tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35356070234351937782024-03-05T23:52:19.632-08:00Nathan Dickey's Blogthe research & writings of Nathan T. DickeyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-64592039901477316562012-12-22T23:55:00.000-08:002013-01-20T16:18:51.926-08:00The Scientific Verdict on God (Part 4): The New Deism<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>The more we refine our understanding of God to make the concept plausible, the more it seems pointless</i>” <b>~</b> Steven Weinberg [<b>1</b>]
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In his bestselling 2006 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356249235&sr=1-1">The God Delusion</a></i>, Richard Dawkins quotes geneticist Jerry Coyne as saying that the real nature of the current conflict between religion and science goes far deeper than just the cultural battle between evolution and creationism:
<blockquote>It’s not just about evolution versus creationism. To scientists like Dawkins and Wilson [E.O. Wilson, the celebrated Harvard biologist], the real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition. Creationism is just a symptom of what they see as the greater enemy: religion. While religion can exist without creationism, creationism cannot exist without religion [<b>2</b>].</blockquote>
If theists want to use reason to argue for their position that a god exists, whatever model of god that may be, they have every right to do so. If they argue on the basis of ancient superstitions, on beliefs based on the myths of a primitive tribe that lived in the desert thousands of years ago and thought very highly of themselves and regarded themselves as special, then there is no point in arguing with them. If, on the other hand, we are going to debate on mutually-agreed grounds of rational argumentation – that is, if the theist agrees along with the atheist that they are going to make clear what their assumptions are and what their reasoning is for making those assumptions, then we should levy no objection to taking the time to debate with them. We atheists want just that kind of debate.
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Incidentally, there are many theologians who do just this. Physicist and atheist Victor Stenger refers to this class of theists as the “Premise Keepers” in his 2003 book <i><a href="http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/god.html">Has Science Found God?</a></i> [<b>3</b>] This is a group with whom he sympathizes despite his disagreement with their conclusions. The premise keepers are theologians who fully accept and embrace the findings of modern science. They reject the approaches of people like William Dembski and Michael Behe and the flat-earth creationists before them, who want to denigrate science. But the premise keepers <i>are</i> theologians, after all. They cannot very well argue that God does not exist, because then they would find themselves out of a job. Therefore, they have to start with the assumption (the premise) that God exists and then attempt to make that proposition consistent with everything we know, not just in science but in all areas of knowledge that weigh in on the god question. And they have actually made a fairly impressive effort in this task by developing a highly abstract idea of god.
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Their abstraction of god has led many of those who follow and agree with their books and articles to write highly critical reviews of the “new atheist” literature that has hit the publishing world like a storm in the past decade. A common accusation they make against the new atheists is that the latter group has not recognized what eminent scientist-theologians like John Polkinghorne or others like him have said. This is simply not the case; atheist writers have considered and written a fair amount about the science-savvy theologians, and I can direct any fan of the premise keepers to the relevant books and articles. However, in many other cases the abstract god of the theologians is not the kind of god being discussed in recent atheist literature. The theologians’ god, who may have created the universe and then allowed it to run on its own, just as in the Enlightenment model of the deist god, is not as interesting as the much more falsifiable personal god of theism who throughout history interacts and interferes with his creation on a moment-to-moment basis. The premise keepers posit a different god, one that essentially amounts to a modernized version of the old deism. Whereas the deism of the Enlightenment was an offshoot from the revolutionary Newtonian picture of the world as a clockwork mechanism, the new deism is an offshoot from developments of quantum mechanics early in the twentieth century.
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Most educated theologians today fully realize that the God they espouse does not answer the prayers of the faithful. Most do not believe Jesus resurrected from the dead or that he was born of a virgin. They are fully aware that these stories and concepts are fictional, quaint mythological stories that may have served some purpose at one time in the past, as all myths seem to have done. Mythology once provided people with a way of understanding their life and the world in which they found themselves that was appropriate for their level of intellectual development.
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Thus, when today’s educated theologians take to task common definitions of God – employed by us outspoken “new atheists” for use in hypothetical argumentation – they are not disagreeing with our observation that the personal God most people believe in does not answer prayers. They are disagreeing with the <i>model</i> of a God that does things like respond to prayers, raise people from the dead, and impregnate virgins with his holy spirit. They realize that the model of this active personal God is a testable hypothesis and one moreover that has failed the test in both science and philosophy. And theologians are notoriously averse to testable hypotheses. Rarely do we ever hear them <i>positively</i> define their god to let us know what they actually believe their god is and what he/she/it actually does. These are the theologians whose sole objection to Richard Dawkins’ <i>The God Delusion</i> is an insistence that the kind of deity Dawkins dismantles is not the god they believe in. But they rarely lay out what they actually <i>do</i> believe about god, only what they do not believe god is like.
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<b>Evolution Theology</b>
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There are several exceptions to this general rule, of course. For example, in the cultural conflict between Christianity and the science of biological evolution, large groups of moderate Christians – taking their cue from the Catholic Church in general – have come out in support of the theory of evolution. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons the majority of scientists are loathe to involve themselves in too great a conflict with these religious groups; they reason that they need their continued support in order to see evolution taught more often than it unfortunately is in most public schools.
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The fact that many religious groups support evolution means that several scientifically-literate theologians must have some answer to the largest theological problem raised by evolution: the fact that the existence of humans is an accident of nature. As the late eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, if we were to wind back the “tape” of evolution and start the process up again from the beginning without changing any of the laws of chemistry, biology or physics, we would not see any of the same set of species we do today. Humanity would not again evolve, since humans are the product of innumerable accidents, chance events that occurred in the process of evolution [<b>4</b>]. The evolutionist John Maynard Smith reiterated Gould’s point in a review of the latter’s work:
<blockquote>If one was able to replay the whole evolution of animals, starting at the bottom of the Cambrian (and, to satisfy Laplace, moving one of the individual animals two feet to its left), there is no guarantee – indeed, no likelihood – that the result would be the same. There might be no conquest of the land, no emergence of mammals, certainly no human beings [<b>5</b>].</blockquote>
This means that humanity is not special. Yet the Christian religion, along with most other religions, has always placed humanity at the center of the universe. Christianity thus has no viable way of accounting for evolution and reconciling it with Christian doctrine.
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How do theologians cope with this? Some, like physicist and Episcopalian priest William Pollard, suggest that God occasionally pokes his finger in at various points to bring about the emergence of human beings [<b>6</b>]. But this model is not consistent with evolution, which is a naturalistic process which operates by a well-established naturalistic mechanism. Pollard’s model is a form of intelligent design.
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Other believers come up with a different theology more consistent with evolution as a naturalistic process. One approach is to basically revert to the god that Einstein famously objected to, namely the god who throws dice. Kenneth Miller, an evolutionary biologist and devout Catholic, suggests that God created the universe with a number of initial possible pathways and then played dice, letting his universe go to let its pathways obtain naturally according to chance, without interfering in any way after the toss. “Evolution is not rigged,” he writes, “and religious belief does not require one to postulate a God who fixes the game, bribes the referees, or tricks natural selection” [<b>7</b>]. This view is shared by physicist and theologian Ian Barbour, who writes, “Natural laws and chance may equally be instruments of God’s intentions. There can be purpose without an exact predetermined plan” [<b>8</b>]. One possible pathway (and the one that the universe obviously took) resulted in the evolution of humanity, but another possible pathway may have led to some other advanced creature. It was just an accident of chance that the path happened to result in the human species.
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In any case, Miller and others with similar views believe that God’s purpose was served, and would have been <i>regardless</i> of what path the universe naturally followed after his roll of the cosmic dice:
<blockquote>Given evolution’s ability to adapt, to innovate, to test, and to experiment, sooner or later it would have given the Creator exactly what He was looking for – a creature who, like us, could know Him and love Him, could perceive the heavens and dream of the stars, a creature who would eventually discover the extraordinary process of evolution that filled His earth with so much life [<b>9</b>].</blockquote>
In other words, whatever path the universe took, whether it resulted in the emergence of humanity or in some other species, God’s only “intention” was to allow the dice to roll as they will. Whatever might have happened, they say, God’s purpose in throwing the dice in the first place is accomplished. As Miller puts it, “If another group of animals had evolved to self-awareness, if another creature had shown itself worthy of a soul, can we really say for certain that God would have been less than pleased with His new Eve and Adam? I don’t think so” [<b>10</b>].
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This is a workable model of God, and one that nobody can disprove or rule out. But it is also not testable or falsifiable, as is the failed model of the Judeo-Christian Islamic God who interacts with his creation on a daily basis and takes an active interest in the lives of humans. Moreover, it is not a god for which any evidence is forthcoming, and the “absence of evidence” argument, as discussed in Part 2, still applies to the dice-throwing deistic god of Barbour and Miller.
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<b>Emergent Theology</b>
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Another common notion entertained by the premise keepers is that god <i>emerges</i> from natural processes, similar to the way consciousness emerges from organic brain matter. The notion of emergence, which grew out of <i>complexity theory</i>, suggests that certain properties and principles not built into material systems can arise out of those material systems, which initially were composed only of particles bouncing off one another. In his book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Emergence-From-Quantum-Consciousness/dp/0199291438/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248355&sr=1-1">Mind and Emergence</a></i>, theologian Philip Clayton identifies <i>downward causation</i> as the most important defining characteristic of emergence. Downward causation is “the process whereby some whole has an active non-additive causal influence on its parts” [<b>11</b>]. This is a process for which the only actual evidence in nature are trivial instances with no metaphysical import, contrary to the theologians’ claims. Clayton himself acknowledges this mundaneness when he points out that claimed instances of downward causation “are clearest when the ‘whole’ in question is something we standardly pick out as a separate object in the world, such as cells, organs, organisms, and objects built by humans” [<b>12</b>].
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A common example invoked by writers on emergence is water. There is no property of <i>wetness</i> in the individual particles that form water, namely hydrogen and oxygen atoms. But when two hydrogen atoms join with one oxygen atom, they produce water molecules which collectively possess the property of wetness. And so, wetness is said to “emerge.”
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Sure, wetness emerges. But this fact does not in any way imply either that emergence is therefore a supernatural process, or that something more than reductive physics is needed to explain emergent properties, as the premise keepers are trying to insinuate.
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Interestingly enough, a number of Christian theologians have come to accept the fact that we can safely conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that there is no such thing as a soul, a spiritual substance that exists in each person separate from their material selves. As Christian theologian Nancey Murphy admits, “It is undeniable that a serious theological problem awaits solution” [<b>13</b>]. She acknowledges that “biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science have provided accounts of the dependence on physical processes of <i>specific</i> faculties once attributed to the soul” and that “the neurosciences have completed the Darwinian revolution, bringing the entire human being under the purview of the natural sciences” [<b>14</b>]. She is a proponent of the position which has come to be known as <i>nonreductive physicalism</i>, which she describes as follows:
<blockquote>Applied to the specific area of studies of consciousness, it [nonreductive physicalism] denies the existence of a nonmaterial entity, the mind (or soul) but does not deny the existence of consciousness (a position in philosophy of mind called eliminative materialism) or the significance of conscious states or other ment<i>al</i> (note the adjectival form) phenomena. In brief, this is the view that the human nervous system, operating in concert with the rest of the body in its environment, is the seat of consciousness (and also of human spiritual or religious capacities). Consciousness and religious awareness are emergent properties and they have top-down causal influence on the body [<b>15</b>].</blockquote>
In other words, nonreductive physicalism accepts reductive accounts of human beings as purely physical organisms, but in addition to rejecting the dualistic notion of a mind or soul separate from the physical constitution of conscious creatures, nonreductive physicalism also denies that reductive physics and biology possess any causal role in bringing about higher capacities such as consciousness.
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Physiological psychologist Warren S. Brown of Fuller Theological Seminary suggests that what we call “soul” is an emergent property which arises from the capacity for personal relatedness among humans. Personal relatedness, says Brown, is made possible by a number of cognitive functions which he argues are either qualitatively or quantitatively unique to humans. These include language, a theory of other minds, episodic memory, future orientation and emotional modulation. While he rejects body-soul dualism and admits that the functions which allow for personal relatedness depend on lower abilities for their existence and operation, Brown argues that they cannot be <i>reduced</i> to those lower abilities. Something more is required to account for them. He further asserts, without providing any evidence, that human cognitive capabilities exert “downward causative influence” on those lower abilities [<b>16</b>].
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So, while the premise keepers have seemingly come to terms with the results of modern neuroscience which demonstrate conclusively that thinking is a purely physical process, as are emotions, they proceed to argue that perhaps, as humanity and the rest of the universe evolves further, out of our materialistic brain chemistry will emerge a tendency toward a point of ultimate complexity. This point of ultimate complexity, which the theologians want to call “God,” is often referred to in the context of the <i>Omega Point</i>, an idea originally proposed in 1955 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin">Pierre Teilhard de Chardin</a>, a Jesuit priest and paleontologist [<b>17</b>].
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Murphy, Brown and other proponents of top-down emergence and nonreductive physicalism still seem to be in denial of another fact, namely that physics implies reduction by definition. If one wants to philosophize it by suffixing an <i>ism</i> onto the term “physical” and talk about physicalism while rejecting reductive accounts which make sense of its constructs, why not deny altogether the primacy of the hard science they are trying to reconcile with theology in the first place and present the physical sciences as simply another branch of theology? As it turns out, some god-believing physicists do just this.
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<b>Christianity and Eternal Life as Physics</b>
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Physicist Frank Tipler of Tulane University, probably the most enthusiastic proponent of Teilhard’s “Omega Point” idea among scientists today, has been rightly described by biologist and popular atheist blogger PZ Myers as <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/is_this_what_we_can_expect_fro.php">“one weird dude”</a> [<b>18</b>]. Tipler promotes some of the most incredibly amusing and bizarre ideas one can hope to come across in his field. He has made a career out of interpreting modern physics in terms of both Christianity and the ultimate movement to the Omega Point, and in trying to persuade his colleagues and readers that theology is a branch of physics. Tipler was introduced in <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/01/supernaturalism-as-scientifically.html">Part 2 of this series</a> as the one who announced in 2007 that he had come up with a physics equation that he claimed proved the existence of God, <a href="http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/proof-of-god-tipler-and-his.html">stating that</a> “as long as you're using . . . general relativity, and quantum mechanics, you are forced to conclude that God exists” [<b>19</b>].
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Some years before this, Tipler authored a fascinating book titled <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Immortality-Cosmology-Resurrection/dp/0385467990/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248287&sr=1-1">The Physics of Immortality</a></i>, in which he purports to “absorb theology into physics, to make Heaven as real as an electron [<b>20</b>].” Let me summarize his interpretation, which is well worth exploring for those not familiar with it.
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Tipler begins the book by asserting that the planet Earth is doomed to be engulfed by the Sun’s outer atmosphere, into which the planet will then spiral, in about 7 billion years. If the human species is to survive into the far future, we must move off the planet and colonize space. In less than fifty years, Tipler is convinced that humanity will have succeeded in building interstellar robot probes which possess intelligence and which will leave Earth to explore the universe and colonize it with the DNA codes of humans and other life forms. These intelligent robots will evolve over time into ever more complex artificial intelligence systems. In about a billion-billion (or 10<sup>18</sup>) years from now, the universe will have reached maximum expansion and will begin to contract. By harnessing the chaos equations governing universal dynamics, the intelligent robots we created will control the rate and direction in which the universe collapses back down to a single point of infinitesimal size (the Omega Point).
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Now, when a system gravitationally collapses, any clocks contained within it run slower and slower as the collapse progresses. This means that an infinite amount of time is available while the collapse of the universe takes place. During this infinite time, everything that can and has happened can be repeated over and over again. The advanced robotic life forms will thus be able to regenerate every single human that has ever existed and make them relive their life over and over again. Not only will every single human being who has ever lived repeat the life they had the first time around, but they will live <i>every other possible life</i>. In other words, everybody will do every possible thing they <i>might</i> have done in their lives. This, then, is the immortality which Tipler envisions: a coming infinity of time in which everything can and will happen, the mechanism for which he works out from advanced physics.
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In 2007, Tipler published <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Christianity-Frank-Tipler/dp/0385514255/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248028&sr=1-1">The Physics of Christianity</a></i>, a book in which he presents pure reductive physics explanations for the resurrection of Jesus, his virgin birth, and his miracles. All of these events occurred naturally, says Tipler, and no postulate of supernaturalism or divine intervention is required to account for and explain them.
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Tipler speculates that when Jesus resurrected from death, his entire body was converted into neutrinos, elementary particles which interact very weakly with normal macroscale matter and thus are invisible, allowing Jesus to walk through solid walls. By reversing the conversion process, Jesus can materialize out of nothing and thereby reappear before his disciples [<b>21</b>].
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Jesus’ virgin birth could have occurred by the natural inducement of oocyte (egg cell) division in the female body of Mary. Tipler points out that the phenomenon of parthenogenesis has been known to occur in nature, resulting in about one in thirty human births. However, because females have two X chromosomes while males typically have the XY combination, natural virginal births should always result in a female child, since all the genes come from the mother in those rare cases. Tipler gets around this problem by noting that 1 in 20,000 males have two X chromosomes, their maleness coming from a key gene (the SRY gene). This SRY gene may have been inserted into one of Mary’s X chromosomes and inactivated by a standard RNA mechanism which turns off genes. The gene would then be activated in Jesus, who in this scheme results from the division of one of Mary’s oocytes <i>prior</i> to its becoming haploid, thus allowing Jesus to be born a male [<b>22</b>].
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Jesus’ miracles are said by Tipler to have been achieved by the electroweak quantum tunneling mechanism, basically the same as that which allowed the resurrection of his invisible body and re-materialization before his disciples: the annihilation/conversion of protons and electrons into neutrinos and vice versa. When Jesus walked on water, the protons and electrons making up the layer of water under his feet were annihilated, creating neutrinos in their place. This means Jesus would have been kept from sinking by the upward recoil resulting from the rapid motion of these neutrinos as they move downward with high momentum [<b>23</b>].
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Tipler even has a physics account of the coming “Great Tribulation” described in the Bible’s more prophetic passages. Tipler is convinced that we as a species are doomed to destroy ourselves within the next fifty years. Recall the intelligent robot probes we will send off into space, as discussed above in reference to Tipler’s previous book. In order to do this, humans will first need to develop a highly-efficient form of propulsion, which Tipler believes will be found when collective humanity discovers the means to control the matter annihilation process used by Jesus. That dematerialization mechanism will provide each of us with a tabletop weapon so powerfully destructive that it makes nuclear bombs look like spitballs by comparison. Our inability to control this weapon will mean our demise at our own hands [<b>24</b>]. Thus, the very process that will ultimately bring about the resurrection of each and every human being to eternal life in the Omega Point – the sending off of intelligent robots into the cosmos who will later resurrect us in the form of computer emulations – will also be the cause of our temporary destruction in less than fifty years.
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<b>Traditional Theology versus “Sokaled” Theology</b>
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In reading Tipler’s works, one is led to wonder if he is actually serious. Perhaps he is playing a great hoax on his colleagues and readers, in similar fashion to the famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair">Sokal hoax</a>. In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal of New York University wrote <a href="http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html">an article for the peer-reviewed journal <i>Social Text</i></a> in which he proposed that the laws of physics are little more than mere social and linguistic conventions and that science must be subordinated to political strategies rather than to reality in order to be liberated [<b>25</b>]. In writing this article, which was accepted by the peer-review board of the journal, Sokal intentionally filled it with pseudoscience and nonsensical but obfuscated postmodern gibberish. His prank highlighted one of the many problems with postmodernist academics, namely the tendency of postmodernists to communicate using a façade of theoretical sophistication to the exclusion of internal logical consistency. As Sokal put it in a <i>Lingua Franca</i> article, in which he revealed his <i>Social Text</i> article as a satire, “Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors, and puns substitute for evidence and logic. My own article is, if anything, an extremely modest example of this” [<b>26</b>].
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This is a fitting description of Tipler’s writings. Although he is careful and rigorous in his use of well-established science and precise mathematics (and so is not postmodern in that particular sense), he has misused and abused the physics he knows in trying to treat theology as a branch of physics and in making up a practically fictional universe from the depths of his fertile imagination. It should be obvious that no Christian layperson talks or even thinks the way Tipler and other “theophysicists” do on a regular basis.
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This is a problem for the evolution-theologians who want to massage their model into consistency with the basic tenets of Christianity. Many want to maintain that the model of a god who throws dice is consistent with what we find in the Bible. However, their model is not at all consistent with what most lay believers and worshippers think and believe. The theologians’ “Sokaled” god is not the one being prayed to by the average layperson in the pew. It is in fact unrecognizable to them, and most of those people in the pews would view the god of the theologians as a heresy. After all, the theologians’ model denies many of the essential traditional precepts of the Catholic Church, for example, one of which states that Jesus was a divine being.
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So in one sense, the premise keepers have come to grips with reality, only to then <i>retroactively</i> define their god back into consistency with the findings of modern science. Because they have come to accept that the broader model of god can no longer be supported, they have scaled back and attempted to fit god into whatever nooks and crannies they possibly can. But they then use their model of god as a justification for religion itself, the exercise of which is completely independent of and separate from the idea of god they have conceived. The premise keepers want to argue that religion itself is good for society and individuals, whether or not there is a god behind it and regardless of whether their god is even identifiable by the worshippers.
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Moreover, the “intention” of the evolution-theologians’ god is indistinguishable from a complete <i>absence</i> of intention. In other words, their god may as well not exist, because if this god does no more than roll the cosmic dice and allow whatever happens next to play out naturally, then there is no reason for supposing that he exists in the first place. Unless, that is, the chance-theologian resorts to the classical First Cause argument, which has been soundly refuted for over 400 years. And besides, there can be no benefit whatsoever to believing in the god who throws dice. He does not hear prayers, much less answer them, and he does not interact in any way with his chance creation. Again, he might as well not exist.
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<b>Conclusion: Rational Christians Are Effective Atheists</b>
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Because the professional reason-oriented theologians posit a god that may as well not exist, it follows that they may as well be atheists. That is, they are <i>effective</i> atheists. This renders their adherence to Christianity all the more perplexing. If they accept that god throws dice and allows chance processes to take over, they must accept that Jesus himself was just another accident of history, as are all the rest of us. Nancey Murphy expresses this concern when she writes, “A revised concept of the person has implications for thinking about the person of Christ. Recognition of the centrality of resurrection to Christian teaching, combined with recognition of the continuity of humans with the whole of nature, calls for reconsideration of the scope of God’s final transformative act” [<b>27</b>].
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Then again, it is not even clear that the majority of today’s professional theologians, even the ostensibly Christian ones, actually believe in Jesus as the divine savior of humankind. Consider, for example, the case of <a href="http://johnshelbyspong.com/">John Shelby Spong</a>. A retired bishop of the Episcopal Church, Spong is the author of many books promoting liberal and progressive Christianity and debunking fundamentalist doctrine. In his 2007 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Non-Religious-John-Shelby-Spong/dp/0060778415/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248205&sr=1-1">Jesus for the Non-Religious</a></i>, Spong gives strong, reasoned arguments as to why the virgin birth of Christ could not have happened, why the whole story of the Nativity of Christ could not have played out as depicted in the Bible, why students of history can safely conclude that the story of Christ’s resurrection is not historical and the story of his ascension is a myth. By the time Spong concludes the first part of his book, practically nothing of the Gospel narrative survives his critical examination. He summarizes his findings as follows:
<blockquote>The first stage of our faith journey, the clearing out of distortions in the way we view the Jesus story, is complete. The literalness of centuries of misinterpretation of the Jesus story has been broken open. The pieces lie before us in frightening array. Jesus was born in a perfectly normal way in Nazareth. His mother was not the icon of virgin purity. His earthly father, Joseph, was a literary creation. His family thought he was out of his mind. He probably did not have twelve male disciples. He had disciples who were both male and female. He did not command nature to obey him. He did not in any literal sense give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf or wholeness to the paralyzed and infirm. He did not raise the dead. There was no stylized Last Supper in which bread was identified with his broken body and wine with his poured-out shed blood designed to symbolize his final prediction of death. There was no betrayal and no romance connected with his death, no mocking crowd, no crown of thorns, no words from the cross, no thieves, no cry of thirst and no darkness at noon. There was no tomb, no Joseph of Arimathea, no earthquake, no angel who rolled back the stone. There was no resuscitated body that emerged from that tomb on the third day, no touching of the wounds of Jesus, no opening by him of the secrets of scripture. Finally, there was no ascension into a heaven that exists above the sky. . . . All of these narrative details were the creation of a community of people who individually and corporately had an experience that they believed was of God in the human life of one Jesus of Nazareth [<b>28</b>].</blockquote>
Spong is by far the most honest Christian I know, and probably one of the most honest Christian writers of our time. His many years of close study have convinced him that there is little to no historical truth to be found in the Gospels, and he has not shied away from presenting the results of his research, however devastating to the tenets of traditional Christianity. It is not often nowadays that we find a Christian author, even a liberal one, writing as Spong does when he says that the “<i>resurrection language of the gospels is literal nonsense</i>” [<b>29</b>].
<P>
I am in complete agreement. If one came across many passages in Spong’s books unattributed, he or she would be excused for thinking that an atheist wrote it. However, through all this, Spong the self-identified Christian somehow manages to retain a dimly-perceived concept of Jesus with which he has lived his whole life and which he believes has brought him a feeling of happiness and fulfillment. He is still somehow able to find in Jesus a name for something by which he accounts for the goodness he sees in life. At the end of <i>Jesus for the Non-Religious</i> he writes,
<blockquote>It is through the expanded consciousness of these transcendent experiences [life, love and being] that I look at Jesus of Nazareth and assert that in his life I see what the word “God” means. My view of God and even of the God I meet in Jesus is a subjective description of what I believe is an objective reality.
<P>
It matters not to me whether any of the details of the cross story are accurate historically. I have long been convinced that they are not, since as I have already suggested, the gospels appear to be liturgically crafted documents based not on eyewitness accounts but on ancient Hebrew sources. They do, however, present a memory of Jesus of Nazareth, a portrait that I still find to be astounding [<b>30</b>].</blockquote>
Spong’s Jesus is just a name, nothing more. His Jesus is a concept not based on anything of substance, but rather on subjective feelings and sentiments. And while the various scientist-theologians reviewed above are more oriented toward hard science fuzzy feelings of the Spong variety, they too champion a model of theological belief of which the sole justification is their subjective aversion to a fully materialistic account of life, the universe and everything. This materialistic, fully reductive account is all that is required of the data, and many of them are good enough scientists to be fully aware of this deep down. The non-interventionist god of the scientist-theologians can thus be safely ruled out on the basis of its status as an unnecessary and post-hoc ancillary hypothesis.
<P>
Paradoxically, the scientist-theologians’ attempts to reconcile their conception of god and religious belief with the findings of modern science represents a fundamental unwillingness to come to terms with the fully reductionist picture of the universe which the data presents to us. At least the religious anti-science fundamentalists live in their own self-contained albeit ridiculous universe of their own dogmatic making which, while completely divorced from the real world, operates consistently according to its own rules which are provably incompatible with reality. Trying to harmonize religion and science succeeds only in a confused and inconsistent worldview unrecognizable by either traditional religion or modern science.
<P>
<b>NOTES</b>
<P>
<b>1.</b> Steven Weinberg, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Final-Theory-Scientists-Ultimate/dp/0679744088/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247182&sr=1-1">Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature</a></i> (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 256.
<P>
<b>2.</b> Jerry Coyne, as quoted in Richard Dawkins, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247341&sr=1-1">The God Delusion</a></i> (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), p. 92.
<P>
<b>3.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Latest-Results-Purpose-Universe/dp/1591020182/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247390&sr=1-1">Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), ch. 11. See also Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Gods-Creation-Search-Consciousness/dp/1591027136/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247432&sr=1-1">Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos, and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), chs. 14-15.
<P>
<b>4.</b> Stephen Jay Gould, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Life-Burgess-Nature-History/dp/039330700X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247481&sr=1-1">Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History</a></i> (New York: Norton, 1989).
<P>
<b>5.</b> John Maynard Smith, “Taking a Chance on Evolution,” <i>New York Review of Books</i> 34 no. 9 (14 May 1992): 34-36.
<P>
<b>6.</b> William G. Pollard, <i>Chance and Providence: God’s Actions in a World Governed by Scientific Law</i> (London: Faber and Faber, 1958).
<P>
<b>7.</b> Kenneth R. Miller, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247680&sr=1-1">Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution</a></i> (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 238.
<P>
<b>8.</b> Ian G. Barbour, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Science-Gifford-Lectures-Series/dp/0060609389/ref=tmm_pap_img_popover?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247550&sr=1-1">Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues</a></i> (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 216.
<P>
<b>9.</b> Miller, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247680&sr=1-1">Finding Darwin’s God</a></i>, pp. 238-239.
<P>
<b>10.</b> Ibid., p. 274.
<P>
<b>11.</b> Philip Clayton, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Emergence-From-Quantum-Consciousness/dp/0199291438/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247783&sr=1-1">Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness</a></i> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 49.
<P>
<b>12.</b> Ibid.
<P>
<b>13.</b> Nancey Murphy, “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues,” in Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Scientific-Theological-Portraits/dp/0800631412/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247843&sr=1-1">Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature</a></i> (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 24.
<P>
<b>14.</b> Ibid., p. 17, 24.
<P>
<b>15.</b> Nancey Murphy, “Nonreductive Physicalism: Philosophical Issues,” in Brown, Murphy and Malony, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Scientific-Theological-Portraits/dp/0800631412/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247843&sr=1-1">Whatever Happened to the Soul?</a></i> pp. 130-131.
<P>
<b>16.</b> Warren S. Brown, “Cognitive Contributions to Soul,” in Brown, Murphy and Malony, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Scientific-Theological-Portraits/dp/0800631412/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247843&sr=1-1">Whatever Happened to the Soul?</a></i> pp. 99-125.
<P>
<b>17.</b> Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Phenomenon-Pierre-Teilhard-Chardin/dp/0061632651/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247918&sr=1-1">The Phenomenon of Man</a></i>, English trans. Bernard Wall (London: Wm. Collins Sons; New York: Harper & Row, 1959). Originally published in French as <i>Le Phénomène Humain</i> (Paris: Editions du Seul, 1955).
<P>
<b>18.</b> PZ Myers, “Is This What We Can Expect from Comfort/Cameron?” <i>Pharyngula</i> 5 May 2007, <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/is_this_what_we_can_expect_fro.php">http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/is_this_what_we_can_expect_fro.php</a> (accessed 22 December 2012).
<P>
<b>19.</b> Quoted in Salman Hameed, “The Proof of God – Tipler and His Pseudoscience,” <i>Irtiqa: A Science & Religion Blog</i> 10 May 2007, <a href="http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/proof-of-god-tipler-and-his.html">http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/proof-of-god-tipler-and-his.html</a> (accessed 22 December 2012).
<P>
<b>20.</b> Frank J. Tipler, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Immortality-Cosmology-Resurrection/dp/0385467990/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356247989&sr=1-1">The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead</a></i> (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. xv.
<P>
<b>21.</b> Frank J. Tipler, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Christianity-Frank-Tipler/dp/0385514255/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248028&sr=1-1">The Physics of Christianity</a></i> (New York: Doubleday, 2007), pp. 198-212.
<P>
<b>22.</b> Ibid., pp. 166-175.
<P>
<b>23.</b> Ibid., p. 200.
<P>
<b>24.</b> Ibid., pp. 62-81.
<P>
<b>25.</b> Alan Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” <i>Social Text</i> 46/47 (Spring-Summer 1996): 217-252. Reprinted in the editors of <i>Lingua Franca</i>, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sokal-Hoax-Shook-Academy/dp/0803279957/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248102&sr=1-1">The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy</a></i> (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pp. 11-45.
<P>
<b>26.</b> Alan Sokal, “Revelation: A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies,” in the editors of <i>Lingua Franca</i>, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Sokal-Hoax-Shook-Academy/dp/0803279957/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248102&sr=1-1">The Sokal Hoax</a></i>, p. 52.
<P>
<b>27.</b> Murphy, “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues,” in Brown, Murphy and Malony, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Happened-Scientific-Theological-Portraits/dp/0800631412/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248160&sr=1-1">Whatever Happened to the Soul?</a></i> p. 23.
<P>
<b>28.</b> John Shelby Spong, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Non-Religious-John-Shelby-Spong/dp/0060778415/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1356248205&sr=1-1">Jesus for the Non-Religious: Recovering the Divine at the Heart of the Human</a></i> (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), p. 128.
<P>
<b>29.</b> Ibid., p. 122, emphasis mine.
<P>
<b>30.</b> Ibid., pp. 285-286.
<P>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-56491947452759179782012-11-17T04:31:00.000-08:002012-11-17T15:21:17.483-08:00The Scientific Verdict on God (Part 3): The End of Classical Theism<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>Deus does not exist<BR>
But if he does he'd want to get down from that cloud<BR>
First marzipan fingers then marble hands<BR>
More silent than silence and slower than slow.</i>”
<BR><b>~</b> The Sugarcubes, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDzaky4nEfg&feature=plcp">“Deus”</a> (from the 1988 album <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/lifes-too-good-mw0000196655">Life’s Too Good</a></i>)
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4xZVWWG1PFbDT8SspUDkmOkjawUee5xiDvmC0GweGzXWjGrXFoLjHzg3Sf46U8hFfgJVA-ZK7ZFtdlkJDehq73Y4teSEuw9NZbqpKJVuYaQisU8jR2X6VhKcTR4cb0s3iBKu8T_liMs/s1600/deadgod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="280" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS4xZVWWG1PFbDT8SspUDkmOkjawUee5xiDvmC0GweGzXWjGrXFoLjHzg3Sf46U8hFfgJVA-ZK7ZFtdlkJDehq73Y4teSEuw9NZbqpKJVuYaQisU8jR2X6VhKcTR4cb0s3iBKu8T_liMs/s400/deadgod.jpg" /></a></div>
<P>
In <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/01/supernaturalism-as-scientifically.html">Part 2</a> of this series, I made the case that science is justified in weighing in upon claims of the supernatural, and that it violates no jurisdiction by doing so. Now that that argument has been made, we can now move on to put the various models of God to the test to see how well they stand up to scientific scrutiny. My thesis in this essay is that the existence of a personal God, the God of classical theism, is a scientific and philosophical impossibility.
<P>
Arguments for God's existence continue to be a topic of intense debate within discussions of the philosophy of religion. I want to make the case that it is high time philosophers of science entered into the question of God with equal intensity. Here I must draw a distinction between questions concerning the concept of God and questions concerning religious practice. All religions, regardless of their relative antiquity or modernity, can easily be demonstrated through critical scholarship to be fallible human inventions. However, the more important and interesting inquiry (at least for me)comes when we put aside theology, all the creeds and the bells-and-whistles with which people dress up their conception of a deity, and consider, if at all possible, <i>only</i> the God concept itself.
<P>
The proposition “God exists in reality” is a <i>hypothesis</i>, and as such it requires objective verification and evidential demonstration to be justified. The particular model of a god I am examining here is that of the personal “Tinkering God” introduced in Part 2 of this series – the one who is said to be intimately involved with and active in his creation. According to classical theists, not only does this God play a very important role in every single event in the universe, from atomic phase transitions in far-off galaxies to the falling of a leaf on the ground here on Earth, but he also actively listens to every human thought. As I noted in Part 2, this God should be eminently detectable by the tools of science, based on the predictions of the model itself, that is, the ways in which this god is said to make his presence known within the natural world.
<P>
Before examining the various classical scientific arguments for the existence of the Tinkering God, let’s review what the theistic worldview is up against.
<P>
<P ALIGN=Center><b>I. ANTI-THEISM ON THE OFFENSIVE</b>
<P>
<b><i>The Problem of Evil</i></b>
<P>
The most devastating argument that weighs against the hypothesis that the God most people believe in exists is the <i>problem of evil</i>. There is an irreconcilable conflict between the conception of an omnipotent, all-wise and all-loving God and the existence in our world of human cruelty and natural disasters. How can an omnipotent (that is, all-powerful) being who is <i>also</i> the epitome of goodness and love possibly allow such evils as war, wholesale genocide, private murder and economic depressions to run indiscriminately rampant and lay waste to his creation? If any higher creative being must be proposed, it would be eminently more reasonable and plausible to posit the existence of a <i>demonic</i> god than a good and wise one. The only other reasonable option open to the theist in the light of the problem of evil is to say that their god is not in fact all-powerful and is therefore powerless to restrain evil. This latter option reduces the theists’ god to utter uselessness; if such is the case, there is no sound basis in reality to all the fears with which religion threatens people and no need for any creed or worship of any kind. Chapman Cohen writes,
<blockquote>If there is a God, he is quite careless of human well-being or human suffering. The deaths of a hundred thousand men mean no more to him than the deaths of a hundred thousand ants. A couple of million men locked in a death struggle on the battlefield is only a replica of the struggle that has been going on in the animal world throughout time. If there be a God, he made, he designed all this. He fashioned the hooks for the slaughter, the teeth for the tearing, the talons for destruction, and man with his multiplied weapons of destruction has but imitated his example. A world without God, and in which humanity is gradually learning the way to better things, is an inspiration to renewed effort after the right. A world such as this, with God, is enough to drive insane all with intelligence enough to appreciate the situation [<b>1</b>].</blockquote>
Theists have yet to explain how a benevolent, loving, omnipotent father-being – who personally guides the destiny of each and every individual – can allow such monstrosities as war, the effects of racism, hatred and bigotry of all kinds stemming from jealousy and fear, the gross disparity between rich and poor worldwide, mass poverty and starvation, the extreme pain and suffering that can be witnessed by touring through any hospital, etc., etc. Consider: if any human father consciously and purposefully allowed his children to starve, he would be imprisoned and indicted. Yet we are told we have a “Heavenly Father,” one we are of course powerless to indict even as he neglects us for eons. If such a god does exist, he is the very antithesis of goodness and wisdom, and it is humanity’s <i>duty</i> to cease paying any tribute to him through worship. In Sunday schools all over the world, theists tell children the fantastic story of how the Son of God miraculous multiplied five loaves of bread and two fishes to feed a large multitude. Yet today millions upon millions of people starve and languish in poverty even as they piously utter “Our Father which art in Heaven, <i>give us this day our daily bread</i>” out of a sense of fear and duty to this deity who has apparently grown tired of performing miracles of any kind. In his book <i>Mind and Matter</i>, the late philosopher C.E.M. Joad summed up the problem of evil forcefully and eloquently:
<blockquote>If we suppose that the universe is the creation of an Omnipotent and Benevolent God, it becomes necessary to ask how pain and evil arise. Pain and evil are either real or unreal. If they are real then God, who, being omnipotent, was bound by no limitations and constrained by no necessities, willfully created them. But the being who wilfully creates pain and evil cannot be benevolent.
<P>
If they are unreal, then the error which we make when we think them real is a real error. There is no doubt that we believe we suffer. If the belief is erroneous, then it follows that God wilfully called falsehood into existence and deliberately involved us in unnecessary error. It follows once again that God cannot be benevolent.
<P>
If we regard pain and evil as due to the wickedness of man and not as the creation of God, we are constrained to remember that man himself is one of God's creations (God being conceived as all creative), and received his wickedness, or his capacity for it, from whom? If we say that man had no wickedness to begin with but willfully generated wickedness for himself, we have to face the double difficulty of accounting for: (<i>a</i>) How man, who is an emanation from God, can will with a will of his own which is not also a piece of God's will; and (<i>b</i>) how a benevolent God could, assuming pain and evil to be a purely human creation, deliberately allow them to be introduced into a world that knew them not, when it was open to Him to prevent such introductions [<b>2</b>].</blockquote>
<b><i>The Hiddenness of God and the Problem on Nonbelief</i></b>
<P>
The very presence of nonbelief poses a serious problem to the viability of a theistic worldview, a problem closely related to the problem of evil. Theists often argue that the reason we do not observe the effects that should obtain all around us if a personal and active God existed is because this God has purposefully gone to great lengths to hide himself from us in order to allow faith to fully play its part in building our character.
<P>
But if this is the case, God is not good. If the only nonbelievers in the world were “bad people” who stubbornly refused to believe in God’s existence simply because they did not want to believe, then that would one thing. However, the vast majority of nonbelievers (certainly all those I have known, met and read) are very open to any and all evidence that might be presented. <i>“Show me the evidence, and I will believe”</i> has been the continual refrain of most in the atheist community, including myself. The fact of the matter is that we still do not believe. Therefore, if the God of the theists really does exist, he must be intentionally hiding himself from people who are open to belief in God and thereby cutting himself off from us skeptics.
<P>
In fact, this distinctly Calvinist interpretation seems to be the view of most evangelical Christians, whether they consciously identify as Calvinists or not. Many believe that their God really has chosen only a select few to be the recipients of his revelation (all those who believe this, of course, are part of that select group). The chosen few are the people God wants to spend eternity with, for whatever reason, and everybody else is doomed to suffer eternally outside his presence. Now, while it is true that this Calvinist model of God goes a long way toward explaining the Problem of Evil, it is certainly not an explanation Christians want to accept. The explanation that presents itself is that God himself is evil. How do we reconcile the rampant, unrestrained evil in the world with the existence of God? Simple: the Calvinist God of the Christians is pure evil.
<P>
Needless to say, this is not the kind of God most people want to believe in. Most people want to believe in a good god, a god that has great love for humanity. But unfortunately, that is precisely the kind of god we can definitively rule out as impossible. Why? Because there should be abundant evidence for a good god, if in fact there existed a good god who did not intentionally and purposefully conceal himself from nonbelievers who are open toward and waiting for positive evidence of the god’s existence to come to light.
<P>
Thus, the very <i>hiddenness of God</i> – quite apart from any consideration of the phenomenon of nonbelief – is damning to the god hypothesis. If the kind of God that most people believe in actually existed, certainly we should expect such a being to have revealed himself to humankind in such a way that there can be no doubt as to his existence and presence in the universe. Furthermore, if <i>any</i> religion is true, this God (if he is not evil, psychotic or otherwise mentally-challenged) should have no qualms or hesitation whatsoever in revealing <i>which</i> is the true religion and <i>why</i> it is true – to all people at all times and in an unambiguous and unmistakable manner – instilling into the collective minds of all people everywhere <i>the</i> True Creed so that no doubt can possibly enter into any skeptic’s mind. Needless to say, this has not happened. “Why, we may ask,” writes philosopher John L. Schellenberg in his book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hiddenness-Cornell-Studies-Philosophy-Religion/dp/0801473462/ref=la_B001JS7YWY_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1353154182&sr=1-4">Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason</a></i>, “would God be hidden from us? Surely a morally perfect being – good, just, loving – would show himself more clearly. Hence the weakness of our evidence for God is not a sign that God is hidden; it is a revelation that God does not exist [<b>3</b>].” Presumably, God could easily, at any moment, exercise his claimed omnipotence to reveal his existence with force sufficient to overpower all traces of doubt and skepticism. Yet humanity has been futilely searching for millennia for even just the <i>slightest</i> evidence of his existence. In his little-known but important book <i>The Churches and Modern Thought</i>, Philip Vivian highlighted the problem succinctly: “How is it that God allowed earnest and learned divines to commit themselves to arguments in proof of His existence, the subsequent overthrow of which has been a potent cause for unbelief? [<b>4</b>]” As for the hundreds of millions who think they have already found a solid faith, William McCarthy asks,
<blockquote>If there are and have been gods, why hasn’t, at least, one showed up? Why do we have to pay their self-appointed, man-selected priests to tell us about them? If the gods wish to save our souls (?) why don’t they, in a few simple sentences, tell us what to do? Why do they permit their vicars to tell us so many conflicting stories about them? The agents of Jehovah alone have pointed out fifteen hundred different mythical roads to heaven, all leading in different directions . . . Why doesn’t god tell the faithful who is right? Is there a god? Would a god permit such confusion and damn foolishness? We wouldn’t [<b>5</b>].</blockquote>
For the sake of argument, let us accept for a moment the theist worldview as a hypothetical exercise, and assess the situation we find ourselves in given the truth of that worldview. The situation, which I have described in five parts, is as follows:
<P>
<i>1.</i> God created the universe but purposefully constructed it in such a way that it looks to all appearances and observation as if no god created it. In fact, God has gone out of his way to hide himself from all people in every conceivable aspect.
<P>
<i>2.</i> However, in a bizarre move on his part, God endowed his favorite creation, humankind, with brains that work with tools called “reason” and “logic,” tools which allow us to discover and learn about the physical world around us.
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<i>3.</i> We develop science, and every discovery we make with the brains God gave us continues to demonstrate that either there is no God, or he is increasingly running out of places to hide.
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<i>4.</i> On top of this all this madness, God divinely inspires a book which tells its readers that he will help anyone come to know him, as long as they are simply willing and open to understanding and receiving him.
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<i>5.</i> And yet, there are millions of people like me – who are certainly open to any evidence that would support the claim that a Supreme Intelligent Creator and Ruler exists – who continue to find it impossible to simply decide to believe despite the utter absence of evidence. And the theists would have us believe that their God has <i>intentionally</i> hidden himself from honest doubters and skeptics.
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<P ALIGN=Center><b>II. THEISM ON THE DEFENSIVE</b>
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<b><i>The Cosmological First Cause Argument</i></b>
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A whole raft of classical arguments favoring the existence of God have been advanced for centuries and continue to be invoked today, despite the fact that they have many times been refuted in short order (if the Bible is correct about anything, it is that “there is no new thing under the sun”). Among these antiquated and obsolete apologetic items is the “First Cause argument,” which assumes as its <i>a priori</i> starting point that every event must have a cause, and that therefore the universe must have had a cause, which theists call “God.” But by predicating a First Cause which they assert to be a “cause that was uncaused,” the theist simply pushes the conundrum it seeks to solve further back. They create a <i>larger</i> mystery to explain a comparatively lesser mystery, and thereby fall into logical absurdity. If <i>everything</i> must have a cause, then we are not justified in making an arbitrary exception for a postulated First Cause. Who, it needs to be asked, created God? And who or what created <i>that</i> creator? To say that this First Cause has always existed and was never created is to deny the foundational and basic assumption with which the argument was started in the first place!
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Moreover, even if it is reasonable to assume that some First Cause always existed, why is it then unreasonable to assume that the universe itself is what always existed, rather than a deity? Postulating the necessity of a First Cause in order to affirm the existence of a god through reason is a complete rejection of all logical procedure, because the First Cause argument seeks to explain that which is provisionally <i>known</i> (the existence of the material universe) with an unknown (God).
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Furthermore, while we can conceive of a cycle of virtually endless causes for any given physical phenomena, it is impossible to conceive of a single ultimate cause for any one obtained object or event. Science provides no justification for tracing causes and effects backward to one simple First Cause. In his excellent book <i>Theism or Atheism: The Great Alternative</i>, Chapman Cohen reminds us that “Cause and effect are not two separate things; they are the same thing viewed under two different aspects. . . . If cause and effect are the expressions of a relation, and if they are not two things, but only one, under two aspects, ‘cause’ being the name for the related powers of the factors, and ‘effect’ the name for their assemblage, to talk, as does the theist, of working back along the chain of causes until we reach God, is nonsense [<b>6</b>].”
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Today physicists are confident that no laws of physics were violated or altered as a prerequisite for the universe to emerge into existence. But that was once one of the best arguments for the necessity of a First Cause, because as early as two hundred years ago it appeared that certain laws of physics, such as energy conservation, did indeed have to be violated in order for the universe to come into being. Physicists today know for a fact that energy conservation was not broken, because we know that the total energy content of the universe is exactly zero; this means no energy was ever required to produce our universe in the first place. We have no evidence that any other laws of physics were similarly violated, either.
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But the First Cause argument contains within it the seeds of the next response resorted to by theologians even today: “Where did the laws of physics themselves come from?” Modern science, not theology, gives us the answers to this question and reveals the fundamental weakness in the First Cause argument. In his book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Comprehensible-Cosmos-Where-Physics/dp/1591024242/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353154082&sr=1-1">The Comprehensible Cosmos</a></i>, physicist Victor Stenger undertakes to show how physicists have come to derive the so-called “laws” of physics [<b>7</b>]. Stenger is interested in accomplishing this daunting task as convincingly as possible, and this obliges him to invoke heavy mathematics of the sort many people cannot read [<b>8</b>]. Stenger’s explanatory account of physical laws as restrictions imposed by observers on themselves is consistent with what would be expected if the universe was <i>not</i> designed by a lawgiver handing down laws from above.
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There is a sound basis for making the case for an uncreated universe that actually does not require a great deal of technical language. Very simply, when a physicist writes a model, he or she is forced to write it in a certain way, namely in such a way that it is independent of the reference frame of the particular observer, what physicists call the “point-of-view.” This required perspective Stenger calls <i>point-of-view invariance</i>: “The models of physics cannot depend on any particular point of view [<b>9</b>].” When this invariance of perspective is achieved, it is nothing short of incredible how all the pieces of the cosmological puzzle fall consistently into place within a wholly naturalistic framework “Thus,” writes Stenger, “the conservation principles follow from point-of-view invariance. If you wish to build a model using space and time as a framework, and you formulate that model so as to be space-time symmetric, <i>then that model will automatically contain what are usually regarded as the three most important ‘laws’ of physics, the three conservation principles.</i> . . . further symmetries will require the introduction of other ‘laws,’ not to govern the behavior of matter, but to govern the behavior of physicists so that when they build their models, those models will be point-of-view invariant [<b>10</b>].”
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Again, the provisionally-derived “laws” of physics, formulated based on human observation and experimentation, are exactly what they should be expected to be if our universe came into being from nothing. Stenger shows in his book that,
<blockquote>[T]he laws of physics do not follow from very unique or very surprising physical properties of the Universe. Rather, they arise from the very simple notion that whatever mathematics you write down to describe measurements, your equations cannot depend on the origin or direction of the coordinate systems you define in the space of those measurements or the space of the functions used to describe those laws. That is, they cannot reflect any privileged point of view. Except for the complexities that result from spontaneously broken symmetries, <i>the laws of physics may be the way they are because they cannot be any other way</i>. Or, at least they may have come about the simplest way possible [<b>11</b>].</blockquote>
The next question theologians ask is: why is there something rather than nothing in the first place? This question assumes that <i>nothing</i> should in fact be a more natural state than <i>something</i>. But why should nothing be the most natural state? As it turns out, we have an answer to the theologians that again comes from hard science. In physics, the most highly symmetric systems we encounter tend to be less stable. For example, a raindrop will freeze into an ice crystal, which does have structure but lacks the level of symmetry the raindrop possessed. Let us stress this: A spherical raindrop has symmetry, while an ice crystal has structure, which is caused by broken symmetry. Likewise, a pencil sitting on a table possesses rotational symmetry around its vertical axis. But that symmetry is highly unstable; if it falls over, that symmetry is broken. Many other examples abound, magnets being a particularly helpful one. Many examples from everyday physics demonstrate conclusively that the more symmetrical a system is, the less stable it will be. Physical systems therefore naturally tend to undergo phase transitions from more symmetric to less symmetric.
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Consider: there is no thing in the universe more symmetric than <i>nothing</i>. Therefore, the state of nothingness is highly unstable. As Stenger explains in his book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/ref=pd_vtp_b_1">God: The Failed Hypothesis</a></i>,
<blockquote>So where did the laws of physics come from? They came from nothing! Most are statements composed by humans that follow from the symmetries of the void out of which the universe spontaneously arose. Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere. And this is why, for example, a violation of energy conservation at the beginning of the big bang would be evidence for some external creator. Even though they invented it, physicists could not simply change the “law.” It would imply a miracle or, more explicitly, some external agency that acted to break the time symmetry that leads to conservation of energy. But . . . no such miracle is required by the data. . . .
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[T]he natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention – not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God [<b>12</b>].</blockquote>
In other words, the existence of our Universe is the natural consequence of the spontaneous collapse of the inherently unstable symmetries of the void. In a <i>Scientific American</i> article written in 1980, Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek provides a succinct mechanism for how this symmetry-breaking may have occurred in the early universe: “One can speculate that the universe began in the most symmetrical state possible and that in such a state no matter existed; the universe was a vacuum. . . . The second state had slightly less symmetry, but it was also lower in energy. Eventually a patch of the less symmetrical phase appeared and grew rapidly. The energy released by the transition found form in the creation of particles. This event might be identified with the big bang. . . . The answer to the ancient question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ would then be that ‘nothing’ is unstable [<b>13</b>].”
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Thus, in responding to theists who invoke the First Cause line of argumentation, many atheists make the slightly mistaken claim that naturalists are not positing a “something-from-nothing” scenario. As we have seen, it is not necessary to distance one’s arguments from this scenario. Despite the difficult philosophical twists one gets into when attempting to describe nothingness, one can plausibly imagine a state of absolute absence of matter, energy and space curvature, and still be able to describe that empty state. To see why this is the case, consider the possible ways of measuring a photon radiation field. This field is described quantum mechanically with a <a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/hosc.html">harmonic oscillator</a>, that is, in terms of a series of energy levels. As the physicist applies what is called a <i>violation operator</i>, a wave function for each energy level is specified by the oscillator. When the measurement is at its lowest level and all the photons have been removed, a wave function still remains. It is a wave function that is describing “nothing.” Thus, it is possible to mathematically describe the property of nothing without any problem, and one can derive a number of plausible scenarios and mechanisms by which something comes from nothing.
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The world-renowned physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking made the same case for a “something-from-nothing” scenario in his J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture delivered in March 2007 at the University of California at Berkeley. Hawking likened the spontaneous quantum emergence of the universe to “the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water [<b>14</b>].” The plausible naturalistic scenario proposed by Hawking became the subject of his 2010 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153700&sr=1-1">The Grand Design</a></i>, co-written with Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow. They conclude, “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing . . . Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going [<b>15</b>].” The analogy to the expanding surface of a bubble is again invoked in Hawking’s and Mlodinow’s book to describe the universe coming into existence via random quantum fluctuations through which the current universe tunneled from a previous one:
<blockquote>Our picture of the spontaneous quantum creation of the universe is then a bit like the formation of bubbles of steam in boiling water. Many tiny bubbles appear, and then disappear again. These represent mini-universes that expand but collapse again while still of microscopic size. They represent possible alternative universes, but they are not of much interest since they do not last long enough to develop galaxies and stars, let alone intelligent life. A few of the little bubbles, however, will grow large enough so that they will be safe from recollapse. They will continue to expand at an ever-increasing rate and will form the bubbles of steam we are able to see. These correspond to universes that start off expanding at an ever-increasing rate – in other words, universes in a state of inflation [<b>16</b>].</blockquote>
<b><i>The Argument from Design</i></b>
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The “Argument from Design” and the so-called “Anthropic (or fine-tuning) Argument” are two closely related classical defenses of a god’s existence that are ubiquitously used today and have been for centuries past. Many theists have attempted to deduce the existence of a supernatural creator and sustainer of the universe from the visible features of the natural world. They do this by selectively pointing to instances in nature of “design,” of carefully-balanced regularity and order, and in various examples of beauty to be found in the exploration and study of natural objects.
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In the early 1800s, Anglican theologian and philosopher <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/paley/">William Paley</a> (1743-1805) famously presented this argument in his book <i>Natural Theology</i>, first published in 1802. A teleological defense of divine causation of nature that was applied on a terrestrial scale, Paley’s argument began with the premise that everything owed its existence to a first cause, which he proceeded to identify as God. The famous “Watchmaker Analogy” was introduced by Paley to illustrate this argument. The structure of the analogy, in Paley's own words, is as follows:
<blockquote>In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result: -- We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially wrought for the sake of flexure), communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer; and at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use [<b>17</b>].</blockquote>
Paley's Watchmaker Analogy can be more succinctly represented by way of a simple syllogism:
<blockquote><i>1.</i> The complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer for the watch.
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<i>2.</i> As with a watch, the complexity of X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe, etc.) necessitates a designer.</blockquote>
Paley's reader is invited to imagine walking through a completely natural locale (forests, deserts, and remote beaches have been used in modern rehashings of this analogy), where a lone watch is found. The analogy suggests that this watch obviously cannot be an artifact of the surrounding nature, that it must have been designed by an intelligent agent.
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Throughout the rest of his book, Paley extrapolates this analogy to everything encompassed by the natural world. This is an example of fundamentally flawed logic. In the context of the Watchmaker analogy, the only reason one is able to apprehend that the watch in the heath is not an artifact of nature in the first place is because <i>nature</i> and <i>design</i> can be distinguished from each other. We can recognize that which has been made by an intelligent agent for what it is. But how do we know when something has been designed and when it has not? The most important failure in Paley's argument is that it lacks a frame of reference from which to compare design to non-design. Paley, along with modern-day proponents of teleological design arguments for theism, failed to realize that the only reliable indicators of genuine design are those that derive from experience. This being the case, a means of identifying instances of design and non-design independently of the indicators in question is required.
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Paley’s design argument also stands as an example of a grossly over-extended metaphor, to which the whole argument is ultimately reducible. While metaphors are often useful for communicating hard-to-grasp concepts to people, they are never the foundation of any strong logical argument. A runaway metaphor cannot be stopped; anything and everything can be applied to it, rendering the necessity of any semblance of logic obsolete. The teleological argument from design is therefore inherently incoherent.
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One can then argue, as biochemist Michael J. Behe does in his 1996 book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153786&sr=1-1">Darwin's Black Box</a></i> (which, in my estimation, is essentially little more than a glorified and updated restatement of Paley's <i>Natural Theology</i>), that complexity <i>is</i> that elusive standard that determines the criterion for justifiably concluding intelligent design [<b>18</b>]. But in actuality, many things that are very simple look designed. For example, a rubber ball is vastly simpler than a rock, geometrically speaking. The reason such simple objects as a rubber ball are recognizable as a designed thing is because of its <i>regularity</i>, not because it is complicated. In fact, designed things tend to be far simpler than natural things. One of the crucial characteristics of agency that need to be taken into account is that needlessly complex things are never an acceptable standard for building things. We want to make them as simple and as efficient as we possibly can. Natural things are (1) generated by chance and necessity, (2) are functionally unspecified and diverse and (3) often very complex. Things that are designed by agents, on the other hand, are (1) built with intent, (2) are functionally specific and (3) always relatively simple compared to natural material.
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It is therefore a basic category mistake to invoke complexity as a measure of design. Complexity more often arises as a result of a lack of planning, than as the result of intelligent deliberation. In addition to this problem, the design arguments characteristic of Paley and his successors also face the problem of lacking sufficient falsifiability: What would a thing <i>not</i> designed by God look like, and how would this non-designed thing operate? These are questions that Paley's argument cannot answer, simply because it was far too simplistic and was not well thought out.
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Moreover, the Argument from Design in general has been conclusively overruled by the discovery and subsequent study of natural evolutionary processes [<b>19</b>]. The argument for god from design relies entirely on the assertion that a <i>Mind</i> exists behind, over and above physical phenomena. The motives of this posited Mind, Paley and others believed, could be apprehended by us mortals through studying the forms of animals. While theists today very rarely use Paley’s original formulation of the design argument, a surprising number of theistic arguments, particularly those of the “recent” Intelligent Design (ID) variety, are still based on Paley’s basic faulty assumptions.
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An understanding of what biological evolution is and how it operates in the natural world is sufficient to soundly and definitively refute the modern ID position. The evolutionary forces that have been conclusively demonstrated to be at work in nature are not only merciless (recalling again the problem of evil discussed above) but also full of waste; innumerable physiological and biological plans have been deemed by natural selection to be futile, useless and worthless for survival. The ruthless preying of a great many forms of life upon many others was unrelenting throughout hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary history and continues to be unrelenting today. Untold myriads of living organisms have emerged onto the scene, only to suddenly perish before reproducing and contributing to their species’ perpetuation. All in all, the world we find ourselves in is a largely useless one, devoid of ultimate purpose and whose defining characteristic is pain and misery.
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The Argument from Design suffers from an extreme case of confirmation bias and selective reasoning. The practice of science, if it is to be objective and impartial, will take note of ugliness and disorder in nature, <i>not just</i> supposed instances of beauty and order. And even <i>if</i> it was true that the earth and its inhabitants are “evolving toward something better” (which is itself a very fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is and what it is not), this would not lessen or mitigate the impact of the extreme, unimaginable cruelty that predominated throughout all of the evolutionary past. In fact, the Argument from Design is inconsistent with <i>every known fact</i> of the natural world; the steady advance of scientific knowledge has rendered it an impossible position.
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<b><i>The Fine-Tuning Argument</i></b>
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A common theistic argument, closely related to the Design Argument, insists that it is impossible for the inherent properties of natural physical forces, acting on their own, to produce an orderly universe that sustains life. The universe, the theists say, requires constant “directivity” in order to remain on its present course.
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It is indeed true that if any one of the physical constants were to be changed by even the slightest amount, life as we know it would be impossible. But it does not then follow that all plausible forms of life could not have existed under those hair-trigger circumstantial changes. This was demonstrated by particle physicist Victor Stenger, who wrote a computer program in the early 1990s called “MonkeyGod,” an interactive module that allows the user to design and run his or her own universe, simply by changing however many constants the user sees fit and then watching to see what kind of virtual universe emerges. Stenger writes, “While these are really only ‘toy’ universes, the exercise illustrates that many different universes are possible, even within the existing laws of physics [<b>20</b>].” Stenger reports on his own experiments with the program as follows:
<blockquote>In previous publications, I have applied MonkeyGod in a computer simulation in which I varied the four parameters randomly (on a logarithmic scale) over ten orders of magnitude. I was mainly interested in seeing how many universes would have stellar lifetimes long enough to allow for some form of life, not necessarily exactly like ours, to evolve.
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. . . I used a formula obtained from one reference for the minimum lifetime of a main sequence star. I later adopted a different formula, from another reference, which I thought was more realistic since it gave the maximum lifetime of a star . . . The results are not in general disagreement with that previously published. In fact, as expected, I get results even more favorable to life. While a few stellar lifetimes are low, most are over ten billion years, which is probably enough time for stellar evolution and heavy element nucleosynthesis to occur. Long stellar life may not be the only requirement for biological life, but I have demonstrated that fine-tuning is not necessary to produce a range amenable for life [<b>21</b>].</blockquote>
Thus, the random, unplanned, chaotic emergence of a universe capable of sustaining life as we know it is not as unlikely as most people seem to think. A number of other studies have been published which report on even more sophisticated scientific programs than MonkeyGod, and which have backed up Stenger’s conclusions. The scientific evidence strongly suggests that some form of life may have been possible under a wide range of circumstances that might have obtained [<b>22</b>].
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There is also a serious philosophical problem confronting the fine-tuning argument: If God was perfect and omnipotent, why would he need to “fine-tune” the universe for life? If the universe was the creation of an omnipotent and perfect God, it should be capable of producing life no matter what the conditions may be. If humanity was so special and elevated above all other species, being formed in the “image of God” as most theists believe, we should be able to live and thrive in literally any locale, under any condition. We should be able to live in the void of space without any need of a spacesuit or other life-preserving equipment.
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However, philosophical and logical objections aside, the practical scientific fact remains that we do not know exactly what kind of universe might be possible under a different set of constants. We can make careful calculations, of course, but in the end we still do not know for certain. Science is an empirical discipline, and the totality of our collective experience is based on just this single universe we find ourselves inhabiting. Still, as we have seen, it is certainly possible to infer what kind of phenomena might manifest in an alternate universe, one with a different set of physical laws and constants. There are no grounds for concluding that this universe is special in any way.
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The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Rather, humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. As a species, we humans just happened to evolve in the kind of universe that features the constants that make our existence possible. If we were not suited for the world in which we find ourselves, we would not be able to live in it. Obviously, then, the situation in which life evolved was one in which the earth had an atmosphere transparent to what scientists call “visible light” – that extremely narrow region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our sun produces a large amount of light within that region, so it was only natural that the human eye developed. How absurd and nonsensical would it be to assert that the sun puts out light in that narrow spectrum, and that the earth’s atmosphere is transparent to that spectrum, because our human eyes are sensitive to that region? This is exactly the kind of silly reasoning underlying the fine-tuning argument.
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The fact that the present order exists as it does is not enigmatic, mysterious or shocking in the least. What would <i>really</i> constitute an anomaly is if any radical and drastic alteration of the present order should occur before our eyes. The state of the universe at any given moment is the inevitable and unavoidable <i>natural</i> result of all the innumerable physical conditions prevail upon the universe in well-understood ways. These physical conditions demonstrate that purely natural forces are capable of producing the universe as we see and experience it. Regardless of what the ultimate nature of our admittedly provisional models of physical forces may be – whether we are considering electrons, protons, electricity or wave energy – these material forces are alone fully capable of producing a universe such as the one we happen to find ourselves inhabiting.
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Moreover, even <i>if</i> these natural and physical forces were not alone capable of bringing a universe into existence, in what conceivable way could an “ultimate, directing and supreme supernatural mathematician” create and install this capacity in natural forces? Unless the capacity for producing the universe as we know it <i>already</i> existed in natural elements themselves, no amount of outside “direction” could have endowed them with that capacity, because this would violate the second law of thermodynamics. Besides, if such an external supernatural and directive agent did exist, why would he/she/it not simply create the universe <i>ex nihilo</i>, without creating natural elements which we observe to possess the inherent capacity for producing the universe on their own?
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As we saw above in regard to the cosmological First Cause argument, inherent in the properties of the fundamental physical elements, and in consequence of their specific combinations, is the capability of “coughing up” the universe as we know it from nothing. The operations of a deity are not required for the universe to either come into being or to subsequently sustain life within it. The order that manifests itself in the universe is the necessary and inevitable consequence of the universal persistence of wholly natural physical forces. If an intelligent supernatural force or being does exist, the best possible evidence of its existence would surely come in the form of inhibitive influences that prevent certain events, predicted by established physics, from occurring or obtaining – events that established scientific observation and testing can confirm <i>would</i> have transpired if it was not for such unnatural interference constituting a clear-cut violation of natural law. But such violations have never been observed to occur. I challenge any theist to present any example of an aberration of the normal operation of known forces which cannot be explained by the effect of other known, natural forces.
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Furthermore, recall also from the above discussion that a “law” of nature is not a fixed statute, as if set in stone by an external legislator. Rather, they represent pragmatically-functional human inventions, interpretations and summations expressed in falsifiable models that are based on established facts inferred from repeated and tested observation. The phenomena observed by scientists do not operate in a particular manner because they derive from a law. The “law” is declared to be so by human scientists <i>because</i> they operate in the manner they do. To assert that “the laws of nature are the result of a lawmaker” is unfounded and an example of faulty logic and poor critical thinking. We have no evidentiary basis to justify any claim that a supreme intelligence decreed natural things to act in certain ways from which they are not to deviate.
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If the theist goes on to claim that a supreme intelligence issued the natural laws for his own pleasure and for no reason whatsoever, then the theist is suddenly forced to admit that something exists which is not subject to any natural law, and the great chain of natural law on which the theist first based the fine-tuning argument is arbitrarily severed in order to posit the nature-independent supreme intelligence! If, on the other hand, the theist claims that there <i>is</i> a divine reason underlying the natural laws instantiated by the supreme intelligence – say, for example, to create the best possible universe – then logic would dictate that the Supreme Being himself is subject to a law over and above himself. Introducing the “Supreme Being” (now not-so-supreme) as an intermediary in the first place is thus rendered superfluous and unnecessary. To say that “God had a reason and purpose” in creating the universe is to posit a law external and anterior to divine edicts and thus the notion of God as an “ultimate lawgiver” suddenly dies at the hands of the theist trying to save the notion.
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<P ALIGN=Center><b>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</b>
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In order to determine whether or not the God Hypothesis is supported by evidence and able to withstand critical scrutiny, we must first construct a testable model of God. The model I have used in this essay is the God of the capital G, the personal God of classical theism that most people worship. As we have seen, the God described by classical theism can be conclusively determined not to exist. In addition the Problem of Evil and the problem of the hiddenness of God discussed above, we do not observe any of the effects that the Personal God model predicts we should see on a regular basis. In other words, the universe appears just as it should if there is no god.
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But most modern-day theologians, particularly those who accept the findings of science related to the origins of the universe and of life on earth, take issue with the model of God constructed by classical theism. Many have insisted the God of classical theism is not the kind of god they believe in or write about in their sophisticated theological treatises. They embrace a different model of god, one that bears little or no resemblance to the God believed in by most non-theologians.
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In Part 4 of this series, I will examine the model of god preferred and embraced by today’s scientist-theologians.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Chapman Cohen, <i>War, Civilization and the Churches</i> (London: Pioneer Press, 1930), p. 122.
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<b>2.</b> C.E.M. Joad, <i>Mind and Matter: An Introduction to the Study of Metaphysics</i> (London: Nisbet & Co., 1925), pp. 100-101.
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<b>3.</b> John L. Schellenberg, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hiddenness-Cornell-Studies-Philosophy-Religion/dp/0801473462/ref=la_B001JS7YWY_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153325&sr=1-4">Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason</a></i> (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 1.
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<b>4.</b> Philip Vivian, <i>The Churches and Modern Thought</i> (London: Watts & Co., 1906), p. 251.
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<b>5.</b> William McCarthy, <i>Bible, Church and God</i> Second Edition (New York: Truth Seeker Co., Inc., 1946, 1972), p. 37).
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<b>6.</b> Chapman Cohen, <i>Theism or Atheism: The Great Alternative</i> (London: Pioneer Press, 1921), pp. 62, 64.
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<b>7.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Comprehensible-Cosmos-Where-Physics/dp/1591024242/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153409&sr=1-1">The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From?</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
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<b>8.</b> The Mathematical Supplements in Stenger’s book (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Comprehensible-Cosmos-Where-Physics/dp/1591024242/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153409&sr=1-1">ibid.</a>, pp. 190-320) are accessible at the level of anyone who has undergraduate science or math training; i.e., those with a Bachelor’s degree in areas such as physics, chemistry, electrical engineering or mathematics will be able to follow Stenger’s mathematics.
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<b>9.</b> Ibid., p. 57.
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<b>10.</b> Ibid., p. 58, italics added.
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<b>11.</b> Ibid., pp. 112-113, italics added.
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<b>12.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/ref=pd_vtp_b_1">God: The Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), pp. 131, 133.
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<b>13.</b> Frank Wilczek, “The Cosmic Asymmetry between Matter and Antimatter,” <i>Scientific American</i> 243, no. 6 (1980): 82-90.
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<b>14.</b> Web Feature, “Origins of the Universe: Stephen Hawking's J. Robert Oppenheimer Lecture,” <i>UC Berkeley News Center</i> 16 March 2007, <a href="http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/03/16_hawking_text.shtml">http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/03/16_hawking_text.shtml</a> (accessed 12 November 2012).
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<b>15.</b> Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153700&sr=1-1">The Grand Design</a></i> (New York: Bantam Books, 2010), p. 180.
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<b>16.</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153700&sr=1-1">Ibid.</a>, pp. 136-37.
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<b>17.</b> William Paley, <i>Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature</i>, Stereotype Edition (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1841), pp. 5-6.
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<b>18.</b> Michael J. Behe, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153786&sr=1-1">Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution</a></i> (New York: Free Press, 1996).
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<b>19.</b> Richard Dawkins, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution/dp/0393315703/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153857&sr=1-1">The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design</a></i> (London, New York: Norton, 1987).
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<b>20.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Fallacy-Fine-Tuning-Universe-Designed/dp/1616144432/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153904&sr=1-1">The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011), p. 236.
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<b>21.</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Fallacy-Fine-Tuning-Universe-Designed/dp/1616144432/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1353153904&sr=1-1">Ibid.</a>, pp. 240-1.
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<b>22.</b> See, for instance, Fred C. Adams, “Stars in Other Universes: Stellar Structure with Different Fundamental Constants,” J<i>ournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics</i> 08 (August 2008)<b>;</b> Roni Harnik et al., “A Universe without Weak Interactions,” <i>Physical Review</i> D74 (2006): 035006<b>;</b> Anthony Aguirre, “Cold Big-Bang Cosmology as a Counter Example to Several Anthropic Arguments,” <i>Physical Review</i> D64 (2001): 083508.
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-11241054838704612012-07-21T23:21:00.000-07:002012-09-08T02:14:36.529-07:00Religion and Morality: A Strained Relationship<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable – namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.</i>” <b>~</b> Charles Darwin [<b>1</b>]
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<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly . . . we are what we repeatedly do.</i>” <b>~</b> Will Durant [<b>2</b>]
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Early in April 2007, a seventeen year-old Kurdish girl named Du’a Khalil Aswad was violently executed in northern Iraq by the members of the extremist Yazidi religious community she belonged to [<b>3</b>]. Her capital offense was become romantically involved with a young man from another religion, a Sunni Muslim boy, with whom she had stayed out all night away from her home [<b>4</b>]. Aswad was literally stoned to death; rocks were physically thrown at her by a crowd of eight or nine men until she died, about thirty minutes into the stoning.
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Regardless of what their religious beliefs might be, the vast majority of Americans would look at a story like this and rightly denounce it as an utterly evil and despicable occurrence, and be reminded of how thankful they should be that we are much more civilized than that. However, many of these same Americans (80 percent of whom identify as Christian) do not recognize that what happened to Aswad in the town of Bashiqa, Iraq is precisely what is prescribed in the holy book a great many of them claim to follow and revere as the morally-correct solution to the problem of teenage waywardness and rebellion against parental authority. Just because most Christians in America have graduated away from these barbaric customs does nothing to change the fact that the Judeo-Christian religion they adhere to demands such customs.
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It is therefore highly ironic to me that, in my own experience, morality seems to be the last bastion of argumentation religious theists present in their debates with me. When it is explained to them that there are several evolutionary explanations for and accounts of morality, a typical response from the theist is to ask where the sense of <i>obligation</i> to be moral comes from, given a naturalistic origin. This line of argumentation is not limited to the lay believer. Many trained theologians have attempted to argue that our sense of moral obligation itself constitutes proof of the existence of God. Christian apologist William Lane Craig goes so far as to propose that, “We cannot . . . truly be good without God; but if we can in some measure be good, then it follows that God exists [<b>5</b>].”
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I say we should examine this claim scientifically. Let us treat as a hypothesis the assertion that God is the source of morals and values, and then proceed to evaluate the consequences that should obtain given that hypothesis. If by “morality” we mean the behaviors which allow sentient, rational beings to live together in peace and harmony (all other things being equal), then there are objective behaviors that promote that end and objective behaviors that detract from it, and this is why we are justified in treating the moral claim of the theists as a scientific proposition to be scrutinized [<b>6</b>].
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There are a number of consequences one would expect to see if it is true that our morals and values derive from the kind of God most theists believe in and worship. Most importantly, religious people should behave better; that is, they should commit fewer crimes, engage in child abuse less often, abuse their wives less often, etc. But across the board, there is no evidence that any difference exists between the religious and the nonreligious. In fact, as Michael Shermer reports in his important book <i>The Science of Good and Evil</i>, “Not only is there no evidence that a lack of religiosity leads to less moral behavior, a number of studies actually support the opposite conclusion [<b>7</b>].” While there is no need to belabor this particular point here, it is abundantly clear that there is no sign that people who are god-fearing are any better morally than nonbelievers. Even Christian publications, such as George Barna’s <i>Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators</i>, <i>Relevant</i> magazine and <i>World</i> magazine (among others), have acknowledged and commented on this fact. Surveys conducted by religious pollsters among their own fellow believers have found, for example, that Christian teenagers are just as much involved in premarital sex as their non-Christian counterparts [<b>8</b>] and that born-again Christians are much more likely to get divorced than are non-Christians [<b>9</b>]. This is understandably troubling to the writers and editors of the Christian publications who fully admit and report on this finding, since they believe they are doing their best to teach and instill morality in the younger generation.
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Indeed, religion and morality have experienced very strained relations throughout history. This undeniable observation constitutes a good reason why human beings are rationally justified in objecting to so-called “religious morality.” A great deal of what religionists deem to be moral are things that most of the non-religious world immediately and intuitively recognizes as immoral. For example, when the head of the Catholic Church does not allow condoms to be distributed among impoverished Africans [<b>10</b>], many of whom then contract AIDS as a result, in what way has the Catholic Church acted morally? To be sure, the African is certainly being more <i>religious</i> by not using a condom, but this is irrelevant; institutions and individuals introduce more suffering into the world when they make decisions on a religious basis, rather than on a sensible and rational evaluation of what is best for humanity as a whole.
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It has been objectively and indisputably shown that parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are endangering not only their own children’s lives, but also the lives of other children with whom the unvaccinated children interact in the classroom and on the playground [<b>11</b>]. Here again is an example of an unfortunate situation that clearly works against the benefit of most people. Why does this situation exist? It exists because of the religious belief held by many people that our divinely created bodies are not to be modified by any medical technology. This is the kind of irrational thinking process that all genuinely moral people must object to. By the same token, it is moral to strongly object to the global “gag rule,” by which government agencies not only seek to limit what can be talked about in women’s clinics around the world, but also threaten to cease funding to clinics whose staff even mentions abortion or condoms or safe sex [<b>12</b>].
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Non-religious and freethinking people who actively object to these things have unwittingly helped give rise to the persistent myth of the “militant atheist” or the “fundamentalist atheist.” These are pejorative labels that most of the so-called “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have been tagged with [<b>13</b>]. I myself have often been labeled as a fundamentalist atheist. My response is this: I would prefer that religious people not hold to their religious beliefs, simply because I prefer to live in a world where everybody acts rationally (which I assume I am). But I am not objecting in principle to people holding whatever private beliefs they might have. My objections are directed toward what they do on <i>behalf</i> of those beliefs when, for example, they attempt to impose them upon other people in the interests of forcing everybody else to live according to the dictates of their particular “God-given morality.”
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The Classical Greek philosopher Plato showed over two millennia ago that the concept of a “God-given morality” is not even a meaningful concept. The famous Euthyphro dilemma [<b>14</b>], found in Plato’s <i>Euthyphro</i> dialogue, asks the question: Are morally good acts willed by God because they are good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God? At the heart of this question is an unsolvable conundrum for the theist: If God wills us to engage in morally good acts because such acts are really morally good, this implies that God is subject to a standard higher than himself. On the other hand, if the decrees and commands of God are moral merely because it is God who wills them, then we are not dealing with objective and authentic morality but rather a morality by fiat that proceeds arbitrarily (see figure below).
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<P ALIGN=Center>(<i>Image retrieved from John Danaher's blog</i> <a href="http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/">Philosophical Disquisitions</a> [<b>15</b>])
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<b>Francis Collins on Morality</b>
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A great many books have described in detail the social problems associated with religion, and I do not presume to add anything to the fine body of work on the subject. But there is an argument persistently put forth by theologians that I am compelled to address in my own way. Some of these theologians also happen to be scientists. My case in point is geneticist and evangelical Christian apologist Francis Collins, current director of the National Institutes of Health and former head of the successful and groundbreaking Human Genome Project. In his bestselling 2006 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-God-Scientist-Presents/dp/1416542744/ref=tmm_pap_title_0"><i>The Language of God</i></a>, Collins simplistically and naively argues that his belief in a personal God is confirmed by his own inner sense of morality, his inner intuition of what is good and what is bad. Collins does not see how that inner sense could have arisen without God in the picture. After quoting at length the theistic argument from human morality as presented by the early twentieth-century Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, Collins writes,
<blockquote>Encountering this argument at the age of twenty-six, I was stunned by its logic. Here, hiding in my own heart as familiar as anything in daily experience, but now emerging for the first time as a clarifying principle, this Moral Law shone its bright white light into the recesses of my childish atheism, and demanded a serious consideration of its origin. Was this God looking back at me?
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And if that were so, what kind of God would this be? Would this be a deist God, who invented physics and mathematics and started the universe in motion about 14 billion years ago, then wandered off to deal with other, more important matters, as Einstein thought? No, this God, if I was perceiving Him at all, must be a theist God, who desires some kind of relationship with those special creatures called human beings, and has therefore instilled this special glimpse of Himself into each one of us. This might be the God of Abraham, but it was certainly not the God of Einstein [<b>16</b>].</blockquote>
One need not be a scientist to see the fallacy in Collins’ viewpoint. All one must do is look at the facts of history. Morality developed long before any religion did; before humans ever invented religion or gods, primitive humanity had a keen sense of morality that allowed them to survive, a sense perhaps far more sensitive and pronounced than in the present day. And the moral sense is not confined to just humans, as if we were endowed from above with a special trait that sets us apart on a higher plane. It has been clearly demonstrated that many animal species exhibit a distinct kind of proto-morality [<b>17</b>]. “Our moral sentiments,” writes Shermer, “evolved out of premoral feelings of our hominid, primate, and mammalian ancestors, the remnants of which can be found in modern apes, monkeys, and other big-brained mammals [<b>18</b>].” After surveying a small sampling of the hundreds of examples of lower animal proto-morality in the scientific literature, Shermer concludes,
<blockquote>The following characteristics appear to be shared by humans and other mammals, including and especially the apes, monkeys, dolphins, and whales: <i>attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group</i> [<b>19</b>].</blockquote>
Collins disputes this, writing, “Though other animals may at times appear to show glimmerings of a moral sense, they are certainly not widespread, and in many instances other species’ behavior seems to be in dramatic contrast to any sense of universal rightness [<b>20</b>].” Sam Harris offers this <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance">thorough and hard-hitting rebuttal</a>, which I will not attempt to improve upon:
<blockquote>One wonders if the author has ever read a newspaper. The behavior of humans offers no such “dramatic contrast.” How badly must human beings behave to put this “sense of universal rightness” in doubt? And just how widespread must “glimmerings” of morality be among other animals before Collins—who, after all, knows a thing or two about genes—begins to wonder whether our moral sense has evolutionary precursors in the natural world? What if mice showed greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage-mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They have.) Wouldn’t these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution? [<b>21</b>]</blockquote>
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<b>Biblical Morality</b>
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So, does the morality of humans and of the lower animals come from God? In addressing this question, let us start with examining the sources people cite when arguing the affirmative. The sources used are usually holy scriptures. For example, one often hears Christians claiming that the New Testament is the greatest document of moral teaching ever penned. And yet the New Testament contains not a single <i>original</i> moral teaching.
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Furthermore, there are many teachings and principles in the Bible that most people, including Christians, certainly regard as immoral in any other context. For example, the Bible clearly supports slavery in no uncertain terms and even regulates its practice:
<blockquote>When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.
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When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
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(<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/exodus/passage.aspx?q=exodus+21:2-7">Exodus 21:2-7</a>, Revised Standard Version).</blockquote>
This is a clear instance, not only of biblical support and endorsement of human slavery, but also of the treatment of women as property whose value is less than that of men. Support for the subjugation of women is elsewhere evident throughout the Bible. According to <a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/genesis/2-23.html">Genesis 2:23</a>, woman is a subsequent and inferior creation to man: “Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, <i>because she was taken out of Man</i>’” (RSV). This verse is invoked by St. Paul in the New Testament in support of his view of women as inferior beings subject to men’s control:
<blockquote>But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head--it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. <i>For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.)</i>
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(<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/1-corinthians/passage.aspx?q=1-corinthians+11:3-9">I Corinthians 11:3-9</a>, RSV)</blockquote>
The subjugation of women is a common and recurring theme throughout both the Old and New Testament. Following is merely a small sampling:
<blockquote><b>•</b> [T]he women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church (<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/1-corinthians/passage.aspx?q=1-corinthians+14:34-35">I Corinthians 14:34-35</a>, RSV).
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<b>•</b> Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands (<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/ephesians/passage.aspx?q=ephesians+5:22-24">Ephesians 5:22-24</a>, RSV).
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<b>•</b> Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/1-timothy/passage.aspx?q=1-timothy+2:11-14">I Timothy 2:11-14</a>, RSV).</blockquote>
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<b>Biblical Relativism</b>
<P>
People who claim that they use the Bible as a source of their morality are being highly disingenuous, whether consciously or unconsciously. Fortunately, very few people <i>actually</i> base their morality on the Bible. If they did, they would be in full support of a number of other social ills we find fully endorsed and even commanded in the pages of the Bible, among them slavery and the subjugation of women, as we have already seen. But thankfully, most modern-day Bible believers do not support these evils. What they have done instead is to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong, in just the same way atheists and all other non-Christians do. Bible believers routinely pick-and-choose aspects of the Bible to incorporate into their moral framework; wherever the Bible happens to say something they perceive to be morally proper, they jump on that and claim that they acquired that piece of moral literacy from the Bible. But in reality they did nothing of the sort. They inculcated what they perceive to be properly moral from their own personal sense of right and wrong. The vast majority of Christians today certainly do not support slavery. Why not? The Bible certainly does not tell them to stand against slavery. They oppose slavery because they themselves have decided that slavery is bad and not conducive to the functioning of a progressive, healthy society.
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Christians who claim they are basing their morality on the Bible are simply not thinking back far enough. Consider: even if a believer were to base his entire moral compass straight from the Bible (one shudders to think of it), he himself has still made the initial decision in the first place that the Bible is a good guidebook. The believer has used his own moral judgment to determine that what he reads in the Bible is actually good. Otherwise, no believer would be able to objectively discern any qualitative difference between God and the Devil [<b>22</b>]. Sure, the Christian Biblicist believes in both of them, and one can find information in the book concerning both personages. But Christian Biblicists have made a personal decision, based on their own subjective morality, that God is the one who is good and not the Devil. Thus, that which Christians often denounce and condemn as “moral relativism” is exactly what the very same Christians are committing when they autonomously choose the Bible as their guide.
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But, to be as conciliatory as possible, I am not willing to go so far as to charge Bible believers with moral relativism, as they often do to us nonbelievers. They have simply and legitimately used their own free will to decide what is right and what is wrong. Contrary to the prevailing postmodern viewpoint, an “absolute morality” (for lack of a better term) does exist, in a certain carefully-defined sense. That is, there are a number of moral propositions that we as human beings uniformly believe to be the case. For instance, with the exception of confirmed sociopaths, humans uniformly believe that telling the truth is good. What kind of society would we find ourselves in if people very rarely spoke the truth? Nobody could believe what anybody said [<b>23</b>]. Or what if everybody murdered other people on a regular basis? [<b>24</b>]
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In either of these hypothetical cases, a functioning society would obviously not be possible to maintain, and humanity would very soon go extinct as a consequence. As a species, we humans have adopted certain uniform moral precepts based upon our own need to live and thrive together in a productive society. Atheists get their sense of morality from the same source as people who falsely believe they receive it from the Bible. The only difference is that we atheists understand where morality actually comes from: morality emerges naturally out of hundreds of thousands of years of human societal evolution [<b>25</b>].
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The only people to whom this naturalistic understanding of morality is not self-evident are those who have simply not bothered to take the time to really think about the issue. Most people, especially the devoutly religious, are far more willing to take the easy path of avoiding deep scrutiny of their beliefs. They are more willing to content themselves with the comforting but apathetic thought that all their moral reasoning comes from a single book dictated by their God, who has done all their moral reasoning for them.
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<b>The Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, and Biblical Illiteracy</b>
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The general lack of scrutiny and critical thinking described above is perhaps best evidenced by the impressions and interpretations with which most Christians in this country comprehend and approach the “Golden Rule.” Most Christians tell us that the Golden Rule is the most preeminent and brilliant moral idea, and that it originated in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Where might they have heard such a notion? They certainly did not read it in the Bible. The most common place they hear it propagated is straight from the pulpit, spoken disingenuously by preachers who must know better. Those few churchgoers and average believers who actually read and study the Bible for themselves will find that Jesus does not take any credit for what has come to be known as the Golden Rule, but instead attributes the idea to the prophets of old: “So, whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law of the prophets” (<a href="http://www.biblestudytools.com/rsv/matthew/7-12.html">Matthew 7:12</a>, RSV).
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But the Golden Rule is older even than the ancient Hebrews who penned Leviticus, where the phrase “love thy neighbor as thyself” first appears a thousand years before Christ (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2019:18&version=KJV">Leviticus 19:18</a>). A search through the annals of history shows that virtually every culture that has ever existed featured a Golden Rule in some form:
<blockquote><b>•</b> Confucius (551-479 BCE) taught a Golden Rule philosophy in his work <i>The Doctrine of the Mean</i>, written about 500 BCE: “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire” (13.3).
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<b>•</b> Confucius was hardly breaking new ground; virtually every major moral figure in history, including those who lacked any obvious association with religion, had already established the principle. Before Confucius, the third century biographer Diogenes Laërtius attributed to Thales of Miletus the teaching, “Refrain from doing what we blame in others for doing” (<i>Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers</i> I,39).
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<b>•</b> In approximately the year 375 BCE, Isocrates said, “Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others [<b>26</b>].”
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<b>•</b> An Egyptian papyrus dating from the Late Period (640-323 BCE) exhorts, “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another [<b>27</b>].”
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<b>•</b> The Hindu <i>Mahabharata</i>, written around 150 BCE, exhorts its devotees to “deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt with” (5:1517).
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<b>•</b> Many more instances of the Golden Rule abound throughout history [<b>28</b>].</blockquote>
This is hardly a surprising phenomenon. The Golden Rule philosophy is a very rudimentary and common-sense idea; it should naturally be among the first notions that enter the mind of anybody who even begins to think about how other people should be treated. I reiterate: the Golden Rule is an excellent example of common sense, and we do not require the help of a divine being or a god-man to come up with the idea.
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Taken as a whole, the New Testament’s “Sermon on the Mount” is almost always approached uncritically and unreflectively by Christians of all denominations. Over and over again, Christians are heard saying that even people who are not Christians must admit that the teachings and sayings of Jesus were very good and wise ideas. This is not the case. Sure, some of the sayings attributed to Jesus are worthy of being considered items of good moral wisdom. But there are also a number of highly unintelligent and naïve teachings attributed to Jesus as well, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount.
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This observation inspired Matt Dillahunty, current president of the Atheist Community of Austin in Texas, to write a detailed and thorough point-by-point deconstruction of the Sermon on the Mount for the <i>Iron Chariots </i>counter-apologetics wiki website. <a href="http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Sermon_on_the_Mount">In this excellent deconstruction</a> (which I think should be published in pamphlet form and distributed in every church), Dillahunty unsparingly points out the parts of the Sermon in which Jesus gives downright bad advice as well as the parts in which patently false claims about reality are made [<b>29</b>].
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Critical evaluations of the Sermon on the Mount reveal the absurdity of the often-repeated claim that the Sermon is “the greatest speech ever delivered in human history,” simply because it may have tugged at peoples’ heartstrings for two thousand years. But the Sermon on the Mount is not the greatest speech anybody has ever given. Not only does it contain plenty of bad advice, but it also conspicuously lacks any really good advice that most civilized people would consider essential, such as <i>“Do not enslave your fellow man.”</i> Would it not be fitting for Jesus, supposedly the “greatest moral teacher who ever lived,” to have denounced slavery as a bad thing to be avoided by healthy societies and individuals? But Jesus is never reported to have condemned slavery, though he had plenty of opportunity and occasion to do so. Indeed, later in the New Testament, St. Paul positively expresses his support of human slavery very strongly [<b>30</b>]. This will hardly come as a shock to those who have actually read and studied the Bible without the blinders or preset assumptions of pious belief [<b>31</b>].
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Fundamentalist Christians in the United States even go so far as to suggest that the American legal system is based on the Ten Commandments, which is ludicrous even by the fundamentalists’ standards of biblical interpretation. Only three of the Ten Commandments are a part of any moral system today. Even this is being generous, since one of these three is a prohibition against the minor societal offense of adultery. While adultery is considered immoral by most people, secular and religious alike, it is not generally illegal in any modern, industrialized country. The remaining two laws, “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal,” are common-sense laws that certainly predate the early Hebrew culture and was hardly originated by them. The remaining seven laws in the Ten Commandments all consist of Yahweh’s demands that his people worship him and no other deity.
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Where in the Ten Commandments (or in the entire Bible, for that matter), do we ever find the concept of democracy or liberty endorsed or even mentioned? It is nowhere to be found, and this should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. Even the concept of the Trinity, a central tenet of Christian dogma, is never actually addressed or even mentioned anywhere in the Bible [<b>32</b>]. Much less so the foundations of American law!
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Nevertheless, theists often insist on resorting to the circular and non-falsifiable route of claiming that basic common-sense morality, which naturally manifests itself in almost every culture through teachings like the Golden Rule and laws against murder and theft, <i>is itself </i>an indication of the existence and influence of God. Collins, for example, asserts that our most basic moral instincts constitute “an inkling of what lies beyond, a signpost placed deep within the human spirit pointing toward something much grander than ourselves . . . [<b>33</b>]” The idea here, when expressed in less theological and sentimental language, is that morality is hardwired into humans by a spiritual conduit through the hundreds of thousands of years of our history.
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How might a rational skeptic argue with this kind of bland assertion? In the face of all we know about the science of human behavior, this assertion becomes little more than an unnecessary ancillary hypothesis. Why must a supernatural power be posited to explain the hardwiring of morality into human behavior? Natural evolution is already more than capable of providing an explanation that is not only more simple and economical, but also far more plausible and evidence-based [<b>34</b>]. In responding to this theistic rationale, physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger writes, “Okay, so the Abrahamic God could have planted these ideas in people’s minds from the beginning. However, the truth is that we cannot point to the scriptures of Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the unique origin of the Golden Rule. More likely, thoughtful human beings reasoned it out in their own minds as a useful principle that humans could live by to make a better society for all [<b>35</b>].”
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<b>Where Do We Go from Here?</b>
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Francis Collins demonstrates in his book that his reasons for believing in and committing his life to a personal god who created the universe are not science-based or evidence-derived. Rather, he was convinced to become a theist based on the provably flawed argumentation of a pious children’s author. Moreover, near the end of his book, Collins relates a subjective experience that finally drove him to not just believe in the Christian God, but also to pray to this entity and surrender his life to it:
<blockquote>Lewis was right. I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ [<b>36</b>].</blockquote>
According to a <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211593-1,00.html"><i>Time</i> magazine profile on Collins</a> [<b>37</b>], the most compelling aspect of the waterfall he stumbled upon during his hike (that which made it so “unexpected”) was that it had frozen into three separate streams. This natural formation powerfully reminded Collins of the Trinity and further cemented his desire to devote himself to Christianity. The fact that this labile self-deception comes from a highly trained scientist is why neuroscientist Sam Harris calls <i>The Language of God </i>“a genuinely astonishing book” and states that those who read it will “witness nothing less than an intellectual suicide [38].” I suggest that a far more accurate subtitle for Collins’s book would be <i>A C.S. Lewis Admirer Presents Emotional Reasons for Belief</i>, for he effectively reduces human morality to subjective feeling and an excuse for credulity throughout.
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What I find most disturbing about the Moral Argument for God’s Existence is that the people who promote the argument do so from such a tremendous position of ignorance. Instead of examining the history of moral development in human culture and the sources of modern law, they are content to theorize using very bad philosophy. “I cannot conceive of any way that we can be good, except with the help of a God,” they routinely say. Why not?
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Herein is seen the importance of the so-called “New Atheist” movement of the last decade [<b>39</b>]. The goal of the New Atheists, which we are accomplishing little by little as time goes on, is (1) to encourage people from all walks of life to start asking tough questions about beliefs that our culture at large takes for granted, (2) to oblige theistic apologists to think through their arguments more carefully and hold them to a higher standard of critical reasoning and (3) to teach our children to not simply rely on authority (either their own or that of anybody else), but to think for themselves. When and if this goal is realized to a noticeable degree, the world will be a much better place than it is now, when religion dominates.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Charles Darwin, <i>The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex</i> Second Edition (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1901), p. 99.
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<b>2.</b> Will Durant (1926), <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Philosophy-Opinions-Philosophers/dp/0671739166/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937696&sr=1-1"><i>The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers from Plato to John Dewey</i></a> (New York: Pocket Books, 2006), p. 98.
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<b>3.</b> Daily Mail, “The Moment a Teenage Girl Was Stoned to Death for Loving the Wrong Boy,” <i>Daily Mail Online</i> 3 May 2007, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452288/The-moment-teenage-girl-stoned-death-loving-wrong-boy.html ">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452288/The-moment-teenage-girl-stoned-death-loving-wrong-boy.html</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>4.</b> Amnesty International, “Iraq: ‘Honour Killing’ of Teenage Girl Condemned as Abhorrent,” <i>Amnesty.org.uk</i> 2 May 2007, <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17351">http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17351</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>5.</b> William Lane Craig, “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality,” <i>Foundations</i> 5 (1997): 9-12.
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<b>6.</b> Sam Harris, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/B006W3YQTK/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937833&sr=1-1"><i>The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values</i></a> (New York: Free Press, 2010).
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<b>7.</b> Michael Shermer, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Good-Evil-People/dp/0805077693/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937267&sr=1-1"><i>The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule</i></a> (New York: Times Books, 2004), p. 235.
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<b>8.</b> Tyler Charles, “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” <i>Relevant</i> September/October 2011, pp. 65-66<b>;</b> Gene Edward Veith, “Sex and the Evangelical Teen,” <i>World</i> August 11, 2007, available online at <a href="http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13208">http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13208</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>9.</b> George Barna, <i>The Index of Leading Spiritual Indicators</i> (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1996).
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<b>10.</b> BBC News, “Pope Rejects Condoms for Africa,” <i>BBC News</i> 10 June 2005, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081276.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4081276.stm</a> (accessed 21 July 2012)<b>;</b> CNN.com, “Pope Visits Africa, Reaffirms Ban on Condoms,” <i>CNN</i> 18 March 2009, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/17/cameroon.pope/">http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/17/cameroon.pope/</a> (accessed 21 July 2012)<b>;</b> Anna Clark, “The Pope is Still Sidestepping the Issue of Contraception and AIDS,” <i>The Guardian</i> 23 November 2011, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/23/pope-contraception-aids">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/23/pope-contraception-aids</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>11.</b> Paul A. Offit, M.D., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Choices-Anti-Vaccine-Movement-Threatens/dp/B005HKUA4O/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937100&sr=1-1"><i>Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All</i></a> (New York: Basic Books, 2010)<b>;</b> Michael Specter, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Denialism-Irrational-Thinking-Scientific-Threatens/dp/B003JTHRFU/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937142&sr=1-1"><i>Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives</i></a> (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), pp. 57-102<b>;</b> Steven Novella, “The Anti-Vaccination Movement,” in Kendrick Frazier, ed., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Under-Siege-Defending-Pseudoscience/dp/1591027152/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937184&sr=1-1"><i>Science Under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience</i></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), 185-194<b>;</b> Richard G. Judelsohn, “Vaccine Safety: Vaccines Are One of Public Health’s Great Accomplishments,” in Frazier, ed., <i>Science Under Siege</i>, pp. 195-6.
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<b>12.</b> Sean Faircloth, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Attack-Theocrats-Religious-Right-Harms/dp/0984493247/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937058&sr=1-1"><i>Attack of the Theocrats: How the Religious Right Harms Us All – and What We Can Do About It</i></a> (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing, 2012), pp. 45-47.
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<b>13.</b> See, for example, Alister McGrath, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Dawkins-Delusion-Atheist-Fundamentalism/dp/083083446X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347074754&sr=1-1">The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine</a></i> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007) and Chris Hedges, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Believe-Atheists-Chris-Hedges/dp/141656795X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937216&sr=1-1"><i>When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists</i></a> (New York: Free Press, 2008).
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<b>14.</b> The original formulation of this dilemma is found in Plato’s <i>Euthyphro</i> dialogue (10a): “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?” (This is G.M.A. Grube’s translation in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Five-Dialogues-Euthyphro-Apology-Phaedo/dp/0872206343/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937796&sr=1-1"><i>Plato: Five Dialogues</i> Second Edition</a> [Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002], p. 12).
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<b>15.</b> John Danaher, “God and Morality (Part 2): Owing Duties and the Euthyphro Dilemma,” <i>Philosophical Disquisitions: Things Hid and Barr’d from Common Sense</i> (blog), January 2, 2010, <a href="http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/01/god-and-morality-part-2-owing-duties.html">http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/01/god-and-morality-part-2-owing-duties.html</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>16.</b> Francis S. Collins, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-God-Scientist-Presents/dp/1416542744/ref=tmm_pap_title_0"><i>The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief</i></a> (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 29.
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<b>17.</b> Matt Ridley, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Virtue-Instincts-Cooperation/dp/0140264450/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347074984&sr=1-1"><i>The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation</i></a> (New York: Viking, 1997); Christopher Boehm, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchy-Forest-Evolution-Egalitarian-Behavior/dp/0674006917/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075042&sr=8-1"><i>Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior</i></a> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Nicholas Wade, “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior,” <i>The New York Times</i> March 20, 2007, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html?pagewanted=all</a> (accessed 21 July 2012)<b>;</b> John Noble Wilford, “Chimpanzees: Almost Human, and Sometimes Smarter,” <i>The New York Times</i> April 17, 2007, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html?pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17chimp.html?pagewanted=all</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>18.</b> Shermer, <i>The Science of Good and Evil</i>, pp. 26-27.
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<b>19.</b> Ibid., p. 31.
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<b>20.</b> Collins, <i>The Language of God</i>, p. 23.
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<b>21.</b> Sam Harris, “The Language of Ignorance,” <i>Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines</i> 15 August 2006, <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance">http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>22.</b> Indeed, nonbelievers who read and study the Bible have often challenged believers to explain why it is that the supposedly all-powerful God described in the Bible never takes it upon himself to stop Satan from corrupting the world and wreaking havoc on humanity. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of Bible believers, higher biblical criticism has shown that God and Satan, far from being understood as archenemies, were portrayed by the ancients as allies working toward the same ends, at least temporarily. See Nathan Dickey, “Why Does God Not Stop Satan? A Response to Lavern,” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 6 June 2010, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-does-god-not-stop-satan-response-to.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-does-god-not-stop-satan-response-to.html</a> (accessed 21 July 2012) and references therein.
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<b>23.</b> Sam Harris, <a href="http://www.samharris.org/lying/"><i>Lying</i></a> (published as an e-book by SamHarris.org, 2011).
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<b>24.</b> Steven Pinker, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0670022950/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075316&sr=1-2"><i>The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined</i></a> (New York: Viking, 2011).
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<b>25.</b> There has been an enormous development in recent years of studies on the evolution of morality, with numerous books and articles available at both the scholarly and popular level. See, for example, Robert Axelrod, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Of-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465021220/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075964&sr=1-1">The Evolution of Cooperation</a></i> (New York: Basic Books, 1984)<b>;</b> Richard D. Alexander, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Moral-Systems-Foundations-Behavior/dp/0202011747/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075907&sr=1-1">The Biology of Moral Systems</a></i> (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987)<b>;</b> Robert Wright, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Animal-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075793&sr=1-1-fkmr0">The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology</a></i> (New York: Vintage Books, 1994)<b>;</b> Frans B.M. de Waal, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Natured-Origins-Humans-Animals/dp/0674356616/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075743&sr=1-1">Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals</a></i> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)<b>;</b> Matt Ridley, <i>The Origins of Virtue</i><b>;</b> Larry Arnhart, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Natural-Right-Biological-Philosophy/dp/0791436942/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075694&sr=1-1">Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature</a></i> (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998)<b>;</b> Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unto-Others-Evolution-Psychology-Unselfish/dp/0674930479/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075648&sr=1-1">Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior</a></i> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)<b>;</b> Leonard D. Katz, ed., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Origins-Morality-Cross-Disciplinary-Perspectives/dp/090784507X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075595&sr=1-1">Evolutionary Origins of Morality: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives</a></i> (Bowling Green, OH: Imprint Academic, 2000)<b>;</b> Jessica C. Flack and Frans B.M. de Waal, “’Any Animal Whatever’: Darwinian Building Blocks of Morality in Monkeys and Apes,” <i>Journal of Consciousness Studies</i> 7, nos. 1-2 (2000): 1-29<b>;</b> Donald M. Broom, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Morality-Religion-Donald-Broom/dp/0521821924/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347094030&sr=1-1">The Evolution of Morality and Religion</a></i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)<b>;</b> Shermer, <i>The Science of Good and Evil</i><b>;</b> M. Rutherford, “The Evolution of Morality,” <i>Groundings</i> 1 (2007)<b>;</b> Christopher Boehm, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Origins-Evolution-Virtue-Altruism/dp/0465020488/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347075528&sr=1-1"><i>Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame</i></a> (New York: Basic Books, 2012).
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<b>26.</b> Quoted in William F. Loomis, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Life-It-Is-Biology-Public/dp/0520253574/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937570&sr=1-1"><i>Life As It Is: Biology for the Public Sphere</i></a> (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2008), p. 170.
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<b>27.</b> Richard Jasnow, <i>A Late Period Hieratic Wisdom Text: P. Brooklyn P. 47.218.135</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 85.
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<b>28.</b> Shermer, <i>The Science of Good and Evil</i>, pp. 25-26.
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<b>29.</b> Matt Dillahunty, “Sermon on the Mount,” <i>Iron Chariots: The Counter-Apologetics Wiki</i> n.d. (last updated December 14, 2011), <a href="http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Sermon_on_the_Mount">http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Sermon_on_the_Mount</a> (accessed 20 July 2012).
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<b>30.</b> Chapman Cohen, <i>Christianity, Slavery and Labour</i> Third Edition (London: Pioneer Press, 1931), p. 10.
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<b>31.</b> Dan Barker, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1342937613&sr=1-1"><i>Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists</i></a> (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2008), pp. 171-184.
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<b>32.</b> Bart D. Ehrman, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Interrupted-Revealing-Hidden-Contradictions/dp/0061173940/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347076194&sr=1-1"><i>Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them)</i></a> (New York: HarperOne, 2009), pp. 254-60.
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<b>33.</b> Collins, <i>The Language of God</i>, pp. 36-37.
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<b>34.</b> For information and references relating to the evolution of morality via naturalistic processes, see Douglas Allchin’s website “The Evolution of Morality,” <a href="http://www1.umn.edu/ships/evolutionofmorality/">http://www1.umn.edu/ships/evolutionofmorality/</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>35.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Folly-Faith-Incompatibility-Religion/dp/1616145994/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347076265&sr=1-1">God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), p. 254.
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<b>36.</b> Collins, <i>The Language of God</i>, p. 225.
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<b>37.</b> David Van Biema, “Reconciling God and Science,” <i>Time</i> 10 July 2006, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211593-1,00.html">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1211593-1,00.html</a> (accessed 21 July 2012). See also Steve Paulson, “The Believer,” <i>Salon</i> 7 August 2006, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2006/08/07/collins_6/">http://www.salon.com/2006/08/07/collins_6/</a> (accessed 21 July 2012).
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<b>38.</b> Harris, <i>The Moral Landscape</i>, p. 160.
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<b>39.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Atheism-Taking-Science/dp/1591027519/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347076374&sr=1-1"><i>The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason</i></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009).
<P>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-58982410140795604202012-07-16T13:14:00.000-07:002012-07-17T02:52:56.691-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 6): Conclusion<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/religious-evangelism-in-american.html"><i><b>Part 1: Introduction</b></i></a>
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/religious-evangelism-in-american_03.html"><i><b>Part 2: Secular vs. Religious Uses of Mass Media</b></i></a>
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/religious-evangelism-in-american_07.html"><i><b>Part 3: Contemporary Christian Music</b></i></a>
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/religion-in-american-popular-culture.html"><i><b>Part 4: Christian Novels</b></i></a>
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/07/religion-in-american-popular-culture_16.html"><i><b>Part 5: Biblical Epics and Evangelistic Filmmaking</b></i></a>
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The grip that the modern mass media maintains on all aspects of social life is strong, and it has evolved over the centuries to become an entity through which our understanding of the world and of our interactions with it is filtered. But the mass media is also a <i>mirror</i>, reflecting the values that society at large places on the issues that affect us most, from politics to economics to religion. This is why religion, which has shaped and transformed the lives of individuals and societies, figures so prominently in popular culture and mass media. But the merging of religion with mainstream popular culture is in many ways a bewildering and, for that reason, fascinating paradox, a paradox that is immediately inherent in the very concept of a higher being communicating with lowly humanity, the transference of infinite wisdom to finite and deficient understanding prone to error and distortion. The biggest challenge faced by evangelical religion in the world of popular culture is to <i>simultaneously</i> offer products that transcend materialistic market philosophies and also reach the masses and meet them where they are by imitating secular forms and styles. Evangelical religion, especially in America, has faced this challenge head-on; popular culture is Christianity’s largest and most treaded missionary field.
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But religion has only seen partial success in the mission field of popular culture. As Moore writes, “[W]ellness does not carry with it transformative power. The paradigm-busters are nowhere in view. Those people who wait in these times for the numerically impressive organizations of American religion to coalesce into a powerful redemptive force are bound to find the present circumstances profoundly unsatisfying [<b>1</b>].” Although religion has certainly not diminished in the face of growing secularization (and in some respects has been enriched by it), the increasingly blurred between the sacred and the profane has rendered the ideals taught by religion a performance to be participated in by the masses through consumer culture, and not through rigorous ecclesiastical codes of conduct and ritual. According to Stewart Hoover, “[D]espite its intentions and pretensions, the electronic church holds out promise mainly for those who are most easily convinced, not for a broader society in need of some sort of hope [<b>2</b>].” If the “hope” that Hoover mentions here is a reference to something beyond the material, American Christianity certainly cannot offer that. “[M]aterial consumption,” writes James Twitchell, is “an expression of belief. Before we are spiritualists, we are materialists . . . No major religion compares with Christianity for its inventory of totemic stuff [<b>3</b>].”
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Religion is every bit as much a performance as is gender or race. Indeed, it must be in order to maintain any semblance of relevancy. This makes evangelical religion a cultural commodity among many others, as there is little relevancy or appeal in cloistered, cult-like messages that promote a stifling sectarian outlook on life. This sectarian outlook is present in the Christian products that have been trapped within the confines of a particular subculture separated from the broader culture. Instead of merging with secular culture seamlessly, religion has been too transparent that what it is often engaging in is imitation, and the secular, diverse world of consumers can see this all too clearly. “That it [the modern church] fails to reach many aside from those who already are adherents suggests that its cultural appeal is very limited, indeed [<b>4</b>].”
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To the extent that secularization of the sacred has actually enriched American religion, it has done so by <i>universalizing</i> its message, not by making a narrow, fundamentalist worldview appealing to the masses. This universalization has effectively diluted the “narrow path to salvation” philosophy that Christianity advocated for centuries. Further research can and should be conducted on how <i>popular culture</i> was one force among many that dragged a religion rooted in ancient tradition and medieval philosophy into the modern age that obliged it to conform to a more healthy humanism and progressive morality, since most research in this area focuses on the role and influence of science and civil philosophy in this regard.
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NOTES
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<b>1.</b> R. Laurence Moore, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selling-God-American-Religion-Marketplace/dp/0195098382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785517&sr=1-1"><i>Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture</i></a> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 275-276.
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<b>2.</b> Stewart M. Hoover, <i>Mass Media Religion: The Social Sources of the Electronic Church</i> (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988), p. 245.
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<b>3.</b> James B. Twitchell, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shopping-God-Christianity-Went-Heart/dp/0743292871/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341137816&sr=1-1&keywords=Shopping+for+God%3A+How+Christianity+Went+From+In+Your+Heart+to+In+Your+Face"><i>Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart to In Your Face</i></a> (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), pp. 61-62.
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<b>4.</b> Hoover, <i>Mass Media Religion</i>, p. 245.
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<meta name="google-site-verification" content="1v89aEpLsANDDfywEXTNHHd4RSKnsy3k4D5x7VnsGx8" />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-15149291247569524362012-07-16T12:15:00.001-07:002012-07-16T13:02:02.123-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 5): Biblical Epics and Evangelistic Filmmaking<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>But he could laugh and cough, couldn’t he? He’s always depicted as so solemn, walking slowly, with his hands held like this</i> . . .” [<b>1</b>]
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<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>The Public, bless ‘em, must have a pretty face to look at . . . Well, isn't there any romance or adventure in the world without having a flapper in it?</i>” ~ Carl Denham, from the movie <i>King Kong</i> (1933)
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When Mel Gibson’s movie <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/golgotha-chainsaw-massacre-rambling.html"><i>The Passion of the Christ</i></a> hit theaters in February of 2004, both the filmmakers and some segments of the general public were taken aback by the resounding success and popularity it achieved. It was not anticipated that a movie whose source inspiration was a medieval book of esoteric Passion visions penned in the 19th century by an Augustinian stigmatic nun [<b>2</b>], and which was dubbed entirely in the dead language of Aramaic, would make much of an impact on the modern movie-going public [<b>3</b>].
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Hollywood veteran Mel Gibson fully realized the financial risks accompanying a bold venture such as this. But contrary to modest expectations and tentative, awkward steps in initial marketing and release that was unconventional almost by necessity, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> did indeed make a resounding impact. <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Poll+Finds+%27The+Passion+of+the+Christ%27+Boosts+People%27s+Bible-Reading...-a0114780523">According to an online poll</a> conducted by Beliefnet.com (answered by approximately twelve thousand people and sponsored by Zondervan, the world’s largest publisher of Bibles), 62 percent were reading the Bible more as a result of seeing the movie. The poll also found that 41 percent of respondents had a more positive view of the Bible after seeing the movie, while 75 percent indicated when asked that the movie portrayed events “very close” to the Bible’s account of Jesus’ death [<b>4</b>].
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This last statistic is of particular interest; it is no secret that images are rapidly replacing texts as a primary vehicle for information of all kinds, especially entertainment. This unseating of textual mediums means that, in a country for whose citizens religion is a deeply-embedded preoccupation, visual media is an obvious direction for communication of a distinctly religious (and especially evangelistic) bent to venture down. Religious themes have found their way into the medium of film almost from its very inception. As Robert Johnston points out in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reel-Spirituality-Theology-Dialogue-Engaging/dp/0801031877/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341105118&sr=1-1&keywords=reel+spirituality"><i>Reel Spirituality</i></a>, religious subjects were prominent in many early films, many of which were made by religious people, and as the relationship between the church and the movie industry grew and matured, so did the quality of the way in which religion and the Bible were presented [<b>5</b>].
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<b>Midrash at the Movies</b>
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The ubiquity of this growth and maturation is evidenced by the fact that the version of the Old Testament with which a wide swath of the American public is most familiar is that of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_%281956_film%29"><i>The Ten Commandments</i></a>. Because of this well-known cultural blockbuster, which highly sanitizes the biblical life of Moses, a surprising number of people who revere the Bible are not even aware that the Moses character is depicted in the Book of Exodus as a sneaky murderer who goes on to lead a massive, ideologically-motivated slaughter of over 3,000 of his own people whom he initially freed from Egypt (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=KJV">Exodus 32</a>).
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The “cinematic redactors” (as I like to call them) were aided in their Midrashic process by their liberal use of sources. In crafting the script, the writers of <i>The Ten Commandments</i> drew not only from the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus, but also from the writings of Philo of Alexandria [<b>6</b>] and Josephus [<b>7</b>], both of whom added several creative details to the story. In addition to these sources, the film writers incorporated material from three fiction novels about Moses written between the mid-to-late nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century [<b>8</b>].
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The New Testament’s Gospels are similarly cinematic and dramatized in the minds of most of the American public, more so than anciently textual. In addition to Mel Gibson’s wildly popular <i>Passion of the Christ</i>, other successful cinematic ventures have included Franco Zeffirelli’s equally-Catholicizing but much-cleaner 1977 miniseries <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_of_Nazareth_%28miniseries%29"><i>Jesus of Nazareth</i></a> and Norman Jewison’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_Superstar_%28film%29"><i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i></a>, the 1973 film adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera of the same name. More recent offerings include Catherine Hardwicke’s 2006 American film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nativity_Story"><i>The Nativity Story</i></a> and the BBC’s 2010 miniseries <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00x15ny"><i>The Nativity</i></a> in the UK (written by Tony Jordan and directed by Coky Giedroyc).
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Movies like <i>The Ten Commandments</i> have become the new definitive version of the Old Testament’s legendary tales, the Book of Exodus having been relegated to the stack of raw material. On a general level, this is not a new trend. It is the modern incarnation of the homiletic Midrashim method of interpretation, applied in ancient times to biblical texts to fill in gaps left in the scriptural narratives. It is also essentially the same process indulged in by the Aramaic Targum, which popularized paraphrases and etiological expansions of the Jewish scriptures in the common language of the people near the end of the last century before the Christian Era. Even in Josephus’s classic historical work <a href="http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/index.htm#aoj"><i>Antiquities of the Jews</i></a> (composed near the end of the first century CE), Josephus promises his readers at the outset that to give only the most accurate details of the historical events, not adding or subtracting anything:
<blockquote>And now I exhort all those that peruse these books, to apply their minds to God; and to examine the mind of our legislator [Moses], whether he hath not understood his nature in a manner worthy of him; and hath not ever ascribed to him such operations as become his power, and hath not preserved his writings from those indecent fables which others have framed, although, by the great distance of time when he lived, he might have securely forged such lies; for he [Moses] lived two thousand years ago; at which vast distance of ages the poets themselves have not been so hardy as to fix even the generations of their gods, much less the actions of their men, or their own laws. As I proceed, therefore, I shall accurately describe what is contained in our records, in the order of time that belongs to them; for I have already promised so to do throughout this undertaking; and this without adding any thing to what is therein contained, or taking away any thing therefrom [<b>9</b>].</blockquote>
However, one finds upon reading the Antiquities that all manner of changes and imaginative additions crept their way in. For instance, consider Josephus’s explanation as to why Pharaoh tries to kill all the male infants and toddlers of the Hebrews; Josephus would have us know that Pharaoh does not undertake this campaign because he is afraid of the Hebrews for any particular reason, but rather because he is fearful of a single prophesied deliverer of his Hebrew minions:
<blockquote>[T]here was this occasion offered itself to the Egyptians, which made them more solicitous for the extinction of our nation. One of those sacred scribes, who are very sagacious in foretelling future events truly, told the king, that about this time there would a child be born to the Israelites, who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian dominion low, and would raise the Israelites; that he would excel all men in virtue, and obtain a glory that would be remembered through all ages. Which thing was so feared by the king, that, according to this man's opinion, he commanded that they should cast every male child, which was born to the Israelites, into the river, and destroy it; that besides this, the Egyptian midwives should watch the labors of the Hebrew women, and observe what is born, for those were the women who were enjoined to do the office of midwives to them; and by reason of their relation to the king, would not transgress his commands. He enjoined also, that if any parents should disobey him, and venture to save their male children alive, they and their families should be destroyed [<b>10</b>].</blockquote>
This premise is clearly ahistorical as well as extra-biblical (it is nowhere to be found in Exodus), but most people recognize it immediately, and erroneously believe it to be in the Bible, due to its inclusion in DeMille’s <i>The Ten Commandments</i>.
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<b>Defamiliarization</b>
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In addition to their etiological and harmonizing function, films that depict sacred narratives serve an actualizing function. That is, they are visual tools designed, whether consciously or subconsciously, to aid the faithful in visualizing the ancient accounts that form the basis of their worldview. This differs in kind from the enhancing powers of the written word of fiction novels, because visual media presents a ready-made vision to the viewer over which his or her imagination has no altering power, whereas the narratives of fiction novels are conformed to the subjective visions of different readers. In many ways this visual kind of experience is far more compelling to people than text; after all, a great many people would love nothing less than to jump into a time machine and travel back to first-century Palestine to meet Jesus face to face, like Michael Moorcock’s character Karl Glogauer in his science-fiction novel <i>Behold the Man</i> [<b>11</b>], or to be whisked away back in time by some ancient magic to witness firsthand the major stories and events related in the Bible, as in Hanna-Barbera’s animated series <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Adventure:_Stories_from_the_Bible"><i>The Greatest Adventure</i></a>.
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Of particular importance in interpreting the function of these films in this way is the concept of defamiliarization, the technique of enhancing the familiar by compelling audiences to view things that are commonly recognizable by the audience in an unfamiliar or groundbreaking way that is cathartic or refreshing to the imagination. The Christ narratives certainly fall within the category of the universally familiar. “Like the narratives of Greek tragedy, the Christ narratives dramatise a familiar story, the rudiments of which we are familiar with, even if we may not be believers, perhaps even more so than with those of other biopics, a genre to which in significant ways the Christ narratives belong [<b>12</b>].” Bible scholar Robert M. Price elaborates on this function quite eloquently:
<blockquote>Because the gospel events are extraordinary, superhuman, we have elevated them to the status of religious myth and dogma. And, ironically, these we take for granted! Once one has heard them embedded in dull sermons for years, clubbed to death by a decade of pedantic Sunday School teachers, the shocking mandates of the Sermon on the Mount come to seem as familiar as the words of a TV commercial . . . And so, if the tale is to strike us again, it must be defamiliarized. And the only way to defamiliarize it is to make it sound mundane, profane [<b>13</b>].</blockquote>
However, the concept of defamiliarization constituted a double-edged sword for Christians interested in spreading their gospel via the silver screen. When applied to such a revered figure as Jesus Christ, defamiliarization has the potential to strike many devout believers as subversive or heretical. As Gerald Forshey observes, “Jesus presented quite a different problem [than DeMille’s Moses] because he was the object of faith [<b>14</b>].” It is interesting to note that none of the major Jesus films that came from Hollywood in the twentieth century were produced by explicitly-branded Christian writers or studios, with the sole exception of Barnet Bain’s <a href="http://www.jesusfilm.org/"><i>Jesus</i></a> (1979). Although Cecil B. DeMille is mostly remembered for his biblical epics, most of his films were not biblically-based or inspired. His 1927 silent film <a href="http://www.criterion.com/films/949"><i>The King of Kings</i></a> builds up to a great defamiliarizing finale, in which the final sight given of Jesus as he ascends to heaven following his resurrection is above a vision of an urban cityscape in which modernistic architecture combines with belching factory-smoke. The intertitle “Lo, I am with you always” appears, as the music of the well-known hymn “Rock of Ages” plays in the background. Babington and Evans offer the interesting interpretation that this final scene “turns the crisis of evolution (rocks, geological strata, the evidence of the existence of life forms outside the scope of biblical explanation) back, even as we remember that the film was made only two years after the Dayton evolution or ‘Monkey’ trial of 1925, into images of comfort, solidity and refuge [<b>15</b>].”
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On the other hand, enterprising evangelists soon realized that adapting their religious message to a secular movie-going audience, who would much rather immerse themselves in a good film than sit through a sermon, meant that they too would have to translate the sacred into the “profane,” to defamiliarize the sacred. But filmmaking of an explicitly Christian brand did not fully mature until the early 1970s. While evangelicals have historically not been fearful of technology and innovation, “it is certainly true that evangelicals were slow in catching on to the evangelistic possibilities of motion pictures, due at least in part to lingering doubts about Hollywood morality and its ‘communist’ sympathies [<b>16</b>].”
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Thus, it makes sense that one of the first successful evangelical films to be made, spearheaded by Russell S. Doughten and Donald W. Thompson, featured a plot that explicitly depicted Communist tendencies in government as evil and even Satanic. The use of film media to further evangelistic ends was largely pioneered by Doughten and Thompson. Their claim to fame was the 1972 sleeper hit film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly4CPRE_Ke0"><i>A Thief in the Night</i></a>, an end-times thriller in which a young woman awakes to finds herself alone in the world after her husband disappears in the “Rapture” (in Christian Dispensationalist theology, a term for the divine snatching away of the righteous from the earth at the end of time). The film follows her struggle to cope with a nightmarish world in which a one-world government emerges almost instantly after the worldwide disappearances and local authorities hunt her down with the intent to mark her as a loyal citizen upon pain of death.
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Despite the relatively impactful nature of <i>A Thief in the Night</i> and its three sequels within the Christian subculture, Christian evangelical filmmaking slowly dwindled in originality and production quality over the next decades, due to its sequestered position within a narrow evangelical niche that saw little or no infusions of large funds enjoyed by big budget Hollywood fares. Hollywood business is rightfully very wary of films that explicitly promote a sectarian worldview, since they know such films will only appeal to a very small portion of the population. Witness, for example, the box-office failure of films that unsubtly and unambiguously promote specific religions and worldviews, such as 2000’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0R_FR9pD2k"><i>Battlefield Earth</i></a> (Scientology), 2003's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijknQ5qJWkc"><i>The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1: The Journey</i></a> (Mormonism), or 2011’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UaZx_DIKgI"><i>Atlas Shrugged: Part 1</i></a> (Randian Objectivism). By the time <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvsW46FzCd8"><i>Left Behind: World at War</i></a> (the third installment in the <i>Left Behind</i> movie series) came along in 2005, it became the first in film history to be released exclusively in churches instead of a theater.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> <a href="http://www.allmovie.com/movie/v32683"><i>La Voie lactée</i></a>, directed by Luis Buñuel (1969<b>;</b> New York City, NY: The Criterion Collection, 2007).
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<b>2.</b> Anne Catherine Emmerich, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dolorous-Passion-Lord-Jesus-Christ/dp/1602065470/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341106188&sr=1-8&keywords=the+dolorous+passion+of+our+lord+jesus+christ"><i>The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ</i></a> (New York, NY: Cosimo Books, 1923).
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<b>3.</b> For my critical review of the movie, see Nathan Dickey, “The Golgotha Chainsaw Massacre: A Rambling Commentary on ‘The Passion of the Christ’,” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 13 June 2012, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/golgotha-chainsaw-massacre-rambling.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/golgotha-chainsaw-massacre-rambling.html</a> (accessed 16 July 2012).
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<b>4.</b> TheFreeLibrary.com, “Poll Finds ‘The Passion of the Christ’ Boosts People's Bible-Reading Habits; More Than 12,000 People Take Zondervan/ Beliefnet.com Poll,” <i>PR Newswire</i> 31 March 2004, <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Poll+Finds+%27The+Passion+of+the+Christ%27+Boosts+People%27s+Bible-Reading...-a0114780523">http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Poll+Finds+%27The+Passion+of+the+Christ%27+Boosts+People%27s+Bible-Reading...-a0114780523</a> (accessed 16 July 2012).
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<b>5.</b> Robert K. Johnston, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reel-Spirituality-Theology-Dialogue-Engaging/dp/0801031877/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341105118&sr=1-1&keywords=reel+spirituality"><i>Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue</i></a> (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 31-37.
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<b>6.</b> Philo, <i>On the Life of Moses</i>, in <i>Philo</i> Volume VI: <i>On the Life of Moses</i>, ed. G.P. Goold; trans. F.H. Colson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). In broad outline, Philo’s <i>Life of Moses</i> is to DeMille’s <i>Ten Commandments</i> what Emmerich’s <i>The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ</i> is to Gibson’s <i>Passion of the Christ</i>.
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<b>7.</b> See especially Josephus, <i>Against Apion</i>, in <i>Josephus </i>Volume I: <i>Against Apion</i>, trans. H.St.J. Thackeray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).
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<b>8.</b> Dorothy Clarke Wilson, <i>Prince of Egypt</i> (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1949); Arthur E. Southon, <i>On Eagle’s Wings</i> (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939); J.H. Ingraham, <i>The Pillar of Fire, or Israel in Bondage</i> (Philadelphia: G.G. Evans, 1860). Also, a novelization based directly on the earlier 1923 silent version of DeMille's movie itself was written by Jeanie MacPherson and Henry MacMahon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924). See also Melanie J. Wright, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moses-America-Cultural-Biblical-Narrative/dp/B005UW3HYO/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341106085&sr=1-2&keywords=Moses+in+America"><i>Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative</i></a> (Oxford, UK and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Brian Britt, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rewriting-Moses-Narrative-Eclipse-Testament/dp/0567092054/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341106124&sr=1-1&keywords=Rewriting+Moses"><i>Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text</i></a> (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2004).
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<b>9.</b> Flavius Josephus, <i>Antiquities of the Jews</i> Preface, in William Whiston, A.M. (trans.), <i>The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, the Celebrated Jewish Historian</i> (Chicago: Thompson & Thomas, 1900).
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<b>10.</b> Ibid., <i>Antiquities</i> Book II, Chapter 9.
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<b>11.</b> Michael Moorcock, <i>Behold the Man</i> (London: Allison & Busby, 1969).
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<b>12.</b> Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Epics-Sacred-Narrative-Hollywood/dp/1606088157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342464800&sr=1-1"><i>Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema</i></a> (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 127.
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<b>13.</b> Robert M. Price, <i>Jesus Christ Superstar: The Making of a Modern Gospel</i> (Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com, 2011), p. 16.
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<b>14.</b> Gerald E. Forshey, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Religious-Biblical-Spectaculars-Forshey/dp/0275931978/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341106820&sr=1-1&keywords=American+Religious+and+Biblical+Spectaculars"><i>American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars</i></a> (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992), p. 84.
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<b>15.</b> Babington and Evans, <i>Biblical Epics</i>, p. 126.
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<b>16.</b> Randall Balmer, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mine-Eyes-Have-Seen-Glory/dp/0195300467/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341106769&sr=1-1&keywords=Balmer+Mine+Eyes+Have+Seen+the+Glory"><i>Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America</i></a> (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 65.
<P>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-84090956870570162472012-06-13T12:37:00.001-07:002012-06-21T01:12:15.954-07:00The Golgotha Chainsaw Massacre: A Rambling Commentary on 'The Passion of the Christ'</p>
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<P ALIGN=Center>"<i>’The Passion of the Christ’ is a thoroughly Satanic production . . . Satanists, who despise Jesus Christ, and their Dark Lord, who has fond memories of the Crucifixion, will no doubt love [the movie]. Everyone else, including Christians, should stay at home . . .</i>" <b>~</b> <a href="http://watch.pair.com/passion.html">from a review written by a fundamentalist Christian</a> [<b>1</b>]
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<P ALIGN=Center><i>"I tell you, I may be playing Jesus, but I felt like Satan at that moment . . . a couple of expletives came out of my mouth."</i> <b>~</b> James Caviezel [<b>2</b>]
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<P ALIGN=Center><i>There is a fountain filled with blood,<br>
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins</i> <b>~</b> William Cowper, 1772 [<b>3</b>]
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqWrDDEAJFlpfPptFiSbKC_a763TSj2MyP6NSjNesQok2xg9EFh5qg8r9Fgg3qQjqg1beiLFzvE22tCVVWniuuzYhEV5YRKbWogWbWlNGSsnyk7oXsMvp9f_p35JZ8tlmJhpUUrk938M/s1600/ThePassionoftheChrist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqWrDDEAJFlpfPptFiSbKC_a763TSj2MyP6NSjNesQok2xg9EFh5qg8r9Fgg3qQjqg1beiLFzvE22tCVVWniuuzYhEV5YRKbWogWbWlNGSsnyk7oXsMvp9f_p35JZ8tlmJhpUUrk938M/s400/ThePassionoftheChrist.jpg" /></a>
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</p>
<b>I. INTRODUCTION: BAD OMENS</b>
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During the filming of Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie <a href="http://www.thepassionofchrist.com/skip.html"><i>The Passion of the Christ</i></a>, the actor portraying the character of Jesus (Jim Caviezel) was struck by lightning <i>twice</i>, in two separate incidents and in two separate places. Apparently the filmmakers could not take the hint the first time <i>or</i> the second time, and the movie was finished and released to the public on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2004.
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Then, on the very first day of the movie’s release in theaters, a person in the audience of Warren Theatre East in Wichita, Kansas <i>died</i> while watching the damn thing. <a href="http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/653662.html">According to one news report</a>, “A woman collapsed in an East Wichita theatre this morning, during [the showing of the movie]. Peggy Law apparently suffered a heart attack. She was pronounced dead a short time later at a Wichita medical center [<b>4</b>].” The story goes on to report that the woman, while watching the movie, collapsed during the portion that depicted the crucifixion of Jesus. A few off-duty nurses and doctors who were in the audience attempted to revive her. She was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where she passed away.
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The filmmakers, of course, are not to be blamed for this unfortunate occurrence. Peggy Scott Law, who was in her 50s, could have just as easily suffered a heart attack walking through the supermarket. The moment of her death was simply a matter of bad timing and an inconvenient place. Still, this certainly was a head-scratcher of a story.
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As an atheist, I am a thoroughgoing naturalist. I do not believe that an actor getting struck twice by lightning constitutes a supernatural sign or omen, even when that actor is portraying Jesus Christ. But as pious Catholics, most of the filmmakers and Caviezel himself should! As for the woman who suffered the heart attack, it is worth pointing out that if she had been revived with CPR while in the theatre, the story would have been treated as a divine miracle, the grace of God working through Mel Gibson’s movie (still, the selective reasoning among believers is such that many who look hard enough and desperately enough for a miracle are apt to claim that is a miracle that <i>all</i> those other hundreds of people in the same theatre audience did <i>not</i> die. We are all sinners, after all).
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<b>II. “TELL ME THE VIOLENT, BLOODY STORY OF JESUS AND HIS LOVE…”</b>
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The foregoing introduction is a very roundabout way of saying that <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> is not a children’s movie, in any way, shape or form, by any stretch of the human imagination. It is not a movie for many adults. The news media back in late 2003 made much of the fact that <i>The Passion</i> was going to be a very gory film with heavy amounts of violence. But connoisseurs of American entertainment are, I believe, so accustomed to the media creating much empty hype over movie violence and accustomed to people overreacting as a result. The collective, unspoken assumption on the part of the moviegoing public seems to have been that, with Christians doing most of the talking about the violence aspect, the movie could not be all <i>that</i> bad.
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<b>(</b>Time for a tangent story: I remember watching Mel Gibson’s 1995 movie <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efy-1sKA1GU&hd=1"><i>Braveheart</i></a> for the very first time when I was sixteen years old. For the past eight years before this, I had heard many adults talking about the battle scenes as being some of the bloodiest, most gory scenes they had ever seen in a movie. I was therefore stoked to finally see it for myself, but was disappointed. Sure, people get their arms chopped off and there was some gore, but it was not <i>nearly</i> as over-the-top and beyond the pale as it was made out to be by my elders<b>)</b>.
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<i>The Passion of the Christ</i> is an altogether different kind of movie, and for this reason it is little wonder it shocked the moviegoing public and took them for surprise. The highlight of the movie is the scene in which Jesus gets scourged, a scene that is definitely one of the most difficult scenes in cinematic history to sit through, regardless of one’s beliefs. In the movie, the scourge is a great whip with small chunks of spikes, pieces of glass, and cat o’nine tails affixed to the its tip. These accouterments work over the body of Jesus in loving slow-motion detail as his flesh is literally ripped to shreds.
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I am of the opinion that the use of violence or any sort of extreme content in entertainment should serve a larger point. And in a sense, Mel Gibson <i>does</i> have a larger point in mind; his intention was to make a movie that is <i>supposed</i> to disgust, horrify and sicken the audience, because his theology motivates in him a desire for others to feel the intensity of what their sin did to Jesus. Passion plays are a very old and time-honored tradition, and this is the very function they have always been intended to serve as well. In the final analysis, knowing when the point comes across becomes a matter of one’s own personal judgment (as opposed to an objective limit) to decide whether watching ten minutes of someone being flayed alive on screen gets the intended point across any more effectively than, say, four or five minutes of it. But for most people, <i>2 hours and 6 minutes</i> of a bloody and violent theological guilt-trip is overkill.
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How do these 126 minutes break down? Well, for about the first five minutes, Jesus is fine. For about the final five minutes, he is doing very well. <i>Every single minute in between</i>, he is constantly being beaten mercilessly into hamburger meat. It is amazing to imagine how many kegs and barrels of fake blood the effects department brought in for the filming. And what kind of continuity problems might the filmmakers have wrestled with? (<i>Oh shit! Yesterday, Jim had a large scar here and a slightly smaller one there. And this ribbon of latex flesh is out of place, dammit!</i>) Then again, Caviezel’s body is so bloody and so scarred throughout the film that very few if any moviegoers would take any notice of any continuity errors, no more than we notice breaks in continuity when grains of sand on a beach are filmed over several days. But I also like to imagine that Gibson had on hand a veritable army of continuity technicians armed with Polaroids, taking tens of thousands of photographs of the cobblestones at the end of every day, just to keep track of where all the blood splatters have landed.
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<b>III. <i>THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST</i> AS FILM NARRATIVE</b>
</p>
This film is sure to take the wind out of anyone who watches it for the first time, and the viewing experience does not get any less unpleasant on multiple viewings. But does <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> work as a piece of film narrative? I for one am not convinced that it is, for two reasons. The first has to do with the purely ideological motive that drove the production. If anything is clear and obvious about this movie, it is that Mel Gibson was making this movie for Christians. Even months before it was released, the Evangelical Protestant Right – which is not a group usually seen allying themselves with “those Mary-worshippers” like Mel Gibson – were making their rounds in news editorials and reviews strongly rallying in support of the film and talking enthusiastically about what a powerful conversion tool they anticipated it would be for their cause. Some even compared it to Barnet Bain’s 1979 film <a href="http://www.jesusfilm.org/"><i>Jesus</i></a>, the evangelical blockbuster hit that was distributed worldwide upon its video release. For the past thirty years, missionaries have trundled the Jesus film off to obscure regions of the world and shown it to Bushmen in remote Africa, for example, in the hopes of converting them to Christianity.
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“Just wait until the indigenous Bushmen get a load of <i>this</i>,” the Evangelical Protestants must have said concerning Mel Gibson’s <i>Passion</i> (frankly, we can be grateful the movie did not in fact gain any status as a missionary conversion tool. It may have only succeeded in instigating tribal warfare against missionaries . . .)
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The second reason <i>The Passion</i> fails as meaningful narrative is that it is devoid of context. The movie begins in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is arrested at night by Roman guards and hauled off in chains. Then the beatings begin. Now, while there is such a thing as too much exposition, this movie had none whatsoever. There is <i>very</i> little actual storytelling involved, and the viewer is not given any context whatsoever for all the violence. Those who go into the movie not knowing anything about Jesus or Peter or Mary will not understand it and will be completely lost from beginning to end.
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Of course, the argument can be made that most of the people who walked into theatres to see this movie, especially in America, were quite familiar with the Jesus story already. Certainly all Christians are familiar with it (or should be), and most atheists know the Jesus story very well. Therefore, one might say, the lack of context perhaps should not be viewed as a big problem. However, if we examine <i>The Passion</i> strictly as a film narrative – that is, on its own internal merits and independent of external assumptions supplied by viewers – it is problematic that the movie provides no context for <i>why</i> a man is being beaten mercilessly to a bloody pulp for two straight hours. What the script does <i>not</i> do is establish Jesus Christ as a character, that is, establish who he is, what he does and why exactly it is that he angers both religious and secular authorities so much that they literally beat him to death.
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Saying that most people going in are most likely going to know in the back of their minds at least a rudimentary knowledge of who Jesus was and what he taught about loving one’s fellow man does not save the film from the above criticism. In fact, if we assess the movie <i>on its own merits</i>, we find that its total lack of context and even explanation renders it nothing more than an exploitation movie. In fact, several negative reviews of the movie coined the term “Christploitation” to refer specifically to <i>The Passion</i> and movies like it, creating a distinct genre in the process. And Christploitation is indeed a very fitting word choice; the violence in <i>The Passion</i> is borderline pornographic in nature.
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Gibson focuses on the scourging and crucifixion to the exclusion of (<i>a</i>) Christ’s teachings, except for very brief flashback scenes of the Last Supper in which he basically just tells his disciples to love people, and (<i>b</i>) the Resurrection. Most of the criticism Gibson has received from Christians is concerned with the fact that the Resurrection of Jesus, considered by the faithful to be the foundation and cornerstone of their religion, is for the most part glossed over in the movie’s finale. We are treated only to a very brief scene at the end that appears as nothing more than an epilogue in which Jesus walks out of his tomb with a portentous “it’s-payback-time” look on his face, almost as if we are being tempted to expect <i>Passion of the Christ II: Judgment Day</i> to be in the works (wouldn’t it be great to have a Gibson-produced movie based on the Book of Revelation, in which Jesus is made of liquid metal?) On this point, many Christians and I are in agreement: one of the strongest negative criticisms of this movie is the heavy and extreme violence thrown at the viewer without any context whatsoever, a context that should have consisted of giving us a bit more background on Jesus’ teachings and a fuller treatment of his resurrection.
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But in a sense, there is also a part of me that sympathizes with and understands Mel Gibson’s motives for making a movie like this. It seems that what Gibson did <i>not</i> want was just another Jesus movie that adhered to the same old formula and motifs that have characterized all the other Jesus movies (i.e., Jesus is born in a manger, as a man he wanders about teaching and performing miracles for two hours or so, then finally comes the obligatory dramatic resurrection scene at the end, etc., *<i>yawn</i>*, etc.). Instead, Gibson’s intention was to focus on just the final twelve hours of Jesus’ life, highlighted by his scourging and his crucifixion. But then again, that is exactly what a <i>passion play</i> is. Thus, Gibson is not ultimately breaking new ground, because passion plays have been written and performed for centuries. The concept is simply new to many modern people in our day and age. Indeed, one might even say pious Catholics of many past generations have wanted very much to produce a passion play as bloody and violent as Gibson’s but that they simply did not have the technology to achieve such great “special effects,” so to speak.
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Another interesting issue that jumps out at me about this movie has to do with the transition from source material to script. The general rule in scriptwriting is that one page translates into one minute of screen time. One minute of screen time per page of script means that a standard film script is about 120 pages. Now, the verses in the Bible that describe Jesus’s execution are much shorter than 120 pages. Even if a screenwriter were to combine the passion narratives of all four Gospels together, they <i>still</i> do not come anywhere close to 120 pages. Thus, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> contains a great deal of filler, making it rather slow in parts. One of the longest continuous scenes in the movie, the 20-minute scourging sequence, is based entirely on a single verse: “<b>Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him</b>” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019:1&version=KJV">John 19:1</a>).
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Coming as I do from my atheist perspective, I am fairly confident that if I was a person who knew nothing about Christianity or even about the basic story behind the religion, seeing <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> would probably not win me over. In that respect alone, the movie is not a success in my estimation, because it serves no other purpose than preaching to the choir.
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But on the other hand, the commercial success of <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> may have ironically contributed to the slow but sure spread of freethought and the rejection of religion in this country. This is because <i>The Passion</i> in many ways forced the American public to come face to face with the undeniable fact that Christianity undeniably has, as its foundation and basis, an extremely violent and bloody event. In fact, Christianity celebrates this central and defining human sacrifice. <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/05/songs-of-human-sacrifice-exploration-of.html">Hundreds of hymns are written specifically about the blood of Jesus</a>, hymns with lyrics like “Are you washed in the blood / In the soul-cleansing blood of the lamb” [<b>5</b>]. This is rather revolting when one really thinks about what he or she is singing [<b>6</b>]. And is it not true that the believers who take seriously the bizarre Transubstantiation doctrine when they partake of communal bread and wine are actually engaging in cannibalism, if what they believe is really true?
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<b>IV. IS <i>THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST</i> ANTI-SEMITIC?</b>
</p>
As most consumers and critics of popular culture are already aware, the biggest source of controversy surrounding <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> was (and is) the open question of whether it was anti-Semitic in tone and message. In the interest of being as fair and balanced as possible, my answer is that the movie is <i>somewhat</i> anti-Semitic.
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On the one hand, the movie features a large cast of bad Jewish characters, with a few good Jewish characters thrown in here and there. On the other hand, there are plenty of bad Roman characters, including two particularly despicable human beings who glean a great deal of pleasure in their work of torturing and tormenting Jesus (reportedly, Gibson’s direction to these actors was to act as if they were throwing a baseball while bashing Caviezel). So the Romans for the most part are not let off the hook.
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However, the high-ranking, important Romans <i>do</i> get off the hook in this movie. Pontius Pilate (Hristo Shopov), the Roman prefect character responsible for issuing the final order to crucify Jesus, is here portrayed as a very courteous and well-mannered man. He does everything within his power to avoid condemning Jesus to crucifixion, but his hand is forced by a rather bloodthirsty mob of Jews. And this portrayal is in fact quite Biblical. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019&version=KJV">Chapter 19 of the Gospel of John</a> has the Jewish mob crying out “Crucify him, crucify him” in unison, and also taking personal responsibility by declaring, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019:6-7&version=KJV">vv. 6, 7</a>). This declaration comes right after Pilate tries to tell them that he can find no basis on which to condemn Jesus. Thus, <i>The Passion</i> does remain true to the original story, in this regard at least. But it is worse than that; Gibson goes out of his way to really focus on this angle. Not only are the important Roman characters portrayed in the best possible light, but a strong case can be made that the high-ranking Jewish characters are portrayed in the <i>worst</i> possible light, as a cruel and bloodthirsty lot. In fact, just about every horrendous thing that happens in the movie is the fault of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest (played by Mattia Sbragia).
</p>
Again, the movie in this way mirrors the Bible’s description of how matters played out. In <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+18&version=KJV">Chapter 18 of John</a>, Jesus is arrested in the middle of the night and hauled away to Caiaphas, who proceeds to interrogate Jesus. What is described in the chapter reads just like a scene out of a mob movie. As Jesus is being questioned, a small number of Caiaphas’s henchmen stand around him. It is easy to imagine them snickering sinisterly, maybe wearing quaint fedora hats. Whenever Jesus spouts his signature smart-ass answer in response to the high priest’s questions (i.e., <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026:63-64&version=KJV">“Well, as a matter of fact, I <i>am</i> the son of God”</a>), the priestly henchmen are there to rough him up.
</p>
Then Jesus is taken before Pilate, and <i>immediately</i> a stark contrast is presented. Pilate displays a very gentle disposition toward Jesus, and they even come very close to engaging in philosophical discourse! The overall impression we get of Pilate, both from reading the biblical account and from watching Gibson’s faithful movie adaptation, is that he is a misunderstood and tormented man who feels forced by external forces working against him to crucify a man he believes is innocent [<b>7</b>].
</p>
The Gospel of John is the only one of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament that goes out of its way to cast the Jews in a negative light. The vast majority of scholars agree that John was the also the latest of the four canonical gospels to appear, having been written between close to the year 100 CE – some 70 or 80 years after the events related – and the gospel did not begin to be circulated abroad in earnest until well into the second century. The other three gospels place little to no blame on the Jews (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2027:25&version=KJV">Matthew 27:25</a>, the infamous “blood libel” verse, is the striking exception that proves the rule). But John’s Gospel even goes so far as to put words in the Jews’ own mouths to the effect that they personally want to see Jesus crucified and that <i>their own law</i> demands it – again, see <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2019:6-7&version=KJV">John 19:6-7</a>.
By this point in late first-century history, Christianity was catching on with great success as a new religion. But with this success came pronounced embarrassment for the Christians when the vast majority of Jews were, to say the least, not wholeheartedly in favor of its message. As Thomas Whittaker writes,
<blockquote>As the orthodox Jews did not enthusiastically receive the new Gospel, or “glad tidings,” the responsibility for the death of the promised Redeemer began to be cast upon them, and withdrawn as much as possible from the Roman governor. Prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, and parables prefiguring the rejection of the unbelieving Jews from the promised kingdom, were put in the mouth of Jesus. The new sect turned more and more to the Gentiles. The feast is for all except those men who were first invited . . . [<b>8</b>].</blockquote>
Supposedly, Christ came to reveal himself as the “King of the Jews,” but the Jews responded with proper skepticism and doubt. Thus, the writer of the gospel attributed to John had ample political and theological motivation to portray the Jews as a villainous, murderous people, a portrayal that again is largely absent from the other three canonical books. A strong case can therefore be made that John approached his gospel-writing project with a very specific and heavily propagandistic perspective on the events he describes. That is, the author seems to have had a vested interest in providing his readers a reason not to consider the Jews to be credible in their well-founded refutations of Christianity: they were responsible for Jesus’ death, and were henceforth a fallen people.
</p>
Thus, by consciously focusing on the Gospel of John, Mel Gibson definitely committed himself to the direction in which his story was to come from. Still, several of Gibson’s defenders have argued that Gibson is not blaming “the Jews” specifically for Christ’s torment and death in this film, but rather pointing the finger at evil, nasty bureaucrats, i.e., people who are in charge or in positions of great political power, regardless of his status as a Jew or Roman or anything else. But the problem with this defense is that the movie clearly does soft pedal the extent of Pontius Pilate’s participation in Jesus’ death, as do the Gospels. Additionally, we can point to the Caiaphas character as a counter-argument to Gibson’s defenders. Caiaphas serves as something of a composite figure, representative of the group of Jewish elders in the Temple as a whole. And they are all <i>unambiguously</i> and <i>unmistakably</i> depicted as the main villains in Gibson’s movie.
</p>
Moreover, the movie’s script borrowed heavily from the writings of the nineteenth century stigmatic and mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote a lengthy account of her visions of Jesus’ suffering and death in a work posthumously titled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dolorous-Passion-Lord-Jesus-Christ/dp/1602065470/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340252429&sr=1-8&keywords=dolorous+passion+of+our+lord+jesus+christ"><i>The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ</i></a>. Throughout this book, Emmerich often refers to the Jews using epithets that are not flattering, to say the least. Very early in the planning and pre-production stages of the movie, many of the reports that began circulating claiming that <i>The Passion</i> was going to be a horribly anti-Semitic film were driven by concern that the early script drafts were drawing from Emmerich’s writings, not just standard traditional texts like the Gospel of John, which is anti-Semitic enough on its own. Abraham N. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, <a href="http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4291_12.htm">described</a> Emmerich’s work as “an anti-Jewish account [which] distorts New Testament interpretation by selectively citing passages to weave a narrative that oversimplifies history, and is hostile to Jews and Judaism” [<b>9</b>].
</p>
<b>(</b>By the way, Emmerich’s influence largely accounts for the presence of several scenes in the final film which are not found anywhere in the Gospels, or anywhere else in Scripture. In one interview, Gibson said of Emmerich, “She supplied me with stuff I never would have thought of” [<b>10</b>]. A case in point is what is in my opinion by far the most off-the-wall and strange scene of the entire film, that being the sequence in which Judas is hounded by little demonic children who torment him all night and in the morning drive him out physically into the countryside [<b>11</b>]<b>)</b>.
</p>
People interested in defending the movie from charges of anti-Semitism will want to point out the few Jewish characters that are presented in a positive way, isolated instances though they are. For example, Gibson’s apologists are quick to draw attention to the very poignant scene in which a Jewish bystander on the Via Dolorosa is ordered by the Roman soldiers to help Jesus carry his cross. This he does against his will at first, but then feels an unspoken bond to Jesus by the time they near the crucifixion site. But I cannot help but suspect, cynical as the suspicion may be, that the underlying message in this scene is this: Jews who are actually involved with <i>promoting the Jewish religion</i> are evil and villainous at heart. The “little people” – the Jewish peasantry who simply go about their daily lives and mind their own business – are certainly not evil. Not so with the people who are actively and diligently involved in spreading the Jewish faith. They of course are a <i>very</i> evil bunch!
</p>
Finally, it is highly significant that the self-directed curse uttered by the Jewish mob in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2027:25&version=KJV">Matthew 27:25</a> (“His blood be on us, and on our children”) is actually a line that <i>is</i> retained in the movie, although not in subtitles. Gibson had claimed that he removed the line out of the movie, but in reality the only thing he removed were the subtitles for the line. All viewers who understood Aramaic quickly caught on to this little tidbit of trivia, and Gibson’s disingenuousness could not be hidden for long.
</p>
Of course, it very well may be the case that Gibson was not being <i>intentionally</i> and <i>overtly</i> anti-Semitic in making his film the way he did. After all, as Gibson revealed in a 2004 interview with People magazine, the hands that are seen nailing Jesus to the cross during the crucifixion scene are Gibson’s own hands:
<blockquote>It's the director's left hand nailing Jesus to the cross. The cameo is more than a Hitchcockian gimmick. Gibson feels his telling of the Passion holds all humanity responsible for the death of Jesus. And, he has said, “I'm first on line for culpability. I did it” [<b>12</b>].</blockquote>
So perhaps the anti-Semitic overtones that do appear are due only to the fact that Gibson’s film takes many cues from the Gospel of John, which is at the very least latently anti-Semitic. In any event, those who are <i>not</i> anti-Semitic going in will most likely not end up becoming anti-Semitic going out. On the other hand, people who <i>already</i> harbor anti-Semitic feelings will certainly be able to garner a great deal of ammunition for their already-existing anti-Semitism by watching this film, which can easily be interpreted by them as an opportunity for another “see-I-told-you-so” moment.
</p>
In fact, Lovingway United Pentecostal Church in Denver, Colorado made headlines back in 2004 for a large outdoor marquee they displayed the day the movie was released which declared, <a href="http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/2873395/detail.html">“’Jews Killed the Lord Jesus’ 1 Thess. 2:14,15 ¡ Settled !”</a> If nothing else, Mel Gibson's new movie emboldened this church to make this public pronouncement [<b>13</b>]. The pastor of the church, Maurice Gordon, was completely unapologetic about the sign, saying “The word of God is the final word.” The Bible passage referenced on the sign, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Thessalonians%202:14-15&version=KJV">1 Thessalonians 2:14-15</a>, reads, “For ye, brethren, became followers of the Churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus; for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews; <i>who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own Prophets</i>, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men.”
</p>
Thus, anyone who wants to throw charges of anti-Semitism at Gibson should first realize that the anti-Semitism they are reacting to does not start with him. There is plenty of fuel for anti-Semitic sentiment in the pages of Scripture. The problem is that people who do not hold repugnant anti-Semitic views have nevertheless unthinkingly committed themselves to saying they believe every word of the Bible to be true. This they do not knowing that the Bible contains many ideas and viewpoints that most people in civilized society today would <i>never</i> want to associate with [<b>14</b>]. Most, if not all, of the people say they believe the whole Bible to be true are people who simply have not read the entire book. They have just heard from their preachers that they are <i>supposed</i> to accept the whole book as truth in order to avoid hellfire, so they say they do.
</p>
<b>V. HISTORICAL ERRORS AND THEOLOGICAL EXTRAS</b>
</p>
</p>
<b>Pontius Pilate</b>
</p>
As mentioned above, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> closely follows the Gospels’ accounts as far as the anti-Semitism is concerned. But this also means that <i>The Passion</i>, like the Gospels, is not merely historically inaccurate [<b>15</b>], but is overtly and pointedly <i>ahistorical</i>. This is especially the case in the movie’s characterization of Pontius Pilate. Extra-biblical historical sources inform us that the Pilate of history was a bloodthirsty tyrant who was actually recalled from his post in Judea for being too forceful in putting down religious dissent and keeping the Judean populace under the yoke, and also for ordering the crucifixion of too many people. Pilate even managed to offend and alienate the Emperor Tiberius with his extreme ruthlessness. This is significant, because Tiberius himself had a reputation for overseeing mass murder, and he is infamous to this day for his statement, “Let them hate me, so long as they support my government” [<b>16</b>].
</p>
<b>Barabbas</b>
</p>
Most people are familiar with the passages in the Gospels that refer to the politically-conciliatory tradition, allegedly maintained by the Roman government, of releasing one prisoner every year at Passover as a way of keeping those “uppity Jews” from completely transforming their drunken religious revelry into an all-out uprising and insurrection. The Romans never did any such thing. This is a Gospel fiction (as is the part of the story in which Pilate “washes his hands” of Jesus’ crucifixion; this he never did, and certainly would never have either occasion or motivation to do even if a historical personage named Jesus was executed on his watch). In fact, Bible scholars and historians have not been able to make any sense of the Barabbas story. For one thing, the name does not even make any sense. “Barabbas ultimately derives from the Aramaic <i>Bar-abbâ</i> (<b>בר-אבא</b>), literally meaning “son of the father.” This appears to be just another of many Gospel contrivances. The Barabbas story, it should be mentioned, was the one and only bit of comic relief to be found in the entire <i>Passion of the Christ movie</i> – it is actually quite hilarious to see Barabbas (played by Pietro Sarubbi) strutting around the crowd upon being released and gloating in wild excitement over being let off the hook.
</p>
<b>Claudia Procles</b>
</p>
Gibson threw in a number of other miscellaneous bits of ahistorical embellishment in <i>The Passion</i>. At one point, Pilate’s wife Claudia Procles (played by Claudia Gerini) personally brings a handful of large linens to Jesus’ mother Mary and Mary Magdalene and joins the two of them in mopping up Jesus’ blood from the ground after his scourging. This particular scenario was invented by the stigmatic nun and mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, whom we have mentioned above already, in the nineteenth century [<b>17</b>].
</p>
<b>“That Old Serpent, Called the Devil and Satan…”</b>
</p>
The appearance of Satan as a character in the movie is another very interesting spin that confirms the ahistorical and pro-mythological nature of the movie. Satan is here played by a woman (Rosalinda Celentano), who looks to the uninitiated viewer to be either a very effeminate man or a very butch woman. The physical appearance of Celentano’s Satan is indeed very gender-ambiguous, an effect that was enhanced by altering the actress’s voice (which she consciously made an effort to deepen) with a harmonizer to render the voice more metallic [<b>18</b>]. This gender-ambiguity applied to the Satan character holds underlying ideological significance; Catholic doctrine has traditionally taken an especially strict stance on gender roles, such that failure to fit into a well-defined gender category is condemned by the Catholic worldview as evil [<b>19</b>]. In fact, presenting Satan as an androgynous figure, whose closest approximation to any predefined gender is one of either effeminate male or butch female, may even have been a very subtle anti-homosexual commentary on particular gay marriage controversies current in the early 2000’s.
</p>
But subtle underlying politics aside, it was actually fascinating to visually experience the Devil as a presence throughout the movie, especially the scene near the end which has Satan screaming in rage from the pits of hell as a representation of the spiritual defeat he suffered when Jesus completed his self-sacrifice (on that note, the movie actually is worth seeing for the quality of its visual representations, if for nothing else).
</p>
<b>Herod Antipas</b>
</p>
I want here to point toward the movie’s portrayal of the Jewish King Herod Antipas (played by Luca De Dominicis) as a data point further supporting my thesis that <i>The Passion</i> has an underlying anti-gay message. Gibson has been accused of blatant homophobia ever since his 1995 movie <i>Braveheart</i>, which controversially depicted the Prince of Wales (who became King Edward II) as an effeminate homosexual whose male lover is thrown out of a high window by the prince’s father Edward I. This trend, if understated, continues in <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>, which clearly did not make any strides toward making the homophobia charges against Gibson go away. In <i>The Passion</i>, Herod is made up in a terrible wig and is depicted as one hell of a flamer. This characterization of Herod is taken from Anne Catherine Emmerich’s book of Passion visions, which describes him as a “luxuriant and effeminate prince” [<b>20</b>].
</p>
<b>The Appearance of Jesus</b>
</p>
Speaking of effeminate-looking characters, it is interesting to note that in Hollywood, Jesus is generally depicted as a fairly effeminate man. Very rarely is he butch, big or beefy (Willem Dafoe’s Jesus in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJKxg4p-Alk"><i>The Last Temptation of Christ</i></a> is one of these rare exceptions, perhaps the only one). However, Jesus <i>does</i> have a beard in most every movie about him, probably to offset any unwanted impressions or interpretations from the viewing public.
</p>
But it appears I digress for the sake of segueing smoothly. My main point in commenting on the physical appearance of Jesus in a section about <u>“Historical Errors and Theological Extras”</u> is really to make the observation that the very fact that the Jesus Christ character actually does appear on screen as a physical person in the movie <i>necessarily</i> renders it a historically-embellished dramatization. This is because no record exists of what Jesus’ physical appearance might have been, whether he was a real historical figure or not. This seemingly straightforward observation is one I need to “flesh out” carefully (no pun intended):
</p>
Throughout history, it has been quite typical for passion plays to represent the Christ figure as being very European and even Anglo-Saxon in appearance. The “European Christ” is the most traditional rendering that originated, of course, with the Roman Catholic Church. It has remained a staple feature of most all passion plays for many centuries, and all the Hollywood portrayals of Jesus owe much to the Roman Catholic Church in this regard. There is hardly anything new about it.
</p>
<i>The Passion of the Christ</i> is certainly no exception and breaks no new ground in this area. There are indeed many white people in the movie. While actor Jim Caviezel in his role as Jesus looks <i>somewhat</i> Semitic, he does so only in the modern sense. In contrast, Jews in first century Palestine probably looked a specific way that was not achieved by the movie’s make-up artists. If Jesus existed historically, he would most likely appear to all eyes as a very typical Jewish peasant living in the Middle East at the time. Any attempt by dramatists to make the Jesus character stand out from the crowd or appear distinctive is thus highly inaccurate.
</p>
A common tactic that has often been used in passion plays throughout history (at least the plays that had some anti-Semitic bent) was to make Christ look almost Aryan, complete with blue eyes and beautifully-groomed blonde hair, as a point of contrast to the villainous and very Semitic-looking Jews. Such depictions belied either ignorance or apathy toward the fact that Jesus, assuming he existed, <i>was himself a practicing Jew</i>.
</p>
This prejudicial typecasting has a long history; even in paintings from a thousand years ago which depict crucifixion and other passion scenes show, we see a very Aryan Christ surrounded by people who are clearly made to appear very Jewish. And while some people will make more of it than others, there are indeed a lot of “hooked noses” so to speak among the shouting mobs in <i>Passion of the Christ</i>.
</p>
As a counterpoint, it is only fair that I come full circle and make certain concessions. As I pointed out already, Jesus’ physical appearance is not described anywhere in the Bible, and there is not even much detail to be found anywhere concerning his heritage. It is therefore not <i>impossible</i> that Jesus could have been white (Christians do believe that half of his genes came from God, which I presume can operate and manifest themselves however they want). But the fact of the matter is that <i>even if</i> we had good, solid rock-hard evidence that a man named Jesus Christ existed and that all the things claimed of him actually happened historically, no one knows what his appearance would have been. No one knows <i>anything</i> about Jesus Christ’s appearance, regardless of whether he is mythical or historical – and this includes the Nazarenes who believe they have special knowledge of Jesus’ hairdo.
</p>
The fact remains that virtually all visual representations of Jesus made throughout history were intended to serve the purposes of dramatic effect, not historical accuracy, and this is demonstrably true of Gibson’s movie (again, the entire 20-minute scourging scene in the movie is based on a single sentence in the Bible).
</p>
<b>Judas Iscariot</b>
</p>
Bible nerds who are bothered by the two opposing accounts we find in the New Testament of the manner in which Judas Iscariot dies may want very much to see <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>. The answer they are seeking, according to Gibson’s Gospel, is that Judas hangs himself, as related in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+27%3A5&version=KJV">Matthew 27:5</a>: “And he [Judas] cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Gibson does not even attempt to harmonize this with the conflicting version found in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%201:16-19&version=KJV">Acts 1:16-19</a>, which informs us that Judas threw himself off a cliff with the result that he “burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out” [<b>21</b>]. So thanks to Mel Gibson, we now know that the Acts passage is the one that is <i>not</i> divinely inspired.
</p>
However, given the over-the-top nature of the rest of the movie, I was actually a bit disappointed that the filmmakers opted for just a plain hanging, instead of the “human landmine” version where special effects would treat us the viewers to the spectacle of actor Luca Lionello literally exploding and spraying the screen. In fact, if it were up to me, I would definitely have chosen to use the variant version of Judas’s death <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.vii.ii.iii.html?highlight=fragments,of,papias,fragment,iii#highlight">preserved by the early church father Papias</a>: “Judas walked about in this world a sad <b>[</b>literally translated ‘great’<b>]</b> example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out <b>[</b>literally translated ‘were emptied out’<b>]</b>” [<b>22</b>].
</p>
Indeed, Gibson had a great many folkloric elements to choose from in portraying the character of Judas Iscariot. In fact, scholars are not even agreed on just how many legendary and mythical elements have found their way into the Judas cycles. A majority of scholars interpret the whole character of Judas, including the name itself, to be a metaphorical figure designed to symbolize the Jews as a whole [<b>23</b>]. The name “Iscariot” is thought by some scholars to be a Hellenized epithet identifying Judas as a member of the <i>Sicarii</i> (the plural form of the Latin word meaning “contract-killer” or “assassin”). The Sicarii, a band of Jewish Zealots, were one of many extremist rebel groups that existed at the time [<b>24</b>].
</p>
<b>VI. CONCLUSION</b>
</p>
Due to the copious amount of publicity and pre-release hype, <i>The Passion of the Christ</i> made $26.6 million on opening day. It pulled in $117.5 million in its first five days of release, making it the second-biggest five-day opening of all time (coming in behind 2003’s <i>The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King</i>, which made a record $124 million in its first five days). Mel Gibson enjoyed a release screening before an audience of 3,000 for a movie that would have suffered an early death in art houses had it not been a movie about Jesus Christ. Not only is <i>The Passion</i> a foreign language film, it is a <i>dead</i> language film with subtitles, making it a movie accessible only to the literate. On top of this, the movie is hyper-violent and received an R-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America when it should have been given an NC-17 rating for its level of violence if the MPAA rating board had treated it impartially. Domestically, the film topped off at close to $371 million, half of which went directly into Gibson’s pocket.
</p>
All this goes to show that there is no better publicity for a movie than when great controversy surrounds it. But this is not necessarily an unfortunate fact when it comes to <i>The Passion</i>. In writing this lengthy negative review, my purpose is not to dissuade or prevent others from seeing this movie if they have not already. The movie is very interesting and culturally relevant, and every atheist should watch it. On top of this, I believe it actually works well as a potent antidote against conversion to Christianity for fence-sitting nonbelievers [<b>25</b>]. After all, the quote from the fundamentalist Christian reviewer in the epigraph at the opening of this essay must be indicative of something positive.
</p>
In the interest of being generous and balanced, I want to end on a conciliatory note. I wish to stress that I fully and completely support the efforts of any filmmaker in making any film they see fit to make. As a strong atheist as well as a strong supporter of freedom of speech and of expression, I will always come out foursquare against any movement that attempts either to inhibit a filmmaker from making a religiously-themed movie or to inhibit the release of a religious movie. I am passionate about artistic freedom, and I say more power to Gibson for managing to make off like a bandit with his Christploitation flick.
</p>
</p>
<b>NOTES</b>
</p>
<b>1.</b> Barbara Aho, “Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion of the Christ’: An International Hoax,” <i>Watch Unto Prayer</i> n.d. (last updated April 25, 2008), <a href="http://watch.pair.com/passion.html">http://watch.pair.com/passion.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
</p>
<b>2.</b> Associated Press, “Role of Christ Lands Caviezel in Lion’s Den,” <i>The Gadsden Times</i> February 19, 2004, C1-C2.
</p>
<b>3.</b> William Cowper (1772), “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” in <i>A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, from Various Authors: For the Use of Serious and Devout Christians of Every Denomination</i> Eleventh Edition, ed. Richard Conyers (York: Thomas Wilson and Sons, High-Ousegate, 1824), p. 120-121.
</p>
<b>4.</b> KAKE News, “Woman Collapses During Showing of ‘The Passion of the Christ,’” <i>KAKEland</i> online Feb. 25, 2004, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/05/songs-of-human-sacrifice-exploration-of.html">http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/653662.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
</p>
<b>5.</b> Elisha A. Hoffman and J.H. Tenney, eds., <i>Spiritual Songs for Gospel Meetings and the Sunday School</i> (Cleveland, OH: Barker & Smellie, 1878), Hymn # 15.
</p>
<b>6.</b> For my critical analysis of the violent and gory aesthetics of Christian hymnody, see Nathan Dickey, “Songs of Human Sacrifice: An Exploration of the Theme of Redemption in Christian Hymns,” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 14 May 2010, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/05/songs-of-human-sacrifice-exploration-of.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/05/songs-of-human-sacrifice-exploration-of.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
</p>
<b>7.</b> While Pontius Pilate himself did not control an appreciably large garrison of Roman soldiers, there was a very substantial garrison of Romans was maintained in Caesarea. This larger garrison had an established practice of bringing in reinforcements to Jerusalem every Passover, because that was a time when the Jewish populace tended to become particularly “uppity.” Thus, while Pilate’s political forces were sufficiently small enough that he sometimes had to placate others in charge with conflicting interests, the presence of this large Caesarean garrison of Roman soldiers completely invalidates any apologetic defense of Pilate’s actions, whether in reference to <i>The Passion</i> or to the Gospels.
</p>
<b>8.</b> Thomas Whittaker, <i>The Origins of Christianity: with An Outline of Van Manen’s Analysis of the Pauline Literature</i> Fourth Edition (London: Watts & Co., 1933), pp. 38-39.
</p>
<b>9.</b> Anti-Defamation League, “ADL Concerned Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion’ Could Fuel Anti-Semitism if Released in Present Form,” (ADL Press Release, August 11, 2003) <a href="http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4291_12.htm">http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4291_12.htm</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
</p>
<b>10.</b> Peter J. Boyer, “The Jesus War: Mel Gibson’s Obsession,” <i>The New Yorker</i> September 15, 2003, 71.
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<b>11.</b> However, it is an open question whether the movie’s demon-children sequence was drawn from Emmerich’s visions or just from Gibson’s own imagination. I quote from Emmerich’s narrative to show my point: “Then, but too late, anguish, despair, and remorse took possession of the mind of Judas. Satan instantly prompted him to fly. He fled as if a thousand furies were at his heel, and the bag which was hanging at his side struck him as he ran, and propelled him as a spur from hell; but he took it into his hand to prevent its blows . . . I again beheld him rushing to and fro like a madman in the valley of Hinnom: Satan was by his side in a hideous form, whispering in his ear, to endeavour to drive him to despair, all the curses which the prophets had hurled upon this valley, where the Jews formerly sacrificed their children to idols” (Anne Catherine Emmerich, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dolorous-Passion-Lord-Jesus-Christ/dp/1602065470/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340251263&sr=1-8&keywords=the+dolorous+passion+of+our+lord+jesus+christ"><i>The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ</i></a> [New York, NY: Cosimo Books, 1923], pp. 174, 175).
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<b>12.</b> Allison Adato, “The Gospel of Mel,” <i>People</i> Vol. 61, No. 9 (March 8, 2004).
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<b>13.</b> TheDenverChannel.com, "’Jews Killed Jesus’ Sign Causing Controversy," <i>Denver News</i> February 25, 2004, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/unholy-bible-case-study-in-obscene-and.html">http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/2873395/detail.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
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<b>14.</b> See Nathan Dickey, “The Unholy Bible: A Case Study in Obscene and Perverse Literature,” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 25 March 2011, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/unholy-bible-case-study-in-obscene-and.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/unholy-bible-case-study-in-obscene-and.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
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<b>15.</b> Numerous minor historical inaccuracies find their way into the movie that many historians were quick to pick up on. To take just one example, the movie has Roman soldiers speaking a colloquial street Latin when (to be historically accurate) they should have been speaking Greek, the official language for administrative communication. See Dr. Andrea Berlin and Dr. Jodi Magness, “Two Archaeologists Comment on <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>," AIA Publications (March 2004). Posted at <a href="http://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/papers/Comments_on_The_Passion.pdf">http://www.archaeological.org/pdfs/papers/Comments_on_The_Passion.pdf</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
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<b>16.</b> W. Francis H. King, ed., <i>Classical and Foreign Quotations: A Polyglot Manual of Historical and Literary Sayings, Noted Passages in Poetry and Prose Phrases, Proverbs, and Bons Mots</i> Third Edition (London: J. Whitaker & Sons, Limited, 1904), p. 238.
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<b>17.</b> Emmerich, <i>The Dolorous Passion</i>, p. 211.
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<b>18.</b> Angela Baldassarre, “A Very Passionate Celentano,” <i>Newswire</i> March 21, 2004. Available from TandemNews.com online, <a href="http://www.tandemnews.com/printer.php?storyid=3772">http://www.tandemnews.com/printer.php?storyid=3772</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
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<b>19.</b> See, for example, Ronald L. Conte, Jr., “A Conservative Catholic Point of View,” <i>Catholic Planet</i> n.d. (last updated January 7, 2012), <a href="http://www.catholicplanet.com/articles/conservative1.htm">http://www.catholicplanet.com/articles/conservative1.htm</a> (accessed 13 June 2012). Of course, this narrow view of gender roles has not been restricted only to Catholic Christians of late.
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<b>20.</b> Emmerich, <i>The Dolorous Passion</i>, p. 195.
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<b>21.</b> The fact that Gibson does not choose to harmonize the two different accounts of Judas’s death is quite surprising, since Emmerich, the stigmatic mystic upon whose passion visions the movie is based, <i>did</i> present an imaginative resolution to the discrepancy: “Overcome by despair Judas tore off his girdle, and hung himself on a tree which grew in a crevice of the rock, and after death his body burst asunder, and his bowels were scattered around” (Emmerich, <i>The Dolorous Passion</i>, p. 176).
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<b>22.</b> <a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.vii.ii.iii.html?highlight=fragments,of,papias,fragment,iii#highlight">Fragments of Papias, Fragment III</a>, in <i>The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, Volume I – The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenæus</i> (American Reprint of the [1885] Edinburgh Edition), eds. Rev. Alexander Roberts, Sir James Donaldson and Arthur Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950-), p. 153.
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<b>23.</b> Christianity’s depiction of Judas as a treacherous betrayer stems primarily from a deeply-rooted anti-Semitism. The English word “Jew” is derived from the Latin word <i>Iudaeus</i>. This root word in turn is very similar to the Greek <b>Ιουδαίος </b>(<i>Ioudaios</i>), usually translated to mean “Judaean.” In the Gospel of John, it is very possible and even highly probable that either the original writer or a later redactor/editor attempted to go out of his way to construct a parallel between Judas, Judaea, and the Judaeans (or Jews) in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+6%3A70-71&version=KJV">6:70-71</a>. This would strongly suggest that the similarity between the name “Judas” and the word for “Jew” in the various European languages has been instrumental in facilitating and encouraging anti-Semitism among the orthodox branches of Christianity. See Hyam Maccoby, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Antisemitism-Modernity-Innovation-Continuity-Routledge/dp/0415553881/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1340250742&sr=1-1"><i>Antisemitism and Modernity: Innovation and Continuity</i></a> (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 14.
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<b>24.</b> Robert Eisenman, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/James-Brother-Jesus-Unlocking-Christianity/dp/014025773X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340250692&sr=1-1&keywords=James+the+Brother+of+Jesus%3A+The+Key+to+Unlocking+the+Secrets+of+Early+Christianity+and+the+Dead+Sea+Scrolls"><i>James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls</i></a> (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 179.
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<b>25.</b> I argued that a very similar “conversion antidote” case can be made for the massively popular Christian end-times fiction series <i>Left Behind</i> by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. See Nathan Dickey, “The Subcultural Apocalypse: A Critical Analysis of the ‘Left Behind' Series,’” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 14 June 2011, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/06/subcultural-apocalypse-critical.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/06/subcultural-apocalypse-critical.html</a> (accessed 13 June 2012).
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</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-49821679002528762392012-06-10T15:26:00.002-07:002012-06-11T08:08:43.280-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 4): Christian Novels</p>
<P ALIGN=Center><i>I shall become your apostle whether you like it or not. I shall construct you and your life and your teachings and your crucifixion and resurrection just as I wish</i> [<b>1</b>].
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<P ALIGN=Center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEismRKJrqccNquhxFwD0t5eF-B0RvJC4BOPhSVkBy0smeWXi65MctMwBTGdaoLMmh0Mpgqfdqkf-tMj9x2HHQ7T1oyEoo1IvC8gMhflEdAXoui_CrLpx7W2JjBiBtZNy0OCDhOh5iHohPc/s1600/OnceUponATime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="231" width="343" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEismRKJrqccNquhxFwD0t5eF-B0RvJC4BOPhSVkBy0smeWXi65MctMwBTGdaoLMmh0Mpgqfdqkf-tMj9x2HHQ7T1oyEoo1IvC8gMhflEdAXoui_CrLpx7W2JjBiBtZNy0OCDhOh5iHohPc/s400/OnceUponATime.jpg" /></a>
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In 1678, Reformed Baptist preacher John Bunyan published his famous allegorical work <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress"><i>The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come</i></a>, a work which, despite its sectarian Protestant overtones, has nevertheless captivated readers across many wide-ranging branches of Christian denominations. One of the earliest known examples of the Christian Novel, <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i> is an allegorical narrative illustrating through metaphor many aspects of the religious life of devotion (in essence a novelizing or dramatization of the New Testament epistles) by way of the story of Christian, an Everyman character who embarks on a perilous journey from his hometown, the City of Destruction, to the Celestial City where he seeks the culmination of the salvation and escape from judgment he found along the way. The narrative is notable for the way it takes abstract theological doctrines and issues and concretizes them for the reader, making abstract concepts more real by turning them into people and obstacles that the protagonist encounters within the confines of the secondary world. The story is related in the form of a dream experienced by a nameless wanderer who makes a brief appearance at the very beginning: “As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream [<b>2</b>].”
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This allegorizing technique was used by the medievalist and novelist C.S. Lewis in his famous series of novels <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia"><i>The Chronicles of Narnia</i></a> [<b>3</b>], which followed in the tradition that was in many ways pioneered by Bunyan’s <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, illustrating key religious and theological concepts and teachings by way of creative storytelling whose plotlines, themes and characters parallel a number of items of Christian faith. Prior to <i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, the technique was utilized by poets rather than novelists, prominent instances being Dante’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy"><i>Divine Comedy</i></a> (1321) and Milton’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost"><i>Paradise Lost</i></a> (1667)[<b>4</b>]. Both these epic poems dramatized, with creative license, doctrines relating to the afterlife (prime fodder for satiating peoples’ imaginations with added details) and the Fall of Adam and Eve, respectively [<b>5</b>].
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The distinctive art form known as the Christian Novel represents the religious devotee’s desire to “dream,” to cognitively move beyond the “wilderness of this world” to experience a fuller and more complete narrative that goes beyond the familiar texts of canon scripture and satisfies gaps left in the imagination by that familiar canon. The “dream” of Bunyan can thus be viewed as a metaphor for religious escapism through the medium of fiction, an escapism for which there is a fine line between enhancement of a religious worldview and what many might lampoon as “<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2005/06/06/lb-explicit-content">spiritual pornography</a> [<b>6</b>].” In this sense Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy</i> was not much different from Boccaccio’s bawdy <i>Decameron</i>.
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The enhancement of traditional, over-familiar faith texts that religious fiction novels offer is analogous to the particular kind of enhancement known as <i>etiology</i>. Deriving from the Greek word <i>aitiologia</i> (“giving a reason for”), etiology refers to the study of why things occur, including the reasons underlying why things are as they are and behave as they do. For example, an etiological myth seeks to explain the rationale for names of places or peoples, and/or to create a mythic history for those places and peoples [<b>7</b>]. In other words, etiological supplements provide fodder for filling in gaps in knowledge and for satisfying conceptual difficulties in the process of imagination. A great deal of fan fiction falls easily into the category of etiological supplements. And of course, Christianity and the Bible hold a massive fan fiction base larger than any others combined (especially in America), and in fact have for centuries.
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<b>Dimestore Apocalypses</b>
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The more enigmatic and mysterious a particular portion of Scripture comes across, the more likely it is to receive fan fiction treatment in the interests of fleshing out tantalizing details not disclosed in canonical scripture. This explains the great popularity and success of Christian novels that deal with the “end-times” as described by the major prophetic books of the Bible, such as Daniel and Revelation. Take, for example, the Christian concept of the Antichrist, a figure who is mentioned in only one verse in the whole Bible (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+2%3A18&version=KJV">I John 2:18</a>), but who nevertheless has utterly fascinated believers and nonbelievers alike for the last two thousand years, likely due to the equation of “Antichrist” to the “Beast” in Revelation and the “Man of Perdition” in Daniel. As religious historian Bernard McGinn remarks, “What is most significant about Antichrist’s appearance in literature has been the attempts to probe the motivation (and at times even the psychology) behind ultimate human evil . . . It is probably no accident that novels and novellas, where motivation and character development are so important, display the most interesting Antichrists [<b>8</b>].” A great deal of these fictional accounts, certainly the ones we are primarily concerned with here, are the brainchild of religious believers seeking to present a doctrine they view as theologically accurate in a compelling, contemporary way which will not only titillate believing readers, but also draw in potential converts who would not normally pick up a Bible or a Bible commentary.
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The wave of Christian end-times novels that have flowed into the Christian subculture for the last fifty years serve a dual function: they are a way of making sense out of the failing of Jesus to return, and they feed off the certainty that he is still coming back. What believing connoisseurs of these novels are actually doing is the former. What they say they are doing is the latter. What seems to be clear upon reflection is that the function of these novels and movies about the Christian end of the world is to psychologically fill in glaring gaps; according to the beliefs which fundamentalists have hammered home to them in church every week, the Second Coming ought to be happening at any time now. In fact, it should have happened before now. Needless to say, it is not happening. So what is the next step? In their imagination, they are able to visualize the apocalypse happening, and this largely suffices. The imagination serves to soften and soothe the wound of disappointed expectation.
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A striking example of this psychological function is seen on the back-cover blurb summary of evangelist Ernest W. Angley’s 1950 novel <i>Raptured</i>, a novel which is clearly and unambiguously fantastical in nature: “With God’s help, determine for yourself whether the days of rapture are fact or fairy tale! Read about real people, in real situations, in this remarkable, inspiring book [<b>9</b>].” One finds this technique again with Jim Grant’s novelization of the 1972 evangelical horror film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070795/"><i>A Thief in the Night</i></a>: “After reading <i>A Thief in the Night</i>, there is only one question you need to answer: Whose place would I want to be in? – Patty’s or Jim’s?”[<b>10</b>] By way of background, Patty in this story is the hapless character who, due to her lack of salvation, “had discovered too late that the loving God, who had allowed the world to go on as He had just so that as many as would could come to Him, had finally called a halt and moved into the next phase. She had discovered that the straight way was the only way. And now she was straight in a crooked world [<b>11</b>].” This indulgence in blurring the lines between reality and fantasy is seen to an even greater extent in Salem Kirban’s 1970 novel <i>666</i>, a novel in which photographs and actual newspaper clippings are interspersed throughout the text to lend it a subliminal realism. In the introduction to his novel, Kirban writes, “This book . . . is a novel. Therefore much of it is fiction. However, it is important to note that <b>very much</b> of it is also <b>FACT</b> <b>[</b>12<b>]</b>.”
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There have been enough failed predictions within most adults’ lifetimes that many of them must have experienced disappointment, but the power of fiction is such that it eases the frustration. Seeing the vicissitudes of the Tribulation play out on the page via the imagination may not be as good or satisfying as the real thing, but wounds of disappointment and yearning are salved nonetheless.
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“The secularization of the sacred apocalyptic myths,” writes Conrad Ostwalt “has been completed in Left Behind [<b>13</b>].” The <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/06/subcultural-apocalypse-critical.html"><i>Left Behind</i> series of novels</a>, conceived in the early 1990s by evangelist Tim LaHaye and written by Jerry B. Jenkins, is arguably the most popular and influential set of Christian novels of the last hundred years [<b>14</b>]. Called “The great Christian apocalypse of our day” by Bible scholar Robert M. Price [<b>15</b>], the <i>Left Behind</i> series represents the culmination of a long, struggling (often awkwardly-handled) tradition among Christian writers to dramatize or novelize the apocalypse. Total sales of the books have surpassed 65 million copies, and since the release of the first book in 1995 [<b>16</b>], the venture has spawned a multimedia franchise that includes three movie adaptations (all starring popular evangelist Kirk Cameron), a spin-off series aimed at younger readers entitled <i>Left Behind: The Kids</i>, comic books based on the novels, three video games, and radio dramas that in many ways mimics George Orwell’s famous <i>War of the Worlds</i> radio drama.
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The wild popularity of the series demonstrates that evangelical culture has become extremely proficient and competent in adopting secular standards to improve the Christian message. This is made all the more fascinating when one considers the extremely literalist standpoint with regard to theological doctrine that the authors of <i>Left Behind</i> assert and from which the storyline and concept is derived. As Robert Dreyfuss notes, “[LaHaye’s] books depict a fantastical, fictional version of what he and his followers think is in store for the human race . . . If the Bible (Revelation 9:1-11) says that billions of six-inch long scorpionlike monsters with the heads of men, ‘flowing hair like that of women’ and the teeth of lions, wearing crowns and helmets, will swarm across the globe gnawing on unbelievers – well, that’s exactly what LaHaye says will happen [<b>17</b>].”
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Secular, mass-market novels in the horror genre that borrow elements from religious apocalypses adopt an ostensibly different approach than the material written primarily for Bible believers. For one thing, secular treatments of biblical themes in general display more flexibility, more comfort and ease at using creative and artistic license with sacred texts. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omen"><i>The Omen</i></a> series of novels and films, which appeared in the 1970s and marked the beginning of a tidal wave of secular novels that incorporated religious end-times elements, is a great example of this. Stephen King’s apocalyptic blockbuster <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand"><i>The Stand</i></a> (1978<b>;</b> revised, restored, expanded, 1991) was another significant contribution to this trend, one of the best examples of highly selective adaptation of scripture.
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Interestingly enough, however, an analysis of these secular mainstream novels finds that there is not as great a divide between them and their more religiously-oriented counterparts as one might initially expect. For example, <i>The Omen</i> was originally conceived by evangelical Robert Boyd Munger, who intended the film to serve as an evangelistic scare. As Bible scholar Robert M. Price points out, “The producers even took on Hal Lindsey as a consultant, but he dropped out when he saw the project going off in what he deemed unscriptural directions [<b>18</b>].” Hal Lindsey, of course, is the infamous author of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late,_Great_Planet_Earth"><i>The Late Great Planet Earth</i></a> , the single bestselling title of the 1970s [<b>19</b>]; his evangelical influence on the first stages of the film’s production is retained in a few isolated but still eye-raising bits of dialogues. For instance, in David Seltzer’s novelization of the screenplay, a Catholic priest frantically pleads with Ambassador Thorn, the story’s main protagonist and unwitting abettor of the child who will become the future Antichrist: “You must accept Christ as your Saviour. You must accept him now [<b>20</b>].” However, there exists a decidedly anti-Catholic bent among many Christian end-times prophesiers, and Lindsey is no exception. Catholics, of course, are portrayed as heroes in <i>The Omen</i> series. Thus, while one can still detect some evangelical influence, it is for the most part drowned out in the final product.
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Another peculiarity worth pointing out is the fact that that in Gordon McGill’s novel version of <i>The Final Conflict</i> (the third installment in the series), Jesus is reborn just as the evil Antichrist character Damien Thorn expected and tried to plan for by attempting to kill every infant boy in Britain. Damien cannot get to his target, however, because Jesus is born without any birth records among Gypsies living in the countryside [<b>21</b>]. In the movie version of <i>The Final Conflict</i>, this premise is changed completely. As it turns out, Jesus returns miraculously to earth as an adult, just as the fundamentalists expect. It is rather apparent that an individual or group exerted religiously-motivated pressure on the screenwriter to alter the originally-planned ending.
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<i>The Stand</i> by Stephen King is an example of an apocalyptic novel that delivers to readers real, genuine suspense. Unlike in LaHaye’s series, in which every jot and tittle of the Book of Revelation is dramatized, the characters here do not immediately understand what is happening to the world. Some only suspect that what is described in Revelation might be playing out, but they are not played out blow-by-blow, heightening the mystery:
<blockquote>The Antichrist, that’s what I think. We’re living out the Book of Revelation right in our own time . . . how can you doubt it? “And the seven vials were opened . . .” Sure sounds like the superflu to me.
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Ah, balls, people said Hitler was the Antichrist [<b>22</b>].</blockquote>
By contrast, there is no real suspense element at work in LaHaye’s series, because he has simply mapped the biblical apocalypse out literally and invited his readers to grab their proverbial popcorn and watch it come to life. Additionally, because LaHaye and Jenkins attempt to track the Bible as accurately as they imagine the Bible is guiding them to, it becomes easier for their audience to accept their narrative in a literal way, subconsciously believing in its truth based on the Bible’s teaching that what they read is how events are going to unfold, while consciously recognizing the novels as fiction. This process of assimilation is prodded on by the authors’ incorporation of constant obtrusive preaching in the form of various characters explicating to each other exactly how they know what is in store for them based on their readings of biblical prophecy.
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Of course, fundamentalist Christians are the primary audience LaHaye and Jenkins have in mind, but no doubt they are also interested in attempting to save the unconverted through the vehicle of a bestselling fiction novel series. The <i>Left Behind</i> series ostensibly serves the same intended function of Pastor Rick Warren’s massively popular book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purpose_Driven_Life"><i>The Purpose-Driven Life</i></a> [<b>23</b>]. Both were written for fundamentalist audiences for whom the dogma contained in both must have been familiar territory, and yet <i>The Purpose-Driven Life</i> was billed and heavily advertised as a book filled with great new insights, new and profound epiphanies that could be effectively employed as a convincing evangelistic tract. The same mindset underlined the emergence of the <i>Left Behind</i> franchise, which has developed into a full-blown example of pop culture “Wal-Mart evangelism” that seeks to scare general fiction readers into salvation in the checkout aisle.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Nikos Kazantzakis, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Temptation-Christ-Nikos-Kazantzakis/dp/068485256X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339363002&sr=1-1&keywords=the+last+temptation+of+christ"><i>The Last Temptation of Christ</i></a> (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1960), 478.
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<b>2.</b> John Bunyan, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Pilgrims-Progress-Signet-Classics/dp/0451528336/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339363051&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Pilgrim%27s+Progress+Signet+Classics"><i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i></a> (1678<b>;</b> reprint ed., New York: Signet Classics, 2002), 11.
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<b>3.</b> C.S. Lewis, <i>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children</i> (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950)<b>;</b> <i>Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia</i> (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951)<b>;</b> <i>The Voyage of the</i> Dawn Treader (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1952)<b>;</b> <i>The Silver Chair</i> (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1953)<b>;</b> <i>The Horse and His Boy</i> (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1954)<b>;</b> <i>The Magician’s Nephew</i> (London: The Bodley Head, 1955)<b>;</b> <i>The Last Battle</i> (London: The Bodley Head, 1956).
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<b>4.</b> John Milton, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Regained-Signet-Classic-Poetry/dp/0451527925/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339363157&sr=1-3&keywords=Paradise+Lost+and+Paradise+Regained+Signet+Classics"><i>Paradise Lost <b>&</b> Paradise Regained</i></a> (1667, 1671; reprint ed., New York: Signet Classics, 2001)<b>;</b> Dante Alighieri (1321), <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Inferno-Purgatorio-Paradiso/dp/0451208633/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso</i>, trans. John Ciardi</a> (New York: New American Library, 2003).
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<b>5.</b> Modern Christian writers, in addition to writing novels, have also imitated the epic poem genre, most notably Calvin Miller’s blank-verse epic poem <i>The Singer</i> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975), an allegory of the life of Christ.
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<b>6.</b> For example, see Fred Clark, “L.B.: Explicit Content,” <i>The Slacktivist</i> (blog) 6 June 2005. <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2005/06/06/lb-explicit-content/">http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2005/06/06/lb-explicit-content/</a> (accessed 10 June 2012).
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<b>7.</b> See Hermann Gunkel, <i>The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga & History</i>, trans. W.H. Carruth (1901<b>;</b> reprint ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 25.
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<b>8.</b> Bernard McGinn, <i>Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil</i> (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994), 263. See also Nathan Dickey, “The Literate Antichrist: A Dilemma for Christian Eschatology,” <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 22 March 2011. <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/literate-antichrist-dilemma-for.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/literate-antichrist-dilemma-for.html</a> (accessed 10 June 2012).
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<b>9.</b> Ernest W. Angley, <i>Raptured: A Novel on the Second Coming of the Lord</i> (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1950), back cover blurb.
</p>
<b>10.</b> Jim Grant, <i>A Thief in the Night</i> (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), back cover blurb.
</p>
<b>11.</b> Ibid., pp. 83-84.
</p>
<b>12.</b> Salem Kirban, <i>666</i> (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1970), 11.
</p>
<b>13.</b> Conrad Ostwalt, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Steeples-Popular-Religious-Imagination/dp/1563383616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339363546&sr=1-1&keywords=Secular+Steeples"><i>Secular Steeples: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination</i></a> (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 96.
</p>
<b>14.</b> For my critical analysis of the series, see Nathan Dickey, "The Subcultural Apocalypse: A Critical Analysis of the 'Left Behind' Series," <i>The Journeyman Heretic</i> (blog) 14 June 2011. <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/06/subcultural-apocalypse-critical.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/06/subcultural-apocalypse-critical.html</a> (accessed 10 June 2012).
</p>
<b>15.</b> Robert M. Price, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paperback-Apocalypse-Christian-Church-Behind/dp/1591025834/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339427289&sr=1-1&keywords=The+paperback+apocalypse"><i>The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind</i></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 271.
</p>
<b>16.</b> Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Left-Behind-Novel-Earths-Last/dp/0842329110/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_har?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339363652&sr=1-1&keywords=Left+Behind"><i>Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days</i></a> (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1995).
</p>
<b>17.</b> Robert Dreyfuss, “Reverend Doomsday,” <i>Rolling Stone</i> 19 January 2004, 45.
</p>
<b>18.</b> Price, <i>The Paperback Apocalypse</i>, 241.
</p>
<b>19.</b> Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, <i>The Late Great Planet Earth</i> (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970).
</p>
<b>20.</b> David Seltzer, <i>The Omen</i> (New York: New American Library, 1976), 60.
</p>
<b>21.</b> Gordon McGill, <i>The Final Conflict</i> (New York: New American Library, 1980).
</p>
<b>22.</b> Stephen King, <i>The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition</i> (New York: Signet, 1991), 888.
</p>
<b>23.</b> Richard Warren, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Driven-Life-Rick-Warren/dp/0310205719/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339364063&sr=1-1&keywords=the+purpose+driven+life"><i>The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?</i></a> (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-49464338208474959472012-06-07T06:15:00.000-07:002012-06-08T01:12:23.749-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 3): Contemporary Christian Music</p>
</p>
<P ALIGN=Center><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv_id8iEzUM"><i>Coming into contact with outer entities / We could entertain each one with our theosophy</i></a> ~ Blondie [<b>1</b>]
</p>
<P ALIGN=Center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILyggmoyDDGnmxPPA_-YOJ_ugFvxj06nDyOlxbGFcfPAweI_vR33usG6bT6s0j8p7tBr3R5ZT0pTJBIASnGp1TREPavvRH3Pio4hyphenhyphenCg19zqzv625LcRyAW6xSrm-31Qrxkq__5Nyg5m0/s1600/CCM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="197" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiILyggmoyDDGnmxPPA_-YOJ_ugFvxj06nDyOlxbGFcfPAweI_vR33usG6bT6s0j8p7tBr3R5ZT0pTJBIASnGp1TREPavvRH3Pio4hyphenhyphenCg19zqzv625LcRyAW6xSrm-31Qrxkq__5Nyg5m0/s400/CCM.jpg" /></a>
</p>
In 1974, Christian music composer and singer Ken Medema presented a song on his now-rare album <i>Son Shiny Day</i> that cleverly and subtly encapsulated the burgeoning new trends and inroads the Evangelical counterculture was creating in the entertainment industry. The lyrics of the song, entitled “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sib9kWN_Bfg">You Can’t Go Back</a>,” tells an imaginative, high-concept story that illustrates the importance and necessity of moving beyond the traditional, tried-and-true musical forms that conservative religion was accustomed to:
<blockquote>High in the towers of Ecclesia they heard it<br />
They heard the wind blowing hard across the land<br />
They saw the fire, it was burning down the statues<br />
They tried to stop it but they did not understand<br />
They sat in silence as they saw the disillusion<br />
They looked for safety but safety wasn’t found<br />
Within the walls of the fortress was confusion<br />
Their mighty castles being burned down to the ground<br />
I said you can’t go back<br />
To the music of yesterday<br />
You can’t go back<br />
To the music of yesterday<br />
You got to stop hiding<br />
And you got to stop running away [<b>2</b>]</blockquote>
Despite its use of metaphor and allegory, the words of this song speak all too clearly about the growing recognition among young evangelical musicians in the early 1970s that they had the potential to express their faith in a far more culturally-relevant way than had hitherto been explored. This urge to break the barriers between sacred and profane was largely catalyzed by the general zeitgeist created by the music of the 1960s, a time when the Top 40 charts featured the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Henry Mancini, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Led Zeppelin. The war in Vietnam was raging, and many people, particularly college students, were much more exercised and angry about the war than their counterparts are in our day about the war in Iraq. Intense protests took place that created a flood of “protest music,” a completely new musical paradigm.
</p>
The contemporary Christian music subculture emerged almost seamlessly from this new musical paradigm from among members of the significant fraction known as the “Jesus Movement” that branched off from the hippie counterculture [<b>3</b>]. Most of the young people who came into the Jesus Movement upon their conversion to southern California-style Christianity were disillusioned with the culture they once called home, finding that “free love” was often not free, and perhaps not even love. Calvary Chapel, which gained a reputation as a radical, edgy church at the time for allowing its congregants to attend services in jeans and barefoot, drew them in with offers of “real love” through Jesus [<b>4</b>]. The new religious music style they gave birth to “began as a fledgling venture, with members of the youthful Jesus Movement using existing rock and folk music to communicate the gospel message to alienated youth of the Vietnam era [<b>5</b>].” Larry Norman, whose 1969 debut album <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/upon-this-rock-mw0000883089"><i>Upon This Rock</i></a> is widely considered to be the very first Christian rock album ever made, was a hippie who came to Christ. Barry McGuire, a former protest singer famous for his song “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo">Eve of Destruction</a>” (one of the prototype protest songs of the 1960s) became a Christian believer as a result of the Jesus Movement. He went on to create a Christian album entitled <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/seeds-mw0000861926"><i>Seeds</i></a>, released by Billy Ray Hearn’s Christian label Myrrh Records.
</p>
Given the emotionally-manipulative nature of music, it is no surprise that music was the major force that drew in disillusioned youth out of the hippie movement. When combined with religious themes and imagery, music becomes an especially potent tool for conversion and then subsequently for reinforcing faith through the emotional responses it elicits. Robert M. Price, a former evangelical and current Bible scholar, made an especially revealing comment on the power of contemporary Christian music on his <a href="http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20430/TS-431848.mp3"><i>Bible Geek</i> podcast</a>:
<blockquote>When I think back on the period in which being a born-again evangelical was the most exciting for me (around 1976), I remember how I was listening to “Contemporary Christian Music” like Love Song, Chuck Girard, Danny Taylor, Randy Matthews, The 2nd Chapter of Acts, Larry Norman, and others. This wasn’t merely <i>compatible</i> with spirituality. I realized later that this <i>was</i> my spirituality. Having these songs (and what they meant) running through my head all the time in the background really did paint the canvas of my thinking and feeling all the time . . . this really was the lifeblood of my Christian consciousness. Yeah, I was reading a lot of apologetics and reading the Bible and trying to pray and all of that. But more than anything else, I found that this Christian music was the breathable atmosphere of spirituality for me. I imagine Christians of an earlier generation had some of the great hymns of the faith running through their minds in the same way [<b>6</b>].</blockquote>
The “music of yesterday” mentioned in Ken Medema’s song is a reference to these “great hymns of the faith” that ran through the minds of earlier generations of believers. Even classical and traditional church music had an aggressive side stemming from its emotionally-manipulative power. “[H]ymn-singing is, as a matter of fact, the most insistent and clamorous of all the ways in which the Christian faith and worship makes impact on the world around it . . . You can close your eyes; you can stay away from the church and so neither taste nor see that the Lord is good. But you cannot close your ears, and if a group of Christian people chose to sing a hymn under your windows you are defenceless [<b>7</b>].” When one spoke of “Christian music” in the late 1960s and early Seventies, one immediately thought of inspirational choir music or classic hymns, material that was more in the vein of a George Beverly Shea type of artist at a Billy Graham Crusade. In the early Seventies, people found the utterly novel concept of “Christian rock” utterly fascinating.
</p>
But even the classical, traditional and hymnological “music of yesterday” was not elevated from the use of appropriation of popular culture for religious ends. “With the Gospel Hymns came a more popular tone and greater effort to reach the man in the street; and out of the social forces at work a little later a demand for a hymnody specially adapted to the needs of the new age [<b>8</b>].” To take a strong example, Charles Wesley, a prominent figure in the Methodist movement of the 18th century, wrote about 6,500 hymns during his lifetime “on hundreds of Scripture texts and on every conceivable phase of Christian experience and Methodist [<b>9</b>],” the tune of most of them being lifted directly from a great number of popular tunes current at that time. This was mainly due to the fact that Wesley lacked any formal musical training and ability.
</p>
Compare the pop-culture appropriations of Charles Wesley over 200 years ago to the modern Christian rock band ApologetiX, a parody group that rewrites the popular secular songs they cover with explicitly Christian lyrics. Within their lyrical canon, Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock’n’Roll” becomes “I Love Apostle Paul” (“<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zU2OUf4VjY&feature=plcp"><i>I love Apostle Paul / He put a lotta lines in the Good Book baby / I love Apostle Paul / From Romans into Philemon yes indeed</i></a>” <b>10</b>). Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” becomes “Learn Some Deuteronomy” (“<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXIQ3M92BPI&feature=plcp"><i>Learn some Deuteronomy – can you name those laws / Learn from Deuteronomy – c'mon try because / Learn your Deuteronomy – you ain't good enough / God's Law – is tricky to keep – born again you must be, yeah</i></a>” <b>11</b>). Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” is transformed into “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1V5dJB9DDI&feature=plcp">Smooth Grandmama</a>,” a pious elderly woman who “karaokes to old tapes of Sandi Patty” and proselytizes the Christian faith to her grandson [<b>12</b>]. Even Eminem’s “Slim Shady” alter ego <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCWUHZxdpcw&feature=plcp">is given a pious reworking</a>:
<blockquote>I've sinned greatly, but Christ's for real, baby<br />
It's a wonder He saved me and just didn't hate me<br />
So won't you tell Him "Save me," please stand up, please stand up, please stand up<br />
Yes, I've been crazy, yes, I've been real shady<br />
Always wanted Him to save me, but just didn't say it<br />
So won't you tell Him "Save me," please stand up, please stand up, please stand up [<b>13</b>].</blockquote>
Music serves as an intertextual narrative to our lives, and when the story it serves as an enriching soundtrack for is a religious one, the modernized results can be very surprising and often humorous. But what about enriching or enhancing <i>text</i> itself?
</p>
<b>NOTES</b>
</p>
<b>1.</b> Blondie, “(I Am Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/plastic-letters-mw0000011469"><i>Plastic Letters</i></a> (Chrysalis Records, 1978).
</p>
<b>2.</b> Ken Medema, “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sib9kWN_Bfg">You Can’t Go Back</a>,” from <a href="http://kenmedema.com/sonshinydayvintagemedemaalbumcd.aspx"><i>Son Shiny Day</i></a> (Word Records, 1974). This song predates a much more well-known song by the progressive rock band Rush, which dealt with a very similar story theme involving a freethinking individual living in a future dystopian totalitarian society, who rediscovers the long-lost guitar and presents the newfound musical form to the totalitarian authorities in the hopes of ushering in a new musical paradigm (“I can’t wait to share this new wonder / The people will all see its light / Let them all make their own music / The priests praise my name on this night” (Rush, “2112,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/2112-mw0000191702"><i>2112</i></a> (Mercury Records, 1976).
</p>
<b>3.</b> William D. Romanowski, “Contemporary Christian Music: The Business of Music Ministry,” in Quentin J. Schultze, ed., <i>American Evangelicals and the Mass Media</i> (Grand Rapids, MI: Acadamie Books/Zondervan, 1990), 143-169.
</p>
<b>4.</b> As the Christian rock band dc Talk put it in one of their hit songs, “The word ‘love,’ well it was once overused / Back in the 70s the word was abused / But I refused to let love be diluted / We can’t allow physical lust to intrude it” (“Say the Words,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/free-at-last-mw0000112552"><i>Free At Last</i></a> [ForeFront Records, 1992]).
</p>
<b>5.</b> William D. Romanowski, “Evangelicals and Popular Music: The Contemporary Christian Music Industry,” in Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan, eds., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Popular-Culture-America-Forbes/dp/0520220285/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339072185&sr=1-1"><i>Religion and Popular Culture in America</i></a> (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 105.
</p>
<b>6.</b> Robert M. Price, “December 23,” <i>The Bible Geek Podcast</i> 23 Dec. 2010 (TalkShoe Recordings [<a href="http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20430/TS-431848.mp3">http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-20430/TS-431848.mp3</a>], accessed 4 June 2012), 14:26 - 16:14.
</p>
<b>7.</b> Erik Routley, B.D., D.Phil., <i>Hymns and Human Life</i> (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), 2-3.
</p>
<b>8.</b> Benjamin Brawley, <i>History of the English Hymn</i> (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1932), 234.
</p>
<b>9.</b> Albert Edward Bailey, <i>The Gospel in Hymns: Backgrounds and Interpretations</i> (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 84.
</p>
<b>10.</b> ApologetiX, “I Love Apostle Paul,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/spoofernatural-mw0000587726"><i>Spoofernatural</i></a> (Parodudes Records, 2001).
</p>
<b>11.</b> ApologetiX, “Learn Some Deuteronomy,” <i>Spoofernatural</i>.
</p>
<b>12.</b> ApologetiX, “Smooth Grandmama,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/grace-period-mw0001023119"><i>Grace Period</i></a> (Parodudes Records, 2006).
</p>
<b>13.</b> ApologetiX, “The Real Sin Savior,” from <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/keep-the-change-mw0000217888"><i>Keep the Change</i></a> (Parodudes Records, 2001).
</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-70575463966840672722012-06-03T22:12:00.001-07:002012-07-16T16:59:09.082-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 2): Secular vs. Religious Uses of Mass Media</p>
Religion in America, especially Christianity, has sought to transcend the superficiality of merely riding on the waves of popular culture and picking up its signals. Hence, a very distinct <i>subculture</i> of religious popular culture has emerged over the course of the last century, a subculture whose distinctiveness from secular counterparts in literature, music, film, radio and the press arises from religious adherents’ desire to conform to the scriptural teaching of being “in the world but not of the world.” As R. Laurence Moore observes, “To halt what they [clerics] viewed as a decline in moral and religious seriousness, they descended into the marketplace to erect some competition . . . In their own churches and in forums outside the regular market, they invented, and used as enticements, Christian forms of fun [<b>1</b>].” But Christian forms of popular culture have evolved into something much more than merely a pious imitation of the secular world for those who want a similar escapist experience without the “corrupting” influence (although, as we will see, that is indeed a significant aspect to study). It has also become an exercise in seeking out and maintaining relevance to the larger outside community. The message coming from culture-savvy ministers of religion, says Conrad Ostwalt, is hard to mistake: “[I]n order to grow, in order to reach a lost world, they must address the existential concerns of a secular society by adopting its language and customs to appear relevant to such a society [<b>2</b>].” The result has been the transformation of American religion into a marketplace commodity on the cultural shelves. Hence, one can today walk into a major bookstore chain or music store and find a special “Christian Fiction” section set apart from general fiction, and “Contemporary Christian Music” set apart from the sections of general music genres any one Christian artist or band might fit into. Then of course there are many store chains which are billed as specifically Christian, in which one can find literature, music, movies and recreational spaces and events that have found a home in this sequestered subcultural space.
</p>
The irony is that this subculture has created an environment whose effects, for those participating within its confines, is not qualitatively different from those of the larger secular media. Much of religion’s original meaning and context is lost in transmission to popularized vernacular mediums, and the process of assimilation and interpretation by its consumers is equivalent to that occurring in the larger secular media world, the only difference being that the religious subculture is a specialized, custom-made model, a portrait in miniature of its more diversified and universal parent.
</p>
Of course, religious themes and references are everywhere to be found in secular popular culture as well, and comparing secular uses of religious ideas to those within subcultures explicitly marketed as religious yields a number of highly interesting insights to the culturally-aware critic. The primary difference is often one of nuance and subtlety versus a straightforward rendering that is self-evident in its second-handedness and in its creative appropriations. Secular culture is replete with unspoken homages to religious themes. The figure of Christ, for example, is an “archetype [that] assumes innumerable dramatic forms [<b>3</b>].” Motifs and themes that reflect religious imagery and ideas, when utilized creatively by secular culture, very often assume universalistic characteristics. As Moseley remarks, “The correlative of Christ is the <i>something</i> through which the Western writer frequently gets at <i>everything</i> [<b>4</b>].” Countercultures, on the other hand, by their very nature take the elements of whatever they are reacting to and bring them to the forefront. In the case of the religious counterculture in America, this process is especially noticeable. In many cases it is a process of <i>reclaiming</i>, as evangelists who have a finger on the pulse of popular culture take the universal aspects that secular society has recognized and found compelling and convert these aspects into narrowly-construed and specialized art forms that mimic and imitate secular narratives that have seen huge success. Witness, for instance, Christian novelist Ted Dekker’s <i>The Circle</i> series, a sci-fi/fantasy epic that purports to be a more Christianized version of the immensely influential <i>Matrix</i> trilogy of movies [<b>5</b>]. Or take a look at Tim LaHaye’s <i>Babylon Rising</i> fiction series [<b>6</b>], which basically asks and fleshes out the question, “What if Indiana Jones was a devout Christian?”
</p>
Examples of such imitation in the interests of providing a more “virtuous” alternative are everywhere to be found. One Christian organization has created “<a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/10/10/the-latest-christian-halloween-protest-jesusween/">JesusWeen</a>,” an outreach that offers a more pious alternative way for people of faith to celebrate Halloween [<b>7</b>]. In Orlando, Florida, a Christian-targeted theme park called “The Holy Land Experience” recreates the sights and sounds of ancient Jerusalem, including replicas of famous biblical scenes and live reenactments of the Passion ordeal of Christ. In the category of “Christ-honoring products,” the Christian cartoon series <i>Veggie Tales</i> achieved success partly as a result of Disney boycotts [<b>8</b>], and videos featuring <i>Bibleman</i>, an evangelical action hero who quotes Scripture as he battles evildoers and is protected by a literal “helmet of salvation” and “breastplate of righteousness,” present a pious alternative to heroes like Superman or Batman (who display more humanistic values) while also incorporating video game tropes and popular music [<b>9</b>]. The secular DC Comics’ series <i>Infinite Crisis</i> has been imitated by <i>Archangels: The Saga</i>, a comic book series dealing with spiritual warfare in which warrior angel superheroes seek help from a superior power. For Christian teens who take offense at raunchy and irreverent teen comedies such as <i>Road Trip</i> and <i>American Pie</i>, director Eric Hannah offered a more wholesome alternative with 2001’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245891/"><i>Extreme Days</i></a>, a road-trip comedy about five college students who manage to live morally-upright lives but still be hip and cool.
</p>
These trends extend even to the text of the Bible itself. Most people are aware of new Bible translations such as <i>The Living Bible</i>, <i>The Way</i> and <i>The Message</i> which rewrite the Bible in completely modern language and vernacular, but a relatively new phenomenon in the Christian publishing industry is Transit Books’ <i>Revolve: The Complete New Testament</i> [<b>10</b>], billed as the first Bible designed to look just like a teenage fashion magazine for girls, and <i>Refuel: The Complete New Testament</i> [<b>11</b>], the same concept as <i>Revolve</i> only this time with teenage boys as the target audience. There is even <a href="http://www.themetalbible.com/enginfo.htm"><i>Metal Bible</i></a> on the market, a Bible edition specially designed and geared for fans of heavy metal. The publishing company responsible for this product, <a href="http://www.bible-for-the-nations.com/">Bible for the Nations</a>, has also released many other Bible editions, including a Biker Bible, Trucker Bible and Football Bible.
</p>
<b>NOTES</b>
</p>
<b>1.</b> R. Laurence Moore, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selling-God-American-Religion-Marketplace/dp/0195098382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785517&sr=1-1"><i>Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture</i></a> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 268.
</p>
<b>2.</b> Conrad Ostwalt, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Steeples-Popular-Religious-Imagination/dp/1563383616/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785557&sr=1-2"><i>Secular Steeples: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination</i></a> (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), 60.
</p>
<b>3.</b> Edwin M. Moseley, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pseudonyms-Christ-Modern-Novel-Methods/dp/082298380X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785615&sr=1-1"><i>Pseudonyms of Christ in the Modern Novel: Motifs and Methods</i></a> (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), 34.
</p>
<b>4.</b> Ibid., p. 35.
</p>
<b>5.</b> Ted Dekker, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-The-Circle-Ted-Dekker/dp/B003TO6D3W/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785672&sr=1-1"><i>Black</i></a> (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Red-The-Circle-Series-Dekker/dp/1595547312/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b"><i>Red</i></a> (Nasville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/White-The-Circle-Series-Dekker/dp/1595547320/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b"><i>White</i></a> (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2004)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Green-The-Circle-Series-Dekker/dp/1595546820/ref=pd_sim_b_6"><i>Green</i></a> (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2009).
</p>
<b>6.</b> Tim LaHaye and Greg Dinallo, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Rising-Greg-Dinallo/dp/B00021317G/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338791458&sr=1-1"><i>Babylon Rising</i></a> (New York: Bantam Dell, 2003)<b>;</b> Tim LaHaye and Bob Phillips, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Rising-The-Secret-Ararat/dp/0553803239/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1338792473&sr=1-1"><i>Babylon Rising: The Secret on Ararat</i></a> (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004)<b>;</b> LaHaye and Phillips, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Europa-Conspiracy-Babylon-Rising-Book/dp/0553803247/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0"><i>Babylon Rising: The Europa Conspiracy</i></a> (New York: Bantam Dell, 2005)<b>;</b> LaHaye and Phillips, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Babylon-Rising-The-Edge-Darkness/dp/0553803255/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0"><i>Babylon Rising: The Edge of Darkness</i></a> (New York: Bantam Dell, 2006).
</p>
<b>7.</b> Sonia Van Gilder Cooke, “The Latest Christian Halloween Protest: JesusWeen,” <i>Time NewsFeed</i> 10 October 2011. <a href="http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/10/10/the-latest-christian-halloween-protest-jesusween/">http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/10/10/the-latest-christian-halloween-protest-jesusween/</a> (accessed 3 June 2012).
</p>
<b>8.</b> Hillary Warren, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Theres-Never-Been-Veggie-Tales/dp/0759105685/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785812&sr=1-1"><i>There’s Never Been a Show Like Veggie Tales: Sacred Messages in a Secular Market</i></a> (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2005).
</p>
<b>9.</b> Richard W. Santana and Gregory Erickson, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/RELIGION-AND-POPULAR-CULTURE-Rescripting/dp/0786435534/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338785903&sr=1-1"><i>Religion and Popular Culture: Rescripting the Sacred</i></a> (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008), 12.
</p>
<b>10.</b> Thomas Nelson, Inc., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Revolve-The-Complete-New-Testament/dp/0718003586/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338786010&sr=1-1"><i>Revolve: The Complete New Testament</i></a> (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 2003).
</p>
<b>11.</b> Thomas Nelson, Inc., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Refuel-The-Complete-Testament-Guys/dp/B0006959XI/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338786045&sr=1-2"><i>Refuel: The Complete New Testament</i></a> (Nashville, TN: Word Publishing, 2004).
</p>
<b>12.</b> Johannes Jonsson, coord., <i>Metal Bible</i> English Version (Howell, MI: Starve The Flesh, 2011). A preview of this product can be viewed at <a href="http://bible-for-the-nations.com/index.php?option=com_flippingbook&view=book&id=33&page=1&Itemid=472&lang=sv">http://bible-for-the-nations.com/index.php?option=com_flippingbook&view=book&id=33&page=1&Itemid=472&lang=sv</a>.
</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsR_3VofO7L81IRhKv3bJk08Yt8pIwJkFrfgZo5vetgZ-7JD5u9b9l1FdSpFJYFs6SzPA6RDR11bGSNbGaLT54dhXMYW7Qq_fjNTeBM1fWcEWlusLfwZaPz2RaLWA5s_b3t47lW_OXEkc/s1600/article_weirdsub.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="269" width="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsR_3VofO7L81IRhKv3bJk08Yt8pIwJkFrfgZo5vetgZ-7JD5u9b9l1FdSpFJYFs6SzPA6RDR11bGSNbGaLT54dhXMYW7Qq_fjNTeBM1fWcEWlusLfwZaPz2RaLWA5s_b3t47lW_OXEkc/s400/article_weirdsub.jpg" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-58887202992710744732012-06-01T20:12:00.000-07:002012-06-07T06:45:13.934-07:00Religion in American Popular Culture (Part 1): IntroductionOne of the most interesting ironies of our time is the fact that, despite the proliferation of commercialized religion in retail store chains labeled as explicitly Christian and in megachurches, very few of the pious consumers of religiously-based popular culture have considered the “what-if” question of how Jesus himself (assuming he existed as a real historical figure) would respond upon walking into one of these Christian retail outlets. This question was recently explored by way of a humorous experiment filmed in a short online video by Phil Mason, a popular video blogger personality and an outspoken atheist who goes by the handle “Thunderf00t” on YouTube.com. In the video, entitled “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UaIRZghoYs">Jesus Christ and the House of Merchandise</a>,” Mason enters a Family Christian Bookstore outlet dressed as Jesus Christ. After briefly perusing the merchandise on sale, he walks up to the woman at the counter. After some humorous small talk, Mason softly exclaims, “I can’t but help feel that I remember something about ‘make not my house an house of merchandise.’ Do you not recall something like that?” After a brief, awkward pause, he continues, “I think a guy who you might have heard might have said it once or twice [<b>1</b>]."
</p>
The seeming contradiction in terms noted by satirists like Thunderf00t and many others, a contradiction evoked by witnessing a religion like Christianity immerse itself in the consumer’s world of mass media and “profane” popular culture, is not so much an inconsistency on religion’s part as it is an adaptation to a rapidly-changing world. One might argue it is even an adaptation sanctioned by sacred writ itself. After all, what better way to “Go . . . and teach all nations” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2028:19&version=KJV">Matthew 28:19a</a>) than to avail oneself of the latest in cutting-edge communication technologies? What better way to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010:16&version=KJV">Matthew 10:16</a>) than to be culturally aware and savvy and to adopt and appropriate the trends that succeed in popular culture, especially when “To the pure <i>all</i> things are pure” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+1%3A15&version=KJV">Titus 1:15</a>)? Speaking of doves, “A sizable portion of the Protestant evangelical community,” writes R. Laurence Moore, “has made its peace with commercial culture . . . If that requires arranging church services to accommodate televised sports on Sunday, building Christian massage parlors and nightclubs atop space needles, or equipping churches with skating rinks and bowling alleys, then so be it [<b>2</b>].”
</p>
This merging of religion with a popular culture and mass media mentality is not a recent social phenomenon. It has a rich and multi-layered history behind it. The historical legacy of American revivalism, for example, has testified to the fact that “American Protestantism has always had a dynamic edge that vigorously adapted the gospel message to the common folk of the day [<b>3</b>].” Revivalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was instrumental in shoving American religion into the cultural marketplace; in the eighteenth century, evangelist George Whitefield’s oratorical talents and persuasive, charismatic rhetoric were largely responsible for triggering the Great Awakening. In fact, Whitefield’s critics in his day attacked him with the same points they leveled against actors, and much of what they said and wrote of Whitefield could seamlessly be transposed in our day and age to refer to televangelists. “Whitefield was turning preaching into a performance, a performance as carefully timed and calculated as one by his famous contemporary David Garrick . . . His religious presentations transformed church services into entertainment, and the money paid for the spectacle went to enrich Whitefield [<b>4</b>].” Whitefield was instrumental in creating a new paradigm of exploration for the art of proselytization, leading Walt Whitman in the 1830s to call the churches “the most important of our amusements . . . especially the Methodist ones, with their frequent ‘revivals’ [<b>5</b>].” The new sermon styles that emerged among preachers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were laboratory experiments in reapplications of religious imagery within secular mediums. As David S. Reynolds writes,
<blockquote>In the early decades of the nineteenth century, American sermon style, which in Puritan times had been characterized by restraint and theological rigor, came to be dominated by entertaining pulpit illustrations, stories, and even humor. The new sermon style was particularly lively among the fiery urban evangelists of Whitman’s New York. During the 1830s and 40s, the evangelical denominations had to compete against each other, against the rising popular press, and against popular entertainments like stage melodramas and Barnum’s Museum for the attention of a working-class population increasingly made up of rowdies and roughs [<b>6</b>].</blockquote>
The religious vision and perceptions of preceding generations of Americans, perhaps more so than either politics or economics and going all the way back to the early centuries of the Common Era, are almost as embedded and ingrained in the psyche of the general public as is the mass media industry that churns out novels, music, movies and all the attendant merchandise that accompanies the most successful of these mediums’ products. The consequence for mainstream religion and (on an individual level) for those who practice its rituals and claim its beliefs is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the presentation and expression of religious faith in a world significantly shaped by modern mass media has the potential to enjoy a level of effectiveness and versatility unavailable to previous generations. On the other hand, the same widespread use of communication technologies will inevitably change and alter the message being voiced by modern generations of churchgoers. If we are to take seriously (and it is the argument of this author that we must) the famous aphorism of media theorist Marshall McLuhan that “The medium <i>is</i> the message,” then we can expect the different and ever-changing ways in which mainstream religion communicates its message to obtain towards a change in the worldview being expressed from generation to generation.
</p>
The purpose of this six-part study will be to examine the ways in which traditional religious movements (particularly Christianity) have availed themselves of secular communication mediums. In particular, I focus on the role played by three different types of popular media (film, music, and fiction novels) in changing and/or altering the essential nature of the religious message being communicated. The ways in which religion adapts to changing cultural trends in order to remain afloat (read relevant) and attempt to continue providing coherent answers to modern challenges to traditional faith is the unifying theme of this research. Religious fiction novels are treated as non-canonical etiological supplements to traditional faith texts, contemporary religious music is explored as a tool to reinforce faith by way of emotional responses elicited, and religious films are analyzed as actualizing tools that aid the faithful in visualizing the ancient accounts that form the basis of their worldview. The importance of this research can be seen by noting the prevalent influence religious ideas and concepts have had on all aspects of social, political and economic life in this country. Religious themes have become so embedded in the popular culture, whose mediums reflect them constantly, to the extent that religions’ most iconic symbols, imagery, and mythos are at times resilient to easy dissection and critique. There is much relevance to be found in attempting, as this research project does, to determine whether religion informs and influences popular culture communication, or whether popular culture informs and influences religion in modern times.
</p>
<b>NOTES</b>
</p>
<b>1.</b> Thunderf00t, “Jesus Christ and the House of Merchandise,” <i>YouTube</i> 28 October 2011, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UaIRZghoYs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UaIRZghoYs</a> (accessed 1 June 2012).
</p>
<b>2.</b> R. Laurence Moore, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selling-God-American-Religion-Marketplace/dp/0195098382/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338606141&sr=1-1"><i>Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture</i></a> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 255.
</p>
<b>3.</b> Quentin J. Schultze, <i>Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion</i> (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), 98.
</p>
<b>4.</b> Moore, <i>Selling God</i>, p. 42.
</p>
<b>5.</b> Emory Holloway, ed., <i>The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman</i> (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1972), 255.
</p>
<b>6.</b> David S. Reynolds, “Whitman’s America: A Revaluation of the Cultural Backgrounds of ‘Leaves of Grass,’” <i>Mickle Street Review</i> 9.2 (1988): 7.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuWND80U0QCuglY8bGuSPubiXZ5KmsTyo9WwU7ujcc4vN_d4c7HKYxwWgsUAcIAompYekRBV5drahYh-2htcGeqc9Y0YmgAKQBkw06XEzOL6GDQr7jU-7OP7HVQ8kzpECWcfStEzIQjU/s1600/buddy-jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style=""><img border="0" height="400" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuWND80U0QCuglY8bGuSPubiXZ5KmsTyo9WwU7ujcc4vN_d4c7HKYxwWgsUAcIAompYekRBV5drahYh-2htcGeqc9Y0YmgAKQBkw06XEzOL6GDQr7jU-7OP7HVQ8kzpECWcfStEzIQjU/s400/buddy-jesus.jpg" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-89376522642980039192012-01-20T23:52:00.000-08:002013-03-06T17:27:26.975-08:00The Scientific Verdict on God (Part 2): Supernaturalism as a Scientifically Testable Model<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.</i>”
<BR>
<b>~</b> Ludwig von Mises, 1932
<P>
In order to arrive at any justifiable conclusion on what verdict science can lay upon the claim that a god exists, we must first make the case that science is in a position to weigh in on the supernatural, and that it violates no jurisdiction by doing so. On one level, establishing the truth of this argument is very simple: If a claim concerning God or other supernatural entities contains testable elements, then <em>the validity of the supernatural can be scientifically tested</em>. For example, if the claim is made that any two Christians who pray to their God can physically move a mountain from its place and cast it into the sea, then we have before us an obvious empirical test that can be performed (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+18%3A19-20&version=KJV">Matthew 18:19-20</a>; <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2021:21-22&version=KJV">21:21-22</a>; <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2011:22-24&version=KJV">Mark 11:22-24</a>).<br /><br />On the other hand, the complications that arise when making the above argument are usually grounded in traditionalism, that is, how scientists traditionally approach concepts of the supernatural. The most important problem we encounter is the common assertion that science has nothing and <em>can</em> say nothing about God. I strongly dispute that common belief; the God most people worship is a God that supposedly plays a very important role in every single event in the universe, from atomic transitions in some far-off galaxy to a leaf falling on the ground here on Earth, and who actively listens to every human thought. Such a God as this should therefore be detectable by his effects, by the ways in which he makes his presence known within the <em>natural</em> world. While it is true to say that science deals strictly with natural phenomena, the kind of God most people believe in should exert observable effects upon and within those natural phenomena. Any God who interacts in <em>any</em> conceivable way with the material, physical reality we experience should provide us with actions that can actually be tested for. <br /><br /><strong>The Irrelevancy of Deism</strong> <br /><br />The only kind of God that would most likely lie beyond any possibility of scientific investigation is the non-falsifiable <em>deistic god</em>, one who started the universe but no longer interferes with it in any way. The deist god was the God of the Enlightenment, one might say. It was the god that most of the founders of the United States actually believed in, most notably Thomas Jefferson. The "Creator" of the <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html">Declaration of Independence</a> is <em>not</em> the Christian God. The “Creator” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is instead a clear reference to the deist god. <br /><br />At that time in history (the late eighteenth century) physics was a highly successful enterprise. Science had attained an impressive level of success with Newtonian physics, and most people then believed that everything that happened was completely determined by the laws of physics. It was therefore quite natural for reasonable people at the time to propose that the only god that is necessary is one that created the universe and established its physical laws. If that god is perfect, they reasoned, he should have simply left the universe alone indefinitely after creating it. That deistic, non-interventionist god was a possible god at that time, given the range of scientific knowledge then available. <br /><br />However, in our current age, we have at our disposal a great deal more knowledge of the universe and of physics than people at that time had, and quite a different picture now emerges which poses a strong threat to theistic belief. Based upon our best knowledge in the area of cosmology, it appears that the universe began in a state of maximum chaos (what physicists call “maximum entropy”). If this was indeed the case, then the universe had no structure and no laws at the point of its inception; it was essentially <em>nothing</em> at that early moment in the universe’s history. This means that if there had been a Creator God (the deist god, for example), no memory or trace of that god would be preserved in the current universe. Therefore, even the deist god of the Enlightenment, while not completely <em>ruled out</em>, is ruled <em>irrelevant</em> by the mere fact that maximum chaos dominated at the moment the universe was born (in fact, the <em>only</em> Creator that remains a possibility under current scientific scrutiny is the kind of creator that Einstein famously objected to, namely the creator that throws dice). <br /><br />There may indeed have been a Creator. After all, an all-powerful being could have created the Singularity in ultimate chaos and allowed the result to proceed on its own, watching in a non-participatory manner to see what happens. But if there was such a Creator, the facts of science tell us that this being created only maximum chaos, leaving us no memory of him/her/it (and this includes <em>any</em> Creator God of <em>any</em> culture). If a god created the universe, he/she/it subjected it to a state that is entirely opaque to any memory of what its intentions may have been. While this is completely possible, this would again point to an <em>irrelevant</em> god, one that may as well be non-existent. There would certainly be no point in praying to such a being, because that being has nothing whatsoever to do with the current universe, with which he/she/it is not a part. <br /><br /><strong>The Tinkering God</strong><br /><br />But of course, that is not the kind of god worshipped by the majority of people today. The God most people worship today is one who <em>is</em> a participant in the universe, and an extremely active one at that. Thus, while I argue that we can confidently dismiss any scientifically-tenable Creator as one who would be reduced to utter irrelevancy, we still need to discuss the God who is claimed, against all scientific reason, to have stepped in <em>after</em> the creation, the God who takes actions and tinkers with the universe and who is claimed to have an effect on our lives. If <em>that</em> tinkering God exists, he should be eminently detectable by the actions he takes following the creation. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.nasonline.org/">The National Academy of Sciences</a>, however, missed this point entirely when they published the following statement: “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral” [<strong>1</strong>]. What is bitterly amusing about this statement is that it seems to <em>only</em> comes from scientists or laypeople. Perhaps surprisingly (and definitely ironically), one very rarely hears statements to this effect from theologians. They routinely claim the opposite, insisting that science <em>can</em> and <em>should</em> be used to demonstrate the existence of God. A great number of books have been written by theists claiming scientific evidence for the existence of God, demonstrating that theists clearly <em>want</em> to believe that the evidence is out there [<strong>2</strong>]. By far, the people who most insist that science should have nothing to say about God tend to be scientists. <br /><br />In 1998, a very revealing survey was conducted by researchers Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham. This survey indicated that only a mere <em>seven percent</em> of the members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, those representing the elite of American scientists, believed in a personal God [<strong>3</strong>]. This demographic of belief within the NAS is close to being the exact opposite, or inverse, of the belief demographic among the general populace of the United States. Here we have a significant number of atheist scientists who make various pronouncements to the public from time to time. And in one of these pronouncements regarding evolution and creationism, as we have seen already from the quote given above, they state that science has nothing to say about the supernatural, and can say nothing about God. This pronouncement is plainly wrong; it is clear that science can indeed comment on God, because the God most people worship is the God that should manifest empirical effects on the world, such as prayer efficacy. <br /><br />How do we explain this tendency among predominantly atheist scientists to refrain from exposing religious claims as scientifically untenable? I would argue that this tendency is by and large a protective measure, for two reasons. First, it is within the scientific community’s perceived interest to avoid making religious people angry at them or angry at science in general. That would cause the worst thing that could possibly happen to any scientist: the loss of their funding. Second, the nature of the cultural war between evolution and creationism poses certain pragmatic barriers to public scientific criticisms of religious assertions. Many scientists believe that the best policy is to avoid attacking religion directly on the issue of evolution versus creationism, despite the fact that the entire motivation for creationism is 100 percent religious in nature. Various science groups, such as the <a href="http://ncse.com/">National Center for Science Education</a>, which does excellent work in trying to keep evolution taught in schools, issue statements to the effect that they are not going to criticize religion in any way. Their reasoning is that they want and need the support of more moderate forms of religion which allow for the possibility of evolution within their theologies and are willing to accept it as real science (the Catholic Church is one prominent example of a religious entity that supposedly supports evolution, although the current Pope Benedict XVI clearly holds different ideas than the previous, more progressively-oriented Pope). <br /><br />In the meantime, science groups who have begun to back off from criticizing religion directly want desperately to keep and maintain any support they can garner. This is completely understandable on one level. But it is my contention that at some point, public support for science is going to start falling apart if this reluctance to engage the claims of religion is continued and prolonged. In the past decade, we have already witnessed the first signs of this disintegration of public support in this country, especially in social issues that bear directly on the conflict between science and religion. One need look no further than the many documented ways in which the Bush Administration suppressed science [<strong>4</strong>], and also made and acted on decisions that were based entirely on faith rather than evidence, including the war in Iraq. Indeed, it is inarguable at this point that the United States’ initiation of and heavy involvement in the disastrous Iraq War was based on blind faith. Numerous other terrible events transpired that were directly sanctioned in the name of religion and made possible by its machinations.<br /><br />This is one reason why scientists in this country <em>must</em> start to speak out strongly against the thinking process that goes into religious beliefs. In fact, the time for scientists to begin speaking out against religious pseudoscience is long overdue. Several prominent and reputable scientists from a number of disciplines have done just this over the past decade, and their books have demonstrated that science is not only <em>able</em> to make definitive critical assessments of religion and the supernatural, but that it is <em>obliged</em> to do so. These scientists include zoologist/biologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins">Richard Dawkins</a> [<strong>5</strong>], neuroscientist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris_(author)">Sam Harris</a> [<strong>6</strong>], and particle physicist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Stenger">Victor Stenger</a> [<strong>7</strong>] among several others. The movement looks promising, having influenced prominent nonscientists such as the late, great journalist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens">Christopher Hitchens</a> to join them in unapologetically speaking out, in an empirical manner characteristic of scientists, against the type of religious thinking that has been at the root of all manner of social ills (which obviously includes much more than pseudoscience, with which scientists can and should deal) in this country and abroad [<strong>8</strong>]. <br /><br />A second reason the scientific community as a whole must start speaking out against the tenets of religion is because to refrain from doing so is dogmatic, even if unwittingly so. Those scientists who say that science has nothing to say about the supernatural, that science should stay out of assessments and analysis of religion altogether, end up playing right into the hands of people like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson">Phillip Johnson</a>, the Christian lawyer who is largely responsible for initiating the Intelligent Design movement with his series of anti-Darwin books published in the 1990s [<strong>9</strong>]. Johnson has asserted time and time again throughout these books that a "bias of naturalism" exists in the scientific community. Johnson charges that the modern scientific establishment assumes everything is material and natural, and that this is an assumption to which scientists are dogmatically attached. Thus, every time a scientist states that science has nothing to do with the supernatural, only with the natural, they are playing right into the hands of people like Johnson. <br /><br />One eminent scientist who fell for what I call the Johnson Trap is the late great paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. In his 1999 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rocks-Ages-Science-Religion-Fullness/dp/034545040X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327205501&sr=1-1"><em>Rocks of Ages</em></a>, Gould put forth the idea that science and religion constitute two “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” [<strong>10</strong>]. He proposed that science and religion occupy completely separate spheres of knowledge (or magisteria). Science concerns itself with the understanding of the natural world, while religion is associated with tackling issues of morality. Most academics who reviewed the book agreed that in it Gould was attempting to redefine religion as moral philosophy [<strong>11</strong>]. The fact of the matter is that most religions are not content with merely being moral philosophies. All religions have something to say about the natural world, the most ubiquitous being that a supreme entity designed and created it and interacts with it in a tangible way. <br /><br />Moreover, there is no reason why science should not be able to weigh in on morality as well [<strong>12</strong>]. Morality is often touted as something that science can say nothing about. While science perhaps may not be able to inform us as to what is right and wrong, science can certainly examine <em>human behavior</em>, which is an observable phenomenon. And science has every right to study everything that is observable, and to construct models that describe these observations. In the final analysis, science at its most basic is involved with observing the world, the universe, human beings, and anything that causes some kind of signal to enter one’s sensory apparatus. As I detailed in <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/12/scientific-verdict-on-god-part-1-models.html">Part 1 of this series</a>, the Scientific Method then proceeds to create models to describe what is seen and to aid in the investigators’ understanding. This means making these models as universal as possible so they do not rely on any one particular point of view. Scientific models that describe reality must be objective, and the process toward that end is a smooth, natural procedure when properly carried out. <br /><br />
<b>Has Science Found God?</b>
<P>
On July 20, 1998, <i>Newsweek</i> magazine featured a cover story by science writer Sharon Begley entitled “Science Finds God,” a piece which credulously promotes the view that modern science is providing support for the belief that God exists [<b>13</b>]. The achievements of modern science, according to Begley, are beginning to offer support for spirituality for a growing number of scientists who have begun to dabble in theology. Begley concludes,
<blockquote>The default setting of science is eternal doubt; the core of religion is faith. Yet profoundly religious people and great scientists are both driven to understand the world. Once, science and religion were viewed as two fundamentally different, even antagonistic, ways of pursuing that quest, and science stood accused of smothering faith and killing God. Now, it may strengthen belief. And although it cannot prove God’s existence, science might whisper to believers where to seek the divine [<b>14</b>].</blockquote>
In supporting her conclusion, Begley provides a number of data points in the form of interviews with reputable scientists The article begins with an anecdotal profile of the astronomer Allan Sandage, who at the age of 50 “willed himself” to believe in the supernatural. Begley quotes Sandage as saying, “It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”
<P>
Next, Begley comments on the historical enmity that has existed between science and religion. The notion of the Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA) is discussed, an impasse between the two modes of inquiry that Begley implies is the end result of the threat that Enlightenment science posed to theology, coupled with the intolerance many deeply religious believers (“fundamentalists”) harbor toward science. But science and theology are coming together into a new consonance, say many scientist-theologians. Robert John Russell, a physicist-turned theologian, founded the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) at the Graduate Theological Union in 1981. He told <i>Newsweek</i> that “theology and science are entering into a new relationship.”
<P>
What are the details of this new relationship? According to the scientist-theologians cited in the article, Big Bang cosmology implies to some scientists that there is a design and purpose behind the universe. Evolution “provides clues to the very nature of God,” say others. Even chaos theory is being interpreted as opening a door for God to act in the world. Institutions, books, symposiums, and television documentaries (PBS’s <i>Faith and Reason</i>, 1998) proclaim a new synthesis. Books include such titles as <i>Science and Theology: The New Consonance</i> [<b>15</b>] and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Belief-Science-Polkinghorne-F-R-S-K-B-E/dp/0300099495/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361339&sr=1-1"><i>Belief in God in an Age of Science</i></a> [<b>16</b>].
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In 1977, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, wrote, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless [<b>17</b>].” But if Begley’s report is to be accepted as accurate, physicists are becoming theologians based on alleged scientific evidence for God. Begley quotes physicist-turned-Anglican priest John Polkinghorne as stating, “When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely-tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.” Charles Townes, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Christian theist, told Begley, “Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.” The article also invokes the notion of “Mathematical Platonism” (the apparent harmony between human thought and natural law) and “quantum theology, in which Chaos Theory and events at the quantum level supply an opening for God to act in the world. The end result of all this, says Begley, is that scientists are finding inspiration in belief to be scientists in the first place. Examples include Mehdi Golshani, a Muslim physicist and author of <i>The Holy Qur'an and the Sciences of Nature</i> [<b>18</b>], and Carl Feit, a Jewish biologist and Talmudic scholar and contributor to such volumes as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-For-The-21St-Century/dp/1890151394/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361008&sr=8-1"><i>God for the 21st Century</i></a> [<b>19</b>] and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Tradition-Challenge-Darwinism-Geoffrey/dp/0226092763/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361097&sr=1-1">Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism</a></i> [<b>20</b>].
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Nontheistic skeptics are noticeably underrepresented in Begley’s article, the sole exception being a quote extracted from an interview with Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society: “Science is a method, not a body of knowledge,” Shermer told our author. “It can have nothing to say either way about whether there is a God. These are two such different things, it would be like using baseball stats to prove a point in football.”
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Begley’s article prompted particle physicist Victor Stenger to write a book-length response, entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Latest-Results-Purpose-Universe/dp/1591020182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327205610&sr=1-1"><i>Has Science Found God?</i></a> In this book, Stenger examines all the major arguments that people have used in favor of the claim that science had stumbled upon God, including the Intelligent Design argument, the terrestrial and cosmological Fine-Tuning Arguments, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, etc. After thoroughly investigating these arguments, Stenger concludes that there is in fact an <i>absence of evidence</i> for the existence of God [<b>21</b>]. And he is certainly not the only scientist to make this conclusion.
<br /><br />Even the most pious believer must admit up front (because this is a fact) that <em>there is no sufficient empirical evidence for the existence of any god that has satisfied scientific consensus</em>. God is simply not a part of modern science. If we had such evidence in hand, if God was accepted by an overall consensus within modern science, then that evidence would surely have a prominent place in the textbooks, right alongside the textbook evidence for quarks, for electrons, for atoms, etc. But there is currently no good evidence for God that has stood up under the <em>normal</em> scrutiny of science, let alone hard scrutiny, and this is a matter of fact, not opinion. <br /><br />The reader will likely already be familiar with the common rejoinder to this conclusion. In the words of the famed astronomer Carl Sagan, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” [<strong>22</strong>]. But upon reflection, this reasoning amounts to little more than a clever play on words. Absence of evidence really <em>is</em> evidence of absence, and <em>good</em> evidence at that. Most of us do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster or in Bigfoot precisely because we do not have any evidence indicating their existence. Why should anyone believe in the reality of anything for which there is no evidence and thus no reason to believe? <br /><br /><strong>The Failure of Prayer</strong><br /><br />Not only is there an absence of evidence (which is already by itself a good argument against God, and at the very least a good argument to reserve belief), but there is also <em>positive</em> evidence that God does not exist, evidence that allows one to falsify the God Hypothesis whenever a God is specifically defined [<strong>23</strong>]. One of my favorite examples of this positive evidence that works actively against the notion of a participant God is the failure of prayer. Consider what we should expect to see if there was a God who answered prayer in a significant way (that is, not just once every ten million years, for example). At what rate are prayers being said, say, every second? This number must be in the billions [<strong>24</strong>]. If any of these billions of prayers were worthwhile, if there was any real purpose behind praying, then we should see at least <em>some</em> tangible results of prayer on a regular basis. And this is something that can (and, as we shall see, has been) tested by scientific means. It is possible to perform carefully controlled experiments on intercessory prayer, for example, taking all the best techniques that we know of from other fields of science, especially blinded studies, and applying them to a study on prayer’s effects. <br /><br />Let us entertain a hypothetical situation: suppose that a series of such rigorous and robust experiments were performed on intercessory prayer, and the result created unanimous agreement on the part of all scientists involved that Catholic prayers really are effective. The results show conclusively and beyond a reasonable doubt that Catholic prayers work in healing the sick. Furthermore, the results show that Catholic prayers are the <em>only</em> prayers that work. Hindu prayers do not work, Buddhist prayers do not work, Protestant Christian prayers do not work, and Jewish and Muslim prayers do not work. Only Catholic prayers are demonstrated to work. Given a result like this, I would be hard-pressed to think of any plausible natural explanation for it. If atheists such as myself were to observe such a phenomenon, most of us would find ourselves conceding that perhaps a God exists after all, and more, a God who answers prayers. Furthermore, we would have to concede that the Catholics had it right all along; the God demonstrated to exist by such experiments is the Catholic God. I can only speak for myself when I say that a result of this kind would lead me to become a believing theist once again. <br /><br />But of course, this hypothetical situation has not played out in reality. We do not see any evidence that prayer is efficacious in any way, shape or form. And in fact, there have actually been a series of very good experiments, done by reputable scientists associated with reputable institutions (<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.com/">Mayo Clinic</a>, <a href="http://www.harvard.edu/">Harvard</a> and <a href="http://www.duke.edu/">Duke University</a>) and published in reputable scientific journals, which utilized standard scientific methods to empirically and rigorously test the efficacy of prayer [<strong>25</strong>]. <br /><br />My favorite of the major scientific prayer studies is the one that came from Duke University. In 2001, physicians from that institution began a clinical trial that spanned three years to study the effects of intercessory prayer, along with other so-called noetic therapies such as music, imagery and touch therapy. The subjects of the trial consisted of 748 patients awaiting angioplasty for obstruction of the coronary artery in nine U.S. hospitals, and the trial involved the intercessions of twelve prayer groups from around the world. These included a representative number of religious persuasions, including lay and monastic Christians, Sufi Muslims, Buddhist monks and Jews. <br /><br />The protocols of this study were straightforward and highly competent: the 748 patients were selected at random by computer, divided into two groups, and their names sent to the twelve prayer groups, who prayed for the complete recovery of selected patients. The clinical trials were performed in a double-blind fashion; it was unknown to both the patients and the hospital staff which group was being prayed for and which was not. According to the final test results published in the journal <em>Lancet</em> in 2005, no significant differences were observed between the two groups’ recovery and health: “Neither masked prayer nor MIT [music, imagery, touch] therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterisation or percutaneous coronary intervention” [<strong>26</strong>]. <br /> <br />It is instructive to note that these experiments were not undertaken by atheists or skeptics. These experiments were performed by believing scientists who <em>wanted</em> to find evidence for the efficacy of prayer. But they were good scientists who allowed the <em>data</em> to decide the results rather than their own desires, and going only where the data leads is always the proper methodology in science. While one might be tempted to conclude that the scientists involved in the Duke study, for example, were initially looking underhandedly for a <a href="http://www.templetonprize.org/abouttheprize.html">Templeton Prize</a>, the fact of the matter is that they were good enough scientists to have the integrity to publish the results, even when the results failed to produce the conclusion they were searching for. And what have the results of these experiments on prayer shown? They have uniformly found that there are no visible effects to prayer. <br /><br />Such scientific tests give the lie to the notion that science can have no say on the supernatural. The studies I have cited serve as illustrative examples demonstrating that science can legitimately comment on God. Experiments have been done (and will continue to be done) that directly address the question of the supernatural.<br /> <br />But we need not even point to these studies to convince theists of this truth. Theists who have written books and articles (of which there are hundreds) purporting to validate the god hypothesis through scientific evidence <em>have already implicitly ceded this point</em>. Thus, when unbiased scientists respond in kind and proceed to put supernatural claims to the tests with proper protocol, such theists are in no position to lodge objections on the basis of a “non-overlapping magisteria” argument. <br /><br /><strong>When Theism Flirts With Science</strong><br /><br />In May 2007, physicist <a href="http://129.81.170.14/~tipler/">Frank Tipler</a> of Tulane University was highlighted in a CBS Channel 5 news report for his announcement that he had come up with an equation that he claimed proved the existence of God. Invoking the idea that physics forces the continual existence of the universe, Tipler boldly stated that "as long as you're using . . . general relativity, and quantum mechanics, you are forced to conclude that God exists” [<strong>27</strong>]. This announcement came shortly before the release of his 2007 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Christianity-Frank-J-Tipler/dp/B003D7JZC6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327206109&sr=1-1"><em>The Physics of Christianity</em></a>, in which Tipler attempts to tie his God equation into <em>additional</em> scientific demonstrations of the divinity of Jesus and a variety of other metaphysical claims specific to Christianity. He came monumentally short of persuading any of his colleagues in the fields of physics, cosmology and mathematics, and the promised “equation” was never released. Instead, interested followers of his announcement were left with a vague and gibberish-laden summary:<br /><blockquote>Tipler then concludes that life must be present to the end, using a string of complex and partly circular arguments: black holes evaporate, this would violate 'unitarity, a fundamental law of quantum mechanics' (nowhere in books on quantum theory, not even in Tipler's book, do I find 'unitarity' mentioned), so universe must collapse, but 'event horizons' would force information and entropy to approach zero, this contradicts second law, thus event horizons do not exist, thus information goes to infinity, thus the universe is closed and goes to final singularity, but without life this would yield an infinitely improbable state, this contradicts second law, thus life must be present to guide universe to final singularity, thus event horizons are absent [<strong>28</strong>].</blockquote><br />If nothing else, a supernatural being that participates in and interferes constantly with the physical universe should at least leave a straightforward statistical trace, not a string of incomprehensible gobbledygook sprung from the imaginative mind of a physicist with too much time on his hands. In fact, statistical evidences are among the strongest kind of evidences one could hope to secure in science, and a number of theists recognize this. Physicist and theist Stephen Unwin favors this statistical approach in his 2003 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Probability-God-Simple-Calculation-Ultimate/dp/1400054788/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327206181&sr=1-1"><em>The Probability of God</em></a>, in which he purports to prove, to a high probability, that God exists by using Bayesian mathematical methods and analysis. Unwin’s calculations yield a probability of 67 percent in favor of God:<br /><blockquote>Through systematic analysis of the evidence, I assess the final truth probability of Proposition G to be 67 percent. This means that the balance of probability – that is 33 percent (100 percent less 67 percent) – attaches to Proposition G*, which is that God does not exist. So comparing 67 percent to 33 percent, we have in effect assessed the odds at 2 to 1 in favor of God.<br /><br />Your assessment of the evidence may differ. So now that you have the hang of the process, you may wish to adjust the numbers as you see fit and see what results you derive. You may even have new evidentiary areas to add [<strong>29</strong>].</blockquote><br />Unwin does not stop there, though. In a bizarre move, he ends up boosting his initial calculation of 67 percent up to 95 percent by the end of his book, the balance of 28 percent originating in a last-minute injection of “faith.” In the process of justifying this probability-boosting, Unwin fully reveals the highly subjective and arbitrary nature of what is only ostensibly a mathematical proof. He writes, for example, “[A] faith factor of 28 percent is necessary to account for the discrepancy between my reasoned, calculated probability of God and my actual degree of belief in his existence. So this 28 percent factor is my trust in God’s existence: the experiential component of my belief” [<strong>30</strong>]. <br /><br />In response to Unwin’s venture, Tufts University physicist Larry Ford acted upon Unwin’s encouragement to assess the evidence and adjust the numbers to his satisfaction. <a href="http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/god_and_rev._bayes">He recalculated the Bayesian probability of God</a> and came up with his own estimate: 10<sup>-17</sup> [<strong>31</strong>]. <br /><br />The lesson to be drawn from this is that if one wishes hard enough to find God in mathematics, he will be found. It all depends on how one reads the numbers. With Bayesian analysis specifically, results depend entirely on what numbers are subjectively inserted by the individual assessor. As Unwin himself admits in his book, “Life thrusts too much information at us. It is therefore a vacuous exercise in my view to speculate on whether access to the same evidence should always lead two people to produce the same probabilities” [<strong>32</strong>]. He goes on to acknowledge that “It is certainly the case that Bayesian probabilities have a subjective element. A degree of belief is a subjective notion . . . partial subjectivity is an inevitable attribute of probabilities” [<strong>33</strong>]. <br /><br />Therefore, we should dispute, at the outset, anybody who claims that he or she can construct a <em>mathematical</em> test of God’s existence. We are obliged to rely on strictly objective observations to the best of our ability and as much and often as we possibly can. Unfortunately, however, most objective observations tend to manifest <em>qualitatively</em>, rather than quantitatively. In fact, it is highly doubtful that it is even possible to make an argument for God’s existence a quantitative one. <br /><br />Because both theists and atheists can look at the same data, the same mathematics, and come up with entirely different results, the burden of proof lies squarely on the shoulders of those making the positive claim, which would be the theist in this case. <br /><br /><strong>NOTES</strong><br /><br /><b>1.</b> National Academy of Sciences, <em>Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science</em> (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1998), p. 58. <br /><br /><b>2.</b> See Victor J. Stenger, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Latest-Results-Purpose-Universe/dp/1591020182/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343356815&sr=1-1&keywords=Has+Science+Found+God"><em>Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003) for an excellent examination of these claims that conclusively finds they do not hold up under careful critical scrutiny. <br /><br /><b>3.</b> Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, “Leading Scientists Still Reject God,” <em>Nature</em> 394 (1998): 313. <br /><br /><b>4.</b> See Chris Mooney, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/B000WCNU44/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343356900&sr=1-1&keywords=the+republican+war+on+science"><em>The Republican War on Science</em></a> (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2005) for documentation of many examples of this concerted suppression of science by Republican politics and the resultant emergence of socially-harmful policies. <br /><br /><b>5.</b> Richard Dawkins, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343356948&sr=1-1&keywords=The+God+Delusion"><em>The God Delusion</em></a> (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006).<br /> <br /><b>6.</b> Sam Harris, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Faith-Religion-Terror/dp/0393035158/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343357032&sr=1-1"><em>The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason</em></a> (New York: Norton, 2004)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Sam-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=tmm_pap_title_0"><em>Letter to a Christian Nation</em></a> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/1439171211/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0"><em>The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values</em></a> (New York: Free Press, 2010). <br /><br /><b>7.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Latest-Results-Purpose-Universe/dp/1591020182/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343357194&sr=1-1"><em>Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/ref=pd_sim_b_3"><em>God: The Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Gods-Creation-Search-Consciousness/dp/1591027136/ref=pd_sim_b_20"><em>Quantum Gods: Creation, Chaos and the Search for Cosmic Consciousness</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Atheism-Taking-Science/dp/1591027519/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c"><em>The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009)<b>;</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Fallacy-Fine-Tuning-Universe-Designed/dp/1616144432/ref=pd_sim_b_5"><em>The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us</em></a> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011). <br /><br /><b>8.</b> Christopher Hitchens, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-Great-Everything/dp/0446697966/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343357467&sr=1-2"><em>God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything</em></a> (New York: Twelve Books, 2007)<b>;</b> Hitchens (ed.), <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Portable-Atheist-Essential-Nonbeliever/dp/0306816083/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><em>The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer</em></a> (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007). <br /><br /><b>9.</b> Phillip E. Johnson, <em>Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism</em> (Dallas, TX: Haughton Publishing Co., 1990)<b>;</b> <em>Darwin on Trial</em> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991)<b>;</b> <em>Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education</em> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995)<b>;</b> <em>Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds</em> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997)<b>;</b> <em>The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism</em> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001). <br /><br /><b>10.</b> Stephen Jay Gould, <em>Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life</em> (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002). <br /><br /><b>11.</b> Ursula Goodenough, “The Holes in Gould’s Semipermeable Membrane Between Science and Religion,” <em>American Scientist</em> May/June 1999<b>;</b> H. Allen Orr, “Gould on God: Can Religion and Science Be Happily Reconciled?” <em>Boston Review</em> Oct./Nov. 1999<b>;</b> Kenak Malik, “Inventing Allies in the Sky,” <em>New Statesman</em> 19 Feb. 2001, 49-50. <br /><br /><b>12.</b> See Harris, <em>The Moral Landscape</em>.
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<b>13.</b> Sharon Begley, “Science Finds God,” <em>Newsweek</em> 20 July 1998, pp. 47-51.
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<b>14.</b> Ibid., p. 51.
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<b>15.</b> Ted Peters, ed., <i>Science and Theology: The New Consonance</i> (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999).
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<b>16.</b> John Polkinghorne, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Belief-Science-Polkinghorne-F-R-S-K-B-E/dp/0300099495/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347360796&sr=1-1">Belief in God in an Age of Science</a></i> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).
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<b>17.</b> Steven Weinberg, <i>The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe</i> (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 154.
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<b>18.</b> Mehdi Golshani, <i>The Holy Qur’an and the Sciences of Nature: A Theological Reflection</i> (New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2003).
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<b>19.</b> Russell Stannard, ed., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-For-The-21St-Century/dp/1890151394/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361008&sr=8-1">God for the 21st Century</a></i> (Radnor, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000).
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<b>20.</b> Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz, eds., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Tradition-Challenge-Darwinism-Geoffrey/dp/0226092763/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361097&sr=1-1"><i>Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism</i></a> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
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<b>21.</b> Stenger, <i>Has Science Found God?</i> pp. 219-260.
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<b>22.</b> Carl Sagan, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347361242&sr=1-1">The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark</a></i> (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), p. 213.
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<b>23.</b> Stenger, <i>God: The Failed Hypothesis</i>.
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<b>24.</b> As a side note, I find it rather amusing that many Christians insist on making grand public shows of their praying, which is contrary to what Jesus instructed his followers to do. According to <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A5-6&version=KJV">Matthew 6:5-6</a>, Jesus says, “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Most Christians obviously do not follow this instruction, which they would do well to look up (yes, please read your Bible, Christians; the more Christians actually read the Bible, the less Christians we would end up with). What we find instead is many Christians attempting to force prayer into as many aspects of public life that they can.
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<b>25.</b> M.W. Krucoff, et al., “Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomised Study,” <i>Lancet</i> 366 (16 July 2005): 211-17<b>;</b> H. Benson, et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,” <i>American Heart Journal</i> 151, no. 4 (2006): 934-42.
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<b>26.</b> Krucoff, et al., p. 211<b>;</b> for a media report on the Duke MANTRA study, see Jonathan Petre, “Power of Prayer Found Wanting in Hospital Trial,” <i>The Telegraph</i> 15 Oct. 2003.
<br /><br /><b>27.</b> Quoted in Salman Hameed, “The Proof of God: Tipler and His Pseudoscience</a>,” <em>Irtiqa: A Science & Religion Blog</em> 10 May 2007, <a href="http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/proof-of-god-tipler-and-his.html">http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/proof-of-god-tipler-and-his.html</a> (accessed 20 January 2012). <br /> <br /><b>28.</b> Quoted in PZ Myers, “Is This What We Can Expect from Comfort/Cameron?</a>” <em>Pharyngula</em> 5 May 2007, <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/is_this_what_we_can_expect_fro.php">http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/05/is_this_what_we_can_expect_fro.php</a> (accessed 20 January 2012). <br /><br /><b>29.</b> Stephen D. Unwin, <em>The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth</em> (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), pp. 128-129.<br /><br /><b>30.</b> Ibid., p. 189.<br /><br /><b>31.</b> Victor J. Stenger, “God and Rev. Bayes</a>,” <em>Skeptical Briefs</em> 17.2 (June 2007), online at <a href="http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/god_and_rev._bayes">http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/god_and_rev._bayes</a> (accessed 20 January 2012)<b>;</b> <em>The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning</em>, pp. 249-252.<br /><br /><b>32.</b> Unwin, <em>The Probability of God</em>, p. 67.<br /><br /><b>33.</b> Ibid., p. 68.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-24672377463481626992011-12-27T16:59:00.000-08:002012-10-11T04:53:44.232-07:00The Scientific Verdict on God (Part 1): Models<P>
<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work</i>.” <b>~</b> John von Neumann [<b>1</b>]
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One of the greatest misperceptions about science entertained among the general public today is that science is a noun. In other words, most people tend to erroneously think of science as a monolithic <i>thing</i> whose primary function is to manufacture <i>proofs</i>, instead of looking at science as it really is: a <i>model</i> that describes reality and how to build it. The viability of a given model is based entirely on (1) how reliable it is, (2) how usable it is, and (3) whether or not it is consistently reproved and continually open to revision by the evidence we have found or may yet find.
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It is important to recognize the word “model” in science-based discussions, because many people very often use the word “theory” (which is itself a much misunderstood word) when they should be using the word “model.” The practice of science, at its most basic, involves making observations of the physical world. The set of basic assumptions that all scientists start out with must always be based on observations. Consider, for example, the concept of <i>time</i>. A scientific investigator is certainly going to start with time when trying to describe almost anything. But how does one go about defining “time”? Not even philosophers have been able to arrive at a consensus on how time should be defined. The definition that Einstein came up with is that time is what one reads on a clock. And clocks are a human invention, allowing us humans to define “time” in terms of whatever basic units we wish and agree upon. The basic unit of time, the second, was redefined in 1967 by international agreement as the amount of time required for a caesium-133 atom to undergo 9,192,631,770 vibrations [<b>2</b>]. Prior to 1967, the second was defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. The new definition was chosen simply for the sake of convenience, as it more fully accounted for irregularities in the rotation of the Earth and thus allowed for comparatively simpler equations. In 1997, the time standard was further refined to specify that the caesium atom used to define time was to be one at rest at absolute zero.
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In conventional physics, all the other various observational qualities follow on the heels of this pragmatic approach: Distance is what you read with a meter stick, a meter being currently defined by international agreement as the distance light traverses between two points in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 of a second. Temperature is what you read on a thermometer.
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These are known as <i>operational definitions</i>, the establishment of which marks the first step in the practice of science, especially physics. Ideally, the operational definitions physicists make are based on specifically-prescribed measuring procedures and informed by empirical observations, and only then do physicists proceed to carry out those measurements. Scientists are highly concerned with making their measurements <i>quantitative</i>. If scientists can be quantitative in their approach, much of their work is complete, thanks to the seemingly elusive quality of <i>precision</i> that is thereby achieved. The quantitatively-oriented physicist is then ready to build models to describe her observations. If the models work, then they are useful. If they do not work, they are not useful. As long as a given model is useful, it does not matter whether it has any correspondence with ultimate reality. In other words, whether or not an electron actually exists in reality, one can still use the electron <i>model</i> to calculate to a high degree of accuracy the current flows in electronic circuits. Never does metaphysics enter the issue at all. As particle physicist Victor Stenger explains,
<blockquote>[T]he true reality of the universe is not necessarily composed of objects that possess attributes such as position and mass which we assign them in the process of doing physics. These variables, after all, are human inventions with no precisely definable meaning beyond their measurements as performed with specific apparatuses such as clocks and meter sticks.
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Describing nature in terms of physical variables is like sketching or photographing an object. Isn’t it rather foolish to equate images on a piece of paper with the real thing? Confusing an image with reality is a common characteristic of small children [<b>3</b>].</blockquote>
Another illustrative example of a model is the earth’s sun. We usually instinctively regard the sun as an orb travelling across the sky. If you are a traveler journeying from east to west, you can use the sun to guide your direction; by heading in the direction of the sunset, you know you are heading generally west. Although you must correct just slightly for longitude, you can successfully use the <i>model</i> of the sun as an orb moving across the sky. The ancient Greeks believed that the sun was Apollo pulling a chariot across the sky. That understanding constituted the dominant metaphysics of the time. The ancient Chinese, meanwhile, understood the sun to be a golden bird flying across the sky.
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Does it really matter which of these metaphysics was correct, if any? Obviously, we know today that neither one of them was true. But the instructive point here is that it does not matter what the particular metaphysics happens to be. Both the ancient Greek traveler and the ancient Chinese traveler could still use the sun as a traveling guide in the exact same way.
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Scientific models work the same way. We use them to more fully grasp, and apply to, practical needs. The better the model becomes and the more universal its application grows, the closer the model comes to being called a “theory.”
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A wide application is crucial to the life of any model; the model must apply not just toward small and isolated situations, but instead to many different situations. The more general a model happens to be, the more universal it becomes. And the more universal the model is, the more universal the accompanying theory therefore becomes, and the more widely it can then be applied. But throughout this whole process of maturation, what we have is still merely a pragmatic model, a human invention. For example, we know full well that the earth is not flat. But the Flat Earth Model is still <i>useful</i>, because it is employed whenever we construct buildings. Locally speaking, it does not matter at all that the earth is actually a sphere. In some cases, we even go out of our way to <i>make</i> the earth flat where it is not in order to apply the model to practical situations.
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<b>Scientific Models vs. Religious Models</b>
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By methodological necessity, scientific arguments about the sun remove <i>intent</i> from the hypothesis of whom or what is hauling it across the sky, if indeed it is being hauled at all. The hypothesis that the sun is a chariot flying across the sky, on the other hand, inherently involves intent. The god responsible for the sun’s movement could arise the next morning and arbitrarily decide that he is not going to haul the sun across the sky. As anyone who has read <i>The Iliad</i> or <i>The Odyssey</i> knows, the Greek gods were very uncertain beings to rely on. When working at the level of deities, <i>science becomes an exercise in second-guessing the supernatural</i>. You could wake up one day to find that the sun did not go across the sky. In fact, such a thing is bound to happen in this scenario; every once in a while at least, the god would decide that he just does not want to fulfill his role. Thus, the fact that the sun has <i>never</i> failed to appear every morning should constitute evidence that the original model of a chariot being pulled along is dead wrong. After all, does Apollo never get sick? Does he not have to take a vacation at some point? Is he going to pull the sun around forever just because he likes us humans so very much?
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Science provides the ability to consistently recreate one’s worldview, because science can recreate from scratch, through observation and experimentation, the models it previously built up. The models may not be <i>exactly</i> the same after reconstruction; there may be something else in the place of the current quark, for example. But whatever may end up standing in its place in the reconstruction aftermath of our hypothetical loss of accumulated knowledge will have the <i>exact same function</i> as a quark and behave exactly the same way. However arbitrary the basis of scientific models may be, whatever it is we have decided to call “quarks” will always be the building blocks of protons and neutrons, but never of electrons. We can rename or even shuffle existing names of the six kinds of quarks we have identified (up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top). We can decide to arrange them differently than they are now, in order from lightest to heaviest in weight. Nothing fundamental would change; all “quarks” would continue to have opposites we call antiquarks. They will always have positive charges, complemented by the negative charges of their antiquarks, no matter what we call them.
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On the other hand, imagine the drastic differences that would obtain if one tried to reconstruct a religion from scratch. What emerges is <i>never</i> going to be the same as what we now have. The models of science change, or are dismissed entirely, in the face of new scientific discoveries. This is how good science works. However, the basic methodology underlying the practice of science has not so much changed as it has been refined over the centuries. “Science began thousands of years ago,” writes Stenger, “and although the volume of knowledge has expanded enormously in that time, the nature and methods of science have changed little. What is often interpreted as a great paradigm shift can be more accurately described as a clarification or reformulation of principles that were previously dimly perceived” [<b>4</b>]. For example, even in the wake of the twentieth-century revolutions in physics that saw the success of non-deterministic quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity, the three laws of motion developed by Isaac Newton continue to work as successful predictive models. They continue to be applied in virtually every facet of modern technology. In fact, our understanding of Newton's law of gravity, <i><a href="http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newtongrav.html">F=G (m_1 m_2)/r^2</a></i>, is what allowed us to fly to the moon.
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Religion, on the other hand, possesses its models and nothing else. There is no discovery in religion; everything must be forced to fit into the given model at hand. Religionists must wedge all outside discoveries into their existing, supposedly changeless model, but they also cannot allow such discoveries to alter the religious model too much, or else their model ceases to be definable as a religion.
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A perfect example of this practice of forcing data into a given religious model is found in the work of religious scientists like William Dembski, Michael Behe and Francis Collins, each of whom are notorious for placing the proverbial cart firmly before the horse in their approach to reconciling science and religion. It is somewhat difficult at times to believe that mathematician Dembski and biochemist Behe, the main representatives of the “Intelligent Design” movement, actually believe their own words. It seems they are both knowledgeable enough, that they both have access to the same information that all other mathematicians and biochemists have managed to understand. Yet they both sit with crossed arms and staunchly deny this readily-accessible information.
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To wit: During <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District">Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District</a></i> (the 2005 legal battle over the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools that was waged in Dover, Pennsylvania), Michael Behe testified under oath that he had never seen any studies or papers that provide answers to his challenge that the immune system is “irreducibly complex” and therefore could not be the product of evolution. The response from his cross-examiner was very telling and damning to Behe’s credibility. As Judge John E. Jones III noted in his decision,
<blockquote>Between 1996 and 2002, various studies confirmed each element of the evolutionary hypothesis explaining the origin of the immune system. [2:31 (Miller)] In fact, on cross-examination, Professor Behe was questioned concerning his 1996 claim that science would never find an evolutionary explanation for the immune system. He was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications, nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system [<b>5</b>].</blockquote>
Having personally read Behe’s famous book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313">Darwin’s Black Box</a></i> [<b>6</b>], it seems to me that Behe genuinely believed that he had hit upon something compelling, that he was not consciously lying. In this book, Behe makes several statements to the effect that no explanation, deriving from gradual evolutionary changes over time, exists for the examples of “irreducible complexity” that he lists, when in fact there were an abundance of explanations he could have easily found had he looked. Behe, who is a biochemist and not an evolutionary biologist by training, was simply unaware of the scientific literature that documents numerous robust examples in nature of organic systems undergoing functional changes during its evolution [<b>7</b>]. He was even unaware that the evolutionary biologist Hermann Joseph Muller, who in 1946 won the Nobel Prize for his work in biology, had already provided an evolutionary mechanism for so-called “irreducibly complex” systems six decades earlier [<b>8</b>].
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The only thing to which we are justified in attributing this is ignorance on Behe’s part, the same sort of ignorance that religious scientist Francis Collins displays on almost every page of his bestselling book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-God-Scientist-Presents/dp/1416542744/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938399&sr=1-1"><i>The Language of God</i></a> [<b>9</b>]. Collins, a geneticist and proponent of a theistic framework through which to understand evolution, is simply unaware of all the scientific as well as theological work that refutes or disputes his claims. But while it may seem as though it is not possible they should be unaware of all this literature any longer, part of the blame lies on other academics in the pertinent fields, academics who do not bother to criticize the likes of Behe and Collins because of the mistaken impression that the Behes and Collins of the world are promoting their cause. More evolutionary biologists, biochemists and geneticists need to read Behe’s and Collins’ books, and they need to criticize and refute them in a mainstream capacity. They need to publicly point out that they are obviously not aware of the literature on the subject. Whereas many theistic apologists very often make arguments from ignorance, Behe and Collins seem to be making arguments from voluntary ignorance, because they have not bothered to investigate the literature that bears on their subjects.
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William Dembski, on the other hand, knows his business much better than Behe. In his books and articles [<b>10</b>], Dembski really is knowingly cooking up claims that suit his preconceived and very dubious ideas [<b>11</b>]. Ultimately, the preconceived end the religious apologist wants to reach constitutes their entire motive, not a genuine regard for science and investigative honesty.
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Of course, one can try to get people to imagine a wholly new religious model, to make up a religion of their own from scratch. Doing so may even result in something better than any religion we now have (then again, it is somewhat difficult to come up with something worse). When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in early 2006 to allow the religious use of hallucinogens for a small religious group (the <a href="http://www.udv.org.br/">União do Vegetal</a>, a fringe Christian sect) in New Mexico, they may have helped make that particular brand of religion much more popular than it previously was [<b>12</b>]. After all, prospective members knew they can legally get high if they came in to that church. But nevertheless, the point remains that the models of science, in their ability to consistently arrive at the same conclusions even after reconstruction of lost data, is demonstrated to be superior to the fickle models of religion.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Quoted in J. Tinsley Oden, Acceptance Remarks, 1993 John von Neumann Award Winner, <i>United States Association of Computational Mechanics Bulletin</i> 6, no. 3 (September 1993).
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<b>2.</b> Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), “Unit of time (second),” <i>The International System of Units (SI)</i> 8th ed., 2006, Section 2.1.1.3., pp. 112-113.
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<b>3.</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Psychics-Search-Beyond-Senses/dp/087975575X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938702&sr=1-1">Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses</a></i> (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), p. 233.
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<b>4.</b> Ibid., p. 294.
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<b>5.</b> <i>Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District</i>, Federal Case No. 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342, Judge John E. Jones III presiding, filed Dec. 20, 2005. Decision, 78.
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<b>6.</b> Michael Behe, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313">Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution</a></i> (New York: Free Press, 1996).
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<b>7.</b> See Robert Dorit, review of <i>Darwin’s Black Box</i> by Michael Behe, <i>American Scientist</i> (September-October 1997)<b>;</b> Kenneth R. Miller, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343758385&sr=1-1">Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for a Common Ground between God and Evolution</a></i> (New York: HarperCollins, 1999)<b>;</b> Robert T. Pennock, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tower-Babel-Evidence-against-Creationism/dp/026216180X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343757534&sr=1-11">Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism</a></i> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 166-72, 263-72<b>;</b> Mark Perakh, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unintelligent-Design-Mark-Perakh/dp/1591020840/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343757596&sr=1-1">Unintelligent Design</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003)<b>;</b> David Ussery, “Darwin’s Transparent Box: The Biochemical Evidence for Evolution,” in Matt Young and Taner Edis, eds., <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Intelligent-Design-Fails-Creationism/dp/0813538726/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938342&sr=1-1">Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism</a></i> (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
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<b>8.</b> H.J. Muller, “Reversibility in Evolution Considered from the Standpoint of Genetics,” <i>Biological Reviews</i> 14 (1939): 261-80.
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<b>9.</b> Francis S. Collins, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Language-God-Scientist-Presents/dp/1416542744/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938399&sr=1-1">The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief</a></i> (New York: Free Press, 2006). For a thorough and comprehensive refutation of Collins’ book, see George C. Cunningham, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Language-God-Scientist-Believer/dp/1591027667/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938751&sr=1-1">Decoding the Language of God: Can a Scientist Really Be a Believer?</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009).
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<b>10.</b> William A. Dembski, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Design-Inference-Eliminating-Probabilities/dp/0521623871/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1343758438&sr=1-1">The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities</a></i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)<b>;</b> <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Design-Between-Science-Theology/dp/083082314X/ref=pd_sim_b_2">Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology</a></i> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999)<b>;</b> <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Specified-Complexity-Intelligence/dp/074255810X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938925&sr=8-1">No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence</a></i> (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
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<b>11.</b> For refutations of Dembski’s work, see Brandon Fitelson, Christopher Stephens and Elliott Sober, “How Not to Detect Design – Critical Notice: William A Dembski, ‘The Design Inference,’” <i>Philosophy of Science</i> 66, no. 3 (1999): 472-88<b>;</b> David Roche, “A Bit Confused: Creationism and Information Theory,” <i>Skeptical Inquirer</i> 25, no. 2 (2001): 40-42<b>;</b> Jeffery Shallit, review of <i>No Free Lunch </i>by William Dembski, <i>Biosystems</i> 66, nos. 1-2 (2002): 93-99<b>;</b> Victor J. Stenger, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Science-Latest-Results-Purpose-Universe/dp/1591020182/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347938985&sr=1-1">Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe</a></i> (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 99-130.
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<b>12.</b> Religion News Blog, “High Court Sides with Church in Hallucinogenic Tea Dispute,” <i>ReligionNewsBlog.com</i> 21 Feb. 2006, <a href="http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13721/high-court-sides-with-church-in-hallucinogenic-tea-dispute">http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13721/high-court-sides-with-church-in-hallucinogenic-tea-dispute</a> (accessed 27 December 2011).
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-19071783960733716782011-10-25T15:50:00.000-07:002011-10-25T16:39:22.197-07:00Do Atheists Exercise Faith in Unbelief?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsIhrXYEu1IZbURlmA5KW-p-A0waBRRn6PdCdM65i1f8LYgltREhyPBjI8u-KxcjROv4KKabX1ASj0yx45dhXa6bMoqnwtjqnh_Y931BxCm4l12GQeI0_4CR2kxEoi6SYsQrTMon59tJw/s1600/ReasonandGod.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsIhrXYEu1IZbURlmA5KW-p-A0waBRRn6PdCdM65i1f8LYgltREhyPBjI8u-KxcjROv4KKabX1ASj0yx45dhXa6bMoqnwtjqnh_Y931BxCm4l12GQeI0_4CR2kxEoi6SYsQrTMon59tJw/s320/ReasonandGod.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667577514476985426" /></a><br /><br />One of the most popular apologetic responses theists direct towards atheists, especially when they have been painted into a corner and have exhausted all arguments from reason and logic, is the assertion that everyone is religious, even atheists. They argue that we atheists evangelize often, and that we even have our own “prophets,” such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Robert M. Price. The argument is often hinged on the assertion that because one cannot prove there is no god, and because faith is belief without evidence (which they have at this point admitted if they are making this argument), then atheists therefore must have faith and are therefore religious. I have even heard several Christian apologists declare that “I could only be an atheist if I had <em>more</em> faith than I already do.” In 2004, Crossway Books published a book by Christian apologists Norman Geisler and Frank Turek entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Have-Enough-Faith-Atheist/dp/1581345615/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319584494&sr=1-1"><em>I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist</em></a>. This line of reasoning follows a grander theme that is usually pushed by the mainstream and prominent apologists, such as pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson, who embarked on a debate tour with Christopher Hitchens in 2008 (excerpts of which became the 2009 documentary film <a href="http://www.collisionmovie.com/"><em>Collision</em></a>), actually confronted Hitchens with the following arguments:<br /><blockquote>There’s no such thing as a standard-less worldview. Every worldview has standards, express or implied, and you can’t function without appealing to those standards constantly. I want to base everything on the Bible. And if you were to say, “Why do you do that?” and I said, “Well, as it says here in Romans . . .” right? You’d say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, I’m challenging, I’m challenging your authority; you can’t just flip to a verse,” right? Because you’d say I’m begging the question, reasoning in a circle. Well, I would say the same thing here. If a person says, “I’m going to base everything, my whole worldview, on reason,” and I would say, “Why do you want to, why do you do that,” when he turns to give me a reason, what’s he doing? He’s flipping open his Bible. <br /><br />Every finite creature has to start somewhere. All of us have certain fixed axioms, and we reason from those axioms. My axioms are Christian.</blockquote><br />This is a bizarre argument, but the motivation of those putting it forth is easily understandable. If the definition of “religious” applies equally well to believer <em>and</em> unbeliever alike, then who can criticize the faithful without taking on equal damage? According to Douglas Wilson, the foundations of all belief systems are chosen arbitrarily, without exception. But then we must ask: If we are <em>all</em> religious no matter what we believe or do not believe, then what is the designation of “religious” really supposed to mean? It would seem that, in their last-ditch effort to deflect criticism, advocates of this argument have effectively diluted their own position to the point of being meaningless. After all, if I can choose my axioms arbitrarily, then all I need do is simply choose whatever conclusion I want to arrive at, and then subsequently select the specific axioms that will get me to that desired conclusion. A case can therefore be made that such postmodern arguments are not even proposing anything of substance at all. <br /><br />Apologists with this kind of postmodern bent have thus saved the village by destroying it. They are in essence admitting that their worldview is completely arbitrary. When this thinly-veiled concession is exposed, one is obliged to ask them why they are even debating atheists and agnostics in the first place. The line that “atheists exercise religious faith too” is the apologists’ way of saying: “Do not bother me. Every belief is an arbitrary positing, and every worldview grows out of that arbitrary starting point. All ideas contain their own criteria of plausibility.” This of course means that, according to them, a so-called “explanation” can be made available for everything that derives from any relative standpoint, explanations that seem plausible and probable insofar as they accord well with a given premise and reinforce it. But again, if there is in fact no objective criterion for both sides to appeal to, why are the two sides even debating? Religious apologists who take this approach (e.g., “You atheists are just doing the same thing we are, so get off our case”) only demonstrate that they rejoice to live in a bubble reality that is self-contained.<br /><br />I find this apologetic approach very suicidal. Are religious believers really willing to say, “Yes, I am standing in mid-air”? Shouldn’t this concession alarm believers at least a little? Perhaps the reason alarm or caution is rarely expressed by such apologists is because most of the time they do not fully realize just what they are saying, which is: “I have made up my mind; do not confuse me with the facts. You do not have any <em>right</em> to try to confuse me with the facts, because you have just made up your mind arbitrarily as well.” <br /><br />I hope to show clearly in this essay that this charge against atheists (and unbelievers generally) is <em>not</em> true. To begin, let us take as a concrete example the debate between those who criticize the authenticity and reliability of the Bible and those who affirm it as authentic and reliable. The fact of the matter is that both sides have only one thing in common, namely the spoken, working hypothesis that in order to understand the Bible, we must interpret its contents with the aid of historical background, cultural background, ancient grammar conventions, etc. Apologists for the reliability and truth of the Bible generally do not resort to allegorizing (except when they attempt to harmonize discordant and contradictory texts in the Bible). They <em>claim</em> to be restricting themselves to the evidence presented by the text, just as the critics are doing. There, I would contend, we do have legitimate grounds for debate. But what do the apologists actually do when we go beyond claims and examine their practice? They very often attempt to short-circuit the entire critical process and, by dragging their presuppositions into the discussion, fail to appeal to any real historical method. It is my contention that it is merely a pretense on the apologists’ part when they express interest in studying biblical texts with controllable and objective methods. <br /><br />It must be emphasized that this is not what us critics of Christianity and religious theism in general are doing. This issue almost never fails to surface in debates surrounding Thomas Kuhn’s great book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319584657&sr=1-1"><em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</em></a> (1962, rev. eds. 1970, 1996), in which Kuhn makes the point that all revolutions in scientific thinking are not so much matters of discovering new data (though, of course, this does happen), as they are matters of creating new <em>paradigms</em>, new heuristic hypotheses that are imposed upon the data to see what sense these hypotheses can make of the data, to see if they will render hitherto anomalous and puzzling data newly intelligible. This is very similar to the concept of the <em>hermeneutical circle</em> which was developed and formulated by philosopher Martin Heidegger and which the prominent German theologian Rudolf Bultmann adopted in his interpretations of the Bible. The “hermeneutical circle” describes a process by which a text is approached with a series of questions that the one studying it wants the text to answer. As one reads and interacts with the text, the questions may have to be adjusted. The student of the text may realize that she is barking up the wrong tree, that the author was not interested in what she is asking of the text. What is the author writing about? Once expectations are adjusted, that which the author is actually saying starts to make much more sense.<br /><br />This is the way historical texts are always approached by scholars who know what they are doing. The late philosopher-historian <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood/">R.G. Collingwood</a> argued that this must be the precedent in all historical methods [<strong>1</strong>]. A <em>fact</em> is only a fact given a particular frame of reference, and this frame of reference is defined as an initial sketch of what is historically plausible in the situation that is being studied, whether we are studying the Civil War, Genghis Khan or Jesus Christ. The historian develops a tentative sketch to see what sense it will make out of the data at hand. If the tentative sketch makes no sense of the data, then the historian must go back to the drawing board. This method is always being applied at all steps in the study of history. <br /><br />In <em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</em>, Kuhn eventually begins to compare paradigm shifts to religious conversion, since the data that occasions paradigm shifts is construed from within:<br /><blockquote>The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith. <br /><br />. . . But crisis alone is not enough. There must also be a basis, though it need be neither rational nor ultimately correct, for faith in the particular candidate chosen. Something must make at least a few scientists feel that the new proposal is on the right track, and sometimes it is only personal and inarticulate aesthetic considerations that can do that. Men have been converted by them at times when most of the articulable technical arguments pointed the other way. When first introduced, neither Copernicus’ astronomical theory nor De Broglie’s theory of matter had many other significant grounds of appeal. Even today Einstein’s general theory attracts men principally on aesthetic grounds, an appeal that few people outside of mathematics have been able to feel [<strong>2</strong>].</blockquote><br />But Kuhn is jumping to unwarranted conclusions on this point; his own argument implies that paradigm-switching involves much more than what can be reduced to the concept of religious conversion. Paradigms are in fact <em>preferable</em> if we can show that a paradigm interprets the data in question in a more economical manner, without adding unnecessary epicycles (a term drawn from Ptolemaic astronomy). We should not cringe in embarrassment to embrace a given paradigm, if that paradigm involves less multiplying of ancillary hypotheses and reduces the addition of ad-hoc factors, e.g., <em>My interpretation would work if</em> x <em>was true or if</em> y <em>was true</em>. What reason is there to think that <em>x</em> is true or <em>y</em> is true? Answering that “The reason for thinking they are true is the help they would be to my paradigm” is unacceptable. A good paradigm must make simple and economical sense of the data, and as much sense as possible without reading in hidden assumptions and variables. Whoever supplies such a paradigm is the current winner, and the hope of the current winner should be that if there exists any data that does not fit within it, someone will revise or replace his paradigm. Thus, the point of bringing into focus a successful new paradigm is not to claim credit for it and copyright it. The point is to advance the discussion. Competent historians and scientists cannot have hobbyhorse favorites. Some do, but they are being bad scientists, bad historians, bad literary critics, etc. Favoritism towards particular paradigms does not even help anybody’s agenda. It cannot be emphasized enough that the correct question to ask is “<em>What would make most sense of the data?</em>”<br /><br />This is precisely why Creationism, for example, is not science. From the very get-go, it <em>cannot</em> be science, because Creationists are not simply looking at the data and inductively trying to construe it in such a way that it makes sense. Rather, they are insisting that the data be forced to fit within an alien paradigm, namely Biblical Cosmology. The late independent scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision">Immanuel Velikovsky</a> is famous for committing this fallacy with other ancient writings [<strong>3</strong>]. <br /><br />Thus, there <em>is</em> an objective and over-arching criterion to attain to; there is no point whatsoever in simply believing <em>anything</em> arbitrarily, because the criteria do exist. Of course, all these criteria are probabilistic. The ultimate truth might possibly be something that is wildly <em>improbable</em>, as well as something that cannot be arrived at by any means. But this possibility should lead us to <em>agnosticism</em>, not fideism. The probabilistic nature of all objective criteria does <em>not</em> entitle us to assert that since we cannot really ascertain deep questions empirically, we are justified in just choosing to believe <em>x</em>. <br /><br />The approach of the religious apologist who is committed to defending the texts of the New Testament as a reliable record of truth can usually be summed up as follows: “We cannot really be sure that the original New Testament manuscripts, the autographs, read the same way then as we read them now, because there is no real evidence that goes back that early. Therefore, let us just assume that our copies <em>are</em> accurate and proceed from there.” The fact that this apologetic approach is widely used is indication that religious faith has replaced a proper agnosticism, which is understandable from a psychological point of view. After all, nothing can be done with agnosticism in the picture. The jig is up, and we cannot play the game anymore. <br /><br />And if the game cannot be played anymore for certain issues, it is time the apologists concede that we just cannot play it. Apologists have been abusing postmodernism for far too long, using it as an excuse to say, “Do not confuse me with the facts” in a way that is disguised by what might seem to be clever and sophisticated language. <br /><br /><strong>Faith as Ultimate Concern</strong><br /><br />Having established all this, I will say that there is a point to the claim that atheists can be religious, but only within a very specific context that evades traditional definitions of “faith.” I refer especially to faith as defined by the late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich">Paul Tillich</a>, the Christian existentialist philosopher who is considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-Faith-Perennial-Classics-Tillich/dp/0060937130/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><em>Dynamics of Faith</em></a> (1957), Tillich argues that “faith” should not be understood as meaning belief in a certain list of items, such as historical claims that cannot be corroborated. Credulity, says Tillich, should be distinguished from faith, as should the attempt to force oneself to believe something. Deep down, the one forcing belief in uncorroborated claims knows at some level that they are acting arbitrarily. Besides this, such people are brainwashing themselves whether they realize it or not at any subconscious level. Tillich insists that this is not faith. <br /><br /><em>Faith</em>, according to Tillich, is being grasped at the deepest level by a particular question or concern:<br /><blockquote>Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern. Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence, such as food and shelter. But man, in contrast to other living beings, has spiritual concerns – cognitive, aesthetic, social, political. Some of them are urgent, often extremely urgent, and each of them as well as the vital concerns can claim ultimacy for a human life or the life of a social group. If it claims ultimacy it demands the total surrender of him who accepts this claim, and it promises total fulfillment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name [<strong>4</strong>].</blockquote><br />This <em>ultimate concern</em> can be the historical Jesus, for example. Having ultimate concern for the subject of Jesus’ historicity does not necessitate having a positive opinion on the matter (i.e., that Jesus was a real historical figure). This ultimate concern can also be concentrated on the question of the existence of God. It is difficult to think of anyone who was more exercised over the question of God than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O'Hair">Madalyn Murray O’Hair</a>. That was her ultimate concern, yet she did not believe God exists. Her ultimate concern, her Tillichian faith object, was to combat the delusion that God is real, a concern that I personally applaud. <br /><br />Tillich is claiming that only the apathetic hedonist (whose sole response to the question of God’s existence is a shrug and a “whatever”) has no ultimate concern. Such a person is an atheist, if only implicitly, and really does lack faith of any kind. But if one is concerned about <em>anything</em>, even if it is unworthy of concern, that state of being ultimately concerned with it is faith. Tillich was not trying to get away with anything by sly apologetic maneuvers with this argument. He is simply interested in cutting the pie differently. He has often been accused of being an atheist himself! He is not attempting to claim that unbelievers are or have the potential to become some sort of Anonymous Christian, as the Jesuit theologian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rahner">Karl Rahner</a> argued [<strong>5</strong>]. Rahner’s point was a very different sort of claim, one that is liable to be confused as being similar or identical to Tillich’s points. <br /><br />On the other hand, there is at least <em>some</em> justification in saying that militant atheists who are overzealous to deconvert religious people are displaying a kind of quasi-religious zeal. I concede this point with some reservation and a few caveats, since “militant atheism” can only be designated as such if the militant atheist is interested in much more than simply provoking religious believers to question their worldview, which is all I as an atheist am “militantly” interested in. Still, there are atheists who heavily politicize their unbelief, and it is this camp that can arguably be said to be playing the same game as the devoutly religious, and that they have merely switched teams. There is an irony in that which I personally would like to avoid, as much as I would love to see people reject the delusion that is theistic religion. <br /><br /><strong>Do Atheists Exercise Faith?</strong><br /><br />Finally, let us address directly the question of whether “faith” in the conventional, traditional sense of the word is required in order to be an atheist (e.g., <em>Bertrand Russell said it, I believe it, that settles it!</em>). I do not doubt that there are indeed nuts like this out there. But atheism, properly construed and understood, cannot accurately be caricatured in this way. Atheists such as myself generally approach the God debate by saying that, on a strictly theoretical basis, there <em>could</em> be a God. But we also understand that on the same theoretical basis, there <em>could</em> be four-armed Tharks living on Mars outside the range of our telescopes. Having granted this, I do not see any reason to take that possibility seriously. <br /><br />I approach the question of God in the same way. My <em>working hypothesis</em> is that no god exists. Likewise, I do not see any reason to take the existence of Zeus seriously, either. Why should I? <em>This</em> is what atheism properly defined implies. Technically, what I am describing is <em>agnosticism</em>. But when the term “agnostic” is used as a qualifier by us atheists, we almost always use it to mean, as the late 19th century philosopher <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/">William James</a> put it, that belief in God remains a <em>live option</em>:<br /><blockquote>Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed . . .<br /><br />A living option [the decision between two hypotheses] is one in which both hypotheses are live ones. If I say to you: “Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,” it is probably a dead option, because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: “Be an agnostic or be a Christian,” it is otherwise: trained as you are, each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to your belief [<strong>6</strong>].</blockquote><br />In the case of the God Hypothesis, the rational appeal is <em>very</em> small, but it remains a live option nevertheless. If there is indeed any reason to believe in God, it simply has not been made definitive, and we are therefore stuck where we are. As an atheist, I do not claim to know <em>what</em> the case is, only that there is currently insufficient evidence to suggest that any god exists. <br /><br />The 19th century English biologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley">Thomas Henry Huxley</a> (who is credited with first coining the term “agnostic”) understood agnosticism in much the same way:<br /><blockquote>Agnosticism . . . is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle . . . Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable [<strong>7</strong>].</blockquote><br />This is a principle that gives much credit to the <em>possibility</em> of God, nothing more. The atheist therefore does <em>not</em> exercise faith. Speaking for myself, I find that I simply cannot take the concept of god seriously; again, I have not been able to find any reason to believe that any god exists. <em>Technically</em>, a god may really exist. But on a theoretical level, who really knows? We are <em>all</em> agnostic whether we admit it or not, whether we be agnostic atheists or agnostic theists. Nobody can sanely claim to know everything about the universe, but does this mean that I as an atheist have any reason, pragmatic or otherwise, to think a god exists? The answer is no, and I am currently in no position to be able to give any credit to the God hypothesis. <br /><br />This is <em>not</em> a faith posture on my part. Any apologist who tries to construe it as such is just a spin doctor. Not only that, but once again they will find themselves cutting off the limb they are sitting on by their implication that all beliefs are equally and completely arbitrary. In fact, I am indebted to the apologist who wants to move forward with that argument, because he or she will only win the debate for me. <br /><br /><strong>Notes</strong><br /><br />1. R.G. Collingwood. <em>The Idea of History</em>. Revised Edition. Ed. Jan Van Der Dussen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. <br /><br />2. Thomas S. Kuhn. <em>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</em>. Third Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 158. <br /><br />3. Immanuel Velikovsky. <em>Worlds in Collision</em>. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950.<br /> <br />4. Paul Tillich. <em>Dynamics of Faith</em>. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957, p. 1. <br /><br />5. “Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity . . . Let us say, a Buddhist monk . . . who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity” (Karl Rahner, <em>Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews 1965 – 1982</em>. Eds. Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons. Trans. Harvey D. Egans. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1986, p. 135). <br /><br />6. William James (1896). “The Will to Believe.” <em>Essays on Faith and Morals</em>. Ed. Ralph Barton Perry. Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company, 1962, pp. 33-34. <br /><br />7. Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S. (1889). “Agnosticism.” <em>Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions</em>. London: Macmillan and Co., 1892, p. 362. The complete text of this essay is also available online at <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_huxley/huxley_wace/part_02.html">http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_huxley/huxley_wace/part_02.html</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-4995795083241737272011-06-30T09:39:00.000-07:002012-07-31T10:22:19.444-07:00On the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God<P ALIGN=Center><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The theistic Ontological Argument is at its core an attempt to define God into existence. An <em>a priori</em> theistic case reformulated from its medieval origins and newly popularized by Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, the Ontological Argument seeks to prove the <em>reality</em> of a supreme being axiomatically, that is, from the <em>concept</em> alone. The basic “reasoning” behind the argument invites us to imagine a being that is in all ways perfect and maximally great. Existence is a necessary quality that this being must possess, because if said being did not exist, then he/she/it would be less than perfect. God therefore exists, because by virtue of being defined as the greatest conceivable being possible, God cannot be conceived <em>not</em> to exist. It is a delightfully circular argument, in which the axiomatic first premise is equal to the conclusion [<strong>1</strong>]. <br /><br />Expressed as a syllogism, the classical Ontological Argument for the existence of God is as follows:<br /><br />1. Let us define God as the greatest imaginable being, a being than which no greater can be conceived.<br /> <br />2. All else being equal, a being or entity that exists is greater than one that does not exist, or one that merely exists as an idea or concept. <br /><br />3. Therefore, God exists in reality. <br /><br />This argument was first formulated and expressed in the 11th century by the Benedictine monk St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his book <em>Proslogium</em>:<br /><blockquote>[E]ven the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater. <br /><br />Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality [<strong>2</strong>].</blockquote> <br />Even Anselm’s contemporaries in the 11th century recognized the flaws in his arguments. Most notably, another monk by the name of Gaunilo of Marmoutiers is remembered for his short work <em>In Behalf of the Fool</em>, in which he used Anselm’s reasoning to “prove” via <em>reductio ad absurdum</em> that the “Lost Island,” a maximally perfect island paradise, exists somewhere in the ocean. When we substitute Gaunilo’s Lost Island for Anselm’s God, the syllogism runs as follows:<br /><br />1. The Lost Island is the greatest imaginable island. <br /><br />2. All else being equal, it is greater to exist in reality than merely as a mythical concept or idea. <br /><br />3. Therefore, the Lost Island exists in reality. <br /><br />Indeed, by using Anselm’s logic, one can “prove” the existence in reality of any number of things, such as unicorns, Shangri-La, Hercules, etc. This is because the argument ultimately reduces to a “proof from definition,” which is a very basic fallacy. Anselm’s argument attempts to demonstrate the reality of a <em>synthetic statement</em> as if it were an <em>analytical statement</em>:<br /><blockquote><strong>Analytic statements</strong> are those which can be said to be true or false by reason alone. For example: <em>"A triangle has four sides"</em>, is an analytical statement and it is false because it is against the definition of a triangle. Also analytic is <em>"There is an infinite number of prime numbers"</em>. This is true, although it is a lot harder to prove. However, reason alone can do it. No additional sensory information is needed.<br /><br />There cannot be any discussion about the truth-value of a analytic statement. Either it is true, it is false or one cannot prove either of those possibilities. One cannot differ in opinion when looking at a analytic statement.<br /><br /><strong>Synthetic statements</strong> are those that are not analytic. Synthetic statements cannot be answered by reason alone, in addition one needs evidence given by the senses. <em>"An apple always falls to the ground"</em> is synthetic; I can try to prove this by empirical evidence, but I can find no mathematical proof of it. <U>It is impossible to prove any synthetic statement with 100% evidence.</U> Therefore, in the case of synthetic statements, we can do two things: believe them, disbelieve them or suspend judgement [<strong>3</strong>].</blockquote> <br />The difference between analytic statements and synthetic statements will become important later on. <br /><br />Confusing these two types of statements is the inevitable consequence of attempting to prove the reality of anything without any reference to what is known about the physical universe. Thus, to convince one who is <em>consistently</em> impressed by such definition-driven ontological arguments of the existence of unicorns, for example, one need only present the following:<br /><br />1. Let us define a unicorn as a magical equine being that has one horn, and that exists. <br /><br />2. Such a being must necessarily exist, given the above definition. <br /><br />3. Therefore, unicorns exist [<strong>4</strong>]. <br /><br /><strong>The Failure of the Second Premise</strong><br /><br />According to the Second Premise of the classical Ontological Argument, a being or entity that has the attribute of existence is greater than one that lacks this attribute. But, as many philosophers have argued, existence and non-existence are not attributes of an object; they cannot logically be considered to properties in and of themselves. Most notably, the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant noted that “existence” is not a state that can reasonably be associated or tied in with the definition of any object, the way things like “temperature” or “size” can be. Kant argued that the existence of any thing is presupposed by its possessing any properties in the first place. Therefore, “<em>’Being’</em> is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment” [<strong>5</strong>]. To consider existence as a property of anything is thus to indulge in a useless tautology, i.e. (in this case), “God exists because God exists.” <br /><br />Furthermore, even <em>if</em> it made logical sense to view existence and non-existence as attributes (which we have seen does not), there is no logical justification for the claim that existence (and, by extension, <em>necessity</em>) is greater than non-existence. As Darrin Rasberry argues,<br /><blockquote>A brief statement about the classical version of this argument is necessary, particularly about the necessity of "necessary" being an inherently positive quality in and of itself, without regards to its referent in reality. This is not entirely clear; a fantastic counterexample would be certain events in the context of human history, which as an A-time theorist I hold to be necessary facts of existence. Suppose, for instance, that Adam and Eve existed and chose to Fall. Then, unless one is a high-Calvinist, the necessity (by asssumption [sic]) of the Fall would be a negative quality, as opposed to a positive one, as the action in the Fall brought death and damnation to Adam, Eve, and subsequently, to all of us. Therefore, it cannot be established that necessity <em>qua</em> necessity is an inherently positive quality of existence [<strong>6</strong>].</blockquote> <br />But perhaps the greatest illustration of the fact that the superiority of existence over non-existence is not at all established by logic is one that goes beyond the implications of necessary versus unnecessary reality and strikes at the quality of existence versus non-existence itself. This illustration is found in “Gasking’s Proof,” a piece of philosophical satire written by the late philosopher Douglas Gasking. Gasking’s Proof brilliantly parodies the Ontological Argument, using the argument’s own premises to turn the argument on its head and “prove” the superiority of non-existence over existence. <br /><br />(1) The creation of the world is the most marvellous achievement imaginable.<br /><br />(2) The merit of an achievement is the product of <em>(a)</em> its intrinsic quality, and <em>(b)</em> the ability of its creator.<br /><br />(3) The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.<br /><br />(4) The most formidable handicap for a creator would be non-existence.<br /><br />(5) Therefore, if we suppose that the universe is the product of an <em>existent</em> creator, we can conceive a greater being – namely, one who created everything <em>while not existing</em>. <br /><br />(6) An existing God, therefore, would not be <em>a being than which a greate</em> [sic] <em>cannot be conceived</em>, because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God <em>which did not exist</em>. <br /><br />Ergo,<br /><br />(7) God does not exist [<strong>7</strong>]. <br /><br /><strong>Ontological Disproof of the Third Premise</strong><br /><br />Because (as we have shown above) the conclusion of the circular Ontological Argument is exactly equal to its First Premise, a demonstration of the inadequacy and fallacy of that First Premise implies an equal fallacy in its conclusion, an implication that yields profound results for the strong-atheism position (“God cannot exist,” as opposed to the weaker position that “God does not exist”). This conclusion was drawn out by the late philosopher John L. Pollock in his 1966 essay “Proving the Non-Existence of God,” in which he succinctly and straightforwardly demonstrated that the only thing that can possibly imply the <em>necessary</em> existence of anything is the <em>actual</em> existence of the thing in question. If the actual existence of God is not demonstrated independent of mere synthetic conception, we can progress no further than the First Premise, and the Ontological Argument dies after that. Because the concept of God <em>is</em> synthetic rather than analytic in nature, the existence of God is unattainable from the definition alone. Conception in this case cannot instantiate existence, and therefore (contrary to Anselm’s insistence) the statements “God is the greatest imaginable being than which no greater can be conceived” and “The greatest thing that exists is not God” are <em>not</em> contradictory at all. As Victor Gijsbers points out, “The one is a matter of the imagination, the other is a matter of reality . . . If the greatest island that exists is Australia, that doesn’t mean I can’t conceive of Lost Island” [<strong>8</strong>]. <br /><br />But, as his title suggests, Pollock goes even further than this, presenting an ontological <em>disproof</em> of the existence of God:<br /><blockquote>The most common analysis of logical necessity is to say that a proposition is necessarily true if and only if it is true by virtue of the meaning of its constituent terms. This means that the proposition that God exists is necessarily true just in case the meaning of ‘God’ requires that He exist, that is, just in the case the definition of ‘God’ entails that He exists . . .<br /><br />[R]ecall that our concept of God is such that if He exists, then He must exist necessarily . . . But then, simply by <em>modus tollens</em> . . . <em>~ Eg</em>, that is, God does not exist. Furthermore, this is a conclusion we have <em>proven</em> by logical means, so it is not just true, but necessarily true, that is, [N]<em>~Eg</em>. Thus, it is necessarily true that God does not exist. <em>The existence of God is a logical impossibility</em> [<strong>9</strong>].</blockquote> <br />There are certain limitations to Pollock’s case, of course. In particular, Pollock’s use of the concept of perfection as a central part of his case limits the scope of his case, since perfection can only be defined relatively. Pollock’s case for the non-existence of God is therefore is first and foremost an incoherency argument, proving only a contradiction between the consequences of a theological understanding of perfection and the criteria by which logical necessity is established. <br /><br />However, reviewers of Pollock’s case and of the Ontological Argument tradition have proposed ways in which Pollock’s argument can be applied to the god concept as a whole, without invoking the problematic concept of perfection. For example, Francois Tremblay points out that “Since any hypothetical god would be logically necessary, N(Eg -> NEg) would hold true for any god also . . . If we presuppose that the god-concept is coherent in total and in parts, then N(Eg -> NEg) must hold true. Therefore I see no reason not to apply the Ontological Argument to the god-concept” [<strong>10</strong>]. <br /><br />Given the blatant circularity of the theistic Ontological Argument and the very basic and elementary logical fallacies it commits, it is somewhat difficult to believe that there are a great many people who favor it in debates with atheists and agnostics. But there certainly are a great many theists who are impressed by it for one reason or another, mostly having to do with their a priori commitment to their god concept which blinds them to the weakness of the argument. This is not an argument that is likely to persuade anyone who is not already a strong theist. <br /><br />Moreover, the selfsame ontological arguments will probably never persuade the theist who favors it that my skin is green with a spattering of purple polka dots. But herein lies their inconsistency; according to the skewed logic of the Ontological Argument, ideas translate into reality proportional to the greatness of the idea. And since I can imagine that the greatest human beings have green skin with purple polka dots, the statement of the content of that imagination means that my imagination has a counterpart in reality. <br /><br />For the same reasons that lead me to reject the existence of any naturally green-skinned and purple polka-dotted people, I must also reject the theistic Ontological Argument, and with it the being whose existence the argument attempts to establish.<br /> <br /><strong>NOTES</strong><br /><br /><b>1.</b> Fatfist, “Pastor Alvin Plantinga’s Ontological Argument for God – REFUTED!” <em>Hubpages.com</em> 76, http://hubpages.com/hub/Pastor-Alvin-Plantingas-Ontological-Argument-for-God-REFUTED (accessed 30 June 2011). <br /><br /><b>2.</b> Saint Anselm, <em>Basic Writings</em> 2nd ed., trans. S.N. Deane (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1962), p. 8. <br /><br /><b>3.</b> Victor Gijsbers, “Is Atheism Based on Faith?” <em>PositiveAtheism.org</em>, <a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/faith.htm">http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/faith.htm</a> (accessed 30 June 2011). <br /><br /><b>4.</b> Thanks to Russell Wain Glasser for this example. <br /><br /><b>5.</b> Immanuel Kant, <em>Critique of Pure Reason</em> trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), p. 504. <br /><br /><b>6.</b> Darrin Rasberry, “On Plantinga’s Ontological Argument</a>,” <em>Debunking Christianity</em> 17 January 2009, <a href="http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-plantingas-ontological-argument.html">http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-plantingas-ontological-argument.html</a> (accessed 30 June 2011). <br /><br /><b>7.</b> William Grey, “Gasking’s Proof,” <em>Analysis</em> 60.4 (October 2000): p. 369. <br /> <br /><b>8.</b> Victor Gijsbers, “Theistic Arguments: Anselm’s Ontological Argument” <em>PositiveAtheism.org</em>, <a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/anselm.htm">http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/anselm.htm</a> (accessed 30 June 2011). <br /><br /><b>9.</b> John L. Pollock, “Proving the Non-Existence of God,” <em>Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences</em> 2 (1966): p. 195. <br /><br /><b>10.</b> Francois Tremblay, “Ontological Argument for the Non-Existence of God,” <em>StrongAtheism.net</em> 2 January 2005, <a href="http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/ontological_argument_for_nonexistence/">http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/ontological_argument_for_nonexistence/</a> (accessed 30 June 2011). Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-82765860812642322902011-04-23T19:06:00.000-07:002012-06-21T02:14:46.939-07:00The Book of Genesis: A Parent's Guide<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsfmjJkgA9xwF_v1EghwTIvTGzYjIX0rILR-X9KapizdKXV1_DY_IDR9p9gYFXaLhADU1ccRKHUugClaR8jLqctrDsKt3FZ7KVpaletI9neMQ-ZyviI3qfy9iJ2HJTd_TzvKNubiIOM9U/s1600/Genesis.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsfmjJkgA9xwF_v1EghwTIvTGzYjIX0rILR-X9KapizdKXV1_DY_IDR9p9gYFXaLhADU1ccRKHUugClaR8jLqctrDsKt3FZ7KVpaletI9neMQ-ZyviI3qfy9iJ2HJTd_TzvKNubiIOM9U/s320/Genesis.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598970968981623794" /></a><br />In 2009, controversial artist and illustrator Robert Crumb – a man who has distinguished himself as an uncomfortably-subversive satirical commentator on traditional mainstream values – completed a four-year effort to produce an illustrated version of the Book of Genesis. The epic graphic novel attracted immediate controversy, for Crumb did not rewrite or leave out a single scene from the first book of the Bible. His complete faithfulness to the text resulted in a warning being printed on the cover: “Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors.”<br /><br /><em>The Book of Genesis Illustrated</em> was condemned by religious groups almost immediately, and ultimately what <em><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6358134/Biblical-sex-row-over-explicit-illustrated-Book-of-Genesis.html">The Telegraph</a></em> described as a “Biblical sex row” reared its ugly head:<br /><blockquote><strong>A sexually explicit illustrated Book of Genesis by controversial artist Robert Crumb, which features Bible characters having intercourse, has been condemned by religious groups.</strong><br /><br />The book, which is released this month, carries the warning "adult supervision recommended for minors", and is described as "scandalous satire" by its publishers.<br /><br />It includes graphic illustrations of Bible characters having sexual intercourse, and other scenes depicting naked men and women as well as "gratuitous" depictions of violence.<br /><br />Crumb, the book's author, is most famous for his creation Fritz the Cat, a sexually graphic "underground" comic strip. It was turned into a film that became the first animation to receive an X rating.<br /><br />He has said he does not believe that the Bible is the word of God. "I take it all for myth from start to finish, with probably some faint relation to historical reality." he said.<br /><br />"They're great stories. But for people to take texts as something sacred, handed down from God... that's pretty backward, I think."<br /><br /><em>The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb has</em> been criticised by leading religious groups such as the Christian Institute.<br /><br />"It is turning the Bible into titillation," said Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, a religious think-tank. "It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God's rescue plan for mankind.<br /><br />"If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves.<br /><br />"Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people's faith, their religion.<br /><br />"Faith is such an important part of people's lives that one must remember to tread very carefully."<br /><br />Other leading religious figures have been more supportive of the work. "I didn't think it was satire," said the Bishop of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nick Baines.<br /><br />"He set out to say; 'this is important, fundamental myth' and it seems to me he's done a good job."<br /><br />A spokeswoman for the Bible Society said she hadn't seen the book but that reviews had suggested that Crumb had "really engaged" with the Book of Genesis.<br /><br />"It may surprise people but the bible does contain nudity, sex and violence. That's because it contains real stories about real people.<br /><br />"If by reading the book people are encouraged to re-engage with the Bible then that can only be a good thing."<br /><br />A spokesman for the Church of England said: "I haven't seen the book but I think trying to sell something by emphasising the sexual nature of some of the scenes doesn't seem to be a good way to pass on the message of the bible." [<strong>1</strong>].</blockquote><br />What I find amazing and extremely ironic is the shock and offense with which Crumb’s work was received by certain religious people and groups who claim to know and revere the Bible as a divinely-inspired work. Why this reaction to an artist who merely reproduced through illustrated depictions, faithfully and without any omission, the entirety of a book from their guide to life?<br /><br />The answer is simple on one level at least. Many of those Christians who identify with the conservative, right-wing persuasions and sensibilities do not fully know what is contained in their own Scriptures – the selfsame Scriptures they use to police and censor the creative output of others whose creations, whether literature, film, music, etc., even slightly disrupt their delicate worldview and challenges them to think beyond the box they have built around themselves and want to build around everyone else.<br /><br />The warning label printed on Crumb’s graphic novel is certainly warranted. I applaud Crumb for confronting people with what needs to be said about the quality of a book that is revered by millions but read by very few. Crumb’s work has inspired me to write this overview of the content found in the Book of Genesis that justifies such a warning label, not just on Crumb’s graphic novel but on <em>all</em> Bibles. In fact, I am in favor of having the Bible classified as “indecent” by authorities, so that only those over the age of 18 could buy the book, which should be sealed in a wrapper with a statutory warning notice [<strong>2</strong>]. Of course, I do not endorse censorship or banning in any way, shape or form. My tastes being what they are, I would personally continue to read and enjoy the Bible.<br /><br />Without further ado, let us dive into this overview of Genesis, which I strongly hope will be read by parents, religious or otherwise, who have not read the book and are concerned about what they expose their children to.<br /><br /><strong>Noah's Nakedness - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+9%3A18-27&version=KJV">Genesis 9:18-27</a></strong><br /><br />Shortly after disembarking from the ark that saved him and his family from a global flood, Noah plants a vineyard. He becomes drunk from the wine he produces and passes out naked in his tent. His youngest son Ham comes into the tent, and upon finding his father passed out naked, approaches his two brothers Shem and Japheth outside to tell them. Shem and Japheth then take a garment and walk into their father's tent backwards to avoid seeing their naked father and cover him with the garment out of respect. When Noah awakes and finds himself naked and covered with a garment, he finds out what Ham had done and what he had failed to do. Ham had seen his nakedness, while the other two respectfully covered him. According to the story, Noah was a highly honorable man. He was so honorable, in fact, that God found him to be the only righteous man in the antediluvian world and destroyed everybody in the world except this naked drunk and his family. Because of this high standing Noah enjoys in the eyes of God, Noah decides to place a curse upon his son Ham, declaring that Ham and all of his descendants (the Canaanites) would be slaves to his brothers and their descendants forever.<br /><br />The sheer insanity of the rationale behind Noah's curse is striking. Essentially, Noah puts the screws to Ham because he got drunk and was caught.<br /><br /><strong>Lot's Incestuous Daughters - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2019:30-38&version=KJV">Genesis 19:30-38</a></strong><br /><br />This passage relates what happens to Lot and his two daughters after they escape the judgment that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Initially, the trio takes refuge in the city of Zoar. But Lot fears the city, and with his daughters he dwells in a cave in a mountain. The two virgin daughters, now isolated from society and thus from any possibility of a future mate, fear that teir father's seed will not be preserved. Their solution is to make their father drunk on wine and seduce him. One night, the older daughter sleeps with him in his drunken state. The next day, she reports that the plan was a success to her younger sister and encourages her to do the same. After causing their father to get drunk again, the younger daughter heeds the suggestion and sleeps with him. Both daughters become pregnant by their father.<br /><br />This story is related with a very black-and-white straightforwardness. Lot's two daughters get him drunk and have sex with him, each conceiving a child as a result. But there are logistical problems I never hear addressed and which the otherwise straightforward text does not elaborate on. Lot's daughters manage to get their father drunk two nights in a row. In making sense of this story, how are we to believe that Lot did not learn a lesson the first night when the first daughter took advantage of him with the help of wine? We are told he allowed his daughters to get him drunk a second night! Another question that should be obvious is how Lot's daughters managed to procreate with their father while he was drunk to the point where he did not realize he was having sex with his daughters. If a person is drunk to that extent, he is not going to be very capable of performing sexually.<br /><br />A more relevant question that should be asked about this story is whether there is not even the slightest trace of a creep-out factor for the ministers who believe the book that contains this story is the inerrant and perfect word of their God. And if, as many such ministers would say, the incestuous actions of Lot’s daughters were ultimately a part of God's plan for history, does that not make the story even creepier? Of course, this story and other equally obscene stories in the Bible sometimes are featured in the Sunday morning sermons of the Christians and the Saturday afternoon service of the Jews. But their rare willingness to illuminate such passages do not excuse the reason they often have for preaching from them. The fact remains that we are teaching our children these stories, and yet many of these people stridently wish that the secular community was not allowed to teach children real science in the classroom.<br /><br /><strong>Like Father, Like Son - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2020&version=KJV">Genesis 20</a>, <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2026&version=KJV">26</a></strong><br /><br />Many characters in the Bible were not very good at planning ahead, or in learning from their mistakes. In Genesis 20, Abraham journeys to the city of Gerar, where he pretends that his wife Sarah is his sister. Abraham had exercised this same deceptive routine in Chapter 12 of Genesis, when he and his wife sojourned in Egypt. His reasoning was thus: "Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, 'This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me, for thy sake; and my soul shall live, because of thee" (Genesis 12:12-13).<br /><br />The two accounts of what transpired as a result of this lie are almost identical. In Gerar, Abraham allows Abimelech the king to sleep with Sarah in order to convincingly maintain his lie. Before Abimelech has a chance to sleep with Sarah, however, God appears to him in a dream. He reveals the truth to him concerning Sarah, and commands him to return her to Abraham if he wishes to avoid fatal divine judgment. Abimelech (who is inflicted by God with a sickness that will not be lifted unless Abraham intervenes with prayer on his behalf), heeds this warning and summons Abraham the next day to reprimand him for his deception. In addition to returning Abraham's wife to him, the fearful king gives them sheep, oxen and servants. Abraham then prays to God on behalf of Abimelech so that God will not put the king to death for the "crime" of believing Abraham's lie. This prayer also lifts the curse that was placed on Abimelech's wife and maidservants, who were not able to bear children while Sarah resided with them.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, Abraham's son Isaac tries to use the exact same trick to the same person in Genesis 26 (or possibly Abimelech's son; the king in this story may have been the son with the same name). His motivation for lying is of course identical to his father's: "And the men of the place asked him of his wife: and he said, 'She is my sister': for he feared to say, 'She is my wife'; lest, said he, 'the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah,' because she was fair to look on" (26:7). In this particular case, Abimelech looks out his window and catches Isaac and Rebekah "sporting" in a romantic and intimate fashion. He summons Isaac and irately demands to know why he lied. He pointedly tells Isaac that this deception might easily have brought guilt upon him or his subjects, as Abraham's lie did. After reprimanding Issac, the king then charges all his people not to touch Isaac or his wife on pain of death.<br /><br />Apparently, the Mosaic concept of "visiting the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation" (Exodus 20:5, 34:7; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9) has an equal application when it comes to the moronic deeds of the father.<br /><br /><strong>Testicular Allegiance - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2024:2-9&version=KJV">Genesis 24:2-9</a></strong><br /><br />In this passage, Abraham beseeches his servant to place his hand under his thigh and swear an oath, which the servant does. This custom is repeated later in Genesis (47:29). The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the word <em>testis</em>, or testicles. This etymology is well established; the manner in which one swore allegiance and honesty in these ancient times was to place one's hand on the testicles of the person being sworn to. In the English translation, "thigh" is very closely related, both literally and physically, to the crotch region of the human body. This understanding is confirmed by passages such as Numbers 5:11-31, in which the word "thigh" is used in the context of a description of the procedure prescripted to be conducted on women to determine if they have been sexually faithful to their husband.<br /><br />Because a man's genitals are his articles of procreation, they were considered highly sacred in biblical times. This explains why the swearing of a sacred and solemn oath would entail placing one's hand under another man's testicles, as in our modern-day custom of swearing on the Bible itself. This bizarre and obscene custom also sheds light on the harsh Mosaic pronouncement against women who touch the genital area of a man she is not married to, even if on accident. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 describes one example of a situation in which this may happen. The penalty for such a woman is to have her offending hand chopped off.<br /><br /><strong>Jacob's Daughter Dinah - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2034&version=KJV">Genesis 34</a></strong><br /><br />In this story, we are introduced to a woman named Dinah, Jacob's daughter. While going out "to see the daughters of the land," she is raped by Shechem, the prince of the Hivites. After raping her, Shechem falls deeply in love with Dinah and asks his father Hamor to procure her as his wife. By way of crucial background, Dinah is Jewish and Shechem is a goy, which would render marriage between them an unlawful act on the part of the Jews. Hamor, accompanied by Shechem, goes to Dinah's father Jacob to speak with him as well as Dinah's infuriated brothers concerning the matter. Hamor proposes a peace treaty through marriage between Jacob's family and the Hivites: "The soul of my son Shechem longeth for your daughter: I pray you give her him to wife. And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us, and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the land shall be before you: dwell and trade you therein, and get you possessions therein" (34:8b-10).<br /><br />The sons of Jacob, who have come in from the field, inform Hamor and Shechem that their sister cannot be given in marriage to one who is uncircumcised. But they agree to consent to Shechem's request only if he and his father convert and become circumcised. In fact, Jacob's sons demand that the Hivites as a whole must convert and be circumcised before any treaty is formed and before any daughters are married off between them. Evidently, Dinah was drop-dead gorgeous, because not only does Shechem agree to be circumcised, but his entire tribe also agrees to be circumcised. The entire Hivite tribe convert and are circumcised to compensate for one of their own raping a Jewish girl and to seal the peace treaty. In the light of what the circumcision process entailed, this is real dedication [<strong>3</strong>].<br /><br />Three days later, "when they were sore" (v. 25) and possibly regretting their decision to convert and be circumcised, two of Jacob's sons come into their city bearing swords. They slaughter every male in the city, including Shechem and his father. After taking their sister Dinah out of Shechem's house, the rest of Jacob's sons show up and plunder the city. They take livestock and wealth, and take captive all the children and all the wives of the slain men. One wonders what Jacob's marauding sons planned to do with the women they stole and took captive. Seeing as they were treated as little more than objects of plunder along with the livestock and wealth, rape is certainly not to be put past them. Furthermore, this slaughter and raid was Jacob's sons' way of avenging the rape of their sister. Jacob's sons would be acting consistently with the general "eye for an eye" concept if their intention was to rape all these captured women, even though the scale is clearly disproportional. Then again, the price Shechem and his fellow Hivites pay for raping Dinah and then marrying her into the tribe is also extremely disproportional. As we discussed above, the punishment for the crime of rape was for the violator to pay fifty shekels of silver to his victim's father if she was not betrothed (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).<br /><br />Jacob is furious at his sons Simeon and Levi, the two who orchestrated the slaughter. He is understandably vexed at the possibility that they have ruined him. He had established a peace treaty with the Hivites and sealed it by having them circumcised, only to have his two sons murder every man in the city and plunder it. Jacob tells them, "Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, amongst the Canaanites, and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me, and I shall be destroyed, I and my house" (v. 30). His sons answer him bitterly with a short rhetorical question: "Should he deal with our sister, as with an harlot?" This is their sole justification for everything they did. This is also the end of the story; Genesis does not enter into any more detail about what took place after all this, and neither does it elaborate via commentary on the morality or lack thereof of the actions committed by Jacob's sons.<br /><br /><strong>Prostitution Intrigue - <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2038&version=KJV">Genesis 38</a></strong><br /><br />Here we are presented with the brief accounts of two brothers, Er and Onan, the sons of Judah and a Canaanite woman named Shuah. Verse 7 of this chapter tells us that Er was "wicked in the sight of the LORD," so the LORD killed him. The text does not expound on either why or how God killed him. But because he died, Onan was then required by law to marry his late brother's wife Tamar so that she can conceive a child. Onan is not comfortable about this arrangement at all, knowing that "the seed should not be his" (v. 9). Whenever he sleeps with Tamar, Onan spills his seed on the ground instead of depositing it inside her so that she would not conceive. This highly displeases God, so God kills Onan as well. To this day, the "Sin of Onan" has traditionally (and erroneously) been interpreted to be masturbation [<strong>4</strong>].<br /><br />Judah had a third son named Shelah, but for some inexplicable reason that is never explained, Tamar does not avail herself of this third option after the years go by and the young Shelah comes of age. Instead, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and sits in a public place outside the town of Timnath. Her plan is to trick her father-in-law Judah (whose wife had since died) into sleeping with her so she could finally conceive a child. Her father-in-law comes into the town and sees her. Thinking she is a prostitute by trade, he approaches her and says, "Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee" (v. 16). Tamar asks him what he will pay her with, and because he has nothing of value on his person, he promises to pay her at a later time with a goat from his flock and leaves her with his seal. Apparently, if one held a position of prominence in this culture, giving a seller a personal identifying seal as a token that he will return with payment later in order to then retrieve the seal was one convenient way of making purchases. But in the case of buying sex from a prostitute, this does not seem like the wisest course of action.<br /><br />Tamar and her father-in-law have sex that night, and she conceives a child by him. Three months after this child is born, Judah is still without his seal. The prostitute has disappeared, and the citizens of the town tell Judah's inquiring servant that no prostitutes make their business in the town. Judah then receives word that his daughter-in-law hd engaged in prostitution, and that she is with child as a result. Judah responds bluntly: "Bring her forth, and let her be burnt." Judah virulently objected to prostitution to this degree . . . despite the fact that he himself had slept with a prostitute [<strong>5</strong>]. When Tamar is brought before Judah, she reveals everything (including, by the way, that Judah was terrible at planning ahead). She produces Judah's signets to prove it was him she had slept with, and tells him she is pregnant with his child and future heir. Judah acknowledges these facts and spares her life.<br /><br /><br /><strong>NOTES</strong><br /> <br /><b>1.</b> Ben Leach, “Biblical Sex Row Over Explicit Illustrated Book of Genesis,” <em>The Telegraph</em> 17 Oct. 2009, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6358134/Biblical-sex-row-over-explicit-illustrated-Book-of-Genesis.html">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6358134/Biblical-sex-row-over-explicit-illustrated-Book-of-Genesis.html.</a> (accessed 23 April 2011).<br /><br /><b>2.</b> Nathan Dickey, “The Unholy Bible: A Case Study in Obscene and Perverse Literature,” <em>The Journeyman Heretic</em> (blog) 25 March 2011, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/unholy-bible-case-study-in-obscene-and.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/03/unholy-bible-case-study-in-obscene-and.html.</a> (accessed 23 April 2011).<br /><br /><b>3.</b> Experts on the circumcision custom as well as medical professionals say that the process is far more painful for an adult male than it is for an eight-day-old infant.<br /><br /><b>4.</b> The religious injunctions against Onanism is a matter of much later interpretation of the story. The original issue at stake for the writer of this passage was not masturbation. The original issue was the obligation of a kinsman to continue his late brother's line of inheritance by begetting children with the widow. The offspring of this union were considered the dead man's heirs, not the heirs of their actual biological father. Onan was averse to this plan, so he discontinued ejaculating inside Tamar. The failure to meet this obligation was the real sin of Onan and the reason why God kills him. "Spilling the seed upon the ground" has not a thing to do with masturbation, which is never discussed in the Bible.<br /><br /><b>5.</b> This aspect of the story actually has a number of real-life parallels today. One example that comes to mind is the gambling problem of William Bennett, who is widely considered the leading voice for the promotion of conservative morals. His best-known work, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Virtues-William-Bennett/dp/0684835770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340269771&sr=1-1&keywords=book+of+virtues+by+william+bennett"><em>The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories</em></a> (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993) praised the virtues of moderation and self-discipline. Both he and the organization he co-founded and headed at the time (Empower America, renamed in 2004 as <a href="http://www.freedomworks.org/">FreedomWorks</a>) opposed the extension of casino gambling in the states. Yet in 2003 it became publicly known that Bennett was addicted to high-stakes gambling and had reportedly lost millions in Las Vegas.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-73418794271418626742011-04-15T19:58:00.000-07:002013-08-03T18:05:02.006-07:00A Bible Story You Probably Never Heard in Sunday School<P ALIGN=Center><i>And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, “Go up thou bald head, Go up thou bald head.” And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the Name of the LORD: and there came forth two she Bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.</i>
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<P ALIGN=Center>(<b>II Kings 2:23-24, King James Version</b>)
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These two verses relate one of the most obscene stories I have come across in the Bible, on a number of levels. In this story, Elisha is walking into the city of Bethel. He is accosted on his way into the city by a crowd of children who tease or harass him (depending on how one wants to interpret the passage), saying “Go up thou bald head, go up thou bald head.” Elisha turns back upon the mocking children and curses them in the name of the LORD. In response, the LORD sends two she-bears charging out of the nearby forest to rip apart 42 of the children.
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To place this scene in some perspective, an average school classroom today holds more than 42 children. The description of the children in II Kings differs only slightly between translations. The New International Version and The Living Bible render them “some youths” and “a gang of youths” respectively, in an attempt to soften the blow of the story. However, the King James Version, which calls them “little children,” is the closest in accuracy in this particular case. The original Hebrew word translated “little children” is <i>na’ar</i>, a word that denotes a boy between infancy and adolescence. This word is not isolated in the text, being qualified by the Hebrew word <i>qatan</i>, meaning “small” or “diminutive,” as in age or importance.
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But it does not much matter if the mockers in this story are little children or mature gang members. According to the story, God sent two bears to rip 42 young people to shreds for the “crime” of calling Elisha “bald head.” Imagine the parents of these children arriving on the scene to make an attempt at identifying the pieces of their child from the pieces of other children in this 42-child mass of carnage. If my reader is grossed out, I have proven my point. This is a story contained in one of the most revered books of all time, a story that would be widely considered highly objectionable by most people if it was found anywhere else (for instance, this could not be shown on television, and any faithful and realistic film depiction would warrant an R-rating or worse).
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The few Christians who are familiar with this story resort to their usual apologetic contortions in trying to justify the violent excessiveness on display in this passage. A common argument is the one hinted at above, wherein the apologist attempts to make a case that the “little children” of the KJV and most other versions is a poor translation, that these children were actually a group of teenagers and young adults who were threatening Elisha with physical harm. This is highly unusual coming from people who claim to take the Bible literally, because this reading is nowhere to be found in the text.
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This story in II Kings is reminiscent of a threat levied by God in Leviticus 26:22: “I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children . . .” Why should God punish innocent children as a means of punishing parents?
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittkh8qyvj4vM8rCmbqY4eSanQao6m9ptup6lW4HhsLcItjZmXCJdGKmwLOeaIKzAwtyAJpN1gcD59f4ohfr2ZORNHx4HGblUKa_UPfeVccgomr2HwfTFA7n1xaFxUgLL_tAhNt2qXNEs/s1600/Elisha+and+Bears.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEittkh8qyvj4vM8rCmbqY4eSanQao6m9ptup6lW4HhsLcItjZmXCJdGKmwLOeaIKzAwtyAJpN1gcD59f4ohfr2ZORNHx4HGblUKa_UPfeVccgomr2HwfTFA7n1xaFxUgLL_tAhNt2qXNEs/s320/Elisha+and+Bears.jpg" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-85876801166975524352011-03-27T20:54:00.000-07:002011-03-28T02:25:38.531-07:00All Agog: A Response to Chris Quintana's Prophecy Challenge<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMoakba9aklbZ41feBT10fjmYkJZ-73sCIYGHgqz16284RS91iOPy-LXvVhYWpB0iJSpoi6LSjhzvR6gTIpDOZhjB-NjXoxXSkCda8Tac-YyWjJV0bWSV9evRvGeSdvfTEqof4AsoWSMY/s1600/gog_magog.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMoakba9aklbZ41feBT10fjmYkJZ-73sCIYGHgqz16284RS91iOPy-LXvVhYWpB0iJSpoi6LSjhzvR6gTIpDOZhjB-NjXoxXSkCda8Tac-YyWjJV0bWSV9evRvGeSdvfTEqof4AsoWSMY/s320/gog_magog.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588983207888781026" /></a><br />"<em>[T]he whole business is childish and nonsensical. Interpreters of prophecy during the last few centuries have been most of them in the same position; one of them sees in the sublimities of the Revelation the form of Louis Napoleon where two hundred years ago half Christendom saw the Pope, and the other half Martin Luther. The other day one of the seers saw Sebastopol in the prophecies, and now another detects the Suez Canal, and we feel pretty sure that the Council at Rome will soon be spied out in Daniel or Ezekiel. The fact is, when fancy is their guide men wander as in a maze. Spiritualistic interpreters see, like children gazing into the fire, not what is really before them, but what is in their own heads.</em>" ~ <strong>Charles H. Spurgeon</strong> (British Particular Baptist Preacher), 1834-1892 [<strong>1</strong>]. <br /><br />“<a href="http://www.rapturereadyradio.com/">Rapture Ready Radio</a>,” a lively radio show which broadcasts multiple times each week, is a cult sensation among right-wing doomsday-predicting fundamentalist Christians and a potential source of great entertainment and laughs by its secular listeners such as myself (my masochistic tastes being what it is, I enjoy Rapture Ready Radio almost as much as I enjoy the likes of <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/09/it-is-fact-that-there-does-not-as-yet.html">Ray Comfort</a> and <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">Kent Hovind</a>). A typical show features long tirades denouncing as a false believer any Christian who does not stand with them on every issue and enthusiastic commentary on various natural and political disasters around the globe, which in their mind is supposed to signal the soon arrival of their god-king to whisk them away to paradise. <br /><br />But on a January 4, 2011 broadcast, Chris Quintana, one of the show’s hosts, presented a challenge to <a href="http://www.everythingdiescomic.com/?s=43&p=4&b=28">Brian "Box" Brown, an atheist cartoonist</a> who appeared as a guest on the program after featuring hosts Quintana and Matt Buff in a satirical comic. Brown, who held his own well enough during the discussion, understandably had no comment to make on this challenge, being unprepared. But Quintana’s challenge struck me as one that was worth making a serious and substantial response to, given the overly-confident manner in which he presented it: <br /><blockquote>I'd like to get your take on something here for us. One of the wars that the Bible predicts is found in the Book of Ezekiel, okay? It's in chapters 38 and 39. Here's the interesting thing: For somebody like yourself as a total skeptic, if you're to go ahead and look at the countries that are mentioned there, what you would find is that they are modern-day Turkey, everything that is pretty much south of Russia, all the way down to Iraq as far over as Pakistan, most of the northern portion of Africa with the exception of Egypt. Now, looking at that part of the world, that the time that Ezekiel wrote it, there was nothing whatsoever that galvanized that group of people, their different cultures, ethnicities, continents, everything. <br /><br />Here's the deal: As Ezekiel writes all of that, there was nothing that galvanized that whole group of people. Now here's where it gets interesting. What Ezekiel saw, and the only thing that those countries now and those groups of people now have in common is Islam. And if you look at the things that those people say, their desire is to see the elimination of the nation of Israel. So here's what I have to ask for anybody who wants to be objective about this: How is it that Ezekiel could talk about a coalition of countries coming after Israel, especially in the last century when, for a good portion of it, Israel didn't even exist. And what else could galvanize that group of people in the modern day, aside from Islam? <br /> <br />You say that everything that we're telling you is ridiculous and that the Bible is self-fulfilling. I'm giving you an example of something that was written long before the event, and you can't give me a good reason to explain how he could have known this. Nostradamus spoke in generalities and very vague things, but there's no way that you can actually say [it's] like what Ezekiel did. He told us what is modern-day Islam, and all the people that have arrayed themselves against Israel. And I just find it fascinating that you say it's self-fulfilling. How is Israel going ahead lining up all of its enemies under a religion that didn't exist when Ezekiel talked about it? How's that work? <br /><br />Please, prove me wrong! I'm serious . . . This would be great! You can go ahead and look, and you can prove it through history who he's talking about, okay? This is your great opportunity to take a Christian guy like myself and show me that I'm totally all wet and prove to me where I'm wrong. This is great! Look at the opportunity that's now before you. What I'm giving you is the opportunity to shoot guys like me completely through, you know, as far as our theory, and maybe you can enlighten me through this. How about I give you the places to look, and you can find out who they are historically. And please tell me what they now have in common aside from Islam. I'd love to know it. If I'm wrong, which you think that I am, I'd love to hear an alternate theory. </blockquote><br />For one thing, Quintana's argument relies completely on a shaky underlying premise which, when dismantled, undermines his entire case. This premise is the assigning of modern-day countries to countries mentioned in ancient religious texts. Prophecy enthusiasts like Quintana have adopted a slapdash etymology that attempts to say that names read in the original Hebrew correspond to somewhat similar-sounding names of modern geographical locations. But this lacks any linguistic basis or sense.<br /><br />In the particular case of Ezekiel 38 & 39, identifying Lud and Put in 38:5 to be Persia, Ethiopia and Libya (as the King James Version does) is in fact not far-fetched. There is good reason to think that the text corresponds to those three countries, based on other ancient references. But the traditional prophecy buffs are mistaken when they equate Meshech and Tubal in 38:2-3 to the Russian cities of Moscow and Tobolsk respectively in the U.S.S.R. Russia as a whole also finds its way into these etymological word games based on the word "Rosh" in 38:2-3, which translates to "head," implying a chief (as in the head man of a tribe). "Rosh" is thus said to be Russia, the head of its domains of Moscow and Tobolsk [<strong>2</strong>]. <br /><br />This is patently incorrect. The name "Russia" derives from the Rus', a tribe of East Slavic horsemen who inundated the steppelands of central Russia and Ukraine from the north in the ninth century C.E. The Rus' have no connection whatsoever to "Rosh" or the "head." Instead, Ezekiel 38:2-3 is describing the <em>chief prince</em> of Meshech and Tubal and does not indicate a third name. Meshech is <em>not</em> Moscow, and Tubal is <em>not</em> Tobolsk. These were two ancient territories located adjacent to the Black Sea. One can find them on just about any old "World of the Bible" atlas. Tubal was the place that the character Tubal-Cain is made an eponymous ancestor of in Genesis 4:22. Being the mythic culture hero that he was, Tubal-Cain is here said to be the inventor of metallurgy, an "instructor of every artificer of brass and iron." Tubal is mentioned in Ezekiel 38 because their people were on the map at the time the text was written, and they were metal workers. They continued the fashioning of weapons in the tradition of their father Tubal-Cain, their eponymous ancestor. Meshech is not much different; the people of this land were known as the Mushki. Neither they nor the people of Tubal have any connection with modern-day Moscow and Tobolsk. Those who claim otherwise commit an error similar to (but even more egregious than) the error of trying to trace the Turks back to the ancient Ionians. While the Turks and the Ionians lived at different times in the same territory, they are completely different ethnic groups descended from different lines. The Turks came in from central Asia much later, during the early Middle Ages. <br /> <br />Now to move on to Gog (the most interesting of the points to be made): The best scholarship we have on this subject strongly suggests that there is only a mythical or semi-mythical association with this name. “Magog” is not a parallel name; it simply means “land of Gog,” to denote the land which Gog rules. In Greek, “Gog” is translated <em>Gugeis</em> (or <em>Gyges</em> if one prefers to Latinize it). Gugeis was a mythical character in Meshech (ancient Lydia), or in the surrounding borders. The king of this territory was Midas. Gog (or Gugeis or Gyges, take your pick) shows up in Middle Eastern mythology as a kind of monster reminiscent of the Leviathan traditions, sometimes associated with Iskandar Dhul-Qarnayn (literally “The Two-Horned One”). <br /><br />This name, which some scholars conjecture is a reference to Alexander the Great, is found in the Qur’an (<a href="http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/arabic/018.asp">Surah XVIII:83-99</a>). According to this passage, Dhul-Qarnayn is said to have imprisoned both Gog and Magog inside a mountain from which they are to eventually escape in the end of days. Gog and Magog are also mentioned in the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible (20:8: “And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog & Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea”).<br /> <br />In the Old Testament’s Book of Ezekiel, Gog and Magog are pictured collectively as a single Leviathan-like creature: “And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws ...” (38:4a). The picture is one of God fishing the great primordial serpent out of the ocean, thereby defeating him as he did Leviathan and Rahab. <br /><br />Of course, biblical prophecy enthusiasts could argue that this interpretation of the Ezekiel passage is simply mythic allusion intended by the writer himself to metaphorically describe a <em>real</em> state that is monstrous and dangerous in nature and which God will defeat. This may in fact be true, but this argument does not avail the prophecy apologist in any way. For one thing, mythic allusion was used to describe almost all major villains, whether whole nations or individual leaders. Even the mythical Azdahak in ancient Iran, the very first Antichrist figure to be conceived, was intended to symbolize the invading Assyrians. The vast majority of characters in ancient mythologies had political dimensions that were relevant to the times in which they were created and written about. <br /><br />This means that Ezekiel 38 and 39 is not an example of prophetic writing at all. Scholars are unanimously agreed on this point. If these chapters were written as predictions of the far future, they would be completely irrelevant to the people the prophets were trying to address at the time. Gog and the land that Gog rules (Magog) have come to mean something completely different than what it was originally intended to mean in modern apocalyptic thought. At the time the author of these Ezekiel passages was writing, they were simply meant to describe (through the metaphoric picture of the great sea monsters that God had defeated in primordial times) nations that were <em>believed</em> to be harassing Israel at the time. They were describing current events. Both literary and historical analysis supports this understanding. <br /><br />This leaves open Quintana’s question of who the armies described in these Ezekiel chapters are supposed to be if not modern Islamic countries. Remember, Quintana says he would “love to hear an alternate theory.” Many scholars say that Gog and Magog represented the historical Scythians, who swept down as mounted horsemen from the northern kingdoms, though they never did get as far as ancient Israel and Judah. However, it was anticipated that they would successfully make it that far, and <em>that</em> is what Ezekiel 38 and 39 are about. I would strongly advise non-scholars like Quintana not to trust the likes of Hal Lindsey and the tradition he represents in his famous 1970 book <em>The Late Great Planet Earth</em> of spinning etymology and history in order to make Ezekiel 38 and 39 all about Russia. <br /><br />To wrap up, we must address Quintana’s claim that these chapters in Ezekiel must be prophetic of modern Islamist countries and that this is borne out by his claim that nothing galvanized the countries he thinks are mentioned together in any coherent way, until Islam gave them something in common. <br /><br />For one thing (as I have already mentioned above) if these writings <em>were</em> about the far distant future, they could not have possibly been relevant to the original readers, Ezekiel’s intended audience. For another thing, it is highly doubtful that there exists any evidence for what Quintana is saying, whatever the nature of Ezekiel’s writings. Yes, the countries and geographical regions Quintana mentions were somewhat diverse, but he seems to overlook the fact that they were cheek-by-jowl on the map! They could not have been so different that they had nothing to unite over. <br /><br />It may be <em>technically</em> improbable that these people would band together for a common purpose, but then again, this is exactly what people are often heard saying today concerning the Shiite and Sunni terrorists. The popular but flawed reasoning has been that there is nothing to fear, because Iraq could never join forces Iran to retaliate against us since one is predominantly Shiite and the other predominantly Sunni. Similarly, we have been told by many that al-Qaeda could never receive any support from the Mullahs of Iran, due to the same Sunni and Shiite differences. This is exactly the naïve, faulty reasoning Quintana is applying in his argument.<br /><br />But let’s not kid ourselves. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Common causes are made on the basis of this truism alone all the time, and throughout recorded history. Eventually, once victory is achieved, they may turn on each other. But this is certainly not evidence of any kind that they had not once united as a group for pragmatic purposes. <br /><br />Then again, all this assumes that Quintana and other prophecy spin doctors are correct in their identification of the countries attacking Israel in these Ezekiel chapters. But, as I think I have shown, he is very likely wrong in his attributions. Again, the scholarly evidence suggests that the armies of Ezekiel 38 and 39 were the Scythians. Even the ancient writer himself may have gotten the identification of the armies wrong. But more importantly, I have shown that Quintana does not have a valid argument or evidence to lean on <em>even if</em> he is correct in his identification of the countries. <br /><br /><br /><strong>Notes</strong><br /><br />1. Quoted in James Comper Gray (1871). <em>The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative, on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-Students, and Sunday-School Teachers. Vol. II. Containing the Gospels According to St. Luke and St. John</em>. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, p. 179.<br /><br />2. While Quintana does not in my quotes explicitly claim that Gog and Magog correspond to Russia both he and other hosts of the show have made it clear in other broadcasts that they are strong adherents of this idea. I suspect he carefully avoided mentioning this here, since Russia’s population is made up of slightly more Christians (17-22%) than Muslims (10-15%). This figure upsets Quintana’s “non-galvanized” foothold, so he instead starts with “south of Russia.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-2607353580706050022011-02-12T02:07:00.000-08:002012-06-07T04:06:26.943-07:00Atlas Shrugged: A Book ReviewNo summary of <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> could possibly do justice to the novel's intricacies, and this is not simply due to the 1100-page length of the book. One of the longest fiction novels in English and nearly as long as the Bible, the focus of this novel is far more complex than the focus of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span>. In the latter, Rand relied on her character's personal, internal conflicts to move the story along, developing them in terms of their specific natures rather than their social relations and interactions with other characters, which were peripheral offshoots of the central theme. <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span>, by contrast, features a heavy focus on relationships in almost every dimension of human life between characters, social structures and institutions, and it has been referred to by many as "The Bible of Objectivism."<br /><br />The vast scope and complex, interwoven themes at work in this magnum opus makes it a novel that does not translate easily into a screenplay. Despite this, however, a film adaptation of <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> is now in the works with actress Taylor Schilling in the starring role as Dagny Taggart and Paul Johansson directing. The finished product should be quite interesting, and I actually look forward to watching it. The first question that comes to my mind is how much screenwriter John Aglialoro will end up cutting the climactic speech delivered by character John Galt (to be played by director Paul Johansson). In the edition of the book I have on my shelf, this speech begins on page 923 and ends on page 976, making a total of 56 pages of John Galt talking uninterrupted (which took Rand two years to write). In the screenwriting business, one minute of screen time per page is the general rule, especially in dialogue-heavy scenes. This means that if Paul Johansson gives the entire speech (which is important to the plot) completely uncut, about half a movie would be out of the way before getting to any of the actual plot.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> takes place in a bleak, near-future America ("<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture">Twenty Minutes Into The Future</a>" as TVTropes.com puts it), that is completely governed by incompetent and evil people bent on draining the productivity of the few remaining brilliant innovators in society. This intellectually-competent and productive remnant go on strike; they disappear one by one from society as public resistance to ever-increasing government control of industrial production grows weaker and weaker. A mysterious figure known as John Galt orchestrates this massive strike behind the scenes, and his name, which is spoken as a catchphrase throughout the novel, is immortalized in the form of a question among the general public: "Who is John Galt?" One of the few remaining noble and brilliant people is Dagny Taggart, a drop-dead-gorgeous and atheistic transcontinental railroad executive who struggles to live up to her ideals and keep her business afloat in a global economy plagued by increasing government encroachment. Every other protagonist in the story, including key characters like Henry Rearden and Francisco d'Anconia, are also brilliant inventors, businessmen and industrialists who alone contribute to social stability (hence the title, which refers to the Greek myth in which Atlas carries the sphere of earth on his back; the removal of the movers and shakers of society is equated to what would transpire if Atlas were to tire of the weight and shrug, i.e., upheaval on a global scale).<br /><br />There are many villains in the story, far more than there are heroes. All of these villains are reminiscent of the "second-handers" in<span style="font-style:italic;"> The Fountainhead</span>; they seek to leech off the ideas and accomplishments of the movers and shakers, reaping the benefit that comes from them without having to work. It is in response to this that John Galt abandons society and founds his own hidden society in the middle of nowhere, which he calls Galt's Gulch. From this base he convinces the geniuses of the country to join him in establishing an experimental version of a libertarian utopia, which he considers to be a type of Atlantis. The world deteriorates more and more as the individualists gradually diminish in number. Galt and his society of noble heroes remain sequestered in their secret haven until society collapses entirely, at which time they emerge to rebuild the infrastructure from the ashes. The novel ends with John Galt declaring, "The road is cleared . . . we are going back to the world." He then raises his hand over the "desolate earth" and traces in space the sign of the dollar. The narrative evokes no remorse for the fate of those who experienced the crumbling of society. In fact, the message conveyed is that they all deserved it, since the vast majority of the people in the world are incompetent and needed to be "cleared" from the heroes' path to success.<br /><br />The ultimate moral of the story represents one of my major misgivings about certain key elements of Ayn Rand's philosophy. This is a philosophical worldview that makes no attempt to understand the complex ways people think and behave, and opts instead to make sweeping blanket statements that portray the masses as idiots who deserve any calamity they might experience. In Rand's universe, people are stratified into three main groups: There are the geniuses, the individualists who typify the noble hero archetype. There are the second-handers, who hold back the accomplishments of the geniuses. Then there are people who are themselves not particularly brilliant or heroic, but who are not evil or stupid either. They are merely useful to the heroes; they carry out the mundane work that the heroes are too important to bother with. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span>, Dagny's assistant Eddie Willers is one example of a character that fits into this category. He is treated as a good person who serves a purpose for those above him.<br /><br />This outlook is very characteristic of cults. Like John Galt and his followers, they cut themselves off from the rest of the world and declare themselves to be a chosen few who are far more intelligent and far more deserving than everyone else. To the Objectivist who would deny that Ayn Rand thought in these terms, a particular passage from <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> should make them uncomfortable. About halfway through the novel, we are treated to a sequence involving a train wreck that leaves no survivors. This is shown to be the end result and natural consequence of sustained negligence and incompetent workers over a period of time. On the receiving end of the tragic consequence is a train filled with random people who are merely going about their daily lives. Still, in setting up this train wreck scene, Rand goes out of her way to convince the reader that every single one of these random people deserved their fate. This is how she does it:<br /><blockquote>It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.<br /><br />The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.<br /><br />The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion "for a good cause," who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others - to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder - for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of "a good cause," which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by "a feeling" - a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own "good intentions" and on the power of a gun.<br /><br />The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly school teacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing. (<span style="font-weight:bold;">p. 558</span>).</blockquote><br />There are two whole pages of this listing exercise, in which Rand progresses through various sections of the car, describing the passengers as she goes. We are introduced to thirteen more people in all as Rand points out the terrible ideas each held to. Her style and method is strikingly reminiscent of the act of placing public figures under a microscope, such that one can always find something wrong with anybody under scrutiny. Rand forgets, ignores, or denies that we are all in fact flawed in some way, shape or form, and concludes with this:<br /><blockquote>These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth. (<span style="font-weight:bold;">p. 560</span>).</blockquote><br />In setting up this disaster, Rand does not hide well the delight she takes in killing off a train full of people whom she deems worthy of death. The indelible impression left is a promotion of oligarchical ideas, and this promotion is obvious throughout the novel. The intelligent are in a class of their own and alone enjoy the right to rule society, as illustrated by the ultimate victory enjoyed by the separatists at the end of the book. While I do support the argument that society will always be better off if the more intelligent people operated in government, I also object to oligarchy in any form. Rand makes no distinction between intelligence and qualification, which I argue is a necessary and important distinction. Just because Person A happens to be much more intelligent and knowledgeable in one area than Person B, this tells us nothing about whether or not Person A is equally knowledgeable and qualified in another area, which Person B might be more qualified in. For example, if a brilliant student were to graduate from a prestigious university with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and then placed in the position of President of the United States, that electrical engineering genius would end up looking far more stupid than she really is, and vice-versa. Thus, what we need to concern ourselves with is placing people in various positions that fit their qualifications.<br /><br />Rand's approach is a black-and-white one that disregards such complexities and stratifies society into the homogeneously intelligent and the homogeneously daft. The character of John Galt is a perfect example of this. The impression given by this character is that he is the best at everything. He is not a physicist, a chemist, a mathematician, or an electrical engineer. He is a <span style="font-style:italic;">scientist</span>. He is a super-genius who knows how to invent and engineer, and he is the world's most powerful demagogue. He also emerges the victor of the love triangle, getting the beautiful girl (Dagny) in the end. He has no specific qualifications, he is simply qualified at everything. At the same time (or perhaps because of this) he gives the impression of having an abrasive and haughty personality; whatever his qualifications might be, his is not the sort of character most people would want to be overseeing the world. For one thing, he does not do anything particularly beneficial to society with the resources he is privy to. He is predisposed only to benefiting himself, which he must be if he is to be a hero in the Ayn Rand universe. But here we run into another inconsistency that destroys the credibility of the story. The notion that an individual working towards his own self-interest is likely to benefit him in the long run is simply an unjustifiable notion. The social sciences suggest very strongly that an individual working toward the self-interest of the group as a whole (to which that individual belongs), is more beneficial to the individual in the long run. This by no means precludes the possibility of an individual working toward his own self-interest in <span style="font-style:italic;">conjunction with</span> exercising an active social awareness. This, of course, Ayn Rand flatly denies. Her heroes are the type of people who hoard money. Her villains are the type of people who invest parts of their money to social causes in hopes of receiving meaningful returns on it. Her ability to carry out the mental gymnastics necessary to make long-term victors out of the hoarders is one truly impressive aspect of her fiction, and one which kept me reading all 1100 pages.<br /><br />Among the several themes that emerge over and over again in <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> (and in Rand's other fiction) is the concept of a society being completely taken over by stupid, lazy and altruistic people. In fact, this premise is utilized in almost every single work of fiction she produced. Of course, one might reasonably argue that this is a device applied to a fictional, future society that is taken to an extreme, and that science-fiction authors do this all the time. But this is not just one work of fiction we are talking about. When nearly every novel Rand ever wrote involves the premise that the vast majority of people in the world are incompetent leeches who hold back and drain the life and production out of the few intelligent people, it ceases to be simply a device any longer. And it becomes less and less credible and convincing as a plot device with increased use. Did Rand ever stop to consider the likelihood that characters who are stupid and lazy could take total control of the world's infrastructure? Apparently not, because in <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span>, the intelligent, greedy and ambitious protagonists struggle in a losing battle against the incompetent and lazy, forcing them to flee the world stage and establish their own secret society. This internally inconsistent concept is impossible for any thinking person to buy into, and the "suspended disbelief" that science-fiction stories often ask the reader to employ simply cannot drown out this inconsistency.<br /><br />Another very interesting consideration that is occasioned by a reading of <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> is that the novel may represent more of a venture into pure escapism on Ayn Rand's part than she would ever want to admit, even to herself. In <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2011/02/fountainhead-book-review.html">my review of her earlier bestselling novel <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span></a>, I pointed out that Rand's characters in that novel are avatars of certain key ideas, personifications of concepts whose participation in the plot is a device to illustrate a philosophical system.<span style="font-style:italic;"> Atlas Shrugged</span> continues this treatment of characters, and takes it even farther. The characters here are not only avatars of ideas. A few of them (especially John Galt, Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden) are idealized versions of Ayn Rand herself. This is not surprising or unusual. After all, the people that Rand idolizes in her novels and elevates as the truly great and noble heroes of the world are inventors, businesspeople, engineers, industrialists, etc. But unlike this class of characters, Rand never contributed anything brilliantly innovative or tangible such as Rearden's miracle metal, Dagny's Transcontinental railroad, or Howard Roark's architecture. Instead, she wrote a lot of books. One can easily imagine why Rand might want to fantasize about fitting in with the class of people she most admired.<br /><br />In the entertainment world, there is a name for the concept of writing a character who is basically a stand-in for the author, only much more idealized and perfect in every way. TVTropes.com, a comprehensive wiki site that catalogues thousands of devices and conventions that fiction writers rely on to tap into their audience's expectations, uses the term "Mary Sue" for this particular device. This term, as the wiki entry explains, originated in fan fiction circles and referred to writers who inserted versions of themselves as characters in another author's universe.<br /><blockquote>The name "Mary Sue" comes from the 1974 Star Trek fanfic "A Trekkie's Tale". Originally written as a parody of the standard Self Insert Fic of the time (as opposed to any particular traits), the name was quickly adopted by the Star Trek fanfiction community. Its original meaning mostly held that it was an Always Female Author Avatar, regardless of character role or perceived quality. Often, the characters would get in a relationship with either Kirk or Spock, turn out to have a familial bond with a crew member, be a Half Human Hybrid masquerading as a human, and die in a graceful, beautiful way to reinforce that the character was Too Good For This Sinful Earth. (Or space, as the case may be.)<br /><br />The prototypical Mary Sue is an original female character in a fanfic who obviously serves as an idealized version of the author mainly for the purpose of Wish Fulfillment. She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.<br /><br />She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her into their nakama, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal. She has some sort of especially close relationship to the author's favorite canon character — their love interest, illegitimate child, never-before-mentioned sister, etc. Other than that, the canon characters are quickly reduced to awestruck cheerleaders, watching from the sidelines as Mary Sue outstrips them in their areas of expertise and solves problems that have stymied them for the entire series.<br /><br />In other words, the term "Mary Sue" is generally slapped on a character who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.<br /><br />(<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue</a>).</blockquote><br />Although "Mary Sue" refers specifically to female characters, both John Galt and Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged possess almost all the attributes of an author-written Mary Sue. These characters actually fit more into the closely-related subcategory of this trope, known as the "Purity Sue," which can be male or female without too great a difference, although there is a strong tendency towards the latter in all but its earliest incarnations. A "Purity Sue" is a character that is intentionally made by the author to possess overwhelmingly positive traits with little to no flaws that that affect them in any significant way.<br /><br />According to the Purity Sue entry on TVTropes.com,<br /><blockquote>Dagny Taggart from <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> is a somewhat scary example of a fully grown Mary Sue in a serious, influential piece of work. She is and has everything Ayn Rand could ever hope for, a total personification of her values — she's a brilliant though underestimated businesswoman, more beautiful than anyone else in the room without even trying - even the simplest of dresses seems 'indecent' on her. She is the linchpin of all the important changes in the world, the last and most important part of the puzzle, the one everyone wishes they could reach, the one everyone looks to. She has multiple lovers and moves on from one to the next without any warning or explanation given — or needed, as each of these lovers peacefully acknowledges the others without the slightest surprise or jealousy, with the impression given that they're going to quietly bear never-again-requited candles for her indefinitely.<br /><br />Technically, John Galt is a closer fit. It's Dagny's failure to embrace the Objectivist Ideal until the very end that moves the plot along and causes her and everyone else a world of misery and trouble. Galt faffs about with his sunny-shiny hair, and everyone confesses their love and adoration to him at every turn, and Dagny falls in love with him before first sight. Then again, this is Ayn Rand; she never denied that this was the case.<br /><br />(<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuritySue">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuritySue</a>).</blockquote><br />The <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtlasShrugged">TVTropes page devoted to <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> </a>is definitely worth reading in its entirety, as it provides a helpful and comprehensive overview of what works and what does not work in the world of the novel. Other important tropes listed for this novel that are used liberally throughout include the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Author Filibuster</span> (As the page itself says, "Eventually the question you ask stops being 'Who is John Galt?' and becomes 'When will John Galt shut up?'" This trope is seen both in John Galt's 56-page speech and in other, shorter filibusters scattered throughout the book), and <span style="font-weight:bold;">Anvilicious</span> which is defined as "a writer's and/or director's use of an artistic element, be it line of dialogue, visual motif, or plot point, to so obviously or unsubtly convey a particular message that they may as well etch it onto an anvil and drop it on your head." Whether or not the reader may agree with the anvils in the book, it is clear that without them, <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> would be a completely different book and probably not as successful. Unfortunately, the reliance on anvils to make the story what it is detracts from its value, both artistically and philosophically, in a number of irredeemable ways.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-35706868414346305982011-02-12T02:02:00.000-08:002011-02-12T02:07:50.535-08:00The Fountainhead: A Book ReviewMore so than in any of the nonfiction books Ayn Rand wrote later in life (most of which are merely collections of her essays and articles), the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism gave her worldview its fullest voice and expression in her works of fiction, particularly the two novels for which she is most famous, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span> (1943) and <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged </span>(1957), both of which I have read. The present essay is my review of the former, which I will follow up with a review of the latter in another essay.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead </span>tells the story of Howard Roark, a brilliant architect whose genius is unrecognized and under-appreciated by all people, save the small and ever-dwindling number of intelligent individuals left in society. Peter Keating, Roark's struggling colleague in the field of architecture, is another central character whom Roark helps out occasionally by designing something for which Keating takes complete credit for. Keating is everything Roark is not and builds his career by leeching off of Roark's brilliance. Struggling in obscurity through many discouraging odds as he fights to preserve his personal vision, Howard Roark remains true to his ideals through to the end, which culminates in his dramatic delivery of a long speech on the value of ego and the necessity of self-interest before a hostile courtroom as he vindicates himself in the face of charges that he dynamited one of his own buildings to make a statement.<br /><br />The court allows Roark to talk uninterrupted for a substantial length of time that covers many pages. Those familiar with Ayn Rand's fiction will recognize the theme of the uninterrupted long speech made by the brilliant hero at the end to be a recurring one in her novels, a device utilized by the author to have her characters serve as her mouthpiece. Rand's fictional characters are developed as avatars of her ideas, who participate in the plot not only to advance it, but also to be represent through their unfolding development the gradual revelation of Rand's philosophical worldview as the novel progresses.<br /><br />Meanwhile, in polar opposition to the noble hero archetype that is Howard Roark, the main villain of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span> is a character named Ellsworth Monkton Toohey. This character exemplifies all that is evil and destructive in the Ayn Rand universe. This is precisely what ends up making this character highly complex and interesting, despite Rand's black-and-white approach to morality in her secondary universe. One of the fundamental ethical principles of Objectivism states that man, being an end in himself, must exist for his own sake and not sacrifice himself for the sake of others. This principle is stated explicitly throughout her fiction. The central character of her later novel <span style="font-style:italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span>, for example, makes the following solemn oath near the end of the book: "I swear - by my life and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" (p. 979). The protagonist in Rand's lesser-known 1938 novella <span style="font-style:italic;">Anthem</span> states almost the exact same sentiment: "I owe nothing to my brothers, nor do I gather debts from them. I ask none to live for me, nor do I live for any others. I covet no man's soul, nor is my soul theirs to covet" (p. 96). <br /><br />In <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span>, such self-giving, collectivist-oriented characters who live for and through others are referred to as "second-handers." This term still holds a prominent place in Objectivist jargon, and Rand followers consider it to be among the worst possible insults. In addition to this, altruistic qualities and impulses are constantly treated pejoratively in Rand's literature. This is at least one aspect of Rand's philosophical beliefs that clashes with scientific fact; evolutionary biologists have long established and demonstrated, by way of game theory, that altruistic behavior is in fact an evolutionarily advantageous trait that arises naturally from competitive drives to propagate the species. This is certainly not the case in Ayn Rand's fictional universe, and the character of Ellsworth Toohey is perhaps the clearest illustration of this view of altruism as being degenerative and destructive. Regarding this demonization of altruism, Libertarian economic theorist David Ramsay Steele provides the following critical perspective on the character of Toohey:<br /><blockquote>In <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span>, the preaching is kept within bounds, and is generally not too jarringly inauthentic. The one bad lapse is the long speech in which Ellsworth Toohey lays bare his own motivations - but Rand had put herself in an impossible position with her ethical theory. For Rand, a villain must be a completely self-sacrificing person. Toohey is an intelligent villain who wants power. [B]ut somehow it has to come across that in wanting power he is not being selfish - which would be virtuous! If Toohey had been dedicated to a mistaken ideal - based on the theory that everyone would be happier in a world of self-sacrifice - it would be convincing, but we would have no reason to hate him. If Toohey had known that universal self-sacrifice would lead to universal misery, but wanted it for the selfish motive of getting power for himself, this would have been detestable, but dangerous to Rand's egoistic message. Toohey has to want to do his bit towards a goal which (it is made clear) can arrive only after his death, to know that the goal will make everyone completely wretched, and to want it for that reason. But this just makes him an unbelievable loony, bereft of any plausible link to real persons like Lewis Mumford and Harold Laski (who were among Rand's models for Toohey. (David Ramsay Steele (1988). "Alice in Wonderland: A Review of The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden." <span style="font-style:italic;">Free Life: Journal of the Libertarian Alliance</span> 5 (1): 8-9).</blockquote><br />Throughout the novel, Toohey repeatedly expounds upon the greatness of selflessness as the highest virtue as he enthusiastically promotes welfare programs and other social expressions of self-sacrifice. Because he is a Rand creation, this of course makes Toohey the personification of evil. Toohey's villainy derives from the fact that he lusts after power and will end up hurting people in order to attain that power. But this obviously does not come close to resembling altruism, which Rand considers the greatest evil! The internal conflict in Rand's fictional experiments is this implicit opposition to altruism that is required to create a credible villain that is discernable in a story that explicitly advocates self-interest and the exclusive pursuing of one's own personal success.<br /><br />This internal conflict extends beyond Rand's fictional world to her creative acts in and of themselves. A recurring and defining characteristic of evil people in Rand's universe is that they lack a profit motive in whatever they undertake to accomplish. And yet, in undertaking to write books to teach people her particular philosophy, Rand herself did not entirely live up to her ideal of pursuing the profit motive as the greatest good. On the one hand, she did of course make a substantial amount of money from the novels she wrote. But where was the guarantee that she would reap a profit from sharing the knowledge she herself worked to gain? After all, Objectivism promotes the attainment of specialized knowledge to benefit the individual, rather than the attainment of general community knowledge that serves society as a whole (and thereby serves each individual within that society, by the way). Thus, a consistently-applied worldview of total self-interest would mean that very few individuals (if any) would become teachers and educators. Yet Rand devoted her life to teaching the public her philosophical belief system through her novels and nonfiction writings. Apparently, it was legitimate for her to devote her life to an activity that had the potential to result in little or no profit, rather than use her knowledge in a specialized capacity to assure herself of profit. And if even an Objectivist can derive personal happiness from teaching and sharing the information they worked to gain, then one can also derive happiness from acts that are truly altruistic in nature.<br /><br />Therefore, if one considers personal happiness to be an element of his or her own self-interest, then it follows that altruism cannot logically be written off as degenerative or evil. In fact, I argue that engaging in selfless acts (or seemingly selfless acts) without a profit motive in mind can be a source of pleasure. This is even true for the hedonist whose motivation for giving of himself for another human being may be his own pleasure. Consider also how Rand's views explain the enjoyment and pleasure many people glean from masochism. <br /><br />These considerations raise the question: What if a man wants (even out of selfish urges) to sacrifice himself for another person? Who is Ayn Rand to declare by fiat that he must not act on that desire? Objectivism simply fails to take into account the complexity of why we as human beings do what we do, vying instead to present a grossly oversimplified model of morality and human volition.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-50518812003358354642011-02-12T01:30:00.000-08:002013-08-03T18:50:55.932-07:00The Shortcomings of Objectivism
<P ALIGN=Center><i><b>Look around this world we've made / Equality / Our stock in trade / Come and join the Brotherhood / Of Man / What a nice contented world / Let the banners / Be unfurled / Hold the Red Star proudly / High in hand</b></i>
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<P ALIGN=Center><i><b>We are the priests / Of the Temples of Syrinx / Our great computers / Fill the hallowed halls</b></i>
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The lines above come from the seven-part rock suite comprising the first half of the 1976 album <i>2112</i> by the progressive hard rock band Rush. The story conveyed in the title song is homage to Ayn Rand’s 1938 novella <i>Anthem</i>, and much more firmly transplants the novella’s ideological message. The album is excellent both musically and lyrically, superior in my own estimation to Rand's novella itself. Neil Peart is a brilliant lyricist who made no secret of the inspiration he gleaned from the founder of the philosophy known as Objectivism.
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<i>Anthem</i> has as its premise a dystopian future world in which evil collectivist overlords wield total control over society and impose strict limits on how often invention and innovation can be practiced among the populace, leading to a world society devoid of modern technology. Collectivism has permeated society to the extent that even words such as “I” and “ego” are forbidden to be uttered on pain of death, and each person living under the totalitarian system knows only to refer to him- or herself as “We.” The story follows the journey of the main character, Equality 7-2521, who rediscovers the secret of electricity during his secret underground studies and attempts to bring this great discovery to attention of the World Council of Scholars. What ensues is a poetic narrative of his struggles to realize his individuality and discover freedom in the face of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the totalitarian World Council.
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The lyrical story told in the twenty-one-minute song “2112” closely mirrors the broad strokes found in the premise and storyline of <i>Anthem</i>. The background setting is a unified galaxy ruled by the Red Star of the Solar Federation, on a world controlled by the authoritarian priests of the Temples of Syrinx. The priests control and regulate every facet of intellectual and creative output among the world citizens. The hero of the narrative is a man who discovers an electric guitar (which replaces the electric light bulb of Anthem). In Part III of the seven-part song (entitled “Discovery”), the listener is treated to a tentatively-handled sequence in which Alex Lifeson, the Rush guitarist, begins to pluck the strings of the newfound guitar awkwardly, taking on the role of the character as he learns to play the instrument for the first time. In the space of about thirty seconds, Lifeson progresses from plucking out clumsy notes to performing an amazing solo worthy of a rock god by means of sequential figurations that become increasingly rhythmical and metrical, as the hero-character he represents discovers that he can produce music of his own. This individualistic music is very different from the music of the Temples, which is portrayed by Lee Geddy’s harsh and shrieking vocals which reach barely-attainable soprano tessitura pitch levels. In the next section (“Presentation”), the hero goes before the priests to show them his discovery and convince them of its merits. However, as in the case of the rejection of Equality 7-2521's rediscovery of electric light in <i>Anthem</i>, the priests condemn the hero's individualistic dabblings and refuse to tolerate his use of the device. Overall, <i>2112</i> is a great album that poetically illustrates very well the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which she herself expressed mostly through her own works of fiction.
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<b>Ayn Rand and Objectivism</b>
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Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905. She was a novelist, philosopher, playwright and screenwriter in America, to which she emigrated in 1926, becoming a citizen in 1931. She is most widely known for her two best-selling novels <i>The Fountainhead </i>(1943) and <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> (1957) and for developing a philosophical system she called “Objectivism.” In this essay, I present my views on this philosophical system; while I find myself agreeing with a great deal of its basic tenets (especially its views on metaphysics), I do not agree with Objectivism at its core, which I argue is flawed for a number of reasons.
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Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is based on three axioms: existence, identity and consciousness. The axiom of <i>existence</i> states that “Existence exists” (“Existence” here refers to the sum of all existents, whether an object, attribute or action). This axiom pertains to whether something exists or not; that which lacks attributes and thus a specific nature does not and cannot exist. To be is to be an entity composed of specific attributes that form a specific nature. This implies the axiom of <i>identity</i>. The law of identity states that “A is A,” and pertains to the fact that objects are always equal to themselves and that a distinction necessarily exists between objects of different natures. As Rand expressed it, “A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time . . . You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.” The axiom of <i>consciousness</i> is “Consciousness exists,” a statement which follows necessarily from the human ability to perceive that the axioms of existence and identity are true. Consciousness is “the faculty of perceiving that which exists.” Consciousness cannot be possible in the absence of an objective reality which exists independently of consciousness for it to be conscious <i>of</i>. Thus, a world without conscious beings is possible. But consciousness is inherent in the <i>awareness</i> that something exists and that objects are equal to themselves. To be conscious is therefore to be conscious of something.
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The statement “There is something I am aware of” is an expression inherent in one's grasp of any object. “There is” denotes existence, “something” denotes identity, “I am aware of” denotes consciousness.
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The fact that these three tenets are <i>axioms</i> should be emphasized at this point. Ayn Rand defined an axiom as “a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others, whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it.” As axioms, the Objectivist understandings of existence, identity and consciousness are in fact assertions that are self-evidently true, and as such they cannot form the foundation of any philosophical system that is particularly insightful or new. All we are presented with so far as a starting point is that whatever exists actually exists, that whatever exists is what it is, and that one is aware in whatever form one is aware. The very act of perceiving and asserting the truth of these axioms serves to validate them. Ayn Rand was a strong atheist on the basis of these axiomatic position statements, which she declared as foundational to her philosophy in order to clearly separate her views on objective reality from the concept of supernaturalism. The Randian argument for the non-existence of the supernatural is one brilliant aspect of Objectivism to which I stand in complete agreement. But in further developing her philosophy, Ayn Rand progresses beyond these three self-evident axioms to a series of assertions that are <i>not</i> self-evident at all, or in some cases not even true.
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In a column published in the August 1962 issue of <i>The Objectivist Newsletter</i>, Rand presents just such a series of assertions as she describes the four basic principles of Objectivism. They are as follows:
<blockquote>1. Reality exists as an objective absolute - facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.</blockquote>
I am in full agreement with the metaphysical worldview described here. However, we must examine what Rand has in mind when she speaks of “objective absolutes.” Philosopher Leonard Peikoff, a devoted disciple/evangelist of Ayn Rand and the heir of her estate and intellectual property, provides us with an explanation of the Randian view of objective reality in his 1991 book <i>Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand</i>, the first comprehensive and systematic statement of Rand's philosophical system ever published, in a sense the definitive textbook on Objectivism. He writes,
<blockquote>People often speak of “objective reality.” In this usage, which is harmless, “objective” means “independent of consciousness.” The actual purpose of the concept, however, is to be found not in metaphysics, but in epistemology. Strictly speaking, existents are not objective; they simply are. It is minds, and specifically conceptual processes, that are objective – or nonobjective.</blockquote>
Peikoff here appears to be saying that the external world is not necessarily objectively real, but that minds are necessarily real. But it makes no sense to portray conceptual processes of the mind as being objective or nonobjective, while excluding external existents from this context. This treatment of objective reality is completely backwards. To be as fair as possible, when Peikoff states that “Strictly speaking, existents are not objective,” he may be trying to suggest that existents are not “objective” in the ontological sense understood or implied by colloquial usage. When he says “they simply are,” it is clear he is alluding to the law of identity, which states that “A is A.” On this point, as well as on the point of reality being independent of consciousness, I am in full agreement; A is definitely and certainly A regardless of one's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. Existence does indeed hold primacy over consciousness.
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Still, I see no need for Peikoff to make such a hair-splitting distinction between existents and the law of identity. Furthermore, it is my contention that Peikoff is not justified in shifting the concept of objective reality away from metaphysics where it belongs and applying it to epistemology. This misapplication is a crucial misstep, one that leads Objectivist philosophy to wrongly equate personal values with objective reality.
<blockquote>2. Reason (the faculty which identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses) is man’s only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge, his only guide to action, and his basic means of survival.</blockquote>
I have no objections to this epistemological position, which I share with Rand.
<blockquote>3. Man – every man – is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.</blockquote>
At this juncture, I begin to diverge from Rand’s views. While I do have serious misgivings about Rand's values, my disagreement here is not in any way a complaint directed at what she personally chose as her own values. Rather, my objection is directed at the way in which she presents it. She is not content to portray this ethical view as a value, but feels she must portray it as a <i>basic and obvious fact</i> or a truism.
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In a number of important ways, I disagree with Randian Objectivism for much the same reasons I disagree with certain key tenets of Christian doctrine. Like Ayn Rand, many Christian theologians and ministers place a strong emphasis on the concept of objective reality. Like Objectivists, many of these theologians and ministers tell us that the postmodernist view that all things are subjective and that truth can vary from one person or realm to another is a major source of problems in the world. This is a point on which the theologians and I stand in some agreement. The problem is that most of these Christians go on to conflate their own value system with the objective reality they speak of. They are often heard claiming that it is <i>obviously true</i> that Christian values have an ontologically superior status to all other values, an unwarranted conclusion to which they leap from their affirmation of objective reality. While objective reality does indeed exist independent of what we may believe to be true, there also exist processes that take place inside people's heads, and these subjective processes are largely the source of our <i>values</i>.
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Ayn Rand conflates objective reality with personal values in much the same way that Christian theologians do. Notice the dogmatic tone and the choice of language employed in her third point. To say that “Man – every man – is an end in himself,” and that he must exist for his own sake and that he <i>must not</i> sacrifice himself to others nor others to himself is to clearly introduce values into a definition of objective reality – which results in a definition that is incoherent at best and contradictory at worst.
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Another significant flaw in this third point is closely related to the erroneous conflation and mixing of objective reality and values. The term “rational self-interest” is invoked as the justification for asserting the necessity of each man existing for his own sake. Yet “rational self-interest” is not clearly defined in this context, and Rand once again equates it with an objective truism, rather than a value that looks different depending on the individual. That which an Objectivist may consider to be in his or her best self-interest and moreover to be rational may be something to which another person objects. What if a man <i>wants</i> to sacrifice himself for another person? Who is Ayn Rand to declare by fiat that he cannot act on that desire? All the Objectivist can do is freely express her observation that such a self-giving man is not acting consistently with <i>her own</i> moral values. This observation is impotent to say anything about the objective merit of the selfless man’s values. In other words, Rand never demonstrated conclusively that her values should be considered by all as representative of what objective reality demands of us.
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We now move on to the fourth principle:
<blockquote>4. The ideal political-economic system is <i>laissez-faire</i> capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as <i>traders</i>, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and <i>no man may initiate the use of physical force against others</i>. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force <i>only</i> in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.</blockquote>
Whether or not politics enters into the discussion, this fourth point once again resorts to the fallacy of asserting as <i>absolute, objective fact</i> something which is actually a value. As long as we are not progressing beyond the level of bare assertion, one could just as easily assert that the ideal political-economic system is Communism (a system I do not endorse or agree with). Rand describes laissez-faire capitalism as the “ideal political-economic system.” But <i>to whom</i> is laissez-faire capitalism the ideal political-economic system? The answer depends entirely on whose point of view is being examined and what the goal of that individual or group happens to be. For example, one might argue that monarchy is not an ideal system and that laissez-faire capitalism, being the elusive ideal system, should replace monarchy. But the king will obviously disagree with that claim. Tom Petty was right when he pointed out in his song that “It's good to be king.”
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Furthermore, Rand puts the cart firmly before the horse in this fourth precept. She declares what the ideal political-economic system is before even discussing and establishing what the goal of society should be. It is of course possible that if our goal is to institutionalize individualism and to encourage the rights of the individual over and above the rights of society as a whole, then laissez-faire capitalism may be the best system to achieve that. But this is why it is crucial to discuss what our <i>goal</i> is first, before evaluating what the most ideal system for society might be. However, even if we settle on instituting the precepts of individualism as our goal, it has by no means been proven or demonstrated that laissez-faire capitalism is the best system for the realization of that end. The United States of America is popularly considered to be the greatest country on earth and as a beacon of freedom. Yet America has not implemented laissez-faire capitalism as an official economic policy doctrine, despite the efforts of Objectivists and libertarians in this country who want to see that very thing happen. Thus, to the extent that implementation of laissez-faire capitalism has been seriously discussed in this country, it has been discussed within a purely speculative or experimental framework. If we as a country wish to turn from speculative to serious experimental examination of laissez-faire capitalism, a control group would be required for any scientific approach, which political scientists and economists should insist on as a means of demonstrating that such a system is viable in actuality. Ayn Rand’s most lasting “contributions” to individualistic philosophy is a series of <i>fictional</i> experiments that demonstrates how perfect laissez-faire capitalism is within the secondary universes of her novels.
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In addition to lacking strong support by way of evidence, the central idea presented in this fourth principle is also sophomoric and short-sighted. What we are presented with is an assumption that a particular political-economic system is the best way for everybody to live because it reflects one self-centered individual’s values. It is an assumption that ignores entirely the fact that a cooperative society is required in order to make possible a system that benefits the individual. If the individual is to benefit from rights, then collective groups that form the society as a whole in which the individual lives must also be afforded those rights.
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The central objection I levy against Objectivism is its dogmatic declaration that all things within reality, including values, should be considered to have an ontologically objective status. While I certainly agree that physical reality is objective and independent of consciousness, Randian Objectivism denies values any subjective status and insistently and aggressively prescribes a set of values that all people must hold. Ayn Rand’s attempt to transcend any and all distinctions between facts and values inevitably led to the downright foolish and contradictory aspects that continue to burden her organized movement, one that glorified, among other concepts, non-contradiction in all matters. Her philosophy is an implicitly <i>authoritarian</i> one that explicitly demands the institution of strict <i>anti-authoritarian</i> policies that deny “society” any organic status or meaning and instead recognizes only the self-centered individual. However, as Ayn Rand herself stated, “You can't eat your cake and have it, too.”
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The fact-value distinction is a necessary one; without such a distinction, people in positions of power are enabled to enforce and institutionalize their own values in society, as if these values were divinely dictated or reflected objective reality. While I certainly am not willing to go as far as some commentators have in suggesting that Ayn Rand's ideology is fascistic in nature, Randian Objectivism certainly would have that potential if it was anything more than what it is: pop philosophy that is mostly harmless; true in some parts, but very misguided and confused in others and in most real-life applications.
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Durrell S. Bowman, “’Let Them All Make Their Own Music’: Individualism, Rush, and the Progressive/Hard Rock Alloy, 1976-77,” in Kevin Holm-Hudson, ed., <i>Progressive Rock Reconsidered</i> (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 183-218.
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<b>2.</b> Ayn Rand, <i>Anthem</i> (1938; reprinted, Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press, 2001).
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<b>3.</b> Chris Matthew Sciabarra, <i>Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical</i> (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 24.
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<b>4.</b> Leonard Peikoff, <i>Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand</i> (New York: Dutton, 1991), pp. 4-11.
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<b>5.</b> Ayn Rand, <i>Atlas Shrugged</i> (New York: Signet, 1957), p. 930.
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<b>6.</b> Peikoff, <i>Objectivism</i>, p. 5.
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<b>7.</b> Ibid., p. 7.
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<b>8.</b> Rand, <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>, p. 952.
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<b>9.</b> Ayn Rand, “Introducing Objectivism,” <i>The Objectivist Newsletter</i> 1(8) (August 1962): 35.
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<b>10.</b> Peikoff, <i>Objectivism</i>, p. 117.
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<b>11.</b> In addition to Rand's fiction, there is also an interesting semi-scientific test of Randian Objectivism in the form of a video game called <i>Bioshock</i>, written and designed by Ken Levine. In the game, the player-character survives a plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean and ends up discovering the underwater city of Rapture, where most of the action takes place. This secret city, envisioned by business magnate Andrew Ryan as a laissez-faire capitalist utopia, was built in response to increasingly oppressive political, economic and religious policies in the world above. But of course, this experimental format does not demonstrate Objectivism to be valid or viable as a political-economic system any more than has the novel format.
<P>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-58335190310394195102010-09-14T22:19:00.000-07:002010-09-14T22:40:24.371-07:00The Godless Basis of Authentic Morality: A Response to A.J. EllisIn the many online discussions I engage in with Christian theists, the argument for God's existence that is both used more than any other and employed with the most confidence is by far the argument from "objective morality." This concept of morality is invoked as evidence for God; their reasoning is that if there is an absolute standard of good and evil that is grounded in something outside ourselves, it must therefore be grounded in something transcendent or supernatural. One self-described Christian apologist I have known for some time via Facebook heavily favors this particular argument, and my recent discussions (which I hope will turn into a formal debate) with him on the subject have inspired me to address his points in the present essay.<br /><br />On his online blog, entitled <a href="http://woodscraps.blogspot.com/."><span style="font-style:italic;">Musings From the Empire</span></a>, A.J. Ellis describes himself as "An occasional writer and Christian constitutional libertarian apologist." On a recent discussion thread on my Facebook profile, A.J. had the following to say about morality and the God hypothesis:<br /><blockquote>The existence of objective moral truths (everyone has 'em, though we may not agree where that line would be drawn) is one of the evidences for the existence of God.<br /><br />First, in obeying God, a person is simply conforming with the final reality (which is God,) instead of beating our heads against it. If God exists, (God meaning the final authority and creator of the universe,) then what He says is true, including moral truths.<br /><br />Humanists always assume some 'higher' moral framework than God, to say that 'God is unjust,' but by what authority or framework can they make that claim?<br /><br />By what standard do you say that God is unjust?<br /><br />Ahh, but wait, you assume the Christian standard of morality given by this God in order to attack his justice, all the while ignoring certain things that go along with God's existence (such as His necessary claim to ownership and ultimate judicial authority.)<br /><br />I say show me how God is objectively unjust.</blockquote><br />In a separate thread, in response to challenges I had put forth to his statements, he writes,<br /><blockquote>Why is it [human freedom and dignity] a 'right?!' What makes any of these otherwise silly moralistic things 'standards?!?' How do you get an 'ought' (without which morality is NOTHING, such as your assertion of 'rights') from what 'is?' (material things which do not speak.) I remember the statement about 'avoiding pain and being happy' being 'better' for people, but why in the world should that matter at all to anyone if they can get away with it? Why is it 'better' in the first place?<br /><br />Although I'm sure you've heard the question before, I'm very interested as to how humanism can get or ground moral obligations, or an 'ought,' based on your woldview [sic], and also wonder if there's a humanistic example of an objective or transcendant [sic] moral obligation that exists.</blockquote><br />On a surface level, A.J. Ellis is correct: If an objective moral standard does exist, then it must come from somewhere. But how does it then follow from this that objective moral standards come from God? God's existence would remain undemonstrated even if objective moral values were shown to exist. In other words, his <span style="font-style:italic;">implication</span> is wrong. The fact of the matter is that A.J.'s argument is worthless because it assumes what it sets out to prove: To paraphrase A.J.: "We are all imbued with a moral sense, by which we have the capacity to judge that God is unjust in the first place. Therefore, all people are possessed of a moral sense which could only have come from God. Therefore, God exists." The argument is essentially that if one understands anything about good and evil, then that person must have standards of some kind, and that standard must have come from God. How does "God" follow from the fact that people with an understanding of good and evil employ standards?<br /><br />Allow me to illustrate the vacuousness of this argument with a question directed specifically at A.J.: Do you consider chocolate to be delicious? Think carefully how you answer; how do you know what "delicious" means? Clearly, you have a standard by which you judge that which is delicious and what is not delicious. This standard you have is the reason you will gladly accept a chocolate bar that I give you, but will reject, say, a steaming dog turd in disgust. Now, if your standard is what informs you that chocolate is more delicious than dog turds, then there must be a <span style="font-style:italic;">source</span> by which to measure how delicious things are. Is it not therefore obvious that this source must be God? After all, by what possible standard can you objectively discern that which is delicious from that which is not, if that standard is not the most delicious thing in the universe? Therefore, we can conclude that God, the Ultimate Tasty Thing, exists.<br /><br />But why end there? Literally any existential abstraction can be ranked in some hierarchy that descends from a "source" or standard. For instance, who is the best gay sex partner? For any given homosexual man, there is obviously going to be some good gay sex and some bad gay sex, with a continuum in between. How, exactly, are we to rank gay sex along that scale? A standard is obviously required to do this. What does <span style="font-style:italic;">this</span> observation make God out to be? As we can see, one should be very careful about who is established as the ultimate standard for everything, because then he/she/it has to actually <span style="font-style:italic;">become</span> the Ultimate Standard for Everything. Such a being would also by logical necessity have to be the ultimate evil as well. Think about that, A.J.<br /><br />The underlying point of these thought experiments is this: The standard you have of what is delicious and what is not has the potential to instill in your mind a Platonic idea of what the most delicious thing in the universe might taste like. But does it then follow that such a thing exists? Not necessarily. If I were to give you a great amount of food and asked you to rank the food items based on how delicious they are, your personal tastes will <span style="font-style:italic;">objectively</span> determine how you rank them. You will end up with a "most delicious item" and a "least delicious item" according to this personal taste by which you objectively rank the food. But is the "most delicious item" on your list the most delicious food item that exists or could possibly exist in the universe? The most likely answer is no. It is much more probable that at some future point after ranking your food gifts, you will encounter new food that becomes, according to your personal tastes, your new "most delicious item." However, the theoretical possibility that there could exist the Most Delicious Thing in the Universe does <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> mean that such a thing actually does exist.<br /><br />The only thing required to conceive of a variety of moral standards is imagination. As humans, we can imagine situations or circumstances that are better or worse than what we are currently experiencing. For example, we can easily imagine a world devoid of pain and suffering, or at the very least a world devoid of unnecessary pain and suffering. Does our ability to imagine such a world mean that such a world actually exists? But we do not even need to go that far with our imagination in order to demonstrate the fallacy of claiming that the existence of human standards implies a transcendent Ultimate Standard floating somewhere in the ether. As humans, we imagine better and worse scenarios in relation to what we currently experience all the time, often sub-consciously. For example, if we are driving along a rural highway and our vehicle gets hit by loose gravel on the road, we may instinctively think <span style="font-style:italic;">It is a good thing this car is not being hit with bigger rocks! </span>As long as anybody has the ability to imagine better and worse scenarios, a scale can be mentally constructed. And all the evidence we have concerning the nature of ethics and morality screams that they are an entirely human contrivance. Ethics and morality are sociological constructs that humans use in order to efficiently function in a cooperative society. Ethics and morality are byproducts of the same system of mental processes by which we rank foods or how clean the air smells on a given day. We engage in qualitative and quantitative analysis all the time, and none of it requires a divine author of any kind.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Counter-Argument From Morality</span><br />There is in fact an important counter-argument to be made. As a Christian, A.J. Ellis claims that his God is the divine author of morality. He knows that God is good, because the book he allegedly inspired says that he is good. Such reasoning is, of course, circular. But even setting that detail aside for now, when Christians read through the Bible and point out passages to say, "Look, here we see God doing something good," they are making a <span style="font-style:italic;">judgment</span> of God's described actions. Based on their own conception of morality, they deem a given action attributed to God as being good and not evil. If they did not already have a notion of morality ingrained in them by the influence of functioning societies, there is no conceivable way they could judge whether it is God who is evil or Satan who is evil.<br /><br />Furthermore, if the God of the Bible truly is the Standard and Source of all goodness, why is it that Christians cannot readily point to highly questionable passages as examples of God's goodness? There are numerous instances in the Bible which speak of the the Israelites committing genocide at the direct command of God, and raping and pillaging indiscriminately with God's blessing and endorsement. Why do we not see many Christians pointing to such passages as examples of God exercising his perfectly good character? Of course, it is true that some do; there are Christians who will say that what God ordered his chosen people to do was morally upright and good, because the people being wiped out and terrorized "deserved it." However, it is also true that Christians rarely if ever hold such narratives up as their best example of God's goodness. In other words, they realize they have to explain such passages. But again, if the God of the Bible truly is the objective Source of all moral goodness recognized by humans, such passages should not require apologetic explanations or excuses. God's morally good character as described in the pages of Scripture should be unambiguously clear and obvious to everyone, and the fact that it is not unambiguous throws a wrench into any characterization of the biblical God as the Source of all goodness, from whence all humans derive their own standards.<br /><br />A.J. charges me with assuming the Christian standard of morality given by his God in order to attack his justice. This is nothing more than evasive rhetoric that attempts to circumnavigate or avoid any commitment to declaring the morally dubious biblical passages as morally good, which consistency would require A.J. and apologists like him to declare. To cut past this evasive maneuver, I address this question to A.J. himself: Are you saying that, for example, God's act of flooding the entire earth, killing everybody except for eight people, was morally good?<br /><br />Most Christians will most likely answer yes to this question, but only because they are forced to by the dictates and assertions of their holy book. I contend that their own moral compass informs them that this is not good or just, and that they recognize this in the inner recesses of their conscience. But they try to suppress this recognition when they insist that they must agree with what the Bible says, and specifically when they call this and other instances of God-ordered atrocities a "necessary evil." The term "necessary evil," when used as a rationalization in this way, allows the apologist to redefine "evil" such that the classification becomes meaningless when applied to God. In this view, evil is simply misunderstood good, because God's plan must be brought to fruition no matter what the consequences are or who is hurt along the way.<br /><br />This response to the "necessary evil" line of rationalization is reminiscent of an argument put forth by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume in his <a href="http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm#A8"><span style="font-style:italic;">Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion</span></a>. Hume likens the "evil as a means to an end" justification to an architect showing off a house that is so lacking in refinements as to inflict upon the prospective homeowner the most unpleasant living conditions. The architect could argue that this house is actually a wonderful, high-quality house, because if anything about the house's original condition was changed or modified, the result would not be a better house, but a still worse one. On the basis of this, the architect could suggest that the house is perfect as it is. Of course, the reasonable and justified response to such an architect is obvious:<br /><blockquote>Did I shew you a house or palace, where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable; where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole economy of the building, were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, darkness, and the extremes of heat and cold; you would certainly blame the contrivance, without any further examination. The architect would in vain display his subtilty, and prove to you, that if this door or that window were altered, greater ills would ensue. What he says may be strictly true: the alteration of one particular, while the other parts of the building remain, may only augment the inconveniences. But still you would assert in general, that, if the architect had had skill and good intentions, he might have formed such a plan of the whole, and might have adjusted the parts in such a manner, as would have remedied all or most of these inconveniences. His ignorance, or even your own ignorance of such a plan, will never convince you of the impossibility of it. If you find any inconveniences and deformities in the building, you will always, without entering into any detail, condemn the architect.</blockquote><br />These analogies, when applied to the Bible's conception of God, illustrate the emptiness of the "necessary evil" rationalization. If the biblical God had skill and good intentions, he might have formed such a plan of the whole, and adjusted the parts in such a manner, as would have made the committing of atrocities to remedy problems completely unnecessary. His failure in that regard should never convince anybody of the impossibility of a better plan. The inconveniences and deformities of the universe we find ourselves in serve as evidence that the God spoken of in the Bible is nothing more than the product of human imagination, a projection and extension of human traits onto an imagined untouchable entity whose alleged actions reflect humanity's own failings to live at peace with one another. However, if the biblical God does exist, we are justified in condemning him as unjust, and in doing so we do <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> assume the standard of morality given by this God.<br /><br />Lest any Christian apologist employs the rhetorical maneuver of creating a distinction between the relevancy of the Old Testament versus the New Testament, I point out that the New Testament notion of eternal punishment for finite crimes is evil and unjust. In fact, this notion stands as the greatest example of the evil and injustice of the God character, more so than any of the atrocities described in the Old Testament as endorsed or commanded by God combined. There are many Christians whose own moral compass informs them that this is indeed evil and unjust. They are the ones who typically say they do not believe in eternal punishment or in the concept of hell. They say that the believers are given eternal life in heaven and all non-believers simply cease to exist. In other words, their own moral standards, which they do not get from an authoritarian deity, inspires them to change what the Bible actually says. But I submit that offering any kind of reward based on belief and not on action is just unjust as the doctrine of eternal conscious torture. Preferential treatment for invalid reasons, which describes perfectly the doctrine of conditional immortality, is just as evil.<br /><br />My two-pronged question to Christian scholars and laypersons who are squeamish about the idea of eternal torture is similar to the question I posed to A.J. above: 1) Suppose God did prescribe eternal torture for non-believers in the afterlife, unambiguously and clearly. Would that prescription of eternal torture for finite crimes become good simply because the deity said so? 2) Since you as a Christian believe that hell does not exist, please explain the words attributed to the person whom you believe is God in the flesh. I suspect the answers to the first question (which is essentially a form of the Euthyphro Dilemma), would be mixed; some would say yes, and some would say no. The latter group clearly has the superior moral grounding. As for the former group, I personally do not see how they get around the actual words they believe are attributed to Jesus when he speaks of the fires of hell. Even the Pope (Benedict XVI) a few years ago <a href="http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07032707.html">made a public statement</a> to the effect that hell exists and is eternal.<br /><br />In the end, the Bible is shown to be a big book of multiple choice, from which Christians pick and choose their theological and social beliefs. This demonstrates that A.J. Ellis grossly oversimplifies matters when he claims that if God exists, then what he says is true, including moral "truths." The fact of the matter is that as humans, we have our own moral standards that we apply to our interpretation of the Bible and other holy books, standards which operate independently of any alleged deity and which are informed entirely by social and cultural influences. The standard by which we can say God is unjust is the same standard that has allowed us to survive as a species and form cooperative societies, and these include notions of justice, fairness, compassion, empathy, etc. Humanism can realize and ground moral obligations in this way; we can get an <span style="font-style:italic;">ought</span> from an <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> based on what we recognize to have sustained us throughout history.<br /><br />As for a "humanistic example of an objective or transcendent moral obligation that exists," our secular standards of morality are no more "transcendent" than our standards as they apply to food, gay sex, how clean the air smells to us, or how much gravel can strike our vehicle before investing in a new paint job. But something does not need to be "transcendent" in order to be reasonably applied in the real world. Morals are not transcendent, because morality does not pre-date either consciousness or experience. And because no two experiences are exactly alike, it makes little sense to speak of morality in objective terms. It makes more sense to say that there exists a moral <span style="font-style:italic;">consensus</span>, a consensus that we disregard at our peril.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj74s5y6Vfc9n-EsUtLRgxyQmtiqaAXsjXTlOFgE_7sw2cNK-Ulnxn-8xFco_4LV0WFK7_LsodZ_QpdHhLToLuFOdjZ7am_W6pw2Q49ifqamzfo_nRfYEOgvpiwZ2BBp0DVBYLXcpkOK3Q/s1600/atheism2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 273px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj74s5y6Vfc9n-EsUtLRgxyQmtiqaAXsjXTlOFgE_7sw2cNK-Ulnxn-8xFco_4LV0WFK7_LsodZ_QpdHhLToLuFOdjZ7am_W6pw2Q49ifqamzfo_nRfYEOgvpiwZ2BBp0DVBYLXcpkOK3Q/s320/atheism2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517010673719258674" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-63798184132022273892010-09-14T18:12:00.000-07:002010-09-14T18:17:09.769-07:00The Atonement Dilemma: An AddendumSome months ago, I wrote <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/01/atonement-dilemma.html">a short essay</a> arguing that the Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement, at least as understood in the orthodox sense that most Christians adhere to, is plagued with fundamental inherent inconsistencies. In the Christian mythology, Jesus Christ is said to have suffered and died for the sins of humanity. If that is the case, I asked, should Jesus Christ not be acting as a placeholder in hell for eternity? Orthodox Christians believe that Jesus took upon himself the sins that condemned all humanity to an eternity separated from God in hell. Therefore, in order for the theological structure to remain internally consistent, Jesus would necessarily have to remain in hell permanently in order for any Christian to enter heaven.<br /><br />I now realize that my formulation of the problem in that previous essay did not take into account the mythology in its entirety, and the feedback from my readers served to remind me of this. The reason why Jesus could take upon himself the sins of all people and yet avoid being permanently trapped in hell is because he is God, and therefore holds the power to avoid that fate by a fiat act of will. For example, one reader responded as follows:<br /><blockquote>To use a really lame analogy, if you take a balloon full of air and try and submerge it underwater, it is going to fight its way to the service. So too because the nature of hell (which IS separation from God) could not contain God Himself, the process of atonement somehow broke the gates. On His return from hell, those who clung (and do cling) to Him in hope are lifted out of death and decay as well. If not bodily yet, in spirit yes.<br /></blockquote><br />In a similar vein, another reader responded by pointing out that<br /><blockquote>I don't think your representation holds, because there's nothing that said Jesus had to go to hell forever. There is a difference between us (the debtor) and Jesus (the one who paid.) The scriptures say that while the penalty of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life.<br /><br />One other thing, if God exists and the Bible is His word, God can do whatever He wants. There is no absolute standard of 'justice' above Him, because justice is defined by Him. Also, what is sufficient is defined by Him as well.<br /></blockquote><br />While this aspect of the mythology is certainly relevant to explaining how Jesus Christ could have escaped the fate of permanent placeholder in hell for the redeemed, the more important insight and the more pertinent point to be made is that <span style="font-style:italic;">there was no sacrifice</span>. If Jesus was trapped in hell forever, that would be a true sacrifice. I am not saying that, according to the story, Jesus did not suffer and die brutally. But this would not hold a candle to the claim that Elvis Presley died for our sins. Elvis stayed dead! Jesus, on the other hand, took an extended weekend and then returned to his position as God afterwards. As revealed by Mel Gibson, Jesus experienced horrible suffering and pain that was literally excruciating. But Jesus did not even experience the most horrible pain and suffering in human history. Compare, for example, the alleged sufferings of Jesus Christ at his execution to people who were kept alive for long periods in the midst of torture during the Spanish Inquisition. I have seen Gibson's film <span style="font-style:italic;">The Passion of the Christ</span> several times (it was not as good as the book, by the way). I have read several historians who point out that as bloody as Gibson's portrayal was, it was very commonplace at that time in history for people to be scourged, brutally beaten and crucified to the same degree experienced by the Christ in the film.<br /><br />Thus, the relative brevity and commonplace nature of Jesus' sufferings compared to the level of suffering experienced by people in all of human history pose another problem threatening the credibility of the atonement scenario. But the problems do not end there. Suppose a godlike being came to you and presented this offer to you: "You are going to be beaten brutally, scourged, have your skin ripped out, stabbed, and nailed to a tree until you die. You are then going to stay dead for three days. Then, when the three days are over, you become God, the supreme ruler of the universe." Who in their right mind would not sign up for that? Far from being the deal of the century, this would be the deal of an eternity. It is anything but a sacrifice.<br /><br />The Christian notion of substitutionary atonement is essentially that God sacrificed himself <span style="font-style:italic;">to</span> himself as a workaround or loophole for rules that he devised himself. If God can do whatever he wants and still retain his perfect morality, with no absolute standard of justice being above him, he could have simply forgiven all people, or at least admitted that his original rules were patently absurd. For what exactly is the actual point in masochistically taking on that extra punishment? If you want to forgive an individual or a group of people, then forgive them, most especially if you are the one who is in charge of making up the rules concerning whether your special creations can be forgiven or not.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-28997488308465454482010-09-06T04:23:00.000-07:002012-07-17T03:31:47.268-07:00Gambling with Pascal: A Refutation of the Foundational Basis of Ray Comfort's MinistryIt is a fact that there does not as yet exist a single argument for the existence of a god that is not either an appeal to emotion or a logical fallacy. This being the case, it is only natural that those of us who realize this fact should come to expect that more and more theistic apologists should begin to understand this as well. But in this regard we often witness the opposite; the observation that very little in essence has changed in apologetic approaches from its earliest practice is quite startling upon consideration.<br /><br />I can find no better demonstration of this fact than the popularity and influence of the ministry of Ray Comfort and his sidekick Kirk Cameron, of <em>Way of the Master</em> infamy [<span style="font-weight:bold;">1</span>]. As utterly stupid as these two figures are, it cannot be denied that they are extremely popular in the mainstream evangelical community and have become household names in American Christian culture. This means, of course, that there are actually many Christians who sincerely consider Ray and Kirk to be competent defenders of the Christian faith. This is a very interesting phenomenon considering that, in the words of my friend Martin Wagner, these two men do not have enough brain cells between them to power a very tiny flashlight.<br /><br />On their website, Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort offer an online course on Biblical Evangelism, which teaches Christians how to effectively share and defend their faith [<span style="font-weight:bold;">2</span>]. This course has also been published as a book, entitled <em>The School of Biblical Evangelism</em>, which consists of 101 lessons which take the form of 5-10 page chapters. Several aspects of this coursework are quite telling. For one thing, their entire approach throughout is to largely bypass intellectual argumentation in favor of purely emotional appeals and guilt trips. They are quite open about adopting this approach on their own website and televison show. What follows is a choice sampling of their open admisssions to being anti-intellectual and proud of it:<br /><br /><blockquote>"These lessons will teach you to overcome your fears by using a proven, powerfully effective way to make the gospel make sense. You won't be at a loss for words. You don't need to be an expert in apologetics. Instead, you'll learn the forgotten biblical principle of bypassing the intellect (the place of argument) and speaking directly to the conscience (the place of the knowledge of right and wrong) — the way Jesus did"<br />(<a href="http://www.wayofthemaster.com/btc.shtml">http://www.wayofthemaster.com/btc.shtml</a>)<br /><br />"[T]hese questions [intellectual objections from the non-believer] can often be arguments in disguise to sidetrack you from the 'weightier matters of the Law.' While apologetics (arguments for God’s existence, creation vs. evolution, etc.) are legitimate in evangelism, they should merely be 'bait,' with the Law of God being the 'hook' that brings the conviction of sin. Those who witness solely in the realm of apologetical argument may just get an intellectual decision rather than a repentant conversion.<br /><br />Always pull the sinner back to his responsibility before God on Judgment Day, as Jesus did in Luke 13:1–5."<br />(<a href="http://www.livingwaters.com/witnessingtool/watchforredherrings.shtml">http://www.livingwaters.com/witnessingtool/watchforredherrings.shtml</a>)<br /><br /><br />Ray: We'll teach you how to bypass the intellect (the place of argument) and speak directly to the conscience, the place of the knowledge of right and wrong.<br /><br />Kirk: You don't have to be an expert in apologetics or archaeology, and you don't have to know Greek! Just let love swallow your fears and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.<br />(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SmEu8DaM58">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SmEu8DaM58</a>).<br /><br />Kirk: When you learn how to speak to a person's conscience, and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution seems to disappear.<br /><br />Ray: Now this is real good news for people like me. It means I don't have to become an expert in the "fossil record." And it also means I don't have to learn words like "Rhinorhondothackasaurus."<br />(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohCDWDsUefk&p=B772A24C0D6113CF&playnext=1&index=27">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohCDWDsUefk&p=B772A24C0D6113CF&playnext=1&index=27</a>).<br /></blockquote><br />Interestingly enough, Kirk and Ray have stumbled (albeit through no intellect or cleverness of their own) across an approach that is in fact quite effective, even when applied to some people who do have a solid grounding in intellectual thought. Because of the way the human brain is hardwired to function, one's entire education, intelligence, critical reasoning and every other aspect of our self that relates to rationality can literally be bypassed if the barriers separating the outermost layers of the brain from the brain's center are psychologically manipulated in such a manner that entry is made possible. This is because the human brain is structured in such a way the function of critical thinking and rationality resides in its outermost layers. The height of our emotional being, as well as the most animalistic and instinctive part of our being, resides in the center of the brain, and this emotional capacity decreases the closer we progress in study to the outer edge of the brain. Thus, that part of our psyche that is operated by the center of the brain is the area most susceptible to fear tactics and appeals to emotion. Depending on how strong these tactics are, they do have the potential to override the rationality of even a highly intelligent and critical thinker. This potential to override the intellect is especially strong in cases involving intelligent people who simply have never devoted much deep thought concerning what they believe and why, and what they do not believe. The evangelicals who exploit this psychological state of affairs most often target these people. The success of the street preaching of Kirk and Ray, for example, depends entirely on their targeting of people who have not developed the critical thinking skills necessary for realizing the emptiness of their claims.<br /><br />Then, of course, there are many people who are purposefully <i>not</i> shown in the final edit of Kirk and Ray's television show depicting their street preaching adventures. These are the people who have a background in active critical thinking, who have a solid understanding of skepticism and are well-educated and well-read, and who have thought long and hard about what they believe and why and what they reject and why. Those of us who grasp these qualities will immediately and clearly see how embarrassingly pathetic Kirk and Ray's course on Biblical Evangelism is. Numerous examples abound, but one of the most important in my mind is the fact that lessons involving how to provide evidences of God's existence is almost non-existent in the coursework. Out of 101 lesson chapters, only five chapters near the end address the subject of atheism. Only one of these addresses "proofs" of God's existence, in an almost begrudging, impatient manner that makes it obvious to the reader that very little thought was given to the argument.<br /><br />But the question of the existence or non-existence of God is a very basic one; one would think that this question should have a prominent place at the beginning of any discussion involving someone who lacks a belief in God. In fact, that starting point should be basic regardless of whether the person targeted by the evangelist believes in God or not. If an evangelist tried to convince me to become a Christian, it would do no good for her to begin by telling me that I am obliged to worship her deity or dedicate my entire being to its will. I have yet to be convinced that the deity being described even exists in the first place. But Kirk and Ray have failed to apply even that basic logic to their initial evangelistic approach. If he can get away with it, Ray Comfort will always avoid discussions that prompt him to provide evidences for theism. Of course, this is because he does not have these evidences, which is also why he places such great and enthusiastic emphasis on "bypassing the intellect." And who better to teach the art of bypassing the intellect than two idiots who have no intellect, and who even admit they have no need of it?<br /><br />The "proof" that Ray Comfort's course instructs the aspiring evangelist to present to the unbeliever is nothing more than that well-known and tired runaway analogy that has been overly refuted in multiple ways for over one hundred years: the analogy between buildings and paintings and builders/painters, extrapolated to the universe as a whole, onto which the label of "Creation" is slapped to uphold the analogy. Ray ends up invoking Romans 1:20 as his main piece of evidence, using the Christian holy book to "prove" the Christian God exists. Beyond this extremely illogical and circular argument, Ray continues to avoid any depth of thought on this issue, as we see in the opening of lesson chapter 70, on "How to Prove the Existence of God":<br /><br /><blockquote>To one who examines the evidence, there can be no doubt that God exists. The fact of the existence of the Creator is axiomatic (self-evident). That's why the Bible says, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). The professing atheist denies the common sense given to him by God, and defends his belief by thinking that the question "Who made God?" can't be answered. This, he thinks, gives him license to deny the existence of God [<span style="font-weight:bold;">3</span>].<br /></blockquote><br />Apparently, Ray cannot manage to remain consistent even in the same short paragraph. If the "fact" of the existence of God is axiomatic, why must one "examine the evidence" before being clear of all doubt? Why would examination of evidence even be required? Notice also what this axiomatic assumption does: even in a chapter purporting to provide evidences of God's existence, the approach is still to assume at the outset that God's existence is a given (i.e., the claim that professing atheists deny the common sense given to us by God, and that this is why we are atheists). In the previous chapter, Ray had declared that there is no such thing as a true atheist. Thus, it is likely to be this idiotic assumption that all professing atheists either secretly believe in God or are truly agnostics that encourages him and Kirk to take a detour from delivering evidence-based justifications for belief in God. I also find it exceedingly ironic that Ray Comfort writes that in order to know God exists, "all we need are eyes that can see and a brain that works . . . The only ones who have trouble with its simplicity are those who profess to be intellectuals. No wonder man is searching for intelligent life in the universe" [<span style="font-weight:bold;">4</span>]. The reason this blows the irony meter is seen in the self-contradictory way Ray concludes the chapter:<br /><br /><blockquote>In a world where the rich get richer and the poor get stomped on, we are informed that God has gone to the other end of the line with the message of everlasting life. How has He done that? Simply by choosing that which is weak, base, and despised. You can see this by asking a skeptic, "Do you believe that the following biblical accounts actually happened?"<br /><br />Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, Jonah and the whale, Joshua and the walls of Jericho, Samson and his long hair, Daniel and the lion's den, Moses and the Red Sea.<br /><br />Of course he doesn't. To say that he believed such fantastic stories would mean that he would have to surrender his intellectual dignity. Who in his right mind would ever do that? The answer is simply those who understand that God has chosen foolish, weak, base, and despised things of the world to confound those who think they are wise [<span style="font-weight:bold;">5</span>].<br /></blockquote><br />Here we are basically being told that aggressive anti-intellectualism and utter ignorance should be proudly displayed, because in the deluded minds of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, such loud displays of blind and credulous acceptance of superstition is proof that God exists and that he has turned his backs on us critical thinkers. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Pascal's Wager: A Sucker's Bet<br /></span>As it turns out, Ray and Kirk's Biblical Evangelism course as a whole depends most heavily on Pascal's Wager, far more than any other terrible argument. Long before actually working on establishing the existence of their deity, they instruct their aspiring evangelist students to begin by throwing the Ten Commandments at the unbeliever in the hopes of causing him or her to feel guilty, embarrassed or otherwise uncomfortable about themselves, at which point they switch to the fear tactic of threatening eternal torture if he or she does not convert. Their twisted routine is described in their own words as follows:<br /><br /><blockquote>He [Jesus] used the Law to bring "the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:19,20). We can do the same by asking, "Do you think you have kept the Ten Commandments?" Most people think they have, so quickly follow with, "Have you ever told a lie?" This<em> is</em> confrontational, but if it's asked in a spirit of love and gentleness, there won't be any offense. This is because the "work of the law [is] written in their hearts" and their conscience will also bear "witness" (Romans 2:15).<br /><br />Jesus confronted the rich young ruler in Luke 18:18-21 with five of the Ten Commandments and there was no offense. Have confidence that the conscience will do its work and affirm the truth of each Commandment. Don't be afraid to gently ask, "Have you ever stolen something, even if it's small?"<br /><br />Learn how to open up the spirituality of the Law and show how God considers lust to be the same as adultery (Matthew 5:27,28) and hatred the same as murder (1 John 3:15). Make sure you get an admission of guilt. Then ask the person, "If God judges you by the Ten Commandments on Judgment Day, do you think you will be innocent or guilty?" If he says he will be innocent, ask, "Why is that?" If he admits his guilt, ask, "Do you think you will go to heaven or hell?" [<span style="font-weight:bold;">6</span>].<br /></blockquote><br />After pressuring their victims to admit guilt, Ray and Kirk then charge the unbeliever with being a liar, a thief, an adulterer at heart, a murderer at heart, etc. Their tactics make about as much sense as saying that if you have ever told the truth in your life, that makes you a truth-teller (and, as we all know, all real truth-tellers will say that they have lied at least once in their lifetimes). Ray and Kirk apparently have no grasp whatsoever of the difference between being imperfect and being evil, and their erroneous equivalence between minor imperfections (including thought crimes) and grave immorality that is harmful to society is similar in scope to claiming that anyone who changes the oil in vehicle is an expert mechanic. Again, their goal in employing these tactics is to shame their subjects adequately enough so that their intellect is completely discarded, making them susceptible to their array of emotional appeals and threats of divine punishment. Ray and Kirk are hoping that it will not even occur to the person they are trying to convert to request that the evangelist present evidence that the being they are being told to pray to and ask forgiveness from even exists in the first place!<br /><br />The shady sales technique in play here is to convince potential buyers to impulsively purchase their product, without first demonstrating that they actually need their product. To Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron I say: Prove to me first that God exists and then that this God is necessarily the Christian God, before telling me I need to go to this God for any kind of forgiveness. Their entire methodology depends on peoples' intellect, an intellect that would lead them to ask for such qualifiers, being placed on the back burner. But of course, Ray and Kirk do not realize their dependency on people's gullibility and credulity, because their intellect is not even on the back burner. It is non-existent.<br /><br />Their promotion of religious impulse-buying is closely related to their aforementioned dependence on the all-too-transparent fallacy known as Pascal's Wager. In addition to gleaning satisfaction from putting others down as a way of over-compensating for their own utter lack of intelligence, Ray and Kirk are motivated by the delusionally paranoid notion that, in the words of the infamous eighteenth-century clergyman Jonathan Edwards, "[T']here is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up" [<span style="font-weight:bold;">7</span>]. This is perhaps seen most clearly Lesson 23 entitled "The Reality of Hell." In this lesson, our authors enter into a discussion of what they see as being the implications if the Christian fundamentalists are wrong about Judgment Day and hell, all the while revealing the hilarious and complete cluelessness with which they delve into their polemic:<br /><br /><blockquote>Here's the good news, though, if there is no hell: You won't know a thing after you die. It will be the end. No heaven, no hell. Just nothing. You won't even realize that it's good news.<br /><br />Here's the bad news if the Bible is right and there is eternal justice: You will find yourself standing before the judgment throne of a holy God. Think of it. A holy and perfect Creator has seen your thought-life and every secret sin you have ever committed. You have a multitude of sins, and God must by nature carry out justice. Ask Him to remind you of the sins of your youth. Ask Him to bring to remembrance your secret sexual sins, the lies, the gossip, and other idle words. You may have forgotten your past sins, but God hasn't. Hell will be your just dessert (exactly what you deserve), and you will have no one to blame but yourself. This is the claim of the Bible. If you don't believe it, it is still true. It will still happen [<span style="font-weight:bold;">8</span>].</blockquote><br />Again, it cannot be stressed enough that at no point thus far in the course has the existence of this "holy and perfect Creator" or the existence of any kind of afterlife ever been established by way of evidence. These things are axiomatically assumed as a given at the outset. Rather than laying out a coherent argument that demonstrates the truth of their claims as the end product of a carefully-reasoned investigation process, the aspiring evangelists who are learning from this course are directed to answer all objections from non-believers with the Mother of all Logical Fallacies. Any experienced Christian apologist with even half a brain realizes that Pascal's Wager is a defunct and stupid argument whose utter unability to address anything of substance killed its validity long ago. It offers all the wrong reasons to believe and, when boiled down to its essence, is nothing more than an appeal to consequences and an appeal to fear. What is even more telling is the fact that Ray and Kirk know they are using fear as a tactic to manipulate a conversion-friendly reaction from their victims, and admit as much, when they write, "[T]he Bible discloses an often-overlooked tool that we can use to reach the lost. That tool is the 'fear of death' . . . Every human being in his right mind has a fear of death (Hebrews 2:15)" [<span style="font-weight:bold;">9</span>].<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Greatest Gamble</span><br />Why exactly is Pascal's Wager a defunct and stupid argument that fails to address anything of substance? In answering this question, I find it useful to turn to a brief critique of a particular episode of Ray's and Kirk's television program The Way of the Master which is devoted to the subject of Pascal's Wager [<span style="font-weight:bold;">10</span>]. In this episode, entitled "The Greatest Gamble," Ray and Kirk prowl the streets of Las Vegas. Standing inside a bustling casino, Ray first asks the viewer, "So what is the greatest gamble? I mean, what are the highest stakes?" We then cut to a scene outdoors where Ray asks a man, "Would you ever bet your life? Would you, for ten million dollars, play Russian Roulette with one bullet and a six-shooter? Ten million dollars!" The man shakes his head, says no, and tells Ray, "Because it's your life . . . I value my life."<br /><br />Ray and Kirk repeat this question to six other people they stumble across in the streets of Vegas. In all, almost half the people interviewed said they would not gamble their life in that way. Five say they would be willing to go through with that gamble, at which point Kirk and Ray open up a briefcase full of cash with a handgun lying inside and present it to the person. All but one of those who at first said they would go through with the game end up backing out at this point. The one exception is a man identified as Nick, who without hesitation reaches for the revolver upon being presented with the briefcase. "Give it to me. Let's do it," he tells Ray. "You're going to try?" Ray inquires incredulously. The footage of this street interview is cut at this point. We are not shown what happened next, most likely because they did not allow him to go through with it and did not want to kill the drama they had built up.<br /><br />One man, closer to the end of the episode, even goes so far as to say he would play the game of roulette with three rounds chambered instead of simply one: "For ten million dollars! Ten million bucks, man! You don't even make that in a lifetime!" When Ray tells him, "You're not going to have a lifetime if the bullets are in the cylinder," the man replies confidently, "That's a risk you've got to take. That's the way I look at it." Ray's very next question to this man is, "Do you believe in Heaven and in Hell?"<br /><br />Those of us with our thinking caps on can clearly see where this is heading.<br /><br />Ray and Kirk then proceed to explain the point they are attempting to make, an explanation that involves Ray and Kirk making an argument as to why it is reasonable to believe in an afterlife, and specifically in hell. They provide two "very convincing evidences" (which are not evidences at all) that hell is real: 1) The rationality of divine justice; if there is no eternal torture chamber, they claim, then God is unjust and couldn't care less about the sins of humanity and 2) the existence of the human conscience, which they allege equips humans with a built-in knowledge at birth of right and wrong. Following this Non Sequitur-soaked two-pronged argument, their reasoning goes like this:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ray</span>: So what is the biggest gamble? I mean, what are the highest stakes? It is to say there is no Hell. And if you're wrong and you go there, you're going to lose your most prized possession: You're going to lose your very soul! (<em>4:37 - 4:54</em>).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Kirk</span>: So how will you do on Judgment Day? Will you be innocent, or will you be guilty? In light of the fact that God sees your thought life and every sin done in darkness, do you think when you die you'll go to Heaven or Hell? Please, don't gamble with your own soul. You can't afford to be wrong! Simply be honest before God. Confess your sins to him, and then turn from them once and for all and put your faith in Jesus Christ to save you. Then obey the Bible. Read it daily. Your obedience is proof of your love for God. God demonstrated his love for you when he sent his son to die on the cross and take your punishment upon himself. Listen to what Jesus said: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (<em>23:16 - 24:13</em>).</blockquote><br />The analogy presented by Ray and Kirk fails to even get off the ground, and showing why this is the case also shows why Pascal's Wager completely fails as a valid argument. In a game of Russian Roulette, the gambler has a 1 in 6 chance of dying via a shot in the head at point-blank range, which is the penalty. There is absolutely no comparison to Pascal's Wager, where the odds of being hit with the penalty have never been calculated, as far as I am aware. Who knows what such odds would be? As far as anyone knows, the odds of "losing my soul" in this spiritual game of Russian Roulette could very well be one in a million! After all, Christianity is not the only religion that threatens eternal punishment for not believing. The very existence of even one belief system or worldview different from and/or incompatible with Christianity that threatens its own harsh penalty for non-belief destroys the validity of Pascal's Wager, for obvious reasons. The Wager relies on a Special Pleading fallacy. Therefore, if the Wager is to be applied consistently in such a way as to avoid special pleading, we are not left with the simplistic choice put on the table by Ray and Kirk. We are instead left with a choice between literally thousands of different belief systems that all conflict with each other [<span style="font-weight:bold;">11</span>]. Seen in this light, choosing non-belief in any purported god, religion or unsubstantiated worldview (pending demonstrable and verifiable evidence, of course) is clearly exceedingly more reasonable than choosing any one of hundreds of religions or unsubstantiated worldviews solely out of fear of being wrong and ending up experiencing divine retribution [<span style="font-weight:bold;">12</span>].<br /><br />My closing remarks are directed at Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, should one or both ever stumble across this: When your combined IQ level finally reaches above room temperature, then come back and try again to present a serious argument for theism first and then for Christianity in particular. However, I am quite confident that the day your collective IQ approaches that value, hell will have frozen over anyway.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">NOTES</span><br /><br /><b>1.</b> Kent Hovind is a close contender in my book, coming in at a close second. But of course, his current hiatus as a prison patron has put a considerable hamper on his popularity and influence. See Nathan Dickey, "Inside the Mind of a Creationist: A Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's 'Doctoral Dissertation.'" <em>The Journeyman Heretic</em> (blog), 23 February 2010, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html</a> (accessed 6 September 2010).<br /><br /><b>2.</b> <a href="http://www.biblicalevangelism.com/register">http://www.biblicalevangelism.com/register</a> (accessed 6 September 2010).<br /><br /><b>3.</b> Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, <em>The School of Biblical Evangelism</em> (Gainesville, FL: Bridge-Logos Publishers, 2004), pp. 464-65.<br /><br /><b>4.</b> Ibid., p. 466.<br /><br /><b>5.</b> Ibid., p. 469-70<br /><br /><b>6.</b> Ibid., p. 118.<br /><br /><b>7.</b> Jonathan Edwards (1741), "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., <em>Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes</em> Revised Edition (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. 165.<br /><br /><b>8.</b> Cameron and Comfort, <em>Biblical Evangelism</em>, p. 155.<br /><br /><b>9.</b> Ibid., p. 185.<br /><br /><b>10.</b> "The Greatest Gamble."<em> The Way of the Master</em>, Trinity Broadcasting Network (KTBN, Santa Ana). For those who have even a slight masochistic bent in their entertainment choices will not want to miss this episode. It really is that rich: <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5388605400616793608#">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5388605400616793608#</a> (accessed 6 September 2010).<br /><br /><b>11.</b> This is not even to mention the weighty problem presented by the sheer number of divergent denomination within Christianity itself. The fact that there are about 38,000 Christian denominations means that no matter what kind of Christian one becomes (including "non-denominational") there will always be at least (and most likley many) other branches of Christianity that will declare him or her a false Christian, a heretic, an apostate, etc, who is therefore headed to hell. Ray and Kirk have not addressed this problem, namely that becoming a Christian is more or less analogous to playing the lottery. Thus, Pascal's Wager fails even when applied within a single religion. Can anybody say fractal wrongness?<br /><br /><b>12.</b> The counterpoints to Pascal's Wager I have presented here is hardly the extent of the problem with this apologetic. A more exhaustive treatment of this subject, by way of a point-by-point refutation of "The Greatest Gamble" episode, is in the works.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-77247454424551421622010-07-03T07:06:00.000-07:002010-09-15T01:53:14.548-07:00The 32,000 Virgins of God and Moses<b><i>"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."</i></b> ~ Mark Twain<br /><br /><b><i>"The death of one is a tragedy / But death of a million is just a statistic."</i></b> ~ Marilyn Manson<br /><br />The Biblical story of the Israelites' massacre of the Midianites and their capture of 32,000 virgin girls in the Old Testament stands as one of the clearest demonstrations of the fact that the Bible promotes great evil. The forcefulness of this particular story is shown by the fact that no matter what form or version of Christianity or Judaism one chooses to embrace, there is no possibility of shying away from the truth that this story portrays a horrible evil as just and good. <br /><br />The story is found in the Book of Numbers, chapter 31. The first aspect of this story that needs to be emphasized is expressed in the first two verses, which read, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 'Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.'" From the very beginning of this chapter, it is clearly stated that Moses was not the only one who ordered the attack. The order originates from God, who uses Moses as his primary messenger and overseer of the orders. Thus, Jehovah cannot be let off the hook for what ensues in the remainder of this chapter. This war of vengeance against the Midianites was not the work of Moses, but was conceived and planned by God. <br /><br />Moses dutifully sends out 12,000 of his men (one thousand from each tribe) to make war against the Midianites. The Israelite soldiers slay all the Midianite males, and take all of the women, children, goods, cattle and sheep captive before burning down all their cities and castles. The Israelite soldiers return to their camp at the plains of Moab, bringing the captives and spoils of war and presenting them to Moses and Eleazar the Priest. Moses is furious; he asks the soldiers, "Have ye saved all the women alive?" (v. 15). Moses proceeds to explain irately that "Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the Congregation of the Lord" (v. 16).<br /><br />The Midianite men, of whom there were no survivors, had turned their backs on God and therefore deserved to die. But Moses is here telling his army that the women who had been taken captive were the ones responsible for leading them away from God in the first place, and that consequently they were deserving of death. And because the sins of the fathers are to be carried out upon the sons, Moses declares all of the little boys worthy of death. Thus, Moses commands, "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man, by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (vv. 17-18). Thus, after completely destroying the entire city of the Midianites, the Israelite army kills all the women and children they took captive, except for the virgin girls. After this massacre is carried out, the Israelite army undergoes a process of ritual purification outside the camp for seven days as prescribed by Eleazar, then return to divide the spoils. Moses has another conversation with God in which God instructs him on exactly how to divide up the spoil. Verses 25-47 describe in detail the process by which a thorough inventory of the spoils is made and divided up among the warriors who took part in the battle and the rest of the tribes making up the Congregation of Israel, which portion was given to the priests, and the amount that God demanded as a tax to himself. It turns out that there are 32,000 virgin girls in total (v. 35). Of those, a total of thirty-two are turned over to the temple as God's tribute portion (v. 40). <br /><br />I have read through this chapter in the Book of Numbers several times. I know the story very well, to the point where I can readily imagine a number of different ways a fundamentalist preacher might deliver a sermon on this particular passage. The most common rationalization employed by a fundamentalist preacher is likely the one that declares how unfortunate it is that God had to kill the Midianite men for turning their backs on him, that the men, women and little boys deserved death because of this, and yet proceeds to assert how wonderful it is that God spared all those young Midianite girls in his infinite love and mercy so that they could grow up in the service of the one true religion, knowing Jehovah and knowing his love! This is one of the most transparently ridiculous as well as despicable rationalizations one can concoct in an attempt to defend the story's immoral theme of young girls being raped after just witnessing all the people they love get killed by the people who are raping them. The Christian attempts at rationalizing the actions of God, Moses and the Israelite army in this story completely ignore this obvious implication. Rather, they prefer to focus their apologetic energies on pointing out the wickedness of the Midianites, much as they do with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis. <br /><br />Of course, it is also true that there are not many sermons being preached on this particular passage. While one could come up with ways to rationalize the story, it is not a particularly pleasant or relevant sermon to prepare, considering the vast array of other Bible passages to choose from. Indeed, I consulted SermonAudio.com, the Internet's largest library of audio sermons from conservative Christian churches, to get a sense of how often this passage is preached on. Out of over 335,000 sermons collected on the site, a mere 13 sermons based on Numbers 31 is to be found [<b>1</b>].<br /><br />In addition to standing as an example of extreme immorality portrayed as heroic justice, this story contains logical absurdities that become apparent when one does the math. Consider: how many people would the Israelites have to kill in order to end up with 32,000 virgins? On average, based on the population of girls age 0-17 in most U.S. cities of comparable size, a total population of about 300,000 is required to come up with a figure of 32,000 for girls in that age range. It should be duly noted that this figure is generous; it is likely that in the time period in which the Book of Numbers is set, girls were probably engaging in intercourse as early as age fourteen. We do not know for sure, of course. But in any case, a required total population of 300,000 to account for thirty-two thousand virgin girls is a good and generous estimate. Now, according to population figures from 2008, there are only 60 cities in the U.S. that have more than 300,000 in total population. Pittsburgh is at the bottom of that list at 60, with a population of 310,037 [<b>2</b>]. Thus, the Israelite army in our story would have had to wipe out the equivalent of Pittsburgh ca. 2008 in order to end up with 32,000 virgin girls. <br /><br />Let us place the numbers in perspective: 300,000 casualties of attack is one hundred 9/11s. It is <i>seventy times</i> the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in the Iraq War to date. But it is only half the number of Iraqis who have been killed to date. Exactly where did all of this take place? What huge city did the Midianites have? How were all of the women and children, 32,000 of which are young virgin girls to be spared, corralled to a location where the rest are killed en masse? <br /><br />There are many numbers in the Bible that are demonstrably and completely wrong. This is one particularly implausible example. There has been an enormous population explosion in just the last century. It is doubtful that there even existed cities the size of Pittsburgh at that time in ancient history. While it is true that the Roman Empire was comprised of five million people by about 14 A.D., the Roman Empire was atypically enormous for one city. In fact, it constituted the entire known world and was spread out in many wide-ranging locations. But historical/archaeological evidence for the existence or plausibility of one city with 300,000 people in circa 1400s B.C. is lacking. Rather, we are presented with the picture of a roving band of murderous barbarians wandering in a desert, juxtaposed against very specific details concerning the Midianites. Throughout the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, there are numerous stories of the Israelites utterly destroying tribes left and right, stories that do not provide any specifics but only lengthy lists of destroyed and defeated tribes. The sheer number of people that were killed at the direct instructions of God add up quickly to a formidable figure in this manner. <br /><br />One of the most important considerations to come away with upon reading and contemplating this story is that no matter how Christians attempt to rationalize the details away, this story would be incredibly appalling even if it happened to concern a single family. Imagine this scenario: a loyal servant of Jehovah heads to the house next door and murders the father, the mother and the little boy because they were deserving. He spares the twelve year-old daughter of the murdered parents, keeping her to himself. <i>One instance</i>, applied to <i>one family</i> makes the scenario described in Numbers 31 one of the most immoral and appalling events that could possibly happen, as is readily recognized and acknowledged as such by all people. Yet it is presented as a moral requirement when this same act is carried out on a mass scale! Controversial rock musician Marilyn Manson had the right idea when he observed human nature to be such that too often we tend to perceive that "The death of one is a tragedy / But death of a million is just a statistic." <br /><br />The alternative to believing that this horrible slaughter of a city with a population size equivalent to Pittsburgh actually occurred is to concede that the Bible is wrong about the number. We certainly should hope that the numbers are very wrong! However, the important point to bear in mind is that it does not matter if the story is true or not. For the record, I do not think this story ever actually occurred; I contend that it is far-fetched and that the numbers are indeed all wrong. But this pales in importance, because the massacre and plunder is portrayed as something that was just and good. It is an act that God is described as having executed and placed his seal of approval on. If the events described in this story ever really happened, it would be an example of horrible evil. This is precisely why I agree with Mark Twain when he said, "If there is a God, he is a malign thug." In my estimation, Mark Twain was being particularly generous in his description of the God of the Bible, and "malign thug" is possibly the most pleasant description one could give to this fictional character. As some of my readers may remember, I have in past writings described the God of the Bible (specifically as depicted in Genesis) as an immature teenager who experiments carelessly with humankind. However, a more fitting parallel is to be made between God and Al Capone the farther one reads through the Old Testament. The God character certainly does develop into a malign thug, and today we are confronted with thugs for God, also known as radical evangelists. <br /><br />As always, I look forward to feedback from my Christian friends who may wish to exercise their apologetic skills. I can be convinced. <br /><br /><b>Notes</b> <br /><br />1. http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?chapter=31&keyword=Numbers&BibleOnly=true&currSection=sermonsbible.<br /><br />2. "Table 1: Annual Estimates of the Population for Incorporated Places Over 100,000, Ranked by July 1, 2008 Population: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008" (CSV). <i>2008 Population Estimates</i>. United States Census Bureau, Population Division.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14690284981533616443noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3535607023435193778.post-81470115205356059242010-06-06T21:15:00.000-07:002014-01-14T00:22:59.927-08:00Why Does God Not Stop Satan? A Response to Lavern<P ALIGN=Center>“<i>There could, he reasoned, be only one Creator, God, who was or had been primarily benignant. Yet all the evidence pointed to the co-existence of an evil creative principle, a Satan. God, then, must be a split or dual personality, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde, manifesting sometimes as the Devil. This duality . . . must be a form of what is commonly called schizophrenia.</i>”
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<P ALIGN=Center><b>~</b> Clark Ashton Smith [<b>1</b>]
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Some months ago, I wrote <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">a lengthy essay</a> critiquing the ideas put forth by the infamous creationist Kent Hovind, specifically focusing on his “doctoral dissertation” that he wrote in the early 1990s and which has just recently surfaced. At one point in that essay, I brought into the discussion a point relating to the relationship between God and Satan as depicted in the Bible. I raised the question of why God did not simply destroy Satan in the past or destroy him now, especially given God’s alleged omnipotence. For according to a literal reading of the Biblical story, Satan is a thorn in the side of both God and humans, being as he is the driving influence behind evil and suffering in the world. I posed the question as follows:
<blockquote>The bewildering question is this: Why is God content to treat the disease and not cure it? Why does God not kill Satan, who is allegedly the thorn in the side of humanity who inspires [humanity’s] shortcomings? The biblical story in its literal form makes no sense.
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Biblical literalists are often heard offering the explanation that God cannot destroy Satan now, because he's bound by the Bible to destroy Satan at the end of time. But then, the question that naturally comes next is who wrote the Bible? What they are essentially saying is that God bound himself to not incapacitate Satan, because God himself wrote the Bible which records Satan’s demise at the conclusion of all things, rather than early on [<b>2</b>].</blockquote>
The present essay is inspired by a video I recently came across, made by a freelance Christian theologian by the name of Lavern, which attempts to address this very question. This Christian commentator runs a YouTube channel whose handle is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TrustinJC/videos">“TrustInJC”</a> (which I can only assume stands for Johnny Cash), a channel devoted to short video messages discussing a number of different topics and issues relating to Christianity and the Bible. After having viewed the video, entitled “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNX5RFBC0o">Why Does God Not Stop Satan</a>,” I thought it worthwhile to review and analyze its message point-by-point, for the message given in it is directly relevant to the question I posed in that earlier essay [<b>3</b>].
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“TrustInJC” (or Lavern) begins:
<blockquote>Hello; Lavern here, and thank you for joining me. In this video, I’m going to attempt to answer a question that was put to me. The question was “Why does God not stop Satan?” Now, before I get into my answer, I’d like to make it clear that I’d really like to know what other people think on this matter, because I believe there’s a lot of atheists who ask this question and even Christians who are unsure why it is that Satan is allowed to roam so freely in the world today.
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Now, as far as my answer: The short answer is that God does in fact stop Satan. We have his promise in the prophecy that Satan will be thrown into the Lake of Fire. So we do know that God eventually does stop him, and stops him cold and for all eternity. The question is, then, why does he not do it sooner? Why is he not already stopping Satan? Why does he allow Satan to continue with what many people would consider to be madness? Well, there are actually a number of reasons for this. I’m probably not going to be able to answer them all in this video.
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One of the more common answers (and something I believe to be true) is that it’s not so much that God allows it, but rather that people allow it. And not just allow it; there are many people who embrace Satan. They reject God and embrace Satan. Scripture tells us that if we are not for Jesus, then we are against him. So consider all the people who are rejecting Christ. These people, then, are against him. So it can be no wonder then that Satan is so well accepted. People are actually embracing Satan; we see this in the media, we see this in government, we see it in the laws that are being passed, we see it in the movies, we see it in our music. People are embracing Satan. Now again, this doesn’t answer the question: “Well, why does God allow this?” So, I would say that it’s not so much that God allows it, but people are asking for it. And as long as people are asking for Satan, God’s going to allow it because they have the free will.</blockquote>
As we can see, the first explanation Lavern offers as to why God does not stop the efforts of Satan comes in the form of placing the blame on humanity’s alleged preference for Satan over God. Free will is then invoked to account for why this preference is upheld by the omnipotent deity. The first problem with this rationalization is that it is presented in the context of a gross oversimplification in the form of a black-and-white dichotomy that simply does not exist in the real world. Lavern subscribes to the transparently false notion that anybody who is not a Christian is against Jesus and is by default an ally of Satan. This idea, which displays an appalling level of understanding of diversity, is so obviously fallacious that it hardly warrants thorough debunking. By Lavern’s criterion, those who worship Satan would include Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintos, Scientologists, atheists/agnostics, and every single other belief system or viewpoint that does not fall within the category of orthodox Christianity. His claim that anyone who rejects Christ automatically embraces Satan is false primarily for the simple reason that Satan is a part of Christianity, while most other faiths and viewpoints listed are completely separate. It is also interesting to note close counterparts to the notion of evil in other religions. Muslims reject Christ, yet their doctrine also declares belief in and opposition to Shaitan, the Islamic equivalent of Satan and a comparable enemy of their God.
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Lavern also specifically refers to those who generally “reject God and embrace Satan.” No atheist believes that Satan exists, just as no atheist believes that God exists. As I pointed out above, belief in Satan presupposes belief in Christianity or Islam, which of course presupposes distinct forms of theism. Even the very small minority of atheists who identify as Satanists do not actually believe in Satan as an actual literal being, but rather revere Satan as a symbol of freedom. There is a vast spectrum of belief in between atheism and theism, of course, for which Lavern’s black-and-white false dichotomy simply does not fit. Many people are not “for” Jesus in a religiously devout sense, but see no particular reason to be against his teachings and philosophy. In fact, a great many people hold great respect and admiration for the alleged life and teachings of Jesus, including some atheists, without taking the unnecessary step of accepting the religiously-inspired, unreachable pedestal constructed for Jesus by adherents of orthodox Christianity. It is also important to point out that the percentage of people in the United States who actually believe in Satan as a literal being and worship him is extremely small.
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In view of this last point, one will notice the sheer ridiculousness of the level of paranoia Lavern harbors toward the world. He apparently sees Satan around every corner. He claims he can recognize the influence of the prince of darkness in the media, in government, in laws that are passed, in films and in music. Is this paranoia in the least bit warranted? I think not; such illusions of sensing evil everywhere often comes from an over-inflated sense of one’s own righteousness that is projected on everything contained in one's day-to-day purview to maintain and increase that delusional sense of ego-reinforcing self-righteousness. But perhaps this notion that a malevolent evil is around every corner provides a hint as to how Lavern might respond to the counter-arguments I raised above. I suspect he would respond by asserting that the majority of those who are not followers of Christ embrace Satan without knowing it consciously. But this amounts to a conspiracy theory run amok, and as with virtually every other conspiracy theory, this idea is unfounded and non-falsifiable. Unless Lavern can provide positive and convincing evidence that a being called Satan as understood by the Christian religion actually exists, and furthermore that Satan’s influence is everywhere exerted in society, we are justified in safely dismissing his conspiratorial claim that Satan’s machinations are everywhere around us whether consciously recognized or not. This means that in the context of the specific claims Lavern has made, one needs to ask him to identify <i>specific examples</i> of media outlets, government actions, laws, film and media that are the products of Satan’s inspiration, and specific reasons as to why these are legitimate examples. Otherwise, to simply assert that “Whatever is not of God is of Satan” is a meaningless statement. God has never been satisfactorily defined in such a way that all can agree what God is through independent verification.
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All these considerations aside, placing the blame for Satan’s continued dabbling with the creation of a supposedly all-powerful God on the free will of people who prefer Satan over God is singularly unsatisfactory as an explanation, at least in view of what Christianity actually teaches. The Bible contains numerous accounts of God intervening in human affairs in such a way that the volition of humans is placed on a back burner. God is apparently willing to intervene and directly violate the intentions of people at some times, and not at other times. The God of the Bible is a very arbitrary character in many ways. Why should the continued existence of his number-one antagonist and the source of humanity's problems be an exception? Why is God obliged to grant humanity their alleged preference of lord and master, but not obliged to grant humanity their other desires and choices? Many Christians are fond of describing God as a caring parent-figure who is only looking out for his creations’ best interests. This portrayal is often put forth as their explanation for why God does not always allow people to experience what their free will choice would result in. If Christians such as Lavern are correct in arguing that it is not God so much as it is people that allow Satan his continued existence through their free will preference, then Christians who adhere to the “caring parent figure” picture of God are obviously not taking this into account or their conception of God is simply wrong. If Lavern’s deity and devil really do exist, then perhaps we should all be desperately wishing, in the interest of humanity, that Garth Brooks was speaking of real possibilities in his song “Unanswered Prayers,” in which he sings,
<blockquote><i>Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers</i> / <i>Remember when you're talkin’ to the man upstairs</i> / <i>That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care</i> / <i>Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.</i></blockquote>
Moreover, if God is so very constrained by the free will of his creations that he is bound to refrain from decisively curing humanity's disease, why speak of him as all-powerful?
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Lavern continues:
<blockquote>But there is more to it. There is another answer as well. And for that we have to go right back to Genesis where it all began, where Satan had the first contact with humans, that being Adam and Eve. Scripture tells us, through the writings of Enoch, that God planted the Tree for the purpose of revealing to Adam his sinful nature. For God knew the sinful and the carnal nature that was within Adam. But Adam didn’t. And so God planted the Tree for the purpose of revealing to Adam his sinful nature. And Satan was also part of this plan. Satan was allowed to tempt Adam and Eve. He was allowed to place into their minds these thoughts, these ideas that they could be like God if they ate of this Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And so then, through this temptation from Satan, their lustful desires (that to be like God) and their prideful heart all came to the surface and was revealed through their actions when they finally gave in and ate of that fruit. And so we see that Satan and this Tree both actually had a purpose into revealing the true nature of Adam and Eve, their true sinful, evil, rebellious nature.</blockquote>
This is all very interesting in its wild speculation, as well as quite bewildering. Lavern is raising far more questions and quandaries than he is answering. My first point in response is a minor one, but one I consider worth raising awareness about. Almost all modern Christian creationists believe that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was the devil in disguise. But nowhere in the Bible is this either stated or implied, neither in the third chapter of Genesis nor in the Book of Revelation and in no passage in between. There is no unambiguous internal biblical support for thinking that the ancient authors of Genesis had what modern theologians think of as Satan in mind at all when describing the serpent in the garden. But I digress . . .
<P>
Lavern cites the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings of Enoch in his analysis of the Adam and Eve story, specifically for the purpose of supporting his interpretation that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was planted by God in proximity to Adam’s and Eve’s habitation as a means of intentionally tempting them into sin. This is interesting in a number of respects. First, Lavern’s interpretation implies that God created Adam and Eve with a built-in sinful nature that they were not aware of. Second, this interpretation likens the Tree of Knowledge to the Pauline interpretation of the Law of Moses. Lavern states that God planted the Tree of Knowledge for the sole purpose of intentionally provoking Adam’s dormant sinful nature into the open [<b>4</b>]. But the analogy to the Pauline doctrine concerning the Mosaic Law is unwarranted. God would have no need to reveal humans’ fallen nature as a means to demonstrate to them their need for his salvation if God had not created humans with an inner evil nature to begin with. Such an “installation” makes no sense whatsoever. Most interesting of all, Lavern states that Satan was a central part of God’s purposes. What he suggests is that God allows Satan to continue wreaking havoc in the lives of people because Satan is conveniently conducive to “revealing our true nature.”
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If what Lavern is suggesting is true, the implication is that God created the first humans with a “sinful, evil, rebellious nature” at the outset and that God’s first occupying interest in humans was to tease their evil natures out of their dormant state and into a manifestation that would reveal to Adam and Eve this nature they did not know they possessed. Does this understanding strike anybody else as very odd? What possible reason would God have to create the first humans with a built-in evil nature lying just under the surface? And what is God’s motive for wanting to reveal this dark side of their nature to them as his very first exercise in interacting with them? Perhaps a motive to compel his creations by guilt to be subservient to him is what is at work here.
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<a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">In my aforementioned essay</a> critiquing Kent Hovind and creationism, I write, “God’s first mistake was to facilitate the first two humans’ fatal screw-up by placing the Tree of Knowledge in the middle of the Garden of Eden, not to mention arbitrarily declaring it forbidden.” Apparently, Lavern would agree that the fall of the first humans was, in fact, facilitated by God (with the help of Satan no less), but that it was no mistake and was intentional. <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">In that same essay</a>, I also posed this question and comment: “What is the divine reasoning behind staging and choreographing situations and conditions in just such a way that disaster is predictable, including the placing of these people in a specific locale in close proximity to a constant temptation? This is rarely addressed by the biblical literalists and never given an explanation that preserves God’s powers of reasoning.” Lavern has actually addressed this question. He has also furnished an explanation, derived from a pseudepigraphical text, that does in fact preserve God’s powers of reasoning (although very loosely). But this is done at the undeniable expense of a picture of the God of the Bible that is omnibenevolent or one whose intrinsic nature is goodness and love. The God that Lavern describes is strikingly malevolent and capricious. Lavern’s interpretation of the biblical God does rationalize what otherwise appears to be fatal errors of judgment, but the rationalization is immediately recognized as irreconcilable with his alleged nature of perfect goodness and love. Then again, my statement in the same essay referred to above may also apply: “If the fundamentalist version of Christianity were actually true, God is perhaps best conceptualized as a teenager who is experimenting on a cosmic scale, not fully understanding exactly what he is doing with our race.”
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The major point to take home from this is that, in the process of attempting to answer the question of why God does not stop Satan, Lavern has stated unambiguously that God and Satan are allied together for a common purpose. God is using the skills of Satan to throw guilt in the faces of his new creations for some twisted reason, which is presumably what Satan is also interested in doing. They both glean something out of this tempting game, and so they work together. The implications of Lavern’s statements appear to have escaped his own attention. If God and Satan are working together for a common purpose, then the reason God does not stop Satan is obvious! In Lavern’s scenario, stopping Satan would be against God’s interest! Not only does this mean that Lavern cannot say God is omnibenevolent and remain consistent, but his scenario also means that God is not all-powerful on his own to accomplish his twisted purposes. In view of the first reason Lavern offered above, perhaps it is little wonder that God is willing to grant humanity their alleged preference of Satan. If Satan works for God, perhaps he finds this indulgence convenient to his designs and plans!
<P>
Lavern continues:
<blockquote>We also see in Scripture that there are other things that God uses to reveal our nature. The Apostle Paul tells us that the Law of Moses was given to us so that we would see our sinful nature, so that that part of us would be revealed. Scriptures themselves are given to us to reveal ourselves. Scripture is like a two-edged sword. It reveals not only who God is to us, but it also reveals who we are. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, so the Holy Spirit reveals to us our true nature. So, so much about our life is done in order to reveal our nature. Even suffering has this purpose, and we see this in the Book of Job. In the story of Job, we see that Satan comes to God and he asks for permission to test Job. And God allows, he gives permission for Job to be tested. So we see here that Satan is actually a test for us, that he is allowed to test us to reveal our nature. And it was Satan’s purpose to try and reveal that Job is not as righteous as what Job would like to believe or what God is claiming. And what we see is that after the second phase, Job actually does falter. He begins to question God. And what this reveals to us is that, like Jesus tells us, the rich man has a very difficult time in entering heaven, and the reason is because of the pride and the lust and everything that they have for the things that they have, their health and so on.
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Now, in the story of Job, from the story of Job, I just want to read a couple passages. Because what we see in Job is that it does reveal Job’s nature. And a young man by the name of Elihu is the one who really reveals this. And he asked Job, in chapter 33, beginning verse 19: “So why are you bringing a charge against him [meaning God]? Why say he does not respond to people's complaints? For God speaks again and again.”
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And then going on to chapter 34, beginning verse 7: “Tell me, has there ever been a man like Job, with his thirst for irreverent talk? He chooses evil people as companions, he spends his time with wicked men. He has even said, ‘Why waste time trying to please God?’”
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So we see here that through Job’s suffering, he finally breaks, and his true nature is revealed. The suffering breaks him down to his core self. It’s like peeling an onion, and it just breaks him down. And from that place, his true nature is revealed. But then from that place, Job ends up repenting. And from this place he actually becomes closer to God, and he actually knows God a whole lot better. We see this in the end of Job. But before I get to there, just one more verse I’d like to read: Chapter 36, verse 21 (this is still Elihu talking): “Be on guard, turn back from evil. For God sent this suffering to keep you from a life of evil.” So through this suffering, it’s actually saving Job, preventing him from a life of evil.
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Now, it ends in chapter 42. And reading from verse 5 (this is now Job talking): “I had only heard about you before. But now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” And this is Job talking about God. Just to repeat this, I had only heard about you before. But now I have seen you with my own eyes. So we see that through his suffering, Job was brought closer to God, and he was able to hear his voice and he was able to see him. And none of this would have been possible if he had not first lost everything that he’d had.</blockquote>
Here Lavern expands on his argument that God allows Satan to continue to thrive for purposes of self-revelation by arguing that Satan is a tool by which the faith of humans is tested. According to him, the influences at work in peoples’ lives to reveal our nature includes the workings of Satan, hence the mention of human suffering as a consequence of Satan’s actions. Not surprisingly, Lavern uses the most clear and thus most forthcoming example in Scripture, that of the story of Job in the Old Testament. In his discussion of Satan asking permission of God to torment Job, Lavern makes a very interesting series of statements. For instance, his comments concerning the rich having a difficult time entering heaven because of their possessions and pride leads me to doubt just how carefully Lavern has read his Bible. The Book of Job indicates fairly clearly that Job was at his most pious and righteous at the height of his prosperity and wealth. Before going into an inventory of his wealth, the opening verses of Job tell us that he was “perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%201:1-5&version=NLT">Job 1:1-5</a>).
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But again, this is a minor point in the context of the overall question we are asking. Lavern’s overarching point is that Satan’s harmful workings and the suffering he inflicts on the world serve the purpose of testing the strength of the faith of the righteous. This occasions an important question: If the God of the Bible is omniscient or all-knowing, why is the testing of his followers’ faith required? Of course, if Lavern stands by the statements he has made so far concerning God’s nature, perhaps the God he has in mind is not all-knowing, all-powerful, or possessed of an impeccable morality. If we take Lavern’s previous statements seriously, we are presented with a God who employs Satan to help him accomplish his capriciously meaningless purposes because he is apparently not all-powerful and thus cannot achieve his purposes without inflicting suffering. Thus, perhaps this God may not be all-knowing or possessed of clear judgment either. But even given a God who is not all-knowing, one wonders why the “God” conceived by Lavern’s theological imagination would even care to be convinced of the strength of his subjects’ faith in the first place. After all, Lavern has stated that God knowingly created humankind with a built-in evil nature that he took pleasure in throwing in their face via the temptation of the Tree of Knowledge that he dangled in front of their faces, so to speak. If God created human beings for the purpose of gleaning a twisted sense of pleasure from watching them wallow in guilt, one would tend towards the conclusion that he is not very interested in seeing them rise above that guilt, which by the accounts of most Christians and Jews is achieved through piety and devotion to God.
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If this kind of God actually exists and the accompanying scenarios really did occur, and if Job was aware of this state of affairs in the agenda of this deity, then Job is perfectly justified, as is all humanity, in levying the kind of charges against this deity that the character of Elihu disapproves of in the quote given above (which is actually found in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2033:13&version=NLT">Job 33:13</a>, not verse 19). In light of Lavern’s conception of God, the contemptuously rhetorical question Elihu poses in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2034:7-9&version=NLT">Job 34:7-9</a> is grossly misplaced. Because Elihu is speaking in pious defense of God, we can wonder just how “evil” and “wicked” the men he disapproves of really are. A “thirst for irreverent talk” would in this case seem to amount to an authentic morality that opposes the juvenile capriciousness exhibited in the particular portrait of God we are examining. Why waste time trying to please this kind of God indeed?
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Some of my readers may at this point charge that I am focusing too heavily on this one individual’s idiosyncratic conception of God and interpretation of Scripture. While this may be the case – since this is a response to his personal attempt to explain a question I have raised in past writings – I should also point out that similar criticisms apply to the more mainstream Christian and Jewish apologetics surrounding the philosophy contained in the Book of Job. According to mainstream interpretation, the moral of the story is that if we unquestioningly trust in God, he will provide for us even if we do not understand his motives in allowing hardship and suffering in our lives. But in the story of Job, God does more than just withhold from Job an explanation of his reasons for allowing Job to suffer tremendously. Job makes several inquiries as to God’s reasoning, with no initial response forthcoming. Finally, God responds indignantly by saying, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038:4&version=NLT">38:4</a>). God then proceeds to embark on an obnoxious tirade, repeatedly making statements such as, “Do you realize the extent of the earth? Tell me about it if you know!” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038:18&version=NLT">38:18</a>), “Do you know the laws of the universe? Can you use them to regulate the earth?” (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038:33&version=NLT">38:33</a>), and so on and so forth. In essence, God’s response can be paraphrased as “Were you present when I created the universe and can you grasp all of its intricacies? No, so how dare you inquire!”
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However, God’s motive in allowing Job to experience such suffering is made known to the reader of the text at the outset. The settling of a bet was his motive. This should strike all readers as extremely petty. One can also apprehend more than pettiness on a cosmic scale when one considers that all of Job’s children and servants were unwittingly involved, with the result that they all perish at the beginning of the story. They had no direct relation to the petty bet between God and Satan, and no explanation is offered as to how they could possibly be deserving of death. If such senselessness is required in “preventing Job from a life of evil” and in bringing him “closer to God” as Lavern says, one can only wonder how perfectly good, loving and all-powerful this God really is.
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Lavern continues and concludes as follows:
<blockquote>Now, jumping to the Gospel of John, chapter 9: This is the story of the disciples coming to Jesus and asking him about this blind man. They ask him “Why is it that he is blind? Is it because of the sins that he committed or the sins of his father?” And this is how Jesus responds: “’It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,’ Jesus answered. ‘This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.’” So it had nothing to do with sins, it had nothing to do with anything that this person had done wrong, but rather was to glorify God and his Kingdom, and at the right time in God's timing, this is what happened. And Jesus ends up healing this man, and the glory of God is shown.
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So, there are so many different reasons. It’s not just one or two as to why Satan is allowed to continue to have his way in this world. Some of it is people actually want him. People are drawn to Satan because of their own evil natures. Some of it is because we are being tested. Some of it is to reveal our own nature, so that we can come closer to God.
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Alright, I really look forward to comments. Till next time, peace and blessings.</blockquote>
The third and final story Lavern cites as illustration of his reasons for why God does not stop Satan is thematically reminiscent of the preceding two. In all three stories, God is far more culpable than Satan for the sufferings of the characters described in the stories. Let’s review:
• In the first story, God creates the first humans with a dual nature already in place in their spiritual constitution for the sole purpose of facilitating their downfall through deliberate temptation, such that the two created people will feel compelled by guilt to be subservient to him. Our bold theologian implies that God enlisted the services of Satan to aid him in bringing about the desired result and essentially wrote the script for the serpent’s dialogue found in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&version=NLT">Genesis 3</a>.
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• In the story of the sufferings of God’s servant Job, God dabbles in a petty wager with Satan to test the strength of Job’s loyalty in the midst of pain, a wager that costs the lives of Job’s entire family with the exception of his wife.
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Finally, in the story of the healing of the blind man by Jesus in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%209:1-3&version=NLT">John 9:1-3</a>, we are given yet another insight into how God is aided in elevating his show of power by teaming up with the helpful scapegoat who is Satan. As Jesus states in the passage, the lifelong blindness experienced by the man was inflicted upon him from birth for the sole purpose of providing a public show of God’s power and “glory” later in life through being healed. The blind man in this story was robbed of a lifetime of sight for no other reason than to allow God (in the person of Jesus) an outlet for glorifying himself by stooping to heal him. If Satan is understood to be a major source of pain and misery in the lives of God’s special creation, we see another example of God enlisting the services of his supposed arch-enemy to attain a self-glorifying end.
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<b>Conclusion</b>
<P>
Taking Lavern’s mini-sermon as a whole, to what conclusion can we arrive as to how he answers the question he sets out to address? According to his analysis, it would seem God does not stop Satan because God and Satan routinely work together and cooperate with one another to achieve ends that are desirable to both. In concluding this response and further establishing why Lavern’s explanations actually does damage to the character of the God he claims to serve, a discussion of other Biblical passages that refer to the relationship between God and Satan is in order. For consistency of form, the passages I cite are from the New Living Translation of the Bible, the version which Lavern uses in his quotations.
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The Bible’s treatment of this relationship appears to justify Lavern’s morally-damaging statements. For example, in the Hebrew Bible, one translation of the term applied to Satan bespeaks a divine messenger sent by God to be an adversary on his behalf. In the story of Balaam as recounted in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022&version=NLT">Numbers 22</a>, for instance, Balaam is visited by God in a dream and instructed to meet Balak, accompanied by the princes of Moab. The next morning, Balaam attempts to evade God’s instructions. In his anger, God sends a messenger (or angel) to kill Balaam as he travels on a donkey across the country. The messenger is invisible to Balaam but is seen by the donkey, who takes immediate action to avoid the danger, bolting off the road and into a field. In his frustration, not knowing that the animal was acting in the interest of his life, Balaam physically beats the donkey. The donkey then speaks to Balaam, asking him why he was beating her. Balaam (who apparently is unfazed by being confronted with a talking donkey), replies, “You have made me look like a fool!” At this point, the messenger appears to Balaam visibly and informs him in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022:32&version=NLT">verse 32</a> that he has been sent by God as a satan (<i>satan</i> being a commonly-used Hebrew verb which translates to mean “one who opposes” or “adversary”).
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Another use of the Hebrew term describing the adversary’s actions translates as a “divine counselor” of sorts. One example of this is found in a comparison of <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Chronicles%2021:1&version=NLT">I Chronicles 21:1</a> and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Samuel%2024:1&version=NLT">II Samuel 24:1</a>. In the former, we read that “Satan rose up against Israel and caused David to take a census of the people of Israel.” In this account, the census is said to have been encouraged by Satan, for which David is severely punished by God with a plague that kills seventy thousand Israelites. In the latter account, the identical event is described, with the one difference being that here it is God who influences the census rather than Satan: “Once again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he caused David to harm them by taking a census. ‘Go and count the people of Israel and Judah,’ the Lord told him.” Despite this, God still becomes infuriated and punishes the Israelites with the aforementioned plague.
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Most scholars of the Hebrew Bible consider the writings in II Samuel to be the original account from which the editor of the I Chronicles text received his information. It is widely believed by scholars that, at the time the text of II Samuel was compiled and edited around 560 BCE, the editors subscribed to the belief common among that religious community at the time that God was the ultimate source of all supernatural actions, whether good or evil. This perspective had changed slightly by 400 BCE, at which time I Chronicles is believed to have been written. The author of the account in I Chronicles views God as one who works indirectly through helping agents. Thus, when we read in I Chronicles 21:1 that Satan rose up and inspired David to take a census of his kingdom, we are likely not reading an account of an adversary working against God, as evidenced by what we are told in II Samuel 24:1.
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In <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Zechariah%203:1-2&version=NLT">Zechariah 3:1-2</a>, Satan is portrayed as a member of God’s council in the court of heaven, in much the same way as he is portrayed in the first two chapters of the Book of Job. In his role on God's council in this passage, Satan objects to the selection of Jeshua as the high priest: “Then the angel showed me Jeshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. The Accuser, Satan, was there at the angel’s right hand, making accusations against Jeshua. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘I, the Lord, reject your accusations, Satan. Yes, the Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebukes you. This man is like a burning stick that has been snatched from the fire.’”
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New Testament theology paints a picture of Satan and his role in the world that is dramatically different than his portrayal in the Hebrew Scriptures. The evolution of the figure of Satan from a loyal servant and ally of God to the arch-enemy of God and of all mankind has been traced by many scholars as a transformation that developed during what is called the “intertestamental period” between the close of the Protestant Old Testament and the start of what eventually became the New Testament canon.
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The shift in Jewish conceptions of Satan during the transitional intertestamental period was largely occasioned by the influence of the Babylonian religion of Zoroastrianism. In particular, the concepts of angels, of the immortality of the soul, and of Angra Manyu, the God of Evil, <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/">were incorporated by Jewish thinkers</a> into their theological system of belief [<b>5</b>]. The Zoroastrian concept of dualism began to surface in a number of Jewish writings, especially those of the Essenes, and eventually became fully integrated into Jewish thought. <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/z/zor7.htm">Shahriar Shahriari quotes J. Duchesne-Guillemin</a> as saying that the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and Christianity was such that “First, the figure of Satan, originally a servant of God, appointed by Him as His prosecutor, came more and more to resemble Ahriman, the enemy of God” [<b>6</b>]. John Gray remarks that “The development of the concept of Satan as the personal power of evil, who had his counterpart in the archangel Michael, the champion of cause of man in God’s purpose of creation, was probably developed under the influence of Persian Zoroastrian belief in the two conflicting spirits of good and evil” [<b>7</b>].
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Thus, the strongly-held Protestant conception of an all-evil opponent of an all-good God who falls from heavenly service and resides over fallen man and hell is taken directly from late period Jewish writings such as the Book of Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, and the Book of Enoch, which were heavily influenced by the Zoroastrian religion of Persia. The irony of this fact is that one of the major reasons Protestants give for their rejection of texts such as these is that, in their understanding, neither Jesus nor his followers refer directly to them. Of course, our friend Lavern takes a different approach and strongly admonishes other Christians to consider the Book of Enoch to be inspired by God. But Lavern’s views represent another irony; he accepts the Book of Enoch, an apocryphal and non-canonical text, as an inspired writing from God in order to emphasize the conflict between God and Satan from a source that describes this conflict in greater depth than any canonical book of the Hebrew Scriptures or New Testament. At the same time, he inconsistently adopts a view of the relationship between God and Satan that writings such as the Book of Enoch largely served to dispel, namely that God and Satan hold common interests and cooperate to realize these interests.
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As a result of this integration from influential pagan sources, God came to be understood as wholly good, rather than the source of both good and evil. Satan was conversely characterized as profoundly evil, wholly opposed to God. History was suddenly viewed as a cosmic battle between God and Satan, and the originally-held concept of Satan as God’s helper or lackey disappeared from orthodox systems of theology. Satan and his demons were then believed to be humanity’s greatest and most threatening enemies, and Christians and skeptical nonbelievers alike began to ask the question that is pondered to this day: Why does our all-powerful and perfectly good God not put an end to Satan’s ministry?
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<b>NOTES</b>
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<b>1.</b> Clark Ashton Smith, “Schizoid Creator,” in <i>Tales of Science and Sorcery</i> (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964).
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<b>2.</b> Nathan Dickey, “Inside the Mind of a Creationist: A Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind’s ‘Doctoral Dissertation,’” <i>Nathan Dickey’s Blog</i>, 23 February 2010, <a href="http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html">http://journeymanheretic.blogspot.com/2010/02/inside-mind-of-creationist-critical_23.html</a> (accessed 6 June 2010).
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<b>3.</b> TrustInJC, “Why Does God Not Stop Satan,” <i>YouTube</i>, 31 December 2009, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNX5RFBC0o">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNX5RFBC0o</a> (accessed 6 June 2010).
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<b>4.</b> On his channel, Lavern has also produced a thirteen-part series of very interesting messages, entitled <i>The Book of Enoch is God Inspired</i>, in which he discusses why he believes the pseudepigraphical and apocryphal Book of Enoch is inspired by God. This series is available at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFD7A02C95EA58BB0&feature=plcp">http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFD7A02C95EA58BB0&feature=plcp</a> (accessed 6 June 2010). In Part 2 of this series, Lavern goes into fuller detail concerning the conception he has been given from this apocryphal text that humanity was created with two conflicting natures at the outset and that the Tree of Knowledge was a device deliberately used by God to draw out Adam’s and Eve’s dark side of their nature.
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For example, he states in this second installment,
<blockquote>“Enoch explains that God understood and knew of Adam and Eve’s evil heart. He understood that they had a rebellious, evil, sinful nature. But they did not understand this, they didn’t know this, and so God used this Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to reveal this to them. And so when Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, their eyes were opened. But it wasn’t because there was something in the fruit that opened their eyes, but rather the act itself. For when they ate of the Tree, their eyes were opened to the fact that they had this evil, sinful, rebellious nature and that they had rebelled against God, and that that sin distanced them from God. Paul understood this, and he had a revelation and understanding of this. And that is why Paul was able to write about the reason and the purpose of the Law of God. God’s Law, Paul explains, was created for the purpose of revealing to us our sinful nature, in the very same way that the Tree of Knowledge was put in the Garden of Eden to reveal Adam and Eve their sinful nature. So this was not some kind of new revelation that Paul received, but rather it was a revelation and an understanding of the writings of Enoch” (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lu1Qkl6yLI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lu1Qkl6yLI</a>).</blockquote>
The question Lavern fails to address is why God found it necessary to create humans with an evil nature to begin with. Does this not render God, not Satan, responsible for human rebellion and resultant human suffering, especially given his idea that it was God who orchestrated the temptation in Eden?
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<b>5.</b> These concepts are developed in Zoroastrian Scriptures such as the Zend Avesta, the Pahlavi Texts and others. These texts are available online at <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/">http://www.sacred-texts.com/zor/</a> (accessed 6 June 2010).
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<b>6.</b> Shahriar Shahriari (July 1997), “Influence of Zoroastrianism on Other Religions,” <a href="http://www.sullivan-county.com/z/zor7.htm">http://www.sullivan-county.com/z/zor7.htm</a> (accessed 6 June 2010).
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<b>7.</b> John Gray, <i>Near Eastern Mythology</i> (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1985), p. 127.
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