This should be an interesting event, with a Who’s Who of atheist speakers—Michael Shermer, Robert Price, Phil Zuckerman, Aron Ra, Richard Carrier, Brian Dunning, Mr. Deity, Dan Barker, Eddie Tabash, and others. I’d like to put copies of my book into the hands of some of these speakers. I’m sure that most won’t read it, but I want to add to my collection of positive reviews and hope that this increases the chance that someone will open doors for the book.

As an aside, has anyone noticed that there are more atheist/freethought conferences lately? I’m fairly new to this game—the first conference that I attended in this category was The Amazing Meeting 2 in 2004. But this could simply be my being more aware of them. Let me know if you sense that conferences have changed in the last decade, either on the freethought side or the Christian side.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The moderator started with Ian Barbour’s four criteria for assessing hypotheses:

1. Agreement with Data.  We never have proof (outside of mathematics and logic), but we can provisionally accept the hypothesis that fits best with the data.

2. Coherence.  A new hypothesis should be consistent with and support already-accepted theories.  If not, it had better be a pretty compelling hypothesis.  Simpler is better.

3. Scope.  Broader is better.

4. Fertility.  What new things can this hypothesis tell us?  What predictions can it make?  What new questions does it invite?

The two speakers were Lutheran pastor Gary Jensen (also a member of Reasons to Believe, an old-earth Creationist organization) and humanist and lawyer Jim Corbett.

I felt that Corbett won the event.  Call me biased, but his arguments were much more concrete.  Rev. Jensen was comfortable speaking to the crowd of roughly 200 people, but his arguments were shallow.  I’ll do my best to give highlights of each speaker’s points.  For Rev. Jensen, I’ll add occasional comments.

Jensen spent much of his opening statement speaking in what (to my mind) were tangential generalities: quoting famous people, asserting that we must follow the evidence wherever it leads (Socrates?), showing how the Bible encourages a sensible interaction with nature, giving a brief summary of the progress of the modern cosmological view, and so on.  He said that the Bible is the only religious story with a cosmic beginning.  (Huh?)

He got to his first claim with a reference to the fine tuning argument, but he simply pointed to Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees.  Okay, that’s a data point, but it’s hardly an argument.

In talking about cosmology, he threw in the term “Darwinism.”  Ouch—that may due to too much hanging out with the Reasons to Believe guys.

He talked about God as a given and made a mistake that I see frequently—confusing statements about his beliefs (which he made) with an apologetic argument (which he didn’t).

He cited Sir William Ramsay’s argument that Paul’s journeys documented in Acts are accurately described and therefore the gospel story is likely also accurate.  (No: that the names and places Paul documents are the least we’d expect of a book that claims to be historical.  This is no argument that the supernatural claims are accurate.  The Harry Potter books accurately refer to London, but that is no evidence that the supernatural elements are accurate.)

He cited Antony Flew’s There is a God as evidence of a smart person who changed his mind.  (This was a mistake—I’ve read the book.  First, it was ghost-written and second, the arguments that supposedly turned Flew into a deist are scientific arguments.  That a non-scientist is convinced by scientific arguments is uninteresting to me.)

Modern science was hatched in a Christian culture.  (Okay, and it was a carnivorous culture as well.  So what?  I see no cause and effect here.)

Jensen made a vague reference to professors “kicked out” for being Creationists and gave Guillermo Gonzalez as an example.  (I wonder if he’s read the other side of the story.  That there is another side doesn’t make Jensen’s claim wrong, but it is mandatory that he at least be aware of it.)

He says that he encourages free inquiry but that scientists who reject the supernatural are therefore closed-minded.

He referred to information in DNA (that some protozoa have 200 times the DNA that humans do shows that DNA isn’t “designed” as we use the term) and absolute morality (that we see considerable social evolution from biblical morality to today’s morality overturns this notion).

Corbett had some interesting points (any transcription errors are my fault):

• We have a moral responsibility to treat supernatural claims with skepticism.  Otherwise we open ourselves to every snake oil salesman.
• Religion is the only impediment to science education in America, and science education is tied to national security.
• We’ve found clues of python worship in Botswana from 70,000 years ago, our earliest evidence of God of the Gaps thinking—that is, God lives in the gaps where science says, “we don’t know.”  In this pre-scientific world, this was understandable and even laudable.  But in the 21st century, it’s inexcusable.
• Lawrence Krauss called God of the Gaps thinking “cowardly.”
• When Christianity was in charge, we called that the Dark Ages.
• One imam helped stifle the Islamic Golden Age, and we’re seeing the same thing in America.

Corbett concluded with an interesting parallel.  It took about 300 years from Christianity to go from nothing (death of Jesus) to being the official religion of the Roman empire (Council of Nicaea).  If you count Darwin’s Origin of Species as the beginning of modern atheism in the West, we’re halfway through our 300-year transition period.  Polls indicate that religion is declining, new knowledge explains away God, and God of the Gaps thinking is no longer necessary.

I’m not sure if that should be seen as optimistic (we’re making good progress) or pessimistic (we have a long way to go) or even unrealistic (Christianity has weathered storms before and we mustn’t count it out), but it’s an interesting parallel.

Photo credit: YouTube

Related posts:

• Comments on a Robert Price vs. James White Debate

Let’s look at the financial statements of organizations that are clearly charities.  The American Red Cross has an annual budget of $3.3 billion.  Of this, 92% goes to program services, with the rest going to “management and general” and “fundraising.”  Or Save the Children—91% of its $450 million budget goes to program services.  Or World Vision—85% of $1 billion.  Or the Rotary Club of Eagle Grove Iowa—100% of $3.3 million.

Organizations that help the disadvantaged are just one kind of nonprofit.  The ACLU (86% of $70 million) defends individual rights and liberties.  Or, for an organization on the other side of the political aisle, take the Alliance Defense Fund (80% of $32 million).

Surely many country clubs host bake sales for good causes, organize projects that help charities, or even donate money, but let’s assume that the good works done to society by country clubs amounts to a few percent of income or less.  We have 80 to 100% of revenue going to good works for regular nonprofits vs. (say) 2% for country clubs—that’s why donations to nonprofits are tax exempt and dues to country clubs are not.

How do churches compare?  The short answer is, we don’t know.  With very few exceptions, the financial statements of churches and religious ministries are not available to the public.

But there are estimates.  For example:

Every year churches collect some $100 billion in donations. But most donors do not know that the average congregation in the U.S. gives only two percent of donated money to humanitarian projects. Some 98% goes to pay staff, upkeep of buildings, the priest’s car, robes, salary and housing.

This came from Roy Sablosky.  But he’s on the board of the American Humanist Association of Greater Sacramento.  Might he be biased?

Christianity Today is another source.  A survey gave this breakdown of the average church budget: 43% for salaries, 20% for facilities (mortgage, etc.), 16% missions, 9% programs, 6% administration and supplies, 3% denominational fees, 3% other.

So where is the money to good works?  Presumably “missions” includes this, but this is a nebulous category.  A dollar spent on the First Baptist Church soup kitchen certainly counts as a charitable expense, but the dollar spent supporting a missionary doesn’t.

That estimate of 2% to humanitarian projects may not be too far off.

These survey numbers are suspect in my mind because less than a quarter of the 1,184 surveys were returned.  Did churches who were embarrassed by their numbers—perhaps the fraction devoted to salaries or facilities was even higher—not bother to respond?  I’d like to have more reliable numbers, but when they’re kept secret, we simply don’t know.

What are churches embarrassed about that they need to make up excuses to avoid showing how they spend their tax-exempt donations?  Again, it’s hard to tell.  But there are estimates:

The January 2011 issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research reported that Christian religious leaders will commit an estimated $34 billion in financial fraud in 2011. 

(I presume that’s worldwide, not just in the U.S.)  And that’s just fraud.  The money going to inflated salaries, lavish living, and other embarrassing expenses may be a far larger amount.

There are groups within Christianity that are also working on financial transparency.  For example, MinistryWatch said,

We wish Senator Grassley success in his quest for the truth [in his investigation of six high-profile televangelists].  It is time for these televangelists to come clean; otherwise it could seem that they are running nothing more than money laundering schemes in the name of Christ.

But MinistryWatch has an uphill battle.  They’re told by fellow Christians that it’s not right for anyone to judge, that it’s not Christian to be critical, that examining a ministry shows distrust in God, and that they should focus on God and not the works of man.

But shouldn’t churches be on the forefront of modeling what’s right within society?  When pastors enumerate all that’s bad with American society today, the list should include the financial secrecy of their own organization.

The overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward
— Titus 1:7

See the first post in this series: What do Churches Have to Hide?

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related links:

• Phyllis Ten-Elshof, “Church Budgets: You Are What You Spend,” Christianity Today, 1/1/00.
• “Death and Taxes 2012: The most open and accessible record of government spending ever to exist”
• “Grassley’s Requests of Televangelists are Well-Founded,” MinistryWatch, 12/07.
• “An Overview of Religious Financial Fraud: The $34 Billion Scandal,” Christian Headlines, 1/8/11.

These are examples of the genetic fallacy.  We’re asked, “How plausible can the claim of global warming be if these nutjobs accept it?”  A genetic fallacy ignores any actual evidence or argument and looks instead at the origin (think genesis) of the argument.  It’s a fallacy because it offers no relevant argument.

Another example would be, “You’re a vegetarian?  Don’t you know that Hitler was a vegetarian?”

But consider this: “You can’t tell me that those new phosphorescent zucchinis are safe!  Don’t you know that the research that supports that claim was funded exclusively by MegaCorp, the company that patented that vegetable?”

This claim is more compelling.  Though it is genetic, it does more than make a simple origins claim.  Compare that with “Don’t tell me that phosphorescent zucchini are safe!  MegaCorp says they’re safe.”  Stripped of the evidence, it becomes an example of a genetic fallacy.  (Of course, the evidence about MegaCorp could be false, but with it the claim at least avoids the genetic fallacy.)

Now consider these claims: “Christianity was influenced by myths of dying-and-rising saviors; therefore, the resurrection of Jesus must also be a myth.”  Or, “The Noah flood story came from a society influenced by neighboring flood stories like that of Gilgamesh; therefore, the Noah flood story is a myth.”

These are (1) genetic, since they make conclusions based on origins, (2) unsubstantiated, since these claims will need lots of supporting evidence, and (3) fallacies.  I would argue that these aren’t genetic fallacies, however.  They fail in my mind because the unequivocal conclusion (“… must also be a myth”) can’t be built on evidence that simply points in that direction.

The fallacy vanishes when we make a conclusion that could follow from the evidence: “Christianity was influenced by myths of dying-and-rising saviors; therefore, we must consider that the resurrection of Jesus may also be a myth.”  We still have work to do to establish that Christianity was influenced as claimed, but the fallacy is gone.

The genetic fallacy is the term for any argument that points solely to origin as its evidence, but there are many subsets based on the specific origin.

• Ad hominem: attacking the person rather than the argument.  “Senator Jones wants to raise taxes, but he beats his dog; therefore, raising taxes is a bad idea.”
• Tu quoque: saying, in effect, “Oh yeah?  Well you do, too!”  This argument tries to respond to a problem by claiming that the other person suffers from it also.
• Argument from authority fallacy: using an authority as a relevant source when that person is not an authority in the field at hand, rejects the consensus view (if any), or is biased.
• Credential fallacy: rejecting an authority because that person doesn’t have the right degrees.
• Ad feminam: rejecting an authority because that person is a woman.

And so on.

Avoid making thoughtless charges of these fallacies.  Not every attack on a person is an ad hominem fallacy.  “Just ignore that fire alarm; that’s nutty Mrs. Smith” may be a fallacy, but “Ignore that fire alarm; that’s Mrs. Smith, and she’s phoned in a false alarm about every week for over three years” isn’t.  (It may not be the safest response for the fire department, but it’s not a logical fallacy.)

And as seen above, not every genetic (origins) argument is a fallacy.

Photo credit: Simon Varwell

Related posts:

• Argument from Authority (and How Consensus Fits In)
• See all the definitions in the Galileo Unchained Glossary.

Related links:

• “Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder,” The Guardian, 5/4/12.
• “Genetic fallacy,” Wikipedia.
• “Genetic fallacy,” Iron Chariots Wiki.
• “Forms of the Genetic Fallacy,” Friesian web site.
• “Ad hominem,” Wikipedia.
• “Argumentum ad hominem,” RationalWiki.

But why?  No one forced tax-exempt donations on them—in fact, they took them willingly—so it’s surprising that they’re now chafing at the regulations that come along for the ride.  The solution is easy: if nonprofit status is a deal with the devil, then don’t accept nonprofit status.

The Internal Revenue Service makes clear that churches and pastors may organize non-partisan voter education activities, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote drives (with an emphasis on non-partisan).  Religious leaders speaking for themselves can say whatever they want, and they can speak “about important issues of public policy.”

However, all nonprofit organizations, including religious organizations

are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made by or on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. … Religious leaders cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official church functions. …

[Nonprofits] must avoid any issue advocacy that functions as political campaign intervention.  Even if a statement does not expressly tell an audience to vote for or against a specific candidate, an organization delivering the statement is at risk of violating the political campaign intervention prohibition if there is any message favoring or opposing a candidate.

But many pastors can’t accept this.  I don’t know if they honestly think that it’s unfair or if they figure that they’ve already tipped the playing field so much in their favor that they’ll try their luck for even more, but the Alliance Defense Fund has organized the annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday (October 7 this year).  On this day:

The pastors will exercise their First Amendment right to preach on the subject [of the moral qualifications of candidates seeking public office], despite federal tax regulations that prohibit intervening or participating in a political campaign. …

The point of the Pulpit Initiative is very simple: the IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status.  We need to get the government out of the pulpit.

Wow—strange thinking.  Tax-exempt status is granted by the government.  It’s a contract, not a right, and it comes with strings attached.  If we the public will be subsidizing an organization, we are entitled to limit its actions.  No one’s strong-arming the church, and they can drop both the nonprofit status and the strings attached any time they want.

To some extent, it’s a zero-sum game.  (For example, when Mormon desires for polygamy clashed with the needs of the state, someone had to lose.)  The head of the IRS addressed this conflict of tax-exempt status and freedom of speech:

Freedom of speech and religious liberty are essential elements of our democracy.  But the Supreme Court has in essence held that tax exemption is a privilege, not a right, stating, “Congress has not violated [an organization’s] First Amendment rights by declining to subsidize its First Amendment activities.”

If the IRS constraints against speaking out on political issues are a problem, then don’t enter into a contract with the IRS.  Drop your nonprofit status, tell church members that they can no longer deduct donations, and then you can give your opinion about any candidate or issue.

But to keep your nonprofit status, you must follow the rules.

See the first post in this series: What do Churches Have to Hide?

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related links:

• “Pastors try to pick a tax fight with IRS,” New York Times, 10/1/11.
• “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” Alliance Defense Fund.
• “The Alliance Defense Fund Pulpit Initiative: What It Is – What It’s Not,” Alliance Defense Fund.
• “Christian right (Partisan activity of churches),” Wikipedia.

The investigated organizations (I’ll use the names of the public faces) were:

• Joyce Meyer.  She responded fully to Grassley’s questions, joined the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), and discloses her annual revenue to MinistryWatch (about $110 million per year).
• Benny Hinn also gave complete answers to Grassley’s questions.  However, MinistryWatch gave him a transparency grade of F.  His ministry’s income is about the same as Meyer’s.
• Kenneth Copeland: incomplete information.  He claimed (go here and search “Torpedoed!”) that his 40-year-old ministry has taken in a total of about $1.5 billion.  MinistryWatch grade: F.
• Creflo Dollar: incomplete information.  MinistryWatch grade: F.
• Eddie Long: incomplete information and not listed in MinistryWatch.
• Paula White: incomplete information and not listed in MinistryWatch.

Let’s dwell on this a moment.  A U.S. senator asks for information, as the Senate Finance Committee is empowered to do, and he is (more or less) given the finger.  And there is no fallout?  These ministries can tap dance away from this request for information with no meaningful loss of face?  The faithful still shower them with $100 million per year?  What kind of disconnect from reality is this?

This is a contract between U.S. taxpayers and these nonprofit organizations, mediated by the IRS.  We provide the nonprofit status and, in return, they prove that they deserve that status.  If religious organizations policed themselves and they made their finances public (by voluntarily submitting their information to the IRS like all other nonprofits), this wouldn’t be a problem.  But they don’t.  With $100 billion in tax-exempt contributions to the religion industry every year, shielded from inspection, it’s obvious that this exemption is a bad idea.

A memo prepared by Sen. Grassley’s staff highlights some of the foundational principles that are relevant to this discussion.

The Constitution does not require the government to exempt churches from federal income taxation or from filing tax and information returns.

And:

Requiring churches to file an annual information return does not offend either the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment].

Some ministries have complained that an obligatory filing would entangle the government in church business, but the opposite may be more accurate.  Today, the IRS must define what a church is, since the legal code doesn’t.  For example, after a long legal battle, Scientology was granted tax-exempt status as a church.  Putting churches in the same bin as other nonprofits would eliminate this unwelcome role for the IRS.

The Grassley memo admits that there should be no constitutional problem with a level playing field, but it argues that some problems will remain:

• Eliminating the exemption “would unnecessarily burden the overwhelming majority of churches.”  Why?  The 1.5 million nonprofits with less than $100,000 in annual income can follow the rules.  Surely a church that can keep its books can fill out a four-page 990-EZ form.  The only tough part is taking that deep breath and disclosing to the world how you spend your income.
• This would burden the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Office, which is stretched as it is.  When a ministry is simply a piggy bank for a few people at the top, no laws are being broken.  Things change if we can force the churches to commit publicly.  Let’s let a little sunshine in and let public scrutiny (and possible condemnation) do its work.  Could a sleazy ministry lie?  Of course, but when it does, it’s now breaking the law.  At that point, there’s a crime that the IRS can go after and assets that can help fund the process.
• This would be contrary to the intent of Congress.  True, but the desires of Congress can change.  If ordinary Christians, embarrassed by the secrecy of churches, demanded a level playing field for all nonprofits, Congress just might turn around.  Without public demand, there will be no energy for this initiative.

The ECFA is a good step.  Though it’s expensive to join, it provides what amounts to a Good Housekeeping seal of approval to ministries that abide by its code.  But even they don’t demand that salaries be revealed, and members need only provide financial information on written request.  It’s a baby step, when a level playing field is the obvious solution.

The IRS has a form 990 and 1.5 million nonprofit organizations already using it.  It works.  It should be our window into the operation of all nonprofits, including churches.

What are the next steps?  An atheist organization like the Freedom From Religion Foundation could file lawsuits, but a push for this from within the Christian community would be far more effective.  Christians, you have the power.  Aren’t you embarrassed by being lumped in with the worst of the televangelists?  Wouldn’t you like to see some public scrutiny on Scientology and other organizations hiding behind this loophole?

You won’t like me when I’m angry,
because I always back up my rage
with facts and documented sources.
— the Credible Hulk

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related posts:

• See the first post in the series: What do Churches Have to Hide?

Related links:

• Douglas Frantz, “Scientology’s Puzzling Journey From Tax Rebel to Tax Exempt,” NY Times, 3/9/97.
• “Weigh in on church’s lack of financial accountability,” Freedom From Religion Foundation, 3/29/12.
• “Grassley Releases Review of Tax Issues Raised by Media-based Ministries,” Senator Grassley’s site, 1/6/11.
• Adam Lee, “How We All Pay For the Huge Tax Privileges Granted to Religion – It’s Time to Tax the Church,” AlterNet, 12/14/11.
• “Give Money Unto God, But Send It To My Address,” Agnostic Review web site.
• “SFC Staff Memo to Grassley re Ministries 01-06-11.”
• “Political Campaign Activity,” IRS Tax guide for Churches And Religious Organizations.
• “Grassley’s Requests of Televangelists are Well-Founded,” MinistryWatch newsletter, 12/07.

Want to know what the revenue of the FFRF is?  For 2010, it was $2,234,307.  Exactly.

Want to know how I know that?  I looked it up; it’s public information.  That’s true for all U.S. nonprofits.  All nonprofits, that is, except churches and other religious organizations.

Isn’t it startling that church leaders, who supposedly believe that the all-knowing Accountant in the Sky will judge them eternally for how ethically they spend the money given by parishioners, are embarrassed to show their financial records to the rest of us?  That they want church donations to be tax exempt but refuse to show the public (who is picking up the slack for the missing taxes) how they spend this money?  What do you suppose they have to hide?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s form 990 has a bold “Open to Public Inspection” at the top.  The form gives the salaries of each staff member, to the dollar.  It shows revenue, expenses, cash in the bank, mortgages, and lots more financial details.  They seem to shoulder this burden pretty well, and I think churches can, too.

Go to GuideStar, the Foundation Center, or similar organizations to look up any nonprofit to which you’re considering a donation to check how they spend their money.

Any nonprofit, that is, except churches.

Let’s remember what religion we’re talking about.  It’s the religion that tells the story of the rich man who was (tragically) too attached to his wealth to follow Jesus’s command, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Mark 10:17–31).  It’s the religion in which Jesus will say to the worthy people, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matt. 25:31–46).  And, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25).  And, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth … but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven … for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19–21).

Apparently Jesus didn’t care much for rich people but cared greatly for the poor.  How do you suppose he would react to churches and ministries being secretive today about how they spend the money given to them?  About churches exempting themselves from the requirement to open their books?

There are some groups trying to fix this problem.  MinistryWatch asks for financial information from ministries and publicizes the results.  For example, Greg Koukl’s Stand to Reason gets an A rating, and they deserve praise for doing the right thing.  But this is just a baby step.  First, MinistryWatch has only 600 ministries in their list when there are an estimated 335,000 congregations in the U.S.  Second, the financial information is still not as thorough as that provided on Form 990s by nonreligious nonprofits.

And third, many of the ministries don’t get an A rating.  In fact, those who get an F (typically because they ignored MinistryWatch’s request for information) are a Who’s Who of high-profile televangelists and religious newsmakers: Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, TD Jakes, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Rod Parsley, Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, Harold Camping’s Family Radio, and more.  They all got an F.  Doesn’t this evasion reflect badly on all religious organizations?

Some churches are open about their finances, but only to members.  According to one survey, 92% of churches provide financial information upon request to members.  Why is this not 100%?  And what good is this to the U.S. taxpayer who wants to verify the claimed benefit that churches provide a good to society that earns them nonprofit status?  Compare this with the financial records of the more than 1.5 million ordinary nonprofits easily accessible in a single database.

Let’s make a simple, logical change—a change that helps churches look better.  This cloud of doubt hangs over every church.  The change costs churches and other ministries very little and makes things fair, and it shows that they have nothing to hide.  Remove the exemption allowing churches to avoid providing financial information.

Some ministries will have to clean up their acts, but isn’t that a good thing?  Doesn’t this benefit the Christians at the churches that spend their income honorably?

Photo credit: IRS

Other posts in this series:

• How Religious are Americans? Not as Much as You Think.
• Church Accountability
• Pastors Speak Their Mind (and Flout the Rules)
• Are Churches More Like Charities or Country Clubs?

Related links:

• “Christian views on poverty and wealth,” Wikipedia.
• “4th annual ‘State of the Plate’ Survey,” State of the Plate, 3/27/12.

The president issued the obligatory proclamation today: “Let us pray for all the citizens of our great Nation, particularly those who are sick, mourning, or without hope, and ask God for the sustenance to meet the challenges we face as a Nation” and blah, blah, blah.

We’ve had a National Day of Prayer since 1952.  What good has it done?  In 1952, the world had 50 million cases of smallpox each year.  Today, zero.  Guinea worm and polio should soon follow.  Computers?  Cell phones?  The internet?  Science delivers, not God.

I can appreciate that praying to Jesus can help someone feel better, but so can praying to Shiva or Quetzalcoatl or whatever god they’ve been raised with.  In terms of actual results, praying to Jesus is as effective as praying to a jug of milk.

I understand how the National Day of Prayer helps politicians get right with Christians.  But how it coexists with the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”), I can’t imagine.

My own departure from Christianity was pretty gentle, and I learned a lot from the painful road taken by Julia Sweeney (creator of “Letting Go of God”).  As she gradually fell away from first Catholicism, then Christianity, and finally religion, she realized with a shock how ineffective prayer had been.  Prayer lets you imagine that you’re doing something when you’re actually doing absolutely nothing.  All that prayer that had helped her feel like she was helping people—whether the person on hard times down the street or the city devastated by natural disaster around the world—had been worthless.

In fact, not only does prayer do nothing in cases like this, but it is actually harmful.  The pain that people naturally feel when they hear of disaster—that emotion that could be the motivator for action—is drained away by prayer.  Why bother doing something yourself when God is so much more capable?

Prayer becomes an abdication of responsibility, and atheism can open the doors to action.

Sweeney’s conclusion: if you want to help the victims of the tsunami in Haiti (or whatever the latest disaster is), you need to do something since God clearly isn’t doing anything.  Contribute to a charity that will help, or demand that the federal government spend more to help and demand the tax increase to pay for it.  If it’s a sick friend, Jesus isn’t going to take them soup and cheer them up … but you can.

Prayer doesn’t “work” like other things work.  Electricity works.  An antibiotic works.  Prayer doesn’t.  As the bumper sticker says, Nothing Fails Like Prayer.

Even televangelists make clear that prayer is useless.  Their shows are just long infomercials that end with a direct appeal in two parts: please pray for us, and send lots and lots of cash.  But what possible value could my $20 be compared to what the almighty Creator of the universe could do?

Televangelists’ appeals for money make clear that they know what I know: that praying is like waiting for the Great Pumpkin.  People can reliably deliver money, but prayer doesn’t deliver anything.

Instead of a National Day of Prayer, how about a National Day of Actually Doing Something?  Many local United Way offices organize a Day of Caring—what about something like that on a national level?

Doing something makes you feel good, just like prayer, but it actually delivers the results.

Prayer is like masturbation.
It makes you feel good but it doesn’t change the world.
— Don Baker

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related posts:

• Televangelists Prove Prayer Is Useless

Related links:

• “National Day of Prayer,” Wikipedia.
• Elizabeth Tenety, “Do we need a National Day of Prayer?” Washington Post, 5/5/11.

Ah, for the good old days when biblical parables made a compelling point!  These are pretty weak.  If you come across more, let me know.

Here’s one I heard on the radio.

A man goes into his pastor’s office.  “I’ve got money problems,” he says.  “I try to give what God commands of me, but I’m having a hard time making ends meet.  At the end of the month, there are still bills to pay.”

If you’re already drinking the Kool-Aid, this one might hit home, but it does nothing as an argument for Christianity.  And the pastor is making a very testable claim—almost a science experiment.  He’s all but quoting Luke 12:27–8:

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you?  You men of little faith!

Test the claim!  I wouldn’t hold my breath for verifiable results, though.

I heard the next story decades ago.

In the early days of the space program, NASA scientists were checking the position of the sun, moon, and planets to make sure that they could safely put up satellites.  They checked thousands of years in the future and the past, but the computers ground to a halt.  The problem was a missing day in elapsed time.  They rechecked their data and the software, but the problem wouldn’t go away.

Ooh—let me guess the moral!  Modern science needs to get its guidance from the Bible.  (Did I get that right?)

Well, Mr. Smarty Pants Scientist—looks like the Goliath of Science has been defeated by the David of Christian Truth!

Despite its longevity and popularity—this story originated in a 1936 book by Harry Rimmer and was popularized by a 1974 book by Harold Hill—it’s bogus.  NASA even released a press release denying the popular story.

There are lots of red flags.  Even if God had stopped the sun 3000 years ago, there is no way to deduce that from information available to astronomers today, so the entire premise is flawed.  And let’s not even speculate at what “stopping the sun” (that is, stopping the rotation of the earth) would’ve done.  Concluding 23 hours and 20 minutes from “about a full day” is wishful thinking, and the ten degrees is more properly translated as “ten steps”—an angle based on local instrumentation that we can’t reproduce.

As usual, imagining that the Bible’s miracle stories really happened takes us to nowhere that can be scientifically justified.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Other links:

• “The Lost Day,” Snopes.
• “Harry Rimmer,” Wikipedia.

Let’s take a look at this fallacy and see where it applies and where it doesn’t.

Suppose I said, “Dr. Jones is smarter than both of us put together and he agrees with me, so I’m right!”  This statement could fail due to the Argument from Authority Fallacy for two reasons: (1) we haven’t established that Dr. Jones’ expertise is relevant to the question at hand, and (2) even if Dr. Jones is an expert on the subject, that he agrees with my position doesn’t make me right—at best, it would make me justified in holding my position.

Chastised at my poor argument, I go back and rework it.  Now I’m careful to first establish Dr. Jones’ relevant expertise and I modified my claim this way: “Dr. Jones, an established authority, agrees with me, so therefore my position is well justified.”  This is better, but my statement could still fail due to this Fallacy.  What if Dr. Jones is a maverick in his field?  He could be a cosmologist still holding on to the Steady State model of the universe now that the Big Bang model is the overwhelming consensus.  Conversely, imagine that it’s the 1930s and he is arguing for an expanding universe when that was the minority position.  Either position makes Dr. Jones a maverick, and the layman (as an outsider) has no grounds from which to conclude that this minority position is the best approximation.

The Argument from Authority is not a fallacy when the person indicated (1) is an expert in the field and (2) is arguing for the consensus.  Of course, that doesn’t necessarily make you right, but being in line with the relevant consensus is the best that we can hope for.

I’m amazed when I hear people reject evolution who aren’t biologists.  I can imagine browsing biology textbooks and concluding that evolution is a remarkable claim.  I could even imagine thinking that the evidence isn’t there (though the fact that I’ve only dipped my toe into the water would scream out as the explanation for this).  What I can’t imagine is concluding, based in my “research,” that the theory of evolution is flawed.  I mean—on what grounds could I possibly make this statement?  On what grounds could I reject the consensus of the people who actually understand this stuff?  The people who actually have the doctorate degrees and who actually do the work on a daily basis?

And yet I hear people justifying this step all the time.

Let’s move on to another topic, the question of consensus.  After many discussions that have forced me to carefully think my position, let me offer my views on consensus from different fields.  Note that this is the view of a layman—someone who is an outsider to these fields.

• Scientific consensus: I always accept this.
• Historical consensus: I always accept this.
• Consensus of religious scholars about their own religion: I always accept their statements of what their beliefs are.  For example, when the consensus of Catholic scholars says that within the Catholic church the eucharist (the communion wafer) is believed to transubstantiate into the body of Christ, I accept that.

But don’t accept everything.  I draw the line at supernatural claims, whether by scholars or believers, and whether the consensus or not.  I will consider evidence for these claims, but so far I have always rejected them.  If I were to accept these claims, that would probably be based either the scientific or historical consensus.

Supernatural claims are in a very different category than scientific or historical claims.  For more, see my post Map of World Religions.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related posts:

• See all the definitions in the Galileo Unchained Glossary.
• Map of World Religions

Related links:

• “Argument from Authority,” Wikipedia.
• “Argumentum ad verecundiam,” Iron Chariots Wiki.

On a recent Bible Geek podcast (scroll to 5:45), Dr. Price was good enough to give a review of my novel, Cross Examined.

Very flattering!

Related posts:

• Comments on a Robert Price vs. James White Debate
• Principle of Analogy    

Can we conclude anything from that?  That “C:\>” is a reflection of some supernatural or transcendental truth?  That it is an insight into God’s mind?  No—it’s just a useful trait shared by this class of PCs.  There’s no objective meaning behind these characters.  This text is useful (it shows the directory in which any typed commands will take place), so it was selected.  There’s nothing more profound than this behind it.

Human morality is like this.  Almost all humans have shared moral instincts, not dissimilar from instincts in other animals.  Through instinct, honeybees communicate where the nectar is, newborn sea turtles go toward the ocean, and juvenile birds fly.  Training or acculturation can override human instincts, of course, but in general we have a shared moral sense—a shared acceptance of the Golden Rule, for example.

We think our moral instincts are pretty important, and that’s understandable, but there’s no reason to imagine that they are objectively true—that is, based on some supernatural grounding.  Said another way, we think that our morality is true because it tells us that it’s true, but we can’t infer from this that it is grounded outside us.

We must not confuse universally shared moral instincts with universal moral truths.

Human moral instincts are what our programming says they are—it’s no more profound than that.  There’s as much reason to imagine that they are a window into the transcendent as that the MS-DOS C-prompt is.

Related posts:

• More on how our instincts are well tuned to the environment: Plantinga’s Nutty Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

The novel The Da Vinci Code portrayed the Council as the stereotypical politicians’ smoky back room where the features of Christianity and the books that represented it (the canon) were haggled over.  Many Christian sources have argued against this characterization, saying that the canon had largely been decided by the early churches by that point, but this doesn’t avoid the problem.  Selecting the canon would’ve been a popularity contest either way.  If the bishops at Nicaea didn’t vote it into existence, then the weeding-out process in the early church created a de facto canon that the bishops accepted with minimal change.  Either way grounds the canon on the imperfect shoulders of ordinary people.

Let’s take the next step.  We have a big gulf to cross from 325 CE to roughly 70–90 CE, when the originals were written down.

Suppose that Mark was written in Rome in the year 70.  Copies are made and it gradually makes its way to Alexandria, where it is copied over and over until it finds its way into the Codex Sinaiticus in about 350.  What happened to it in those 280 years?  How does the version that we have vary from the original manuscript, now lost to history?  That’s a lot of time for hanky-panky.

The issue isn’t that I’m certain that the books were changed significantly; rather, we aren’t certain that they weren’t.  This period from Nicaea back to the originals is the Bible’s Dark Ages, a period with very little documentation.  We have just a few dozen Greek manuscripts that precede the complete codices.  The papyrus manuscripts are all fragments, containing at most a chapter or two of one book.  These manuscripts are remarkable finds, but that does nothing to change the fact that we’re bridging a large gap with little information.  We can’t say that our copies differ little from the originals because we don’t have the originals.

This biblical Dark Ages was a period of much turmoil in the Christian community.  The divisions in early Christianity were much bigger than the modern Lutheranism vs. Presbyterianism distinction, say.  Instead of French vs. Spanish, think French vs. pre-Columbian Mayan.  And these divisions were all fighting for survival, fighting for their place in the canon.

Historians know of four primary divisions in the early Christian church.

Proto-Orthodox.  This is Bart Ehrman’s term for the early Christian sect that would become Christianity as we know it today.  Paul’s writings (which changed Jewish law to reject circumcision, the kosher laws, and so on) form the heart of this division.

Ebionites.  These may have been the first Christians, because they saw Jesus as a Jew.  This was the Jesus who said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets” (Matt. 5:17).  The New Testament documents the struggles between the James/Peter sect and Paul in Galatians 2:11–21.  Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus says,

According to the Ebionites, then, Jesus did not preexist; he was not born of a virgin; he was not himself divine.  He was a special, righteous man, whom God had chosen and placed in a special relationship to himself.¹

Marcionites.  This Christian variant was put forward by Marcion in about 144 CE.  The Marcionites had no use for the Old Testament, since it documented the Jews’ god, who was different from the (unnamed) father of Jesus.  Marcion argued that you could answer to Yahweh if you wanted, but Jesus offered a much better option.  This Jesus was divine and only appeared to be human.  Consider John 20:26: “Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them.”  Marcion considered only Paul’s writings to be canonical.

Gnostics.  The Gnostics rationalized the evil in the world by saying that the world was created by a demiurge (craftsman) who didn’t intend to or wasn’t able to create a perfect world.  While most people on the earth were just animals, some held a divine spark.  For that special few, Jesus’s hidden knowledge would be necessary after death to see them safely back to heaven.  We see this in Luke 8:10: “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’”

Biblical redaction is the deliberate change or concatenation by a later editor, and the Bible is full of examples.  For example, the Old Testament has two creation stories, two flood stories, two contradictory Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 vs. 34), and even two David and Goliath stories.

The New Testament holds clues to this kind of change as well.  For example, John ends with chapter 20 and then again with chapter 21.²  The authorship of Peter’s two epistles is unclear.  Jesus says, “But about that day or hour [of the end] no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt. 24:36), but some scribes omitted the startling phrase “nor the Son” from their copies.

The Ebionite, Marcionite, and Gnostic passages above suggest that our Bible is a conglomeration of different traditions, with verses or chapters added as necessary to dull the edge of an unwanted concept.

This isn’t meant to be a thorough discussion of New Testament redaction.  Rather, I want to show just a few places where it is suspected and to suggest that it could have been even more widespread.  Claims as remarkable as those of the gospels must be built on more than “Well, they might not have been changed.”

The message of James differs from the message of Paul; the message of Paul differs from the message of Acts; the message of the Revelation of John differs from the message of the Gospel of John; and so forth.  Each of these authors was human, each of them had a different message, each of them was putting the tradition he inherited into his own words.³

Would writings be deliberately changed?  The author of Revelation apparently knew it was widespread enough to end with a curse against anyone who would modify his book.  The famous Testimonium Flavianum in Josephus (“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man …”) is almost universally said to have been added by later copyists.  With the pull of competing Christianities, the urge to “improve” a book might have been irresistible.

Would competing writings be destroyed?  It happened in Islam.  The “Uthmanic recension” was the process through which one version of the Koran was accepted and all competing versions destroyed.  The Nag Hammadi library seems to have been buried.  Why hide these books unless there was reason to fear destruction?  Perhaps, like the Koran, the Bible has been modified through destruction.

While historians have told us a remarkable amount about the societies from which Christianity arose, our understanding is changing even in our time.  For example, consider “Gabriel’s Revelation,” a recently discovered first century BCE writing that talks about a suffering messiah, not Jesus but Simon of Peraea.  “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice.”  Do we conclude from this that resurrection after three days wasn’t a new concept to the Jesus-era Jews?  In this revelation, the messiah sheds blood, not for the benefit of sinners but for the redemption of Israel.

Of course we don’t discard the clues we have about the original New Testament documents, but let’s proceed with humility about how little we can say with confidence.

Read the first post in the series here: What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say?

Next time: the last post in the series will take the step from gospel originals to the figure of Jesus.

¹ Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (HarperOne, 2005), p. 156.
² Ehrman, 61.
³ Ehrman, 215.

Photo credit: Walter Noel

While a convenient phrase, it can be confusing.  “Fit” in biological terms doesn’t mean what we commonly think (strong, quick, or agile, for example) but refers to how well adapted an organism is for an environment.  Think of it as puzzle-piece fit, not athlete fit.

Creationists sometimes use the phrase to mean that might makes right or that the most savage or ruthless or selfish will survive.  On the contrary, rather than might makes right, cooperation can be the better approach.  And even if evolution did have some bloodthirsty aspects to it, how does that change whether it’s an accurate theory or not?

NewScientist magazine says:

Although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.

What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells. Multicellular organisms are made up of cooperating complex cells. Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individuals.

Note also that evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive; it simply says what is the case and doesn’t provide moral advice.  “I’ll model my morality on evolution” makes as much sense as “I’ll model my morality on the fact that arsenic kills people.”

Creationists sometimes twist Darwin’s The Descent of Man to argue that he favored eugenics.  Darwin’s damning paragraph said, in part, “hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”  In the first place, whether Darwin ate babies plain or with barbeque sauce says nothing about whether evolution is accurate or not.  In the second place, the very next paragraph clarifies Darwin’s position about denying aid to the helpless.

Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

“Survival of the fittest” is a handy description of natural selection as long as all parties understand what it means.

Photo credit: EvolveFish

Related links:

• “Survival of the fittest,” Wikipedia.
• Michael Le Page, “Evolution myths: ‘Survival of the fittest’ justifies ‘everyone for themselves,’” NewScientist, 4/16/08.

Historians use several tools to resolve these differences:

• Criterion of Embarrassment.  Of two passages, which one is more embarrassing?  We can easily imagine scribes toning down a passage, but it doesn’t make sense for them to make it more embarrassing.  The passage that is more embarrassing is likelier to be more authentic.  For example, different copies of Mark 1:40–41 has Jesus either “moved with compassion” or “moved with anger” (for more, see the NET Bible comment on this phrase).  A copyist changing compassion to anger is hard to imagine, but the opposite is quite plausible.  The Criterion of Embarrassment would conclude that “moved with anger” is the likelier original reading.
• Criterion of Multiple Attestation.  A claim made by multiple independent sources is preferred over one in a single source.

In addition, a contested passage in an older manuscript is preferred, the one contained in more manuscripts is preferred, and so on.

Notice that these tools need multiple manuscripts to work.  They ask: given two manuscripts with different versions of a particular passage, which is the more authentic one?

Consider the long ending of Mark, for example.  Given a manuscript of Mark ending with verse 16:20 (version A) and a manuscript ending with 16:8 (version B), the historians’ tools can be applied to determine which is the likely older and more authentic version.  But what if you don’t have multiple versions?  Suppose we only had Mark version A, with no copies of B and no references to it.  Scholars wouldn’t even know to ask the question!

Consider the three most famous of these embarrassing scribal additions: the long ending of Mark, the Comma Johanneum (the only explicit reference to the Trinity in the Bible), and the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery.  Apologists will argue that these are neither embarrassing nor problems because they’ve been resolved.  We know that they weren’t original.  But this is true only because historians happen to be lucky enough to have competing manuscripts without these additions.  For what added biblical passages do we not have correct manuscripts to make us aware of the problem?

There are consequences.  Pentecostal snake handlers trust in the long ending tacked onto Mark (“In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; they will pick up snakes with their hands, and whatever poison they drink will not harm them”).  What additional nutty demands in our New Testament do we not know are inauthentic?

Of several manuscript categories, our oldest complete copies are Alexandrian manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus mentioned in the last post.  That’s not because they’re necessarily better copies but because they were preserved better.  The dry conditions of Alexandria, Egypt preserved manuscripts better than many other places where New Testament documents were kept—Asia Minor, Greece, or Italy, for example.  We accept these manuscripts simply because anything that might refute them has crumbled to dust, which is not a particularly reliable foundation on which to build a portrait of the truth.

Read the first post in the series here: What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say?

Next time: The Bible’s Dark Ages

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

• What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say? (Part 1)

So we don’t know who was perhaps the most famous and influential author in the English language?  Shakespeare only died in 1616, we have a good understanding of the times, and he wrote in Early Modern English, and yet there remains a gulf of understanding that we can’t reliably cross.

And we flatter ourselves that we can cross the far more daunting gulf that separates us from the place and times of Jesus so we can accept the far more incredible claims of the gospel story.

Let’s see how reliable our modern New Testament is.  We’ll follow it back in time to track the tortuous journey on which it has come.  This post will go back to the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, and later posts will explore the hurdles between that point and the life of Jesus.

Our first step is to get past the translations.  In English, we have dozens of versions—New International Version, American Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, and so on.  Some Christians prefer the more archaic King James Version even to the point of arguing that it alone is divinely inspired.  Proponents of different versions find plenty to argue about.

Translation is especially difficult with a dead language like New Testament Greek since text examples are limited and there are no living speakers to consult.  Consider an English example: the idiom “have your cake and eat it too” interpreted 2000 years in the future.  Or “saving face” or “kick the bucket” or “throw in the towel” or “get your comeuppance.”  If given only a handful of examples, future interpreters would have to guess at the meanings.

Let’s look at similar problems in the Bible.  Consider the Hebrew word reem, translated nine times in the King James Version as “unicorn.”  For example, “Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the reem.”  It’s now translated as “wild ox,” so perhaps we’ve got this one resolved.  But what other rarely used words and phrases have been misunderstood?  With no authority, we have nothing more than our best guesses to rely on.

A bigger question is: what is “the Bible”?  That is, what is canonical, the books accepted as scripture?  The Christian church is not unified on this question.  For example, Protestants accept the fewest books.  The Roman Catholics add two books of Maccabees and Tobit (and others), the Greek Orthodox church accepts those and adds the Prayer of Manasseh and Esdras (and others), and the Ethiopian Orthodox church accepts those and adds Enoch and Jubilees (and others).  In other words, Christian churches themselves can’t agree on what books contain the inspired word of God.

Our next challenge is to find the best original-language copies.  The King James version was based on the 16th-century Textus Receptus (“received text”), which was a printed version of the best Greek New Testament texts known at the time.  More Greek manuscripts have come to light since then, and modern scholars rely on a broader set, so let’s discard the Textus Receptus and focus on those instead.

Many apologists point proudly to the thousands of New Testament manuscript copies we have today—roughly 5000 Greek manuscripts and lectionaries (collections of scripture used during church services) and close to 20,000 manuscripts in other languages (mostly Latin, but also Ethiopic, Slavic, Syriac, and more).  This compares with just 600 copies of the Iliad, our second-most well-represented ancient book.

These are impressive numbers, but too much is made of them.  Many of these are incomplete fragments—especially the oldest and most important—and almost all are far removed from the early church period.  Suppose scholars discovered a library with 1000 previously unknown Latin Bible manuscripts from the 12th century.  This would be quite a find, but these late manuscripts wouldn’t override the content from the best and oldest handful.  Today’s 25,000 copies tell us little more about the originals than would having only the most reliable and complete 25 copies.

While there are fragments of gospels going back to the second century, for complete copies we go to manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.  These are our oldest copies of the New Testament, and each was written in roughly 350 CE, perhaps as part of the newly approved canon from the Council of Nicaea.

We’ve still got a long way to go before the events in the life of Jesus.  It’s like we’re looking the wrong way through a telescope.

See all posts in this series here:

• What Did the Original Books of the Bible Say? (Part 2)
• The Bible’s Dark Ages

We see through a glass, darkly
(That is: we dimly see in a mirror)
— 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

It’s a week after Easter, so here is one final post on the theme of resurrection.

History records many dying-and-rising saviors.  Examples from the Ancient Near East that preceded the Jesus story include Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Baal.  Here is a brief introduction.

Tammuz was the Sumerian god of food and vegetation and dates from c. 2000 BCE.  His death was celebrated every spring.  One version of the story has him living in the underworld for six months each year, alternating with his sister.

Osirus was killed by his brother Set and cut into many pieces and scattered.  His wife Isis gathered the pieces together, and he was reincarnated as the Egyptian god of the underworld and judge of the dead.  He was worshipped well before 2000 BCE.

Dionysus (known as Bacchus in Roman mythology) was the Greek god of wine and dates to the 1200s BCE.  The son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Dionysus was killed and then brought back to life.

Adonis (from 600 BCE) is a Greek god who was killed and then returned to life by Zeus.

Attis (from 1200 BCE) is a vegetation god from central Asia Minor, brought back to life by his lover Cybele.

In Canaanite religion, Baal (Baʿal) was part of a cycle of life and death.  Baal and Mot are sons of the supreme god El (yes, one of the names of the Jewish god).  When El favored the death god Mot over Baal, the heat of the summer took over and Baal died.  He was resurrected when his sister-wife kills Mot.

All these gods:

• came from regions that were close enough to the crossroads of Israel (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Asia Minor) for the ideas to have plausibly made it there,
• were worshipped well before the time of Jesus, and
• were of the dying-and-rising sort.

This is strong evidence that the gospel writers knew of (and could have been influenced by) resurrecting god stories from other cultures.

Is it possible that Judea at this time was a backwater, and the people were unaware of the ideas from the wider world?  That seems unlikely.  The book of 2 Maccabees, written in c. 124 BCE, laments at how Hellenized the country was becoming.  It says that the new high priest installed by Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes “at once shifted his countrymen over to the Greek way of life.”  He “introduced new customs contrary to the Law” and “induced the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat.”  The book complains about “an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways” and the youth “putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige.”

In fact, the gospels themselves report that the idea of dying and rising again was a familiar concept.  Jesus in the early days of his ministry was thought to be a risen prophet.

King Herod heard of [the ministry of Jesus], for His name had become well known; and people were saying, “John the Baptist has risen from the dead, and that is why these miraculous powers are at work in Him.” But others were saying, “He is Elijah.” And others were saying, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, “John, whom I beheaded, has risen!” (Mark 6:14–16)

One Christian website does a thorough job attacking poorly evidenced parallels between Jesus and these prior gods.  For example, was Dionysus really born to a virgin on December 25?  Did Mithras really have 12 disciples?  Was Krishna’s birth heralded by a star in the east?  The author offers $1000 to anyone who can prove that any of these gods’ lists of parallels are actually true.

I’ll agree that there are strained parallels.  One early work that has been criticized for too many claims and too little evidence is The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors by Kersey Graves (1875).  The recent “Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ” by Acharya S also seems to be reaching, in my opinion.

I don’t have the expertise to weigh in on these many issues, so let’s grant the complaints and dismiss the many unsupportable specific parallels.  What’s left is what really matters: that the Jesus story arose in a culture suffused with the idea of dying and rising saviors.

Apologists raise other objections.

Many of these gods actually came after Jesus.  That’s why the list above only includes dying-and-rising gods who are well-known to have preceded Jesus.  There are many more such gods—Mithras, Horus, Krishna, Persephone, and others—that don’t seem to fit as well.  In fact, Wikipedia lists life-death-rebirth deities from twenty religions worldwide, but I’ve tried to list above the six most relevant examples.

But Jesus really existed!  He’s a figure from history, unlike those other gods.  Strip away any supernatural claims from the story of Alexander the Great, and you’ve still got cities throughout Asia named Alexandria and coins with Alexander’s likeness.  Strip away any supernatural claims from the Caesar Augustus story, and you’re left with the Caesar Augustus from history.  But strip away the supernatural claims from the Jesus story, and you’re left with a fairly ordinary rabbi.  The Jesus story is nothing but the supernatural elements.

Most of those gods were used to explain the cycles of the seasons.  Jesus isn’t like them.  Christianity is different from all the other religions, just like any religion.  If Christianity weren’t different from one of the earlier religions, you’d call it by the name of that religion.

In another post I explore the Dionysus myth more fully to show the parallels with the Jesus story.  That post also notes how Justin Martyr (100–165 CE) not only admitted to the similarities but argued that the devil put them in history to fool us.

Okay, they’re all myths, but the Jesus story is true myth.  This was the approach of C.S. Lewis, who said, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth; a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference, that it really happened, and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s Myth where the others are men’s myths.”

So you admit that the Jesus story indeed has many characteristics of mythology but demand that I just trust you that it’s true?  Sorry, I need more evidence than that.

And the throw-in-the-towel argument:

Just because Christianity developed in a culture that knew of other resurrecting gods doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t the real thing.  Granted.  But “you haven’t proven the gospel story false” isn’t much of an argument.  Those who seek the truth know that proof is impossible and try instead to find where the evidence points.

And here’s where the evidence doesn’t point: that humans worldwide invent dying-and-rising saviors (except in the Jesus case, ’cause that one was real!).

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Related posts:

• Lee Strobel’s Fragile Argument

Related links:

• Jonathan Talat Phillips, “Gnosis: The Not-So-Secret History of Jesus,” Huffington Post, 1/7/12.
• Acharya S, “The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ,” Stellar House Publishing, 2011.
• “Dying god,” Wikipedia.
• “Jesus Christ in comparative mythology,” Wikipedia.
• “Were Bible stories and characters stolen from pagan myths?” Tekton.
• “Was Jesus Christ just a CopyCat Savior Myth?” Christian Thinktank.
• Comparison of the traits of the Jesus story against those of Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz, and Baal at Religion is Dumb.
• “Pagan Origins of Christianity?” Answering Islam.
• “Mystery Religions—Isis, Osiris, Dionysos, Orpheus,” AskWhy!
• “Mystery Religions—Tammuz and Adonis, Attis and Cybele,” AskWhy!

In a fable going back centuries within various cultures, a simpleton sees the reflection of the full moon in water and imagines that it’s a wheel of green (that is, young) cheese.  It’s a tale that we often pass on to our children and that we discard with time, like belief in the Easter Bunny.

But how do you know that the moon isn’t made of green cheese?

Physicist Sean M. Carroll addressed this question recently.  After a few moments exploring physical issues like the moon’s mass, volume, and density and the (dissimilar) density of cheese, he gave this frank broadside:

The answer is that it’s absurd to think the moon is made of green cheese.

He goes on to say that we understand how the planets were formed and how the solar system works.  There simply is no reason to suppose that the moon is made of green cheese and plenty of reasons to suppose that it’s not.

This is not a proof, there is no metaphysical proof, like you can prove a statement in logic or math that the moon is not made of green cheese.  But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding.

Bringing this thinking into the domain of this blog, how do we know that Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead?  The answer is the same: it’s absurd to think that Jesus was raised from the dead.

• We know how death works.  We see it in plants and animals, and we know that when they’re gone, they’re just gone.  Rats don’t have souls.  Zebras don’t go to heaven.  There’s no reason to suppose that it works any differently for our favorite animal, Homo sapiens, and plenty of reasons to suppose that it works the same.
• We know about ancient manuscripts.  Lots of cultures wrote their ancient myths, and many of these are older than the books of the Old Testament: Gilgamesh (Sumerian), Enûma Eliš (Babylonian), Ramayana (Hindu), Iliad (Greek), Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon), Popol Vuh (Mayan), and so on.  For whatever reason, people write miracle stories, and we have a large and well-populated bin labeled “Mythology” in which to put stories like those in the Bible.
• We know about how stories and legends grow with time.  We may have heard of Charles Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Christianity (false).  Or that a decent fraction of Americans thought that President Obama is a Muslim.  Or that aliens crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico.  Or that a new star appeared in the night sky with the birth of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.  In our own time, urban legends so neatly fit a standard pattern, that simple rules help identify them.
• We know that humans invent religions.  There are 42,000 denominations of Christianity alone, for example, and uncountably many versions of the myriad religions invented through history.

Natural explanations are sufficient to explain Christianity.

Might the moon actually be made of cheese?  Science doesn’t make unconditional statements, but we can assume the contrary with about as much confidence as we have in any scientific statement.

Might Jesus have been raised from the dead?  Sure, it’s possible, but that’s not where the facts point.  Aside from satisfying a preconception, why imagine that this is the case?

Photo credit: TV Tropes

Related posts:

• Principle of Analogy

(Or is it … ?)

In the episode “The Last Day,” Kryten’s replacement has finally caught up with the ship.  Kryten is packing up his spare heads in preparation for being replaced and is talking with Lister.

LISTER (crewman): How can you just lie back and accept it?

KRYTEN (robot): Oh, it’s not the end for me, sir, it’s just the beginning. I have served my human masters, and now I can look forward to my reward in silicon heaven.

LISTER: Silicon what?

KRYTEN: Surely you’ve heard of silicon heaven. It’s the electronic afterlife. It’s the gathering place for the souls of all electronic equipment. Robots, calculators, toasters, hairdryers—it’s our final resting place.

LISTER: There is no such thing as silicon heaven.

KRYTEN: Then where do all the calculators go?

LISTER: They don’t go anywhere! They just die.

KRYTEN: It’s just common sense, sir. If there were no afterlife to look forward to, why on earth would machines spend the whole of their lives serving mankind? Now that would really be dumb!

LISTER: Just out of interest, is silicon heaven the same place as human heaven?

KRYTEN: Human heaven? Goodness me! Humans don’t go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!

Kryten’s explanation of his heaven is what I get from many Christians.  The existence of their heaven is obvious and indisputable, and the alternative is empty and inconceivable.  They’ve read about it, after all, and they’ve heard about it all their lives.  No heaven?  Who could imagine such a thing?

Christians can easily see through someone else’s nutty idea of an afterlife.  (“Hindu reincarnation?  Where’s the evidence of that?!”)  What they have a harder time with is holding a mirror to their own beliefs.  If they did, perhaps they’d find no more evidence for their concept of heaven than for Kryten’s.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Related links:

• Screenplay found at: “RED DWARF Series 3 Episode 6, ‘The Last Day’” PlanetSmeg.