Monthly Archives: January 2018

Christianity: Just Another Marketing Scam

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I gotta tell you about the most brazen product ad I’ve ever seen. It had a can’t-look-away-from-the-car-crash stickiness that honest marketers can only dream of. It was an opportunistic seizing of—nay, a celebration of—consumer stupidity that I’ve never seen duplicated. Think of it as the commercial version of Donald Trump’s campaign.

This ad was in a Sunday newspaper magazine in the mid-1980s. At that time, cable and satellite TV were new and expensive. Each needed a decoder box that usually sat on top of the TV. This new GFX-100 promised to eliminate the monthly cable bills.

So you have the background of an educated reader from 30 years ago, let’s review a couple of points before we get to the ad.

  • Before TV came through a cable, it only came over the air as radio waves and was captured by antennas. A pair of these telescoping antennas were sometimes called “rabbit ears.”
  • RF = radio frequency. VHF and UHF are the two radio bands allowed at that time for U.S. television broadcasts.

Here’s the ad with every exclamation point, quotation mark, and font change lovingly preserved. The product is shown above. See if you can figure out what they’re actually selling.

Throw away your old TV rod antenna! The GFX-100 looks like an outdoor satellite “dish,” but works indoors like ordinary “rabbit ears.” No wiring or installation! Legal in all 50 states. You pay NO cable fees because you’re NOT getting cable!!! You pay NO satellite fees because you’re NOT using satellite technology or service!!! Works entirely via proven “RF” technology—actually pulls signals right out of the air. Instantly locks into every local VHF and UHF channel from 2 to 83 to bring you their movies, sports and special events just like an ordinary pair of “rabbit ears.” No cable box or special attachments needed! Enhances color and clarity, helps pull in weak signals. Compatible with all TVs from 3-inch portables to giant 7-footers. Sits on any TV top in less than 4 linear inches of space! Guaranteed not to utilize, replicate, transmit or interfere with any satellite signal. Complies with all applicable federal regulations. Not technical razzle-dazzle but the sheer aesthetic superiority of its elegant parabolic design make the GFX-100 a marketing breakthrough!

It worked “like ordinary rabbit ears” because it was ordinary rabbit ears. The little dish thingy and the two knobs were just inoperative decorations on an ordinary TV antenna whose technology had been unchanged for decades.

In a remarkable example of candor—or maybe cockiness—they admit, “Not technical razzle-dazzle but the sheer aesthetic superiority of its elegant parabolic design make the GFX-100 a marketing breakthrough!” Translation: there’s nothing interesting here, but the novel appearance means we’ll sell a boatload of these things! It was like male enhancement pills labeled “guaranteed placebo.”

Sound like Anyone we know?

And that brings to mind our favorite religion. Christianity is also just marketing. There’s nothing there, just promises.

What would Christianity look like if it were pressed into this mold? Maybe something like this.

Christianity marketing scam

But perhaps you’ve got some better lines? Share them in the comments.

The difference between education and indoctrination:
it’s whether the person at the front of the room
invites questions from the audience.
—  Richard S. Russell

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/16/14.)

Thanks to Dan Bornstein for preserving this ad.

Image via Petras Gagilas, CC license

Superman and Jesus: More Similar than You Might Imagine

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super

Robert M. Price is both a biblical scholar and a critic of popular culture, and he is well qualified to compare two super-powered heroes who came to earth from another place, Jesus and Superman. His Bible Geek podcast for 5/18/2011 compares these two superheroes and finds more similarities than you might expect.

You could argue that Superman is a Christ-like figure, but that’s not the topic here. Rather, the techniques Christian apologists use to conclude that the Christ story is historical would also lead historians to a similar conclusion about Superman.

Sifting out the historical core

There are Superman comics, radio shows, TV shows and cartoons, movies, and even novels and video games over a 75-year span, and the stories aren’t always consistent. Suppose a future historian is trying to make sense of this and decides to select just the uncontested facts. These might be: Superman grew up in Smallville, was strong enough to lift a car, disguised himself as reporter Clark Kent, and so on. In the Superman canon, nothing contradicts these claims, so they must be historical, right?

We see the same thing with Christian apologists. They’ll take the natural elements of the gospel story and demand that they must be historical. Jesus was born, he was crucified, he was buried, and the tomb was later found empty. Who could argue with these? They must be historical.

Gary Habermas is well known for his minimal facts argument, that with just a handful of facts accepted by relevant scholars, the resurrection of Jesus is the obvious conclusion. (I’ve written more on this argument here.)

Or take the Testimonium Flavianum, the passage in the writings of first-century historian Josephus that gives a flattering account of Jesus. This is unlike anything a Jew like Josephus would write, and even many conservative scholars agree it isn’t authentic. Instead of rejecting it as an obvious forgery, however, many are determined to salvage what they can and imagine a toned-down original by Josephus that they can declare as historical. (More here.)

Support from extra-canonical evidence

If we take the comics as gospel, what extra-comical evidence is there for Superman? Plenty, given the numerous radio and TV series, movies, and other media. Thought bubbles don’t translate from print media, and Jimmy Olsen first appeared in a radio show to give Clark Kent or Superman an excuse to explain what he’s thinking. There are countless instances where Superman is referenced by journalists or ordinary citizens.

We see the same thing in Christian apologetics. Some writings were declared heretical, like the writings of Marcion. Some books are canonical in some churches but not in others. For example, 1 and 2 Maccabees are canonical in the Catholic Church but not in Protestant churches. Apologists point eagerly to meager mentions of Christianity in the works of first- and early second-century historians.

Redaction, copyist errors, and deliberate changes

Superman originated with high school students Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), but the entire canon is the result of many hands—other comic writers and artists, TV and movie screenwriters, radio scriptwriters, and more. Plot holes, logical flaws, and other errors are inevitable with so many contributors. An internet search for “Superman continuity errors” returns two million hits.

More serious are the deliberate changes. For example, everyone on Superman’s home planet of Krypton originally had superpowers, but later only Clark Kent had them due to the earth’s yellow sun. And is Superman super just as a man, or also as a teen, a boy, or a baby? Some projects reboot Superman, preserving the broad outline without being constrained by details in previous incarnations.

The Bible is also the work of many hands. However, unlike Superman, whose story spans less than a century, the Bible spans a millennium—more if you consider the oral history from which it arose.

As with Superman, there are many contradictory versions of Jesus. The biblical solution was to drop the inconsistent versions, and the writings of the Marcionites and Gnostics didn’t make the cut (at least according to the faction that won the popularity contest). Later contributions by Mohammed and Joseph Smith weren’t included either.

Though the books of the Bible were selected to satisfy a narrow orthodoxy, we still see the shadow of these inconsistencies. For example, does post-resurrection Jesus have a spirit body (Luke 24:31) or a physical body (eight verses later)? How can Jesus go to “Paradise” with the thief on the day of his death according to Luke when Acts says Jesus remained on earth for 40 days? Another example: Paul’s ideology conflicted with the stricter views of the James/Peter sect, and he documents this struggle in Galatians 2:11–21.

Lifting ideas from previous sources

Superman is drawn from other super-savior myths of the time, and the borrowing can be obvious. For example, you probably know of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, but Doc Savage also had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, and his first name was also Clark. Doc Savage (née 1933) is the Man of Bronze and Superman (1938) is the Man of Steel.

Captain Future (1940) is The Man of Tomorrow; so is Superman.

The girlfriend of The Shadow (1930) was Margo Lane; Superman’s was Lois Lane.

Likewise, we see plenty of examples in the Bible that draw from prior traditions from civilizations in the region.

  • The Noah story comes from earlier Sumerian ideas about how the earth and heavens were put together (more).
  • The Garden of Eden story mirrors the Sumerian Atra-Hasis epic (more).
  • Yahweh defeated Leviathan, and we find the same Combat Myth in earlier Ugaritic, Babylonian, and Akkadian literature (more).
  • The Jesus story comes from a culture full of stories about dying-and-rising gods like Dionysus, Osiris, and Tammuz (more).

Historical support for historical Superman belief?

If the techniques of Christian apologists are valid, future Kentites would be justified in their belief. Or, if that logic is flawed and a historical Superman is ridiculous, the same is true for the gospel story.

On the face of it, the Superman story is far more plausible than the Jesus story. Superman is an intelligent being who lived on a planet, and we understand that since that’s what we are. Superman got here with technology, and we understand that, too—we have a limited ability to travel through space ourselves. But Jesus? We have zero universally acknowledged evidence of a supernatural anything.

Another important difference is that Superman saves people whether they believe in him or not.

Two possibilities exist:
either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying.
— Arthur C. Clarke

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/11/14.)

Image credit: Wikipedia

 

2 Tragedies Produce 2 Very Different Approaches to Prayer

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“Faith” has two meanings. It can be permission to believe without a good reason, or it can be belief well grounded in evidence. Changing the definition as necessary is a game that many Christians play.

We find a similar have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too approach with Greg Koukl, a popular Christian apologist from Stand to Reason who responded in contradictory ways to two recent tragedies.

Case 1: critical injury to a staff member

In a podcast on 12/20/17, Greg talked about the health of Melinda, a staff member who was in critical condition after a head injury in early December. His appeal for prayer was what you’d expect.

I don’t know what God’s thinking about things, but I know what Christians are doing and I hope you’re doing with us—you’re praying like crazy. And that’s what we want you to keep doing—praying Melinda out of this….

Lots of people have come out of [medical situations like this without supernatural assistance], but with God’s help, of course, that gives us a massive leg up and that’s why your prayers for Melinda and for the Stand to Reason team are the most important thing right now….

God is holding us up. He’s keeping us on our feet, which I attribute to his grace and to your prayers, so keep it up.

Koukl isn’t downplaying prayer with tepid claims that it’s meditative or therapeutic for the person praying. No, he’s making the familiar Christian claim that prayer is useful. It causes positive change. It delivers in the here and now.

Case 2: Texas church shooting

Six weeks earlier, Koukl responded to another tragedy within the Christian community. A shooter had killed 25 and wounded 20 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas on 11/5/17.

(I think there are important points to observe and critique here, but if I seem insensitive to a tragedy or in other ways offend anyone, let me clarify that I’m trying to illuminate an issue, not mock Christians who are grieving.)

Presumably people in a church in fear for their lives were doing a lot of praying. That obviously didn’t stop the injuries and deaths. Koukl illustrated this with a couple of comments from atheists: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive” and, “It seems your direct line to God is not working.”

Christian response: be careful critiquing worldviews

Koukl responded that it’s a mistake to critique another worldview from inside your own. He illustrated his point with an exchange during a Christopher Hitchens debate with Jay Richards. Hitchens said, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” When Richards assented, Hitchens responded, “I rest my case.”

Here’s an example of mine that I think illustrates Koukl’s point. Suppose Hitchens was making lasagna and Richards was making barbeque pork. Now imagine Hitchens criticizes Richards by saying, “You can’t use barbeque sauce in Italian cuisine.” That may be true, but the rules of Italian cuisine don’t apply to barbeque recipes. Similarly, “Resurrections are ridiculous” is true within atheism but not Christianity.

The first problem with Koukl’s point is that atheism isn’t technically a worldview. It’s one answer (“No”) to one question (“Do you have a god belief?”). What he wants to respond to instead is a naturalistic worldview (the belief that only natural, not supernatural, forces operate in the universe).

The second problem is that Richards already does pretty much accept that worldview—that evidence is important, that hypotheses should be tested, and so on. I’m sure he uses evidence to cross a street, learn a language, or select medical treatment. (Of course, Richards would reject any claim that only natural forces are in effect.) When followers of Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba claim that he could be in two places at once or when Uri Geller claims to be using the supernatural rather than performing stage magic, I’m sure Richards is as skeptical as the typical atheist.

It’s not like there are two worldviews, Christianity and naturalism, and they’re equally plausible. Naturalism is the default. We all accept that science informs us so well because it takes a naturalistic approach. Christians live in a house of naturalism, but they go into their Christian room from time to time.

The value of prayer

Forgetting his assurance that prayer works in Melinda’s situation, Koukl says,

People from the outside think for some reason (and maybe Christians have given them reason to think this) but that if God really does exist and we pray to him, then we get what we want from God, which includes physical protection.

Koukl doesn’t think it works this way, but Jesus did:

I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete (John 16:23–4).

The story eliminates any second-guessing about caveats when we read a few verses later,

Then Jesus’s disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech.”

See also: National Day of Prayer Wasting Time

Koukl continues:

It strikes me as such an absurd thought, why anybody who has even a modest understanding of Christianity and the history of what Christians have endured for thousands of years . . . [would] think that this [shooting] is somehow inconsistent with Christianity.

Uh, because the Bible promised that prayers are answered? Or is this a trick question?

Jesus promised persecution

Koukl next claims that we shouldn’t expect protection from murderers. To underscore this, we get a little persecution porn as Koukl ticks off verses where Jesus promised that Christians will be persecuted.

Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12–13)

[Jesus said:] “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10)

Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)

Koukl is telling us that prayer works and that we should pray for Melinda, and the Bible agrees (“Ask and you will receive”). But then he laughs at the idiotic atheists who think that God would answer prayers for protection against a murder.

Koukl again:

There is . . . no rationale, no line of thinking that if God does exist that only good things happen to people, particularly people who believe in God, especially Christians.

No one claimed that only good things happen to Christians or that the Bible said this. Let’s return to the issue as Koukl himself raised it. The original atheist objection was: “The murdered victims were in a church! If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive.” And those objections were correct.

Koukl juggles two Bible claims, that Christians will have hardships and that Jesus promised that prayers are answered. He takes the typical Christian route of encouraging prayer when it suits him, but when slapped with inconvenient evidence that prayer does nothing, he reminds us that Christians will have hardships. This does nothing to fill the awkward silence when Christians pray for something and only chance replies.

Prayer is an act of doubt, not faith.
If you really thought your god was watching over everything
and you genuinely trusted in his “plan,”
you wouldn’t be praying in the first place.
— seen on the internet

Image credit: manhhal, flickr, CC

A “Personal Relationship” With Jesus? I Doubt It.

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Imaginary friend

Think about someone you know well—a friend or relative, say. Now list the attributes that make them unique. You could give the physical attributes that would help me find them at the airport—gender and age, height and weight, hair color and style, and so on—but you know much more than that.

You might know how they shake hands and if they like to hug. You might know their favorite music and sports, their favorite foods and food allergies, which TV shows they like and which they hate, their annoying habits, the names of their pets, their medical issues, where they went to school and where they’ve lived, and their past jobs. You may have helped them through tough times in life or vice versa.

You recognize their voice and their laugh. You have funny stories you could tell at their birthday party and poignant stories for their funeral—or vice versa.

If you have a “personal relationship with Jesus,” can you say the same thing? Can you list attributes about Jesus? If so, do you imagine that they’re the same as those of other Christians? If not, why call this a relationship?

Christians today only know Jesus from the artwork. But give your Jesus a haircut, a shave, and modern clothes. As Richard Russell (whose essay inspired this post) observed about Jesus, “You couldn’t pick him out of a 1-person lineup.” Jesus is nothing but a costume.

The many flavors of “relationship”

Consider a sequence of relationships, ranked from strongest to weakest.

  1. Start with the one described above, an intimate, long-term relationship with a family member or close friend.
  2. Now we begin to degrade the relationship. Consider a less-intimate relationship with someone you’ve met face to face. This might be neighbor, co-worker, acquaintance from a party, or the parent of one of your kid’s classmates who you recognize but whose name you’ve forgotten. You have strong evidence that you met someone, though you have few intimate details.
  3. This is a voice- or text-only relationship such as that with a pen pal or online friend. Though these relationships can be intimate, no one would consider them equivalent to a face-to-face relationship. They can be spoofed (I wrote about the unfortunate Manti Teʻo here).
  4. Finally, drop even this channel of communication so that there is no objective evidence of any intelligence on the other end of the relationship except a mirror of yourself. You can fool yourself quite easily (and if you’re responding, “No, I can’t!” then you see how unassailable your own ideas can be). Maybe there really is an intelligence that refuses to communicate any way except this one, but this is indistinguishable from an imaginary friend or delusion.

We know what person and relationship mean. We can look them up. “Relationship” #4 is unlike any actual relationship with an actual person. What we’re seeing is an instance of Shermer’s Law: smart Christians using their substantial intellect to defend beliefs they adopted for indefensible reasons. They might be Christians who adopted that worldview from their environment, but as adults, they know that “cuz I was raised that way” is no intellectual justification for their Christian belief. They can’t admit to having an imaginary friend. Instead, they handwave that they have a relationship with an actual person, no less real than their relationships with close friends in other parts of life.

We see this definition fiddling with other positive attributes—good, just, and merciful, for example. These are great words to apply to their favorite deity, but, given some of God’s shenanigans, Christians must “improve” the definitions to address God’s hateful acts in the Old Testament. Sorry—that’s not how words are used.

Perversely, relationship #4 is the one that apologist William Lane Craig insists is the strongest and the least in need of evidence (I’ve written more here). Only in religion, where every day is Opposite Day, could a lack of evidence be heralded as a virtue.

The only reason you keep [claiming
your “deep, personal relationship with Jesus Christ”]
is because it’s the slogan of the club
that some con artist or charlatan has suckered you into believing
you really want to be a member of.
— Richard S. Russell

This post was inspired by “That Deep, Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ” by Richard S. Russell.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/9/14.)

Image credit: Don Addis

 

Christian Nonsense from People Who Should Know Better

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Tom Gilson was provoked to produce his book True Reason because of the 2012 Reason Rally (which I attended). He demands: Why allow the atheists to seize control of the word “reason”?

He said, “The atheists claim to be the party of reason, but they don’t do it that well. Christianity on the other hand has a strong claim to be reasonable and based in reason.”

World famous apologist William Lane Craig agrees:

Christians are genuinely deeper, more thoughtful people than unbelievers are because Christians do wrestle with and think about these very profound, ultimate questions. . . . We do encourage hard thinking and self-reflection.

Respect for reason

We’re off to a good start. Christians embrace reason, and Christians are eager to wrestle honestly with tough questions their faith raises.

Let’s turn to Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith to see if Craig continues as the strong advocate of reason.

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter. (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition, p. 48)

Record scratch. The “witness of the Holy Spirit” beats reason? How can you tell the Holy Spirit from wishful thinking? Dr. Craig seems eager to parrot support for reason when pressed, but his true evaluation gives it a secondary role. More from Craig:

It is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that gives us the fundamental knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. (Reasonable Faith, p. 47)

Why bother showing the grounding of his belief? That’s really hard! So he just assumes it and declares it self-authenticating. (I wonder why science never takes this shortcut? Maybe because it’s not a reliable route to the truth.)

We do find some rationalization for this position:

It seems to me inconceivable that God would allow any believer to be in a position where he would be rationally obliged to commit apostasy and renounce Christ. (Source)

Wow—the guy’s got two doctorates and this is what he comes up with? Just assume God and fit the facts to that assumption?

Even [people] who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God’s Holy Spirit. (Reasonable Faith, p. 50)

Did you see that coming? That’s impressive blame shifting—now it’s the atheist’s fault! Craig elaborates with an analysis of their motivations:

When a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God. (Reasonable Faith, p. 47)

Aha—so I love darkness. Got it. Yeah, what else could explain it?

More sources of delusion

William Lane Craig has plenty of company in Crazy Town. Are you a Christian who needs a pat on the head and assurance that you’ve backed the right horse? You can check your reason at the door, believe whatever the pastor tells you, and have confidence that you’re right.

  • Martin Luther said: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
  • The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).
  • Apologist Greg Koukl said, “Intuitional truth doesn’t require a defense—a justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge—because this kind of truth isn’t a result of reasoning by steps to a conclusion. It’s an obvious truth that no rational person who understands the nature of the issue would deny.”
  • Philosopher Alvin Plantinga said, “But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism.”
  • The statement of faith of Answers in Genesis begins: “The scientific aspects of creation are important but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.”
  • Kurt Wise has a PhD in geology from Harvard but is a young-earth Creationist. He has an unusual relationship with evidence: “If all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”

An appeal for reason

But the Bible makes clear that Jesus intended his miracles to be evidence of his claims. He said, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works” (John 14:11). Demanding evidence is actually biblically supported.

To paraphrase physicist Paul Dirac: in science one tries to tell people, in a way understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in religion, one tries to tell people, in a grand and mysterious way, something they have no reason to believe—that an invisible God actually exists, that prayers are really answered, and that there is an afterlife.

Continue with “More Sloppy Thinking from William Lane Craig”

[The White Queen said:]
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/4/14.)

Image credit: joseloya, flickr, CC

 

Critique of “The Star of Bethlehem” Video (3 of 3)

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I summarized the video The Star of Bethlehem by Rick Larson here. We’ll finish up our critique by examining the last claim, that the “star” stopped over Bethlehem (part 1 of the critique here).

As a final example to illustrate that compelling stories don’t always have substance, let’s remember Harold Camping. He was an engineer, and while fiddling with some biblical calculations, he stumbled across the fact that there were 722,500 days between the death of Jesus and May 21, 2011, a date (at that time) in the near future. Things become more interesting when you realize that 722,500 factors into 5² × 10² × 17². Biblical numerology assigns traits to those numbers: 5 = atonement, 10 = completion, and 17 = heaven. So that date was the day of (Atonement × Completeness × Heaven) squared. Armageddon, here we come!

I’ve written more about Brother Camping’s ridiculous project here.

And there are other intriguing stories that can’t support their weight. Procter and Gamble’s moon-and-stars logo had a Satanic meaning. Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision (1950) presented an imaginative natural cause for the ten plagues. The Beatles dropped hints that Paul was dead. Popular rock music contained hidden satanic messages, revealed when played backwards. John Hagee invented the idea of four blood moons.

Let’s return to Larson’s star-of-Bethlehem theory.

4. The star stops over Bethlehem

The magi visited Herod, who was surprised to hear of the astrological signs and worried about a potential rival for his throne. The magi expected to find the new Jewish king in Jerusalem, but Herod’s priests showed the Bible reference with Bethlehem as the prophesied birthplace. The magi were directed to Bethlehem, five miles south, and the star “went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.”

Micah prophecy

Micah chapter 5 has the Bethlehem reference: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.” As usual with claims that see Jesus behind every rock in the Old Testament, when you look at the context, the prophesied ruler doesn’t sound at all like Jesus.

Micah was written after Assyria had conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, and little Judah might be next. During these troubled times, Micah predicts that there will be a king from Bethlehem (since King David was born here, this may simply mean “a king in the line of David” rather than a literal birth in Bethlehem). God will abandon Israel, but then countrymen (presumably scattered Israelites from the aftermath of the conquest) will return to support the new king. With God’s renewed support, the king will bring peace to Judah, defeat any invasion by Assyria, and be celebrated worldwide.

This doesn’t sound like the career of Jesus.

What actually happened was that the Babylonians conquered Judah in the sixth century, so Micah’s prophecy was wrong.

(The composition of the book of Micah is complicated. Part appears to have been written just after the Assyrian conquest of Israel, but it was likely put into final form after the return of exiles from the Babylonian conquest of Judah. The king narrative in Micah 5 may date to an earlier time because it refers to Assyria, which hadn’t existed for a century when the exiles returned from Babylon.)

The perspectives of the magi and Herod

Let’s think about the magi. Who were they, and what was their motivation? They knew enough about Judaism to make the lion = Judah connection and cared enough to make an expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming trip. Nothing says that they were ambassadors from a royal court, so they funded this trip themselves. However, if magi from the east didn’t visit Herod or any other Judean ruler on their ascension to the throne, why (besides literary reasons) is it plausible that they would visit this time?

If they were knowledgeable about Judaism, why did they have to be told about Bethlehem? Perhaps they only knew of a Jewish canon with no Micah, but the book of Micah would’ve been over 500 years old at this point. They might have been isolated from mainstream Judaism, and then we’re back to the question of why they would make the difficult trip to connect with a Judaism they were isolated from.

Since God spoke to the magi directly when he warned them in a dream to avoid Herod on their return, why couldn’t he just have told them, “Go to Bethlehem by date X to visit the new king of the Jews”? Why would ambiguous motion of Jupiter be preferable? Avoiding a visit to Herod would’ve also avoided tipping him off to the rival king, which caused the Massacre of the Innocents (not that avoiding bloodshed is much of a priority in the Bible).

Of course, if we’re questioning God’s motivation, we could ask why he celebrated the most important event on earth since Creation with a vague light show that would be understood by a few strangers rather than something grand that would alert the world. God could’ve told everyone or he could’ve told no one, but instead he gave just a hint to a few men hundreds of miles away from the birthplace of Jesus. I guess God moves in mysterious ways.

Now consider Herod’s motivation. He was so concerned about being replaced by this new “king” that, after the magi returned home secretly to avoid telling Herod where Jesus was, an enraged Herod ordered all boys two years old and under in Bethlehem area to be killed to make sure he eliminated his rival. A guy that ruthless would’ve simply had guards escort the magi to Bethlehem and then kill the boy once they found him. Sure, you could imagine a miracle that kept Herod in check, but then you could imagine a miracle behind the star, and Larson wants a natural argument.

How could Jupiter stop?

Finally, let’s consider how Jupiter “went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” Since Jupiter moved across the sky east to west each night, it was over Bethlehem for just a moment. When was that moment? And how far must you go in that direction? “[The star] stopped over the place where the child was” is not something Jupiter could ever do.

Larson’s attempt to salvage his theory uses one of Jupiter’s switches between forward and retrograde motion (it switches directions twice a year) as a “stopping” point. Yes, Jupiter’s motion relative to the fixed background of stars would apparently stop for several days, but this does nothing to get us to “it stopped over the place where the child was.”

Remember the Bible’s cosmology. Stars weren’t light years away but were close enough to fall to the ground after the tribulation. Perhaps it was easy for the author of Matthew to imagine those little twinkly things moving like Tinker Bell to direct the magi to the house (no, not a stable—that was Luke) where Jesus lived. Don’t forget that they already knew that “stars” could move since they were familiar with planets.

Fun with interpretations

So where does this leave us? We have the king planet crowning the king star in the constellation of Judah and then a remarkable conjunction between the king planet and the Mother Planet.

Alternatively, we could use similar logic but pick different data. Remember that Satan is personified as a lion in 1 Peter 5:8 (this may be an allusion to “roaring lions that tear their prey” in Psalm 22). Now we have the king star crowned in the constellation of Satan followed by a conjunction between the king planet and the morning star Lucifer.

One interpretation might give you “a new king is born in Judah,” but the other gives you “Satan is the new king.” Sure, I forced the facts into a conclusion—I could’ve instead picked equally plausible facts such as, “the constellation of Babylon” or “the king is in the lion’s den” or “a Jupiter/Venus conjunction means war.” But if I forced the facts, so did Larson. If one interpretation is biased, so is the other.

Another interpretation

North Korean legend says that the birth of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il was celebrated by the appearance of a new star. Was there an agenda here? Of course, but Matthew might’ve had one as well, and the decay of time has blurred Matthew’s story far more. Is the historical credibility of the North Korean tale any less than Matthew’s?

Matthew was written in roughly 80 CE. That’s 80 years after the supposed visit of the magi. Suppose the conjunctions Larson mentions were noted at the time. After many decades of oral history, the author of Matthew (who wasn’t an eyewitness to the conjunctions) wrote a garbled prescientific account through a Christian lens.

Or, suppose that the magi story was entirely fiction, an opportunity to show praise for Jesus from foreign dignitaries while creating a threat from Herod. This sets up the flight to Egypt and the Moses-like fulfillment of “out of Egypt I have called my son” (from Hosea 11:1). In this case, Matthew is writing literature, not history.

We find precedents for Matthew’s nativity story. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas is a Trojan hero whose mother is the goddess Venus. He escaped Troy after its defeat by the Greeks in the Trojan War and was guided to Italy by his mother’s star, the planet Venus.

A precedent for the trip of the magi took place shortly before Matthew was written. The king of Armenia and his magi traveled to Rome in 66 CE to pay homage to Emperor Nero.

There is plenty of room to make a plausible skeptical case against Matthew’s nativity story. Enjoy Larson’s video as a clever tale, not an adequate explanation.

Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines,
which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer.
When this is done, the same question shall be
triumphantly asked again the next year,
as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject.
— George Horne

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Image credit: Wikipedia
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