Monthly Archives: June 2014

Biblical Slavery (2 of 3)

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Old Testament Bible slaveryLet’s continue this critique of an apologetics.com podcast that responded to Dan Savage’s claim that the Bible is “radically pro-slavery.” Italicized arguments are my paraphrases of arguments from the podcast. (Part 1 here.)

4. The Bible rejects slavery. “Slavery” in the Bible is simply not the same thing as slavery in the United States. For example, consider Ex. 21:16:

Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.

See? A rejection of slavery, right there in the Bible.

Nope. This refers just to Jews kidnapping Jews to be sold in other countries—see the NET Bible comment on this verse. The Bible makes a clear distinction between Jews as slaves and members of other tribes as slaves.

Why is the atheist educating the Christians about their own holy book? Don’t they read it? Don’t they know about these two aspects of biblical slavery?

5. Biblical slavery was NOT American slavery. “We have a very different view here of what slavery was [comparing American slavery with biblical slavery] and you can see that it’s heavily regulated.”

Yes, slavery was regulated, just like commerce. And, like commerce, slavery was kosher from God’s standpoint.

And yes, Africans enslaved in America was different than Jews enslaved by Jews. We’ll get to that.

On the podcast, Brooks read the rules for treating Jewish slaves from Exodus 21:2–8. A Jewish slave must be freed after six years; any wife or children that came with him would be free to go, but if the master buys him a wife, she remains behind; if the slave can’t bear to leave his wife, he can remain if he promises to be a slave for life; there are special rules for how to sell your daughter into slavery; and so on.

This is rather like indentured servitude used in the American colonies, the contract by which someone would be transported to the New World in return for five or so years of work. These were European servants working for European masters.

The Bible defines two kinds of slave

But, incredibly, the discussion didn’t address the elephant in the room: the biblical rules for non-Jewish slavery. This conversation went on for an hour, so it’s not like they didn’t have time. Are they really unaware of this? Or was this a deliberate deception on their part, a wager on the ignorance of their audience?

Well, if they won’t discuss it, I’ll be happy to. Let’s wallow in the Bible’s radically pro-slavery message.

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites [harshly]. (Lev. 25:44–46)

This doesn’t look like indentured servitude, Toto. Indeed, this looks very much like the slavery for life (chattel slavery) in America that the speakers were so frantic to distance themselves from. The Jews treated the folks from their own tribe better than “those people” from other tribes. Sound familiar?

Much is made in the Old Testament of how God rescued the Jews from slavery in Egypt, but slavery was a terrible burden only when applied to us. When it’s applied to them, that’s a very different story. In fact, the Jews enslaved the tribe of the Gibeonites as soon as they returned to Canaan after the exodus from Egypt (Joshua 9:23).

More biblical demands for slavery:

When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. (Deut. 20:10–11)

You could argue that slavery is better than being killed, which the following verses make clear is the alternative. Indeed, the hosts make points like this—slavery is better than dying, slavery is the merciful alternative, Old Testament rules were kinder than those in some neighboring countries, and so on.

But I gotta wonder—is this is the best that can be said about the greatest moral document in history, that it wasn’t as bad as the morality in surrounding countries? This is the best an omniscient, omni-benevolent God can do?

Speaking of forced labor, this is how King Solomon worked his famous mines (1 Kings 9:20–22).

Then there’s the category of sex slaves (or sex workers or concubines or whatever):

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; see also Deut. 21:11)

And no slave manual would be complete without a rule for how to beat slaves correctly:

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property. (Ex. 21:20–21)

Again, this sounds very much like slavery in America. These biblical laws sound similar to the laws governing the practice of slavery in America. Some of these also protected slaves. For example, the 1739 South Carolina code fined someone who killed a slave £700 and limited the number of hours that slaves could be made to work. The 1833 Alabama law code dictated, “Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white person.”

Despite the hosts’ protestations to the contrary, American slavery and biblical slavery were quite similar institutions.

Concluded in Part 3.

He that will not reason is a bigot; 
he that cannot reason is a fool; 
he that dares not reason is a slave.
— William Drummond

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/9/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Foolproof Method for Separating History From Legend?

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history legend jesusLet me share with you an article that I enjoyed. And when I say “enjoyed,” I mean, “was baffled by.”

The article is “The Bible and Miracles: Fact or Fantasy?” and it proposes rules for separating history from myth and legend. It concludes that the Bible’s miracles are history.

Four simple rules

1. Unlike myths, biblical miracles are presented in a historical context, that is, in conjunction with actual historical events, many of which can be verified by archeology.

Yes, myths are often unconnected with human history, but that’s a quibble for this conversation (more on the distinctions between myths and legends here). Let’s consider legends instead, which typically are presented in a historical context. For example, the legend of King Arthur and Merlin was set in England around 600. The legend of William Tell was set in Switzerland around 1300. The legend of Jesus the miracle worker could be set in Palestine around 30.

Archeology supports biblical miracles no more than it does the supernatural stories in the Iliad. Yes, there was a Jericho and yes, there was a Troy, but archeology gives no support to the supernatural.

2. Miracles are presented in a simple, matter-of-fact style. No fanfare, sometimes not even a comment.

I don’t think that Jesus’s miracles are treated any more matter-of-factly than Merlin’s magic, the gods’ supernatural actions in the Iliad, or Paul Bunyan’s overlarge feats.

3. Miracles occur in a framework of reason and logic. There are no miracles just for the sake of miracles. They are not performed for show; they are not “magic tricks” designed to entertain the reader.

The Bible’s miracles are not entertainment, but they are done to make a point. Jesus performed his miracles “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matt. 9:6).

4. Miracles are performed in the presence of hundreds, sometimes thousands of witnesses; and many of the witnesses are still alive at the time the events are written down.

No, the stories claim that miracles were performed in the presence of many eyewitnesses. There is no independent historical documentation of a single miracle. For example, I’ve pointed out the weakness of Paul’s claim of 500 eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus here.

Let’s test drive these rules

To illustrate a non-miracle, the author gives this example:

Even now, over 200 years after the fact, would anyone believe someone today who wrote that George Washington calmed the Delaware River and walked across it while his soldiers rowed?

We have the author’s own foolproof 4-part method to separate miracle from legend. Here’s an example; let’s try it out.

1. “Washington walked across the Delaware River” is in a historical context. No one doubts that the Continental Army crossed that river the night of December 25, 1776 to attack enemy forces in Trenton.

2. Matter of fact style? Check. It’s easy to imagine the story told in this style.

3. Not performed as a trick or entertainment? Check. Washington had to get across somehow, and he could’ve walked across the water as a morale booster for the troops.

4. Performed in the presence of hundreds of witnesses? Check. History records 2400 soldiers in the group that crossed with Washington.

According to the author’s own checklist, he would be obliged to accept this account of Washington walking on water as an actual miracle. Since this account would be written about our own country’s history in Modern English, it would be more reliable and accessible than gospel stories written in 2000-year-old Greek from an ancient culture.

Parallel the gospel story with a modern analogy

The author bristles at the concern that the gospel story is unreliable history because it was initially passed on as oral history and written long after the events. He proposes a parallel. Compare Jesus known only through gospels written decades after his death with Mahatma Gandhi known only through the film Gandhi, which was produced decades after his death.

To understand the early readers of the gospels, consider ourselves learning about Gandhi only through the film. But the author wants us to imagine a very different Gandhi. This Gandhi does the things that Jesus did: he proclaims himself divine, heals the sick, and multiplies loaves and fishes. Would you believe it?

Now go further. Would you believe that this Gandhi died and resurrected? That He died for your sins? Would you drop everything to accept this Gandhi’s call to follow Him?

Of course not. That’s a helpful parallel, and this Christian author has nicely demonstrated that the gospel claim is ridiculous.

[SFX: record scratch]

Nope, that’s not the conclusion of this author. He tries to pull the bacon out of the fire:

No one could have fabricated a story as that told in the gospels with the expectation that people would believe it. Yet believe it they did. Why? Because it happened, that’s why! And the apostles that preached the gospel must have demonstrated its truth by performing the same miracles. It’s the only answer that makes sense. No one in their right mind would have concocted those stories,* because no one in their right mind would believe them without reason.

* I argue that the gospel story is legend, not that it was deliberately invented.

Wow—you can’t make this stuff up. This author admits that the gospel story is crazy but tries to salvage his position by spinning this as a good thing. It’s like early church father Tertullian who is quoted as writing, “I believe because it is absurd.”

Yeah, seek out the absurdity. That’s a good way to find truth. Or not.

This reminds me of Sathya Sai Baba, another Indian leader who died a few years ago with millions of followers. He is claimed to have performed almost all of Jesus’ miracles, including raising from the dead. That the absurd stories are true is the only answer that makes sense, right?

The Son of God died:
it is wholly believable because it is absurd;
he was buried and rose again,
which is certain because it is impossible.
— Tertullian, early church father

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The Most Popular Logical Fallacy in Christian Discourse?

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I wade through many Christians’ comments and blog posts in which the point boils down to something like, “I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists.” Or, “I got that job after I prayed for it; therefore, God exists.” Or, “I just know that Grandpa is in heaven; therefore, God exists.”

These Christians imagine a situation like this:

where the arrow indicates causation. That is, God exists, and this causes my sense of God’s presence.

The argument can be expressed more formally:

1. If God existed, I would sense his presence

2. I sense God’s presence

3. Therefore, God exists.

But any argument of this form (If P then Q; Q; therefore, P) is a logical fallacy. Specifically, this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

That this is a fallacy is easy to see. For example:

1. If it’s raining, then I have my umbrella

2. I have my umbrella

3. Therefore, it’s raining.

The conclusion in step 3 doesn’t follow because I could have lots of other reasons for having my umbrella. Maybe it completes my outfit. Maybe I want to fly like Mary Poppins. Maybe I need it to act out a Monty Python silly walk or Gene Kelly’s “Singing in the Rain.” Maybe it’s a weapon. Maybe I always carry it, just in case.

The same is true in the “I sense God’s presence” case. The beginning of a more complete map of causes might look something like this:

where HAAD = Hyperactive Agency Detector, a brain trait that natural selection could have favored in early humans. Those who imagined agency (intelligence) behind a rustling in the bushes would run away and live, while those who thought, “Not to worry—probably just the wind” might pay for an error with their lives. A sound might be only the wind or a squirrel … or it might be a leopard. Those who survived (our ancestors) would be the ones with a hyperactive agency detector, which occasionally saw agency where there wasn’t any. For example, this HAAD might assign agency to thunder, drought, and illness.

In this diagram, two possibilities are shown that could create the Christian’s sense of God’s presence, and there might be many more.

Learning correct logical inferences and the long list logical fallacies won’t hurt anyone eager to think more rationally, but if you only learn one, this might be a good one to understand and avoid.

This crime called blasphemy
was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines
not able to take care of themselves.
― Robert G. Ingersoll

Photo credit: Enno Lenze

Atheists Do Good Works, Too

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Seattle Atheists Philanthropy CharityChristians sometimes boast that they gather to do good works and contribute to good causes. But this isn’t a Christian invention—people give time and money to good causes, atheists included.

Seattle Atheists has been an educational nonprofit organization for a decade. In addition to hosting social events and lectures and being a popular presence at local street fairs, Seattle Atheists members have participated as a group in disaster relief fundraising, assisting the local NPR pledge drive, holiday gift wrapping for charity, blood drives, and more.

Another regular event is the American Cancer Society’s annual Relay for Life. The summary page for the Seattle Atheist team is here.

Cancer is on my mind at the moment. Just a few weeks ago, a close relative of mine was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, nine years after the initial diagnosis. Cancer affects all of us, if only indirectly.

The Relay for Life is a fundraiser, a celebration of cancer survivors, and a memorial to loved ones lost to cancer. It’s a 24-hour event at a local track, and team members take turns doing laps. A particularly moving tradition is the luminaria ceremony held after dark. Paper bags holding candles line the track, each one remembering a particular friend or family member dealing with or who has died from cancer.

Over three decades, the Relay for Life movement has raised nearly $5 billion to fight cancer. “Help the American Cancer Society create a world with less cancer and more birthdays.”

You can donate to the Seattle Atheists team here.

The hands that help
are better far than lips that pray.
— Robert Ingersoll

Old Testament Slavery—Not so Bad?

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Old Testament SlaveryYou’ve probably been there. You’ve read one too many articles claiming that biblical slavery was not a big deal, that it was actually a good thing for the enslaved, or that biblical slavery wasn’t at all like slavery in America.

Let’s go there.

Seattle columnist Dan Savage delivered a lecture in 2012 to high school students interested in journalism. His point, roughly stated, was that we discard lots of nutty stuff from the Old Testament (no shellfish, slavery, animal sacrifice, etc.), so let’s discard hatred of homosexuality as well.

Christian podcast apologetics.com responded on 5/13/12 with “Sex, Lies & Leviticus” (the second hour is the interesting part, with host Lindsay Brooks and guest Arthur Daniels Jr.). The interview begins with the guest mocking Savage’s claim that the Bible is “radically pro-slavery.”

The Bible is pro-slavery in the same way that it’s pro-commerce. The book of Proverbs says that God demands honest weights and measures—four times, in fact. Commerce is regulated, so it’s pretty clear that God has no problem with commerce. God is happy to set down prohibitions against wicked things, and there are none against honest commerce. By similar thinking (the regulation and the lack of prohibition), the Bible is pro-slavery.

But more on that later—let’s critique the arguments in the interview. Some of the arguments are truly ridiculous, but I include them for completeness and to give atheists a chance to become aware of them and Christians to realize what arguments need discarding.

1. Selection. The Bible prohibits lots of things, not just homosexuality. Dan Savage is happy with prohibitions against murder, rape, stealing, and so on. Why accept most of the Law but reject just the bits you don’t like?

Because no atheist goes to the Bible for moral guidance! No one, including Christians, know that murder, rape, and stealing are wrong because they read it in the Bible. They knew they were wrong first and saw that, coincidentally, the Bible rejects the same things. Our moral compass is internal, and from that we can critique the Bible to know what to keep (don’t murder) and what to reject (acceptance of slavery).

2. Food Laws. Dan Savage ridicules the kosher food laws (rejections of shellfish, for example), but Paul’s epistle of First Timothy (4:4–5) overturns these food restrictions.

In the first place, Pauline authorship for 1 Timothy is largely rejected by biblical scholars. Apparently, these guys want Christians to follow some random dude rather than Jesus himself, who never questioned the kosher laws and indeed demanded that they be upheld. Jesus said:

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17–20)

And secondly, laws aren’t considered and rejected one by one. Do they have a counter-verse to reject death for adultery (Lev. 20:10), for sassing your parents (Lev. 20:9), and every other nutty Old Testament prohibition that no Christian follows? Christians more typically reject the Old Testament laws with a blanket claim that the sacrifice of Jesus made those laws unnecessary (for example, see Hebrews chapters 7, 8, and 10).

The problem there, of course, is that prohibitions against homosexual acts are discarded along with the rest. You don’t get to keep just the ones you’re fond of. I discuss this more here.

3. Ignorance. Dan Savage is speaking out of turn. Like other atheists, he simply doesn’t know his Bible well.

Or not. American atheists are famously better informed than any religious group. And we’ll see that Savage is on target about slavery.

Continued in Part 2.

Americans treat the Bible 
like a website Terms of Use agreement. 
They don’t bother reading it; they just click “I agree.”
— Unknown

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/7/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Prayer Cures Disease? Tried and Found Wanting.

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Does prayer cure disease?In early 2012, Washington state declared an epidemic for pertussis (whooping cough). Pertussis hadn’t been this bad for decades. The 2500 cases during the outbreak was more than ten times higher than the previous year.

Before routine child vaccination in the 1940s, pertussis caused thousands of fatalities annually in the U.S.

You might imagine that this is a story about anti-vaxers, afraid of a perceived vaccine-autism link, who refused to vaccinate their children and helped create this epidemic. Not this time. The anti-vaccine movement seems not to have been a factor.

Instead, the interesting angle on this story is not disease prevented by vaccine but disease prevented by prayer. Kingdom League International, an online ministry based in western Washington, said in a brief article titled “Whooping Cough Epidemic Halted in Jefferson County”:

Churches in Jefferson County [one of those hardest hit by the statewide epidemic] used our strategy to mobilize prayer and establish councils to connect in 7 spheres of society [the Dominionists’ Seven Spheres of Influence]. On Mar 27 they met and a County Commissioner asked them to pray about the whooping cough epidemic. … As of April 13 there has not been one case reported. From epidemic proportions to zero.

A bold claim, but the question is whether we can find natural explanations besides prayer to explain the facts. We can. Epidemics peak and then diminish, particularly when there’s an effective health system in place that can administer vaccines. There were 21 confirmed cases for this county in 2012, with no new cases since mid-April. Is this remarkable? Is this unexplained by the efforts of the public health system? This looks to me like an epidemic that’s simply run its course.

I jumped into a discussion with the author in the comment section. Aside from being quickly asked my faith status (though I’m not sure how this affects one’s ability to evaluate evidence), I got the expected tsunami of miracle claims—a bad knee healed, a barren woman now pregnant, lung cancer cured, demons cast out, blindness healed, a stroke patient recovering, a rainstorm to break a heat wave, a cracked rib healed, and so on.

(For comparison, consider the pinnacle of medical cure sites, Lourdes. After 150 years as a pilgrimage site and with six million visitors per year, the Catholic Church has recognized just 67 miraculous cures.)

I pointed out to my Kingdom League correspondent that natural explanations hadn’t been ruled out. Surprisingly, he had no interest in doing so.

I tried to portray this as a missed opportunity. If any of the many healing claims were more than just anecdotal, this group should create a dossier of x-rays, test results, photographs, or other evidence, both before and after the miracle. Add the report of the doctor who witnessed the change and then show this to the Centers for Disease Control or an epidemiologist or some other qualified authority. Why hide your light under a basket? Jesus had no problem using miracles to prove his divinity.

There seems to be no shortage of these miracles (at least in their minds), so if one miracle claim isn’t convincing, then pray for some more and try again to convince the skeptics.

That this group has no interest in going beyond feel-good anecdotes makes me think that they understand that their claims wouldn’t withstand scrutiny, not because skeptics wouldn’t play fair, but because honestly evaluating the claims would show them to be little more than wishful thinking. Their purpose in celebrating these “answers to prayer” isn’t in convincing others but convincing themselves.

Pray v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled
on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/31/12.)

Photo credit: AJC1