Sigh…
So here’s what’s been going on lately. Most of you who read this blog already know that when my wife and I left Christianity, it wrecked most of our family relationships. My wife’s parents and siblings, as well as my own, felt that they could no longer interact with us socially after our deconversion. We were no longer invited to any family functions, and our communication with them all but disappeared. We would speak if it was about religious issues, or if there were logistic issues that needed to be worked out in letting them see our kids, etc.
Over the years, things have gotten a little better, especially with my wife’s parents. Things are by no means back to normal, but at least our infrequent interactions have become more civil and more comfortable. A few weeks ago, I even had a phone conversation with my father that lasted about half an hour and had no references to religion whatsoever. It was nice.
Nevertheless, the awkwardness is still there, just under the surface. And we’re still blacklisted from all the family functions.
Throughout this time, I’ve occasionally reached out to my side of the family with phone calls, letters, facebook messages, etc, in an effort to discuss the issues that divide us. I don’t get much response. I’ve always been puzzled by that, since I know they think I’m completely wrong. If their position is right, why aren’t they willing to discuss it?
In the last five years, I’ve also been sent books and articles and even been asked to speak to certain individuals, and I’ve complied with every request. Why not? How could more information hurt? But when I’ve suggested certain books to them, or written letters, they aren’t read. When I finally realized that my problems with Christianity weren’t going to be resolved, I wrote a 57-page paper to my family and close friends, explaining why I could no longer call myself a Christian. As far as I know, none of them ever read the whole thing. And sure, 57 pages is quite a commitment. But they say this is the most important subject in their lives…
This past week, the topic has started to come back around. A local church kicked off a new series on Monday entitled “Can We Believe the Bible?” It’s being led by an evangelist/professor/apologist that was kind enough to take time to correspond with me for several weeks in the summer of 2010. I’ve never met him in person, but a mutual friend connected us, since he was someone who was knowledgeable about the kinds of questions I was asking. Obviously, we didn’t wind up on the same page.
My wife’s parents invited us to attend the series, but it happens to be at a time that I’m coaching my oldest daughter’s soccer team. So unless we get rained out at some point, there’s no way we can attend. However, we did tell them that if practice is ever cancelled, we’ll go. I also contacted the church and asked if the sermons (if that’s the right word?) will be recorded, and they said that they should be.
Monday night, the weather was fine, so we weren’t able to attend. And so far, the recording isn’t available on their website. However, they do have a recording of Sunday night’s service available, which is entitled “Question & Answer Night.” I just finished listening to it, and that’s where the bulk of my frustration comes from.
It’s essentially a prep for the series that kicked off Monday night. They’re discussing why such a study is important, as well as the kinds of things they plan to cover. What’s so frustrating to me is that I don’t understand the mindset of evangelists like this. I mean, they’ve studied enough to know what the major objections to fundamentalist Christianity are, yet they continue on as if there’s no problem. And when they do talk about atheists and skeptics, they misrepresent our position. I can’t tell if they honestly believe the version they’re peddling, or if they’re purposefully creating straw men.
A couple of times, they mentioned that one of the main reasons people reject the Bible comes down to a preconception that miracles are impossible. “And if you start from that position, then you’ll naturally reject the Bible.” But that’s a load of crap. Most atheists were once theists, so their starting position was one that believed in miracles.
They also mentioned that so many of these secular articles and documentaries “only show one side.” I thought my head was going to explode.
And they referred to the common complaints against the Bible as “the same tired old arguments that have been answered long ago.” It’s just so infuriating. If the congregants had any knowledge of the details of these “tired old arguments,” I doubt they’d unanimously find the “answers” satisfactory. But the danger with a series like this is that it almost works like a vaccination. The members of the congregation are sitting in a safe environment, listening to trusted “experts,” and they’re injected with a watered down strain of an argument. And it’s that watered down version that’s eradicated by the preacher’s message. So whenever the individual encounters the real thing, they think it’s already been dealt with, and the main point of the argument is completely lost on them.
For example, most Christians would be bothered to find out that the texts of the Bible are not as reliable as were always led to believe. Even a beloved story like the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus writes on the ground, we’ve discovered that it was not originally part of the gospel of John. It’s a later addition from some unknown author. To a Christian who’s never heard that before, it’s unthinkable! But if they’ve gone through classes where they’ve been told that skeptics exaggerate the textual issues in the Bible, and that the few changes or uncertainties deal with only very minor things, and that none of the changes affect any doctrinal points about the gospel, then it’s suddenly easier for them to swallow “minor” issues like the insertion of an entire story into the gospel narrative.
Sigh…
I’m going to either attend these sessions, or I’ll watch/listen to them once they’re available online. I may need to keep some blood pressure medication handy, though.
Finding Truth 
Hi Brandon, sorry if I misrepresented you. It is clear there is hyperbole in the accounts because often it talks about a people being wiped out and then later on they crop up again. So clearly they were not eradicated. Even Jesus used hyperbole at times, to emphasize a point.
One of my arguments with people who favour a very literal interpretation is that they imagine there is only one way to interpret the text: their way.
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“One of my arguments with people who favour a very literal interpretation is that they imagine there is only one way to interpret the text: their way.”
Hi Peter,
So are you ok with a Christian believing that Jesus’ resurrection was only a spiritual resurrection? That Jesus remained dead but his death created a spiritual rebirth, as Bishop Spong and other Christians believe?
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Hey Nate,
Regarding the Israelites entering the Promised Land, I don’t think the question of who is sinful at all is the factor at play. Rather, it is who has the particular sin of grumbling and faithlessness, and this seems to be the predominately in the older generation. It is certainly possible that some of the younger generation also has this sin, therefore these would have been afforded mercy. The age of 20 seems to be a somewhat arbitrary cutoff in separating the two generations. But, the picture as a whole is consistent with classical theology in which God has the right to either show mercy or administer justice. God is not quite like a machine that will always give the same output. Some are shown mercy in this life, others not.
Regarding Paul’s statement on law and knowledge of sin, we find the Jewish conception of sin includes people who are unaware of their sin, and these are still held responsible. For example in reading Leviticus, there is no prerequisite of knowledge at the time of sin. In fact, sinners are frequently unaware of their sin having sophisticated rationalizations for them. Also, in Pauline thought the situation is complicated by Gentiles being a law unto themselves as though the law were written on the human heart. This would mean that even children have some kind of innate moral knowledge even if they are not reciting the Torah or other ethical codes. I should reemphasize here that legally and as a measure of outward behavior (of which the US legal system is biased towards), we hold “minors” to a different standard than adults. But like I said, the classical conception of God is one who sees into the heart, the very core of our desires. God is not limited by the “permissible evidence” of human legal systems.
In your “dogs will be dogs” point, I wonder, what is the difference between dogs and toddlers and the mentally retarded? In naturalism they are all biological machines driven by whatever desires they are programmed with. In theism humans are endowed with freewill to choose and create new realities with less restriction than a machine. I don’t think there is a definitive way to argue either the naturalist or theist position here.
When we talk about cruel and unusual punishments, we need to be absolutely clear about the definition. Cruelty in this context refers to excessive use of otherwise legitimate punishment. Of course we are unaware of the Israelite method of execution, but I think it would have been swift and relatively painless as it was for animal sacrifices. This would make it not cruel. Better than agonizing during a failed lethal injection, right?
Honestly, I think there is a modern misunderstanding of God’s right to administer either justice OR mercy. It’s not that God is a machine that we can predict exactly when one or the other will happen, but rather that God has the right to choose. It’s like the judge of a legal case who senses a deep remorse in the criminal and wants to show some mercy in his sentence. The judge has the right to give the maximum sentence, but may choose otherwise based on the circumstances or wisdom.
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Hi Gary
I don’t support the liberal view of Scripture because it seems to me that picking and choosing what is true is intellectually dishonest. I have never been a supporter of Spong’s view.
My own view is ‘confused’!
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Powell,
I’m not sure you can “know” or say “it is true” that sin is arbitrary. That is an assertion without any reasoning. In Christian theology sin is not at all arbitrary. Sin is relative to the individual’s situation according to the idea that God has higher expectations of those who are given more. But, it is still relative to some absolute and not at all arbitrary. And, yes, there is a question of “where does the absolute, the natural law, come from?” Does God simply force it into being by extreme power? This is a flawed question that I will return to.
As for sin granting God the right to take life by any means, I think you could think of it as natural law. Now, let’s tie these thoughts together.
What you are raising is an ancient philosophical problem called “Euthyphro’s dilemma” which asks: is it good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? Notice that this question pays no respect to the idea of a supreme creator deity,. The question has a very simple answer! Both, yes and yes! God created the natural law of sin and death and God upholds this in his decrees and revelations.
When you accuse God of “might makes right” you are probably thinking of an arbitrary declaration that finds no basis in natural law, but on the contrary, what has God commanded that falls into that category? That is exactly the kind of argument I have been seeking. But, I have yet to see a good argument.
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Interesting questions about good and evil and what YHWH meant, precisely by them, and how it’s all so terribly confusing.
I don’t really find it all that confusing. The words are functional and dysfunctional, not good and evil. In truth, the words are Hebrew, and composed of pictographs, and the pictographs themselves convey content and meaning, like a sentence.
But the bottom line is that there is no point in seeking to question me too closely about God’s decision making choices and patterns, and why he does what he does. I’m not him, and he never told me. So you’ll have to ask him when you see him, if you still even care about such things when you do.
From what he said, as near as I can see it, it is functional that men should have to die, it is GOOD that we die, because if we were immortal, then sin, and the compounding of sins, would live forever. And that would be too bad for us, ultimately. I trust that God knows what he is doing and why, and I don’t worry about it much.
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Peter,
So how do you determine which passages in the Bible should be understood literally and which passages should be understood metaphorically or as hyperbole?
And why would God write humankind a message that no layperson could figure out; it requires a person with a divinity degree to decipher its true meaning?
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Gary,
The biggest problem with bouncing the rubble too hard using the discredited Carbon Dating, and the discredited McCrone study, and pretending that the older, minority report is The Truth, and the rest of science can simply be discarded, is that you could end up proving too much.
Because, you see, if you solidly PROVE that the Carbon Dating must be true, and the experts got it right, but then evidence comes from a different scientific source: history, and pieces of artwork and records pre-dating the 1300s, in which the Shroud is clearly displayed, including tiny little features.
Then you have the terrible problem of historical documents demonstrating the existence of the Shroud, but your science has “proven” that it wasn’t made until hundreds of years later. That tends to put a torpedo under the keel of reliance on the Carbon Dating.
There’s more than just a Carbon Dating. And McCrone was completely discredited. So if you really hang you hat on it being mid-1300s, and then you end up with the face-print fingerprint between the facecloth that has clear historical data at 631 AD and he Shroud, you have an impossible conflict.
It gets worse when the problem of the image itself, its properties are reviewed. Because you still have a miracle, whenever it was formed. And efforts to “recreate” the Shroud that do not have anything like the same properties, and that have nothing but a visual similarity, starts looking desperate.
And there are still 69 Lourdes miracles, and the incorrupt saints, and Lanciano. And the Shroud.
It’s quite a nest of issues.
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@Brandon
I see where you are coming from, and I think you do understand what I’m saying as well.
Perhaps I need to clarify: when I arbitrary I do not mean “random”, but the 2nd definition according to google dictionary:
1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
“an arbitrary decision”
2. (of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.
“a country under arbitrary government”
Certainly God may have basis in having the right due to natural law. Unfortunately I don’t see it happening from our perspective. Hence, the assertion that God’s right is not arbitrary and is based on natural law is speculative for me.
E.g.
Adam and Eve eating the fruit – what is the actual sin?
1 – disobedience towards God?
2 – eating the fruit itself is sinful, whether God said no or not is secondary.
If it is (1), why is the sin = death worthy? Because God says so? Or there is a natural law that somehow eludes us? If it is a natural law as you claim, do we have other example in our natural world that reflects this relationship?
(2) – I don’t see any justification why eating a fruit of knowledge can be sinful. But honestly I also dunno where I’m going with this one, just penning out my thoughts as they come to my mind.
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“And why would God write humankind a message that no layperson could figure out; it requires a person with a divinity degree to decipher its true meaning?”
That’s the way it’s been, Gary, ever since the fictitious Moses at Sinai. Priests write much of the
Bible, and only priests can tell you what god wants – this is known as priestly job security.
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Crown,
Tell you what, I’m going to ignore all the evidence that secular scientists say proves the Shroud to be a Medieval forgery. I’m going to take the word of one man.
Pope Clement VII said it was NOT authentic.
The word of the pope is good enough for me…on this one. I’m not going to beat this dead horse anymore. You are welcome to discuss this subject with others, but I’m done.
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Frankly, Gary, I think you’ve done an incredible job, where many would have simply thrown up their hands.
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Gary
I suspect you don’t fully understand my position. I agree in broad terms with what you are saying. Presently I am not sure whether or not the bible is truly God’s word or not, or indeed whether or not God is actually there. These are issues I am working through.
Presently I am leaning towards the view that God is not actually there, which by derivation would mean the Bible is not divinely inspired. However I have not yet finalised my views. On the whole I tend to agree with the various points you raise.
As for the way to discus these issues. My own personal preference is for the tone adopted by Nate and Josh. But we are all different (I was going to say God made us different – habit of a life time). I realise that You and especially Arch have a different, more direct communication style.
I am happy to continue the discussion.
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Peter, you wrote: “Presently I am not sure whether or not the bible is truly God’s word or not, or indeed whether or not God is actually there. These are issues I am working through.”
I have a suggestion for you to consider while you’re working through the issues you need to resolve.
Read the Bible again, cover to cover, but this time do it with a yellow highlighter in hand, and highlight only those portions where the text says “God said…” or “YHWH said” and the like – the words that came directly from the mouth of God or Jesus or an angel (including demons).
Then take a look at just that corpus of material. All of the law in Scripture was conveyed that way. Everything else is the story built around men’s actions, good and bad, in reaction to those words.
God’s own words are the skeleton around which the rest of the Scriptures are constructed.
When you assemble God’s direct words and read them, they form a direct arc through Scripture. It’s revealing. It provides a means for triaging Scripture. And it’s what Jesus said to the Devil: “man lives…by every word that proceeds forth from out of the mouth of God”. The words you highlight are THOSE words, the ones that proceeded forth directly from out of the mouth of God.
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“I realise that You and especially Arch have a different, more direct communication style.” – I’m just particular as to whom I waste my words. If you want “direct communication,” wait til Ark gets his panties in a wad.
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“God’s own words are the skeleton around which the rest of the Scriptures are constructed.” – As Shakespeare so aptly put it in Hamlet, “Aye, there’s the what rub!” Your highlighter wouldn’t get much of a workout – in fact, you could leave the cap on.
Nowhere in the Bible does “god” say anything – fallible men claim to report what their god said, a phenomenon that has been happening ever since witch doctors and tribal shamen claimed the ability to communicate with spirits.
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I have no idea how the word, “what” got in there – WordPress spirits, I’m thinking.
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I’m enjoying the further discussion on the shroud. It really is a shame that another carbon dating test will not be done anytime soon. I read somewhere that they already have a sample set aside for testing, it is just a matter of releasing it (the odds are not looking good).
I’m going to read the paper by Rogers when I have time and see if there is any compelling reason to think the samples used were from a patch. It would seem that if you were going to take a sample for testing you would make sure it was original and not a patch!
Crown wrote: “pieces of artwork and records pre-dating the 1300s, in which the Shroud is clearly displayed, including tiny little features. ”
I think he is referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pray_Codex
This Hungarian Pray Manuscript is dated to 1192-1195 and the dates obtained from the carbon dating of the shroud are 1260–1390. Anyone interested should compare the photo of the codex to the photo of the shroud and decide for themselves if there is any correlation.
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Prototypical Old Bird: “Nowhere in the Bible does “god” say anything – fallible men claim…”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You have no way of knowing for sure either way.
But what we CAN do is look at the text itself and, taking it on its own terms, we can see what it actually SAYS. And one feature of what it says is to identify where God speaks…as Elohiym or YHWH or El Shaddai, or as the Father, or through an angel. Likewise, where Jesus speaks is also indicated.
Maybe it’s all a fairy tale, maybe not. But within the fairy tale there are speakers.
Nobody ever really said “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!” Or “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” Yet, when referring to the movie “Wizard of Oz”, those lines were spoken, in the film, by certain figures.
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Dave,
Thanks for the reference. For anyone who is interested, there’s a reasonable arc of the Shroud before it’s appearance in France at the Crusader’s family, where it was brought from the Sack of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade in 1214, to which it was brought from Edessa, where it was discovered in late Roman times.
There’s an historical arc of the cloth in addition to the forensics, and the remarkable change of Eastern iconography in the 600s to match the face on the Shroud in various detailed points.
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In the “Wizard,” most of us above the age of six or seven know that the words of the screenwriter, not an actual witch or little girl, but for the purpose of entertainment, we choose to follow the advice of Coleridge and suspend our disbelief. A read of the Bible with that viewpoint firmly in mind, likely couldn’t hurt anyone.
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Well, if anyone is going to take Crown’s advice and read through the Bible, there are many interesting things you are going to learn that you never knew your God commanded his followers to do and not do. Here is one of my favorites:
Deuteronomy 23:1
“No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.
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In reference to Crown telling Peter to reread the Bible and highlight what god said — you don’t have to highlight very far before you realize that this god represents the behavior of the worst of human kings and your averaged alpha male chimpanzee. Only those who are no longer desensitized by this can see the horror of this antisocial behavior.
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Old Bird: “A read of the Bible with that viewpoint firmly in mind, likely couldn’t hurt anyone.”
ANY reading of the Bible takes a lot of time. And more than a little bit of it is boring and repetitive.
Worse (and I know you don’t believe a word of this), because some of those words DID come from God, there’s power in them. People feel the power, and glom onto it. Unfortunately, most people do not have great reading comprehension, and when they turn towards what they perceive (correctly) to be “the Light”, and fly towards it, they frequently end up being like moths to a flame, or skeeters to those blue light thingies: ZAP!
An example: YHWH, to Moses, in the desert with the Hebrews during their 40 years of wandering, said to the Israelites: “You shall not permit a witch to live.”
Because of those lines, from God, in the Scripture, probably 70,000 people were burnt for witchcraft during the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Trouble is, that particular law never applied to anybody but the Hebrews living in that camp and then in the land of Israel, when it was still under YHWH’s direct rule. It was part of the purity laws for Israel, and NOT a general law for mankind.
In fact – and again this is just the text itself – fable or no – as a matter of clear and simple reading comprehension, the rule that always applied to Christians (and non-Christians – everybody else on earth EXCEPT Hebrews living in ancient Israel when it was still a state performing the rites prescribed by God and ruled directly by God – was simpler: do not kill people.
So, based on the text of the Bible itself, when Christians burnt witches, even if they were real witches, the Christians who did it were all murderers with no authority from God, at all, to do it. And Jesus said that murderers are thrown into the flames at judgment. So, to be crystal clear, the Bible actually SAYS that the Christians who burnt witches – even if they really WERE witches – thereby doomed themselves to fail judgment and be thrown into the flames as murderers. For Jesus said that murderers are to be thrown into the flames.
“But the Bible says that we are not to suffer a witch to live.”
No, it does not. Not anywhere. It says that WE are not to kill people. Ever. Except in punishment, after true judgment, for murder. It says that ISRAELITES, living IN ISRAEL, and practicing ALL OF GOD’S LAW, under God’s rule, were not to permit witches to live. That law only EVER applied to them. On its face it was GIVEN to them. The law given to everybody else was just: Don’t kill people. That was given to Noah after the Flood.
So, why did all those Christians burn witches? “Because the Bible says…” Except that no, the Bible DOES NOT say to burn witches. It was always murder for anybody EXCEPT ancient Jews, in ancient Israel, with the priesthood up and the rites being practice. Nobody else was given that law, and that command.
In fact, reading the Bible without reading comprehension has resulted in grotesque evil. It is better that most people do not read it at all, rather than read it stupidly, fail to follow the story CAREFULLY, fail to realize TO WHOM God is giving specific laws. Great evil has been done by Christians who applied the law of Israel to themselves, and thereby, “based on the Bible” arrogated to themselves legal powers that God never gave to anybody BUT the ancient Jews in the Israel HE ruled directly.
Jesus pronounced the final doom of the Temple and of divine Israel in the final week of his life. The Roman Army carried out the sentence in 69 AD. And since then, nobody on earth has been granted any power by God to kill witches at all. Rather, God has commanded men not to kill – a very limiting, cramping doctrine.
But educated men – not well-educated enough, not careful enough, not seeking power, but infatuated with God – read that Bible, read all of those unique laws of Israel, and then began to act as though God had empowered THEM to do things that God, in fact, in the text, said was murder if THEY did it.
That is why it is better than men not read the Bible at all, than read it stupidly and carelessly and get infected by the notion that they are empowered by God to act as though they are the priests of ancient Israel.
If you’re killing people for any reason other than to punish adjudicated murder, you’re violating what God said in the Bible. That SO MANY Christians have read that book for SO MANY centuries and come to a different conclusion is WHY, in fact, it is better that people NOT READ IT, than that they read it stupidly and do evil, because they feel the divine power, but won’t take the care to discipline themselves to sit through the WHOLE divine message.
The Bible, in the hands of poor readers, is a power source for incredible evil and horror.
It would better that it NOT BE READ AT ALL, than that it be badly read and misapplied.
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Neuronotes – Want to bet? Whoever does the exercise I described will discover that God, read properly and carefully and completely, does not behave like an alpha chimp.
The first general law he gives people is: Reproduce! Increase! Fill the land and subdue her!
The next general law he gives people is: Plants are your food.
And the very next general law he gives people is: I will hold you accountable for shedding human blood.
And he never, ever comes off that law, or changes it.
For the Hebrews, specifically and only, a people he was ruling directly, he gave a whole bunch of additional laws and rites – and he gave them no government at all, just judges, and he gave the supreme judge oracles: Urim and Thummim, by which they could always ask God on demand for answers. In other words, God gave death sentence crimes, for various violations of rites, but he also left a direct means to communicate with him in cases of doubt.
For the rest of mankind (and for the Jews too, since Jesus) the law has been: do not shed human blood, do not kill people except as punishment for killing people and shedding blood.
And that’s nothing like an alpha chimpanzee.
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