Maybe it Works Better in German

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A text-only box written in mock-German demands that people leave the First Amendment alone.

You’d think the reasons would be obvious, but maybe a warning in a severe font will encourage meddling Christians to respect the First Amendment.

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Biblical Marriage: Not a Pretty Picture

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Christian apologetics and atheismWhat does the Bible say about marriage?  Jesus said, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Mark 10:8).  Sounds like today’s conservative position, with no restrictions against interracial marriage and no allowance for same-sex marriage.

But the Bible says much about marriage, and things get muddier when we look at the big picture.

Interracial Marriage.  Deut. 7:3 says, “Do not intermarry with [those in the Canaanite tribes].  Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.”  King Solomon got into trouble for violating this rule and marrying foreign wives (1 Kings 11).

So the Bible says that marriage is with someone of your own tribe.

Concubine Sex.  King Solomon famously had 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).  Four of Jacobs 12 sons were from servants of his two wives, and Abraham’s first child was from his wife’s slave.  Frankly, I’m unclear on the difference between wives and concubines, though one source emphasizes the similarity—concubines had similar privileges and their children had similar rights.

So the Bible legitimates sex with and children from concubines.

Rape.  Courtship rituals vary by society, but here’s an unusual approach: “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver.  He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her” (Deut. 22:28–9).

So the Bible says that if you see a woman and don’t want to go through that whole getting-permission thing, you can rape and then marry her.

Captured Women.  “Now kill all the boys.  And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Num. 31:17–18 and see also Deut. 21:11)  I don’t know what we’re talking about here—whether it’s wife, concubine, or sex slave.

So the Bible says that capturing women (virgins only, please) is a reasonable way to get a bedmate.  It doesn’t much matter whether the woman is on board with the project or not.

Slave Marriage.  Exodus 21:4 says that a male Jewish slave can be released, but any wife given to him by his master (and her children) remain the master’s property.

So the Bible says that ownership trumps marriage.

Levirate Marriage.  Say a man is married but dies before he has any children.  Who inherits his stuff?  To solve this problem, the Bible demands that another brother must marry this sister-in-law, with the firstborn child considered the dead brother’s heir.  The Bible does more than simply document a curious Jewish custom; God enforces it with the death penalty (Gen. 38:8–10).

So the Bible says that getting children as heirs for a deceased brother is more important than having your own children.

Polygamy.  Abraham had two wives.  Jacob had two (or four, depending on how you count them).  Solomon had 700.

God said to David, “I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms.  I gave you the house of Israel and Judah.  And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.” (2 Sam. 12:8).  God has his complaints about David, but polygamy isn’t one of them.

So the Bible says that marriage is between a man and one or more women.

Apologists like to excuse the Bible’s craziness with its many variations on marriage by saying that it simply reflects the culture of the time.  It applied then, but it doesn’t apply now.  I can accept that—just do the same when the Bible says, “A man shall not lie down with a man.”  Put that into the same bin as levirate marriage, polygamy, or killing everyone in a tribe except the hot women that are kept for your pleasure.

Today’s Christian enthusiasm for marriage certainly wasn’t mirrored by the early church.  Here’s what Paul says: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1).  So much for the celebrated role of procreation.

Paul said, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.  But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry” (1 Cor. 7:8–9).  In other words, marriage is the second best option.

Paul also rejects divorce (7:10–11).  Those Christians concerned about the purity of marriage might want to look at their own house to see if they’re following the rules.  (You could say that Paul rejected marriage only because he thought the end was near.  This might help reinterpret his curious views on marriage, but of course his being dramatically wrong raises a whole new set of problems.)

Marriage wasn’t even a Christian sacrament until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.  This wasn’t a popular move among civil authorities of the time, because it granted the church the power to decide which marriages were legal and which not—and therefore decide which contracts (often based on marriages) were valid and which not.  When the Pope didn’t like an alliance, he could just annul the appropriate marriage.

The argument that the Bible and the Church make a clear and unambiguous declaration that marriage is between a man and a woman is in tatters.  Sure, let’s celebrate marriage, but let’s not delude ourselves about how recent our view of marriage is.

Photo credit: patries71

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Word of the Day: Confirmation Bias

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Christianity and atheism, does God exist?Sandy beaches often have a line of debris left by the last high tide.  These lines look different on different beaches, reflections of the local environment.  They might contain rocks, shells, seaweed, jellyfish, flotsam or garbage, egg cases from skate or conch, and so on.

When I was about 11, I spent a week at a beach on which amber occasionally washed up.  After a little training, I got pretty good at seeing the amber.  On a different beach, the prize was fossilized shark’s teeth, and again I got good at spotting them amid the pebbles.

Given a little training and motivation, the mind pulls out interesting things from the background chaos.  What is the wheat and what is the chaff changes based on your needs.

Suppose you’re an emergency room nurse and comment on what a crazy night it’s been and a coworker says, “That’s always the way it is with a full moon.”  Now that your mind has been primed, you may notice this coincidence often.  But seeing this as more than just a coincidence without good evidence is confirmation bias.  Confirmation bias becomes a problem when you sift through the evidence that you come across and select only those bits that confirm what you already believe.  You don’t seek information but confirmation.

The hypothesis “God answers prayers” can also be supported by confirmation bias—those prayers that more or less come true within some broad time range are counted as successes, and those that don’t are either ignored or repositioned with, “Sometimes, God says no.”  Psychics and horoscope watchers will similarly list successful predictions and ignore or forget the failures.

I listened to the weekly Reasons to Believe podcast from Creationist Hugh Ross for a while.  It was little more than a selection of the few bits of evidence from the thousands of scientific articles that week that could be interpreted to support his old-earth Creationist views.  Seeing this for what it is—an answer to the question, “What in this week’s news would support my Creationist preconceptions?”—would be fine.  It’s when we imagine that this is objective science that we delude ourselves.

So that we evolution-accepting atheists don’t get too smug, Sam Harris proposed the Fireplace Delusion, a chance to have our own preconceptions challenged.  It’s a good exercise by which to see your mind being offended and the defenses it puts up to maintain its initial position.

The mind is built to favor evidence that confirms an existing opinion over disconfirming evidence, and to combat this bias, science tries to disconfirm theories rather than confirm them.  You can’t prove a scientific theory right, but you can prove it wrong.  This reversal—testing our opinions with disconfirming challenges rather than selecting confirming evidence—is a good example to follow.

We can prime our mind, like we’re looking for shark’s teeth on the beach, to pull in only what we want to see, but we delude ourselves when we do so.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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Homosexuality v. Christianity

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An atheist critique of the Christian response to homosexuality2012 is the centennial year of the birth of Alan Turing, a British cryptanalyst central to the project that decoded German Enigma messages during World War II and a pioneer in computer science.  Celebrations marking the event are planned, and the UK has issued an Alan Turing stamp.

Though you may not have heard of Turing, you have been touched by his work.  When a web form challenges you to read distorted text to make sure you’re not a computer program, you’re participating in a variant of the Turing Test.  When you use a modern PC, you’re using a Turing Machine.

Turing was convicted under an 1885 law against homosexuality and forced to undergo “chemical castration” by hormone treatments.  Details of his death are imprecise, but, despondent over the treatments, he apparently killed himself by cyanide poisoning.

This brilliant gay man was 41.

Gay suicides continue in our own day.  A 14-year-old boy killed himself last September in response to school bullying, just months after recording an “It Gets Better” video.

For those who wish for a day when sexual preference is as bothersome as hair color, things are improving.  Within the last month, Washington and Maryland enacted laws allowing same-sex marriage (though both laws will likely be challenged by referendums in November), bringing to eight the number of states with such laws.  The military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was repealed last fall.  A Pew Research poll shows that supporters of same-sex marriage in the U.S. have recently become greater in number than those who oppose it.  Archie Comics has even become gay friendly.

Can someone explain to me why same-sex marriage is an issue?  I don’t get it, and I’ve drunk the marriage Kool-Aid.  My wife and I have been married for over 30 years.  I got married the same week I graduated from college.  Two kids, no divorce, no adultery.  When a preacher or politician imagines himself speaking to the country on this issue, he puts me in the front row.  And I’m still waiting to hear a coherent argument for why same-sex marriage should bother me.

One of the most popular arguments is that this would redefine marriage.  Okay, but so what?  The definition of marriage hasn’t been a constant in the U.S.  Until Loving v. Virginia in 1967, marriage in 17 states meant the union of one man and one woman of the same race.  As I discussed in a previous post, the original 1959 conviction that prompted this landmark Supreme Court case was backed up with Christian justification.

Before that, marriage was redefined in 1890 to prohibit polygamy.  In that case, the Supreme Court made clear how a clash between religious precepts and the laws of the state is resolved:

However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country.

And the definition of marriage continues to be a moving target since not all states have the same rules.  Can you marry without parental approval at age 18?  Yes in most states; no in Mississippi, where you must be 21.  Is common law marriage recognized?  Yes for Alabama and Colorado; no for Alaska and Delaware.

The definition or marriage hasn’t even been constant within Christianity—the stories of Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and other patriarchs make clear that the biblical definition of marriage was the union of one man and one or more women.

Marriage evolves, and if anything is attacking marriage today, it’s not same-sex marriage but divorce.  Indeed, it’s odd that at a time when many Christian leaders are lamenting marriage’s reduced status within society, it dismisses a group that wants to embrace it.  There’s no fixed pie here, where you getting a bigger slice means I get a smaller one.

What’s behind this?  Is it the church’s obsession with sex?  Perhaps it fears sex as a powerful competitive force.  This reminds me of the Soviet Union suppressing Christianity because it was a powerful competitive force.

Actor and author Stephen Fry, in talking about the church and sex, likened sex to food.  He said, “The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese.  And that, in erotic terms, is the [Christian] church.”

Let’s visit one elephant in the room that may be behind Christians’ objection to homosexuality.  Gay sex, to use clinical terminology, is icky.  My response: yes it is.  And I have a quick and effective solution.  If you don’t like gay sex, don’t have any.  It’s really pretty easy when you think about it.

But this sidesteps the bigger issue.  It’s not that gay sex is icky.  It’s that sex is icky.

Imagine you’ve just met someone at a party, and he soon turns the conversation to his particular sexual turn-ons.  You’d probably find the conversation very uncomfortable.

Another example: explain in detail the mechanics of sex to a six-year-old.  The child would be disgusted whether you describe gay or straight sex.  Sex is disgusting; it’s just that we are drawn to our preferred brand of sex because the passion overrides the disgust.  We typically don’t have the passion to override the disgust from our inner six-year-old for other brands.

When I read a diatribe against homosexuality or same-sex marriage written by some politician or pastor, I wonder: with all the problems in the world—disease, poverty, famine, natural disasters, the economy, and so on—this is near the top of your list of things that keep you up at night?  Seriously?  You can’t find something else to worry about?  Sorry, but same-sex marriage doesn’t affect my marriage—or yours—one bit.

There’s far too little love in the world as it is.  It’s unthinkable—nay, reprehensible—to stand in the way of what love can be found.

Photo credit: San Diego Shooter

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  • Heartstrong: “Hope & help for gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender students from religious educational institutions”
  • “Church says no interracial couples allowed,” CNEWS, 11/30/11.
  • Rob Boston, “Trouble In Riverdale: Religious Right Groups Blast Gay Friendly ‘Archie’ Comic Books,” Talk to Action, 1/13/12.

“This is Guaranteed to Convert You!”

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Is belief in God rational or logical or justifiable?Imagine that an atheist walks into a gathering of Christians.  He says, “I hold in my hand a pamphlet that will rock your worldview.  In fact, it will almost surely change your worldview.  I have shown this to several hundred Christians of many denominations, and shortly after they read it, 90% admitted that their faith in the truth of Christianity was pretty much gone.

“Now—who wants a copy?”

How many Christians would take the challenge?  How many would risk their worldview for a chance at a more correct worldview?

My guess is very few.  My guess is that most Christians have had pangs of doubt and don’t like them.  They don’t want the boat rocked—it’s rocking enough as it is.  They suppress their own doubt and they avoid any “opportunity” to increase that doubt.

But now let’s turn that experiment thought around.  I’m going to the Reason Rally and the 2012 American Atheists Convention in Washington, D.C. in March, so let’s imagine that a Christian speaks to the gathered atheists at these events and says, “I hold in my hand a pamphlet that will rock your worldview.  I have shown this to several hundred atheists, and shortly after they read it, 90% went down on their knees and accepted the truth of the gospel message and asked Jesus into their hearts.  Now—who wants a copy?”

How many atheists would take the challenge?  My guess is many.  My guess is that most atheists came to their position because of evidence, not because of suppressing it, and that they’re eager to find the most correct worldview.

I certainly would read it.

What would you do?  And what does this say about the truth of the Christian and atheist positions and the role of evidence in those worldviews?

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Keith B. for this insightful idea.

Photo credit: Brandeis Special Collections

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Christianity Can’t be Deduced from Nature

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I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, 
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
— Albert Einstein

Atheist Christianity discussionSuppose Einstein’s catastrophic World War III happened and civilization was destroyed.  After a thousand years, civilization returns to roughly our level of scientific awareness.

After losing all knowledge of optics and thermodynamics and gravity, this naive society has re-discovered it—the very same laws of optics and thermodynamics and gravity that we have now.  The same is true for relativity or e = mc2 or f = ma or any other scientific law or theory.

Obviously, these post-apocalyptic humans would have different terms and ways of representing things—consider how mathematical symbols, numbers, punctuation, paragraph breaks, and even spaces have evolved over the centuries.  But whatever notation they invented would be synonymous with our own since they would simply be descriptions of the same natural phenomena.

Now imagine that all knowledge of Christianity were lost.  A new generation might make up something to replace it, since humans seem determined to find supernatural agency in the world, but they wouldn’t recreate the same thing.  There is no specific evidence of the Christian God around us today.  The only evidence of God in our world are tradition and the Bible.  Eliminate that, and Christianity would be lost forever.

There would be nothing that would let this future culture recreate Christianity—no miracles, no God speaking to them, no prayers answered, no divine appearances (unless God decided to act more overtly than he does today).  Sure, there would be beauty to wonder at, great complexity in the interwoven structure of nature, frightening things like death and disease for which they would need comfort, riddles within nature, and odd coincidences.  People then, like they do now, would likely grope for supernatural explanations, but starting from scratch you could invent lots of religions to explain these things.  There is no evidence or observation that would guide them to any supernatural dogma that we have today, except by coincidence.

Christians today come to their beliefs because someone initially told them of Christianity.  If no one told you, you couldn’t figure out Christianity on your own, which is quite the opposite from how science works.

Note that morality doesn’t need rediscovering.  Naive people don’t need to be told that you oughtn’t treat someone else in a way you wouldn’t like to be treated.  That doesn’t mean that everyone in a post-apocalyptic society will act with compassion and generosity, just that they don’t need to be taught this.

The Bible weighs in on our thought experiment.  It claims:

Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:18–20). 

And yet, without God informing humanity of his existence, Christianity could never be recreated.  Worship of one or more gods, sure, but not Christianity.

Here’s a variation on this thought experiment.  Imagine the post-Christian society uncovers a library from our day from which they find information about 20 religions that are popular today. This information spreads and civilization gradually adopts these new religious options.  What is the likelihood that Christianity would come out on top again?  Not very.

Let’s acknowledge that Christianity is sticky.  If its message were a dud—that is, if it didn’t give people what they were looking for, at least to some extent—it would have faded away.  But now we’ve turned our backs on the question of truth and are squarely in the domain of marketing, considering which features of religion satisfy people’s emotional needs and which are turn-offs.

This is religion as breakfast cereal.  Some new cereal brands last for a few months and are then withdrawn while others remain appealing (often adapting to changes within society) over the decades.  Christianity is simply the Cheerios of religion.  Like any successful brand in the marketplace, Christianity has spun off many variants—as if Protestantism were the equivalent of Honey Nut Cheerios, Mormonism as MultiGrain Cheerios, and Pentecostal as Cinnamon Burst Cheerios.  Variants succeed or fail depending on how they serve their customers, both with cereal and with religion.

What can you say about a religion that can’t be recreated from evidence at hand today?  About a religion whose god is knowable only through tradition?  You can say what applies to all religions: we can’t prove that it’s manmade, but it gives every indication of being so.

I’ll end an observation by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason, still relevant 200 years after he wrote it.

The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion.  Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

See other posts in the God Doesn’t Exist series.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

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