Category Archives: Christianity

Shroud of Turin: An Easter Miracle?

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Christian apologetics and atheismThe Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long linen cloth with the faint image of a man.  Imagine the cloth going from feet to head along a man’s back, then folding over the head to continue back to the feet.

Many Christians think that it is the burial shroud of Jesus and that the supernatural energy of resurrecting his dead body burned an image into the cloth.  It first appears in history in 1390 in France and was moved to Turin, Italy in 1578.  Fire and water damage from 1532 are visible on the shroud.

Proponents argue that marks from Jesus’s last hours are on the figure—the nail wounds, the scourgings, and the cuts from the crown of throns—but is this the real burial shroud of Jesus?

The first problem is scriptural.  This doesn’t match the story of the empty tomb from the Bible.

[Simon Peter] saw the strips of linen lying there [in the tomb], as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head.  (John 20:6–7)

Strips of linen (presumably for the body) and a separate head cloth is not a single shroud.  And there is no evidence besides the shroud itself to imagine that first-century Jews buried their dead that way.

They took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.  (John 19:40)

This wasn’t just a pinch of spice—it was 75 pounds worth (John 19:39).  And yet we see no evidence of all this spice applied to the body in the shroud image.

Next, an artistic problem.  If a linen cloth were laid over a prone person, it would drape over the face.  That is, it would wrap around to some extent.

A typical man’s face is roughly six inches wide.  But it’s more like eleven inches from one ear, across the face, to the other ear.  Granted, the shroud wouldn’t be vacuum-sealed to hug the face completely.  But we would expect to see some wraparound distortion to the image when the shroud was later laid flat.  The image is actually thinner than an ordinary person, not wider, as it ought to be.

Could this have been a hoax or some other fake?  Traffic in holy Christian relics was common during the medieval period—it’s been said that there were enough pieces of the cross to build a ship and enough nails from the crucifixion to hold it together.  And this wasn’t the only shroud—history records forty of them.  Obviously, at least 39 of these must be false.

In fact, our first well-documented discussion of the shroud in 1390 states that it is a forgery and that the artist was known.

(An aside: I’ve written before about the apologists’ Naysayer Argument, that the gospel story must be true because, if it weren’t, we’d have rebuttals from contemporaries.  The Shroud debate nicely defeats this argument.  Our oldest reliable source is a rebuttal of the supernatural claim of the shroud, and yet this obviously didn’t eliminate Christian belief.)

Many problems argue against the shroud being the real thing.  Carbon dating says that the linen is from the 1300s, there is evidence of tempera paint creating the image, 2000-year-old blood should be black and not red, pollen on the shroud seems to be only from Europe and not also Israel, the weave of the fabric doesn’t appear to be authentic, and so on.  Christian apologists have a different way to rationalize away each of these problems, but the most economical explanation, the one that neatly explains the evidence, is that it’s a fake.

There’s a surprisingly large amount of information on this topic.  It is clearly important for a lot of people.  The best that can be said of the shroud is that we can’t prove that it wasn’t the burial cloth of Jesus.  But that’s no reason to believe that it was, at least for anyone who cares about evidence.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Homosexuality in Nature

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Homosexuality--just one of the dangerous things that Christianity can lead toChristians often argue that homosexuality is unnatural.  That is, the purpose of man/woman sex is clear—it’s what propagates the species.  Any other kind of sex simply isn’t using human anatomy for what it was meant for.  There’s only one way to properly fit the jigsaw puzzle pieces together.

The Catholic Church is a vocal proponent of this idea that homosexuality is unnatural.  Let’s pause to savor this for a moment—that’s a community of celibate men, if you can imagine such a thing, calling another lifestyle unnatural.

But the fact is that homosexuality is natural.  It’s widespread in nature and has been observed in 500 animal species, including all the great apes, of which humans are a part.

The science that explains homosexuality is immature—homosexuality might be the consolation prize, for example—but why isn’t the point.  It’s clearly natural, and that’s been recognized within society.  We’re decades past the time when homosexuality was categorized as a mental disorder.

But natural doesn’t mean good, the Christian will say.  Rape, violence, and cyanide are natural, and they’re harmful.

True enough.  Then let’s move the conversation from natural/unnatural to good/harmful.  Rape, violence, and cyanide are inherently harmful, but homosexuality isn’t.

Saying “I have homosexual inclinations, so I should act on them” is like saying, “I have alcoholic inclinations, so I should act on them.”

Once again, the issue is harm.  Alcoholic inclinations cause harm, and homosexual inclinations don’t.  What’s the problem caused by consensual homosexual sex (besides offending the Old Testament god)?

Homosexuals can be treated.  They can become un-gay.

Here’s an interesting data point from the More Musings blog:

[Alan] Chambers is the president of Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization in the United States. … The most significant statement Chambers made that evening was this:

“The majority of people that I have met–and I would say ‘the majority’ meaning 99.9% of them–have not experienced a change in their orientation, or have gotten to a place where they could say they could never be tempted, or are not tempted in some way, or experience some level of same sex attraction.”

Quoth the President of the Largest Ex-gay Ministry in America.

But if everyone were homosexual, the population would die out!

Yes, and if everyone were female, the population would also die out.  So what?  No one’s saying that being female is bad or immoral or unnatural.   It’s not the case that everyone is female, and it’s not the case that everyone is homosexual.  No problem then!  Anyway, animals have apparently been gay since forever, and evolution stumbles along just fine.

I’ll close with something I recently found that’s currently at the top of my I Wish I’d Said That list:

Homosexuality exists in 500 species.
Homophobia exists in only one.
Which seems unnatural now?

Photo credit: Gabludlow

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Marriage—Designed for Procreation?

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Christianity and atheismThe most popular argument against same-sex marriage from Christians that I see is that the purpose of marriage is procreation.  (It makes me wonder if the only advice they would give a couple considering marriage would be about sex positions and lubricating oils.)

Where did this idea come from?!  My guess is that a couple of Christian strategists had a conversation something like this.

First Guy: We’ve got to find some way to differentiate same-sex marriage from straight marriage.
Other Guy: Yeah—some significant difference.
First Guy: So what would a gay marriage not be able to do that a straight marriage can?
Other Guy: Let’s see—they can love each other, they can support each other through difficult times …
First Guy: They can provide sexual satisfaction, they’ll have two incomes in many cases …
Other Guy: Hey, wait a minute—they can’t make babies! 
First Guy: Sure, that’s it!  Let’s just spin it to imagine that that’s the sole purpose of marriage!
Other Guy: The sole purpose?  But what about all that other stuff?
First Guy: Whatever—the argument just has to be plausible at first glance.  It doesn’t have to actually make sense.

Seriously?  Is that all you get out of the marriage vows?  “I promise to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow,” and so on doesn’t sound like “Make babies!” to me.

And what would these people do with marriages that don’t produce children?  Some couples don’t want children and others can’t have them.  More than 10% of couples have a fertility problem.  In other words, if every single homosexual person paired up and got married tomorrow, they would still be far exceeded in number by the straight couples simply unable to make babies.  As anti-gay-marriage advocates lie awake at night and worry about other people’s happiness, I wonder if this fact troubles them as well.

And what about couples beyond child-bearing age?  My wife and I are too old for more babies, for example.  Does that make our marriage invalid or inferior?

It’s easy to smoke out these Christians’ true opinions on the subject.  Ask these opponents to same-sex marriage why a straight couple should get married instead of living together, and the procreation argument goes out the window, replaced with profound thoughts about love and commitment—precisely the reason same-sex couples want to get married.

The marriage-creates-babies idea is clung to like a life preserver, but the simple fact is that marriage doesn’t make babies, it’s sex.  And, as I’ve said in a previous post, let’s remember that the apostle Paul was against sex and made clear that the best marriage was no marriage at all.

A variant of this argument is that a straight couple provides a better environment for a child than a same-sex couple.  I’ve heard evidence that this is true and other evidence that it doesn’t make much difference, but I’m in no position to evaluate them.  It certainly seems to me that other factors in life—having enough money, no domestic violence, no drug use, a safe neighborhood, and so on—can overshadow the parents’ gender.  But this argument is irrelevant in those situations when two biological parents simply aren’t an option.

Imagine a lesbian woman, divorced with a child.  The mother could live alone, she could live with a woman partner, or the two women could get married.  What’s the best situation for the child?  Mom and Dad isn’t an option; they’re divorced.  Mom and Stepdad aren’t an option; Mom’s a lesbian.  Seems to me that there’s room in this situation to allow for Mom’s happiness, and that could provide another adult to help with the parenting.  Where’s the problem?  We probably agree that single-parent households aren’t best for raising children, and opposing same-sex marriage only stands in the way.

A final element of the Christian position is a rearguard action.  Concerned about the charge of bias, they argue that their position does not discriminate against homosexuals.  After all, they say, the restriction that someone can only marry someone of the opposite sex applies to everyone equally.

I’m sure this absurd argument was as foul-smelling when it was applied to those in love with someone of a different race in 1967 when mixed-race marriages were still prohibited in 17 states.  “There’s no discrimination here.  You can marry anyone you want … as long as that person is of the same race as you.”

Yeah, right.

Christians don’t need to be born again. 
They need to grow up.
— John Shelby Spong

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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The Irrelevant Wisdom of the Ten Commandments

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atheism and christian apologeticsFew Christians can list the Ten Commandments in order, but almost all are familiar with them:

  1. Have no other gods before me
  2. No graven images
  3. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain
  4. Keep the Sabbath day
  5. Honor your mother and father
  6. Don’t kill
  7. No adultery
  8. Don’t steal
  9. Don’t lie
  10. Don’t covet

These are the well-known Ten Commandments from Exodus 20.  What could be ambiguous about this list?  Stay tuned as we run through the story.

It takes 11 more chapters for God to finish giving all his secondary commandments, first rules for how the people should conduct themselves and then rules for the temple and priests.

After weeks of waiting for Moses to return from Mt. Sinai, the anxious Israelites make a golden calf in chapter 32.  Moses is furious when he finally returns.  He smashes the tablets, has the calf ground up and force-fed to the faithless people, and orders the Levites to slaughter thousands of their fellow tribesmen.

Then follows an indeterminate amount of time during which God descended on Moses’ tent as a pillar of smoke and “the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.”

As a side note, it’s interesting that this appearance of God to Moses (Ex. 33:11) as well as that to Abraham (Gen. 18:1–2) is denied in other parts of the Bible.  We’re later told, “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18) and “No man has seen or can see [God]” (1 Tim. 6:16).

Back to our story: Moses goes up Sinai a second time in Exodus 34.  God says, “I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered,” so we know that this nothing new, just a replacement set of commandments.  But the contents are very different:

  1. Make no covenant with the Canaanite tribes
  2. Destroy their altars
  3. Make no idols (“molten gods”)
  4. Observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread
  5. “The first offspring from every womb belongs to me”
  6. Rest on the seventh day
  7. Celebrate the Feast of Weeks
  8. No leavened bread during Passover
  9. Bring the first fruits of the soil to the Lord
  10. “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk”

The chapter ends with these words: “And [Moses] wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.”  This is the first time this label is used in the Bible.

You want to display the Ten Commandments in public?  Go for it, but put up this list.  It’s the official list, after all.

Contrast this with the story of the first tablets, which concludes at the end of chapter 31, “[God] gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.”  There is no mention of a “ten commandments,” and these stone tablets presumably contain all of the rules given in chapters 20 through 31.

Another detour: chapter 34 has this savage claim, “[God] will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Ex. 34:7).  And yet, three books later, we get this contradiction: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16).

I guess this too can be rationalized: Deut. 24 is talking about what man must do.  Man needs to treat people fairly and punish only the wrongdoers.  Ex. 34 is talking about what God will do.  God has a long memory and will hold a grudge against you to punish your descendants.

Speaking of punishments, the Ten Commandments list crimes without giving punishments.  For you traditionalists who like the “thou shalt not” set of commandments, “Positive Atheism” has handy list of the corresponding punishments.  God has a pretty limited imagination, and you can guess what they are: “He who sacrifices to any god, other than to the LORD alone, shall be utterly destroyed” (Ex. 22:20), “the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death” (Lev. 24:16), and so on.

Display the Ten Commandments in public, just put up the correct ten.  I dare you.

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments,
you must always come back to the pleasant fact
that there are only ten of them. 
— H. L. Mencken

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What Does the New Testament Say about Homosexuality?

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How effective are Christian apologetics?There are two primary places in the New Testament where homosexuality is a condemned practice.

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10).

We’ve been here before.

The early Christians weren’t Christian.  They were Jews, and they followed the Scripture (what we call the Old Testament).  As I noted in the last post on this subject, Leviticus categorizes homosexuality as a ritual abomination—that is, something that’s bad by definition, not by its nature.  Leviticus puts gay sex in the same category as eating a ham sandwich or sowing a field with two different crops.

Christians have rejected all of the Old Testament’s ritual abominations (animal sacrifices, kosher laws, and so on), and they can’t now come back to retrieve a few that they’re nostalgic for.

We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine (1 Tim. 1:9–10).

Ritual abominations like homosexuality are mixed in this list with actual crimes such as murder.  This tells us nothing new, so it isn’t much of an attack.  As an aside, however, it may be worth wondering who wrote this book.  Though its first line says that it’s from Paul, this book is widely considered to be pseudepigraphical.  So we have a book of unknown authorship with a wide range of possible dates of authorship.  Though it’s part of the canon, that doesn’t make it much of an authority.

If we’re to find moral advice in these two books, let’s look at a few other things they say.

Women should remain silent in the churches.  They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.  If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church (1 Cor. 14:34–5).

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.  For Adam was formed first, then Eve.  And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner (1 Tim. 2:11–14).

For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man (1 Cor. 11:8–9).

(Yeah, it’s about time we got some old-fashioned Bible values back in society!  Let’s correct society’s lax approach toward women.)

Let me suggest another source of advice.  Romans 14 recommends that we be flexible about others’ ways.  If someone has more or fewer restriction about what he eats, for example, just let it slide.  As Ambrose said, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”  Maybe this advice applies to homosexuality as well.

I’ve heard some Christians say that we should treat homosexuals with sympathy.  This sounds like giving sympathy to those pathetic individuals cursed with left-handedness in society.

The Catholic Church held for over a thousand years that being left handed made you a servant of the Devil and that anything left-handed was evil.  (Source)

Sympathy might have been the best response in a world that saw lefties as evil or demon possessed, but society has gone beyond that.  Left-handedness is irrelevant; no one cares.  We don’t give sympathy because none is necessary.  Shouldn’t that be the goal with homosexuals, another of society’s minorities?

While I know this sympathy is meant as a generous sentiment, it doesn’t come across that way.  “Hate the sin; love the sinner” may be as distasteful for the homosexual as “I love you, but you’re going to hell” aimed at the atheist.  In either situation, being told that you deserve an eternity of torture in hell for living your life in a way that is honest to who you are and that hurts no one else is simply offensive.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs delivers a much-needed smackdown to modern-day Pharisees and Levites.  It makes clear that the moral of the parable of the Good Samaritan isn’t “help people in need.”  First, a bit of background: the Pharisee and the Levite in the story were ritually clean as they walked past the beaten man lying in the dirt.  They avoided him because touching blood or a dead person caused ritual uncleanness.  But the Torah didn’t forbid touching such things; it simply stated that you were ritually unclean after doing so and had to cleanse yourself.  The Secret Diary concludes: “Jesus, your big hero, was saying that if you have some rule or conventional wisdom that causes you to do harm to people, violate the goddamn rule.”

Jesus broke lots of rules—going postal on the money changers, harvesting grain and healing on the Sabbath.  Remember “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”?  The prohibition against homosexuality is another that the Christian needs to break.

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image
when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

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