Monthly Archives: November 2018

A Very Zeitgeist Christmas: Rebuttal to the Astrology Claims for Jesus

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I summarized the astrological interpretation of the New Testament from Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007) here and responded to the star of Bethlehem argument here. Let’s wrap up with a critique of the movie’s astrological interpretation of the meaning of Jesus on earth.

Jesus

Zeitgeist says that the plane of the sun moves south from June through December. The sun stops this motion for a few days around the solstice (December 22–24) near the constellation of the Southern Cross. It moves again, back to the north, starting on December 25. The sun dies on the cross and is soon reborn, which parallels the son dying on the cross and then rising after three days.

  • The most glaring problem is the son/sun parallel. Saying that the Son dying on a cross actually meant the sun dying on the Southern Cross is clever, but this homonym only works in English. Son/sun sounds identical in modern English, but this is irrelevant because (everybody say it with me) the New Testament wasn’t written in modern English! Take away the homonym, and this story largely falls apart.
  • Can you can see the constellation of the Southern Cross from the Middle East? Jerusalem is north of latitude 31°, but you must be at 25°N or lower to see it. However, precession has changed this. In the time of Jesus, this constellation would’ve been visible in the Middle East, so this (surprisingly) isn’t a problem.
  • But even with the Southern Cross visible, would the sun ever be “on” the Southern Cross? No, for two reasons. There are lots of constellations, but the twelve astrological constellations are on the ecliptic, the path that the sun makes through the sky. The Southern Cross is about 50° south of Virgo, so while the sun can be “on” Virgo, it will never touch the Southern Cross. Second, the sun is in Virgo in September. It then passes through Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius by the time of the winter solstice. Imagine an observer looking at the Southern Cross on December 25 and hoping to see the sun on it. If they tipped their head to make the ecliptic the horizon, the sun would be about 90° too far left at that moment, and it would always be about 50° too far up.
  • When was the Southern Cross seen as a distinct constellation and not part of something else? Ptolemy in the second century CE saw these stars as part of a larger constellation, that of Centaurus. The first documentation of the Southern Cross as a separate constellation was in 1592. In other words, there was no Southern Cross at the time of Jesus.
  • Why the interest in December 25? If the topic is resurrection symbology—Jesus dying on the cross and rising again—that happened at Easter.
  • The winter solstice happens not on a day but at a precise moment. Before that moment, the plane of the sun was tipping to the south, and after that it tips north. If you must imagine a rest period (which doesn’t actually happen), that would not be December 22–24 but would more plausibly be December 20–23, the date range for the solstice.

After the spring equinox (around Easter), light finally becomes greater than dark. Jesus is born again with the rising of the sun every morning.

  • The sun is “born again” every day (or, if you prefer, once a year on the winter solstice), but being born again wasn’t a thing for Jesus, just for his followers. Jesus resurrected, and that supposedly happened just once. And even a Christian being born again is supposed to only happen once.
  • Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This means that it varies within a 34-day window. Easter is only roughly tied to the equinox.

Ages

Zeitgeist says: an astrological “age” is one twelfth of one cycle of the precession of the earth (26,000 ÷ 12 = 2150 years). We’re nearing the end of the Age of Pisces (0 – 2150 CE). Moses represented the new age of Aries the Ram (2150 BCE – 0) and a rejection of the previous age, that of Taurus the Bull.

  • “Ages” in the New Testament isn’t a reference to astrology but to Apocalypticism. When Jesus said, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age,” he was talking about an age that would end soon—in years or decades, in the lifetime of many of his hearers. Apocalypticism was a religious view popular in Judaism during the time of Jesus and before.
  • Did the ancients know about the precession of the sun through the zodiac that makes the astrological ages? Hipparchus (second century BCE) could’ve known, but this is disputed. Even if he did, he had only a rough idea of the rate of change, which is a long way from the astrological idea of 2150-year-long ages known in the Middle East.
  • Moses was probably a legendary figure, but even if we ignore that, he was said to have been born in the 1500s to 1300s BCE, many centuries after the start of the Age of the Ram in 2150 BCE. Any imaginary Aries vs. Taurus friction would’ve been in the distant past, so why would Moses want to make the point? And who would need to hear that Aries had firmly supplanted Taurus?
  • Many civilizations saw constellations, but they didn’t see the same ones. Did the Taurus/Aries/Pisces astrology that we know today exist in the minds of the authors who wrote about Moses in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), probably around 900 BCE? All these questions must be answered with good evidence before this argument is worth considering.

Zeitgeist: Jesus was born at the start the Age of Pisces the Fish. We even see a hint of the next age with the reference to the water bearer, Aquarius.

  • If this point of this verse is that Aquarius will be the next age, how would this be newsworthy? It is debatable whether people of that time shared our conception of astrology and the zodiac, but if they did, they would already know this. When the Age of Pisces has just started, why waste the ink getting people excited about the Age of Aquarius, which wouldn’t arrive for more than 2000 years?
  • What kind of theology changes with the zodiac sign? Aries introduces Moses, and Pisces introduces Jesus . . . so then the unchanging Truth will change again with some new guy for Aquarius?
  • Jesus was short-term focused. The Apocalyptic end of the age was to happen soon. There was no concept of a perpetual cycle of ages.

Conclusion

Many people have found this popular video compelling, and yet a little skepticism and research defeat this Christian astrology section many times over. Skeptical atheists and Christians will both see this as a shaky argument. Perhaps that agreement could lead to the question, why is the Christian story any less so?

It is not a book to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force.
— Sid Ziff, Los Angeles Mirror-News

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Wikimedia / Image public domain
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The Star of Bethlehem: Rebuttal to the Zeitgeist Argument

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Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007) has an intriguing section that talks about an astrological interpretation of the star of Bethlehem and the life of Jesus (my summary here). My goal was to show that with some effort, you can weave together lots of semi-plausible explanations that look good at first glance. Just as Zeitgeist makes a plausible-at-first-glance case, so did Rick Larson with his conjunction-based explanation of the Star, and so do Christian apologists make for the Bible’s accuracy.

But let’s return to Zeitgeist. I can’t let it go without listing some of the holes in the argument. If those errors annoyed you as well, play along at home and see if you spotted some errors that I missed. (This will make more sense if you’ve read the argument outlined in the previous post here.)

The star of Bethlehem

Zeitgeist tells us that Matthew’s story of magi coming from the east (perhaps Babylon) to visit baby Jesus is a metaphor for (or was inspired by) the “three kings” (the three stars in Orion’s belt) following “the star in the east” (Sirius, the brightest star). These four stars make a line in the sky that points to the sunrise on December 25, just after the winter solstice, when the sun begins to gradually strengthen.

  • (I’ll give objections as bullets.) It’s true that Sirius is the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius and Orion’s belt are somewhat in a line, and that line intersects the sun (more or less) in late December, but this is too fuzzy to imagine that it goes through the sun precisely on (and only on) December 25. Also, this lineup has nothing to do with sunrise. The imaginary connecting line would still be there throughout the day, it’s just that the conditions would only be right to notice it—dark enough to see the stars but bright enough to see where the sun is below the horizon—shortly before dawn.
  • Who called Orion’s Belt “the three kings” and when was that label applied? The originator of the argument used by the movie argues that this name was used by Christians, but that would’ve been plausible after Matthew’s magi story. That is, the story came first and inspired the name for the stars. If the reverse is true and this astrology was the inspiration for Matthew’s story, you need to show that these stars were called “the three kings” (1) in that region and (2) before Matthew. The movie doesn’t do this.
  • The word in Matthew is not kings but magos, meaning wise men, teachers, or sorcerers. And Matthew doesn’t say that there were three of them. There were three gifts, from which tradition inferred three magi. Since the three came from Matthew, it sounds likely that Matthew came first, then the tradition of three visitors, then the visitors get upgraded to become kings, and finally, the label of “three kings” for Orion’s belt. The movie does nothing to argue that this plausible interpretation is wrong.

Virgo

Next, Zeitgeist says that the constellation of Virgo the Virgin represents Mary. Virgo was known as “the house of bread,” which is also with Bethlehem means. This puts the entire quest in the sky: three kings on December 25 weren’t searching for Bethlehem the town, but the celestial “house of bread,” the Virgin.

  • The magi were searching for Jesus, not his mother. And how does the trek fit into the star story? The supposed three kings in the sky are immobile. How do they search for the Virgin?
  • Bethlehem does means “house of bread,” but I can find no such label for Virgo. The closest I can find is “the barley stalk” as the Babylonian name for the constellation.
  • And this naming difference raises another problem: we have familiar names for the constellations, but that doesn’t mean that all cultures through all times used them. For example, do you say Big Dipper or Plough or Ursa Major (Great Bear)? All names are in use. This is true for the signs of the zodiac as well: the Babylonian name for Aries the ram was “the hired man.” Is Aquarius the water bearer or the eagle? Is Virgo the virgin or the barley stalk? The book of Job also has different names for constellations. We need proof that magi came from a culture that would’ve seen a virgin in one of the zodiac constellations.
  • December 25 had no special significance for the author of Matthew. The story doesn’t say it was Jesus’s birthday.

We’ll conclude the critique by looking at the astrology behind the Jesus story in part 2.

Christianity is ultimately self-worship:
A deity made in the image of man;
a long lineage of church leaders and ordinary believers
hearing their own thoughts and calling them the voice of God;
the idolizing of belief itself (and by implication,
the human brains that generate beliefs).
The whole thing is utter narcissism
with humility layered on top
like chocolate icing on a dirt cake.
— Valerie Tarico

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Image from MabelAmber, public domain
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The True Meaning of Christmas (According to the Zeitgeist Movie)

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Christians for centuries have tried to find a scientific explanation for the star of Bethlehem. (Since no astronomical phenomenon moves like the Tinker Bell star in Matthew, I guess you have to be impressed by their perseverance.) Here’s another interpretation that you may enjoy. It comes from an 11-minute section of Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007). It’s a fascinating attempt to explain the star and even the Bible from an astrological viewpoint. I want to summarize it for you, not because I think it’s particularly accurate, but to show how a story can be woven from facts and speculation that can be compelling to an unskeptical audience.

The star of Bethlehem

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, and it’s “the star in the east” that Matthew says the three kings were following. On Dec. 24, Sirius aligns with the three stars in Orion’s belt (the “three kings”). These four stars form a line that points to the sunrise on Dec. 25. That’s how the “three kings” follow the star in the east to locate the birth of the sun. This line points to the birth of the sun just after the winter solstice when days start to get longer.

Mary is represented by the constellation Virgo the virgin. The astrological symbol for Virgo is the “altered M,” which is why we see saviors’ mothers’ names start with that letter, such as Jesus’s mother Mary, Adonis’s mother Myrra, and Buddha’s mother Maya. Virgo is also known as the House of Bread, and the constellation is often drawn showing a woman holding a sheaf of wheat. The sun is in Virgo in the late summer, which is harvest time. Bethlehem also means “house of bread,” which means that the Bethlehem sought by the kings was a constellation, not a town on earth.

Take a step back . . .

If doubts are growing in your mind about some of the claims in this argument, I feel the same way. We’ll continue with the argument as it moves on to an astrological interpretation of Christianity and the role of Jesus, but keep track of those doubts, and you can compare them with mine in a subsequent post.

This video is an odd combination of intriguing connections built on a foundation of questionable claims. Said another way, it’s compelling even though its claims are questionable. Now that you see where we’re going, rein in your skepticism and consider the rest of the argument.

Jesus and astrology

The transit of the sun moves south from June through December (yes, this perspective is Northern Hemisphere-centric, but that’s because the gospel story comes from the Northern Hemisphere). The weather gradually gets colder, and plants die. The plants are dying because the sun is “dying” (becoming weaker as it gives less light). The sun is motionless (that is, it stops going further south) for a few days around the solstice (December 22–24) near the constellation of the Southern Cross. And then on December 25, it moves again. In other words, the sun dies on the cross and then is soon reborn. This parallels the son dying on the cross and then rising after three days. The sun brings spring, while the son brings salvation.

After the spring equinox (around Easter), light finally becomes greater than dark, and the sun has overpowered the darkness (evil). Jesus’s promised return is the rising of the sun every morning.

The twelve disciples parallel the twelve signs of the zodiac. The typical drawing of the zodiac is a ring of constellations with a horizontal and vertical line that divides them into four groups of three to identify the four seasons. In the center of this cross is often a circle for the sun. This symbol, the cross with a circle (think of a Celtic cross), is a pagan symbol that preceded Christianity. Jesus is often depicted with this circle/cross behind his head as a halo (here, here). In this way, Jesus is depicted as the sun at the center of the zodiac, the light of the world.

Another kind of halo was the crown of thorns, which parallels the sun’s rays.

Ages

You may have heard the song, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension (1969), which refers to the “Age of Aquarius.” An “age” in this astrological context is one twelfth of one cycle of the precession of the earth. Precession is what a spinning top does when its axis slowly wobbles to trace out a cone while the top itself is spinning rapidly. The earth is also a spinning top, and a complete precession cycle for the earth takes about 26,000 years, so the sun on the spring equinox is in each constellation for one twelfth of that, which is 2150 years. We’re nearing the end of the Age of Pisces, which will be followed by the Age of Aquarius.

Moses in his day represented the new age of Aries the Ram (2150 BCE – 0), and a rejection of the previous age, that of Taurus the Bull. The golden calf on which Moses smashed the Ten Commandments was from the old age, and from the new Age of Aries came the Jewish custom of blowing a ram’s horn. We see a similar symbology in Mithraism in which Mithra killed a bull.

After Aries came the Age of Pisces the Fish starting in about the year 0, roughly the birth year of Jesus. The fish is a symbol of Jesus, and fish recur in the gospel story: fishermen join his entourage, he feeds the masses with a few loaves and fishes, and he promises his followers, “I will make you fishers of men.”

We even see a hint of the next age. Jesus tells the disciples how to find a room for the Last Supper: “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters” (Luke 22:10). The water bearer symbolizes the next age, the Age of Aquarius, which begins in 2150. When Jesus promises, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), the “end” isn’t the end of the world but the end of the astrological age, in this case, the Age of Pisces.

Continued: last December, I couldn’t simply lay out Rick Larson’s explanation for the star of Bethlehem without a rebuttal pointing out its errors, and I can’t let this Zeitgeist astrological story get away with its errors. Continue here.

God’s not dead,
but he’s very, very good at playing possum.
— commenter Richard Wade

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Image from MabelAmber, public domain
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20 Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage, Rebutted (Part 3)

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We’re looking at popular arguments against same-sex marriage (and a few that are just anti-gay). Conservative radio host Frank Turek provides most of the arguments. (Part 1 here.)

7. You’re infringing my religious freedom!

The sky is falling, and the religious liberty of bakers, florists, and photographers is battered down by the merciless iron fist of the Gay Agenda®. To those businesses that turn away homosexual couples, Frank warns,

If you don’t agree to celebrate same-sex marriages, you will be sued, fined, fired, and perhaps even jailed. All in the name of “tolerance, inclusion and diversity.”

Discrimination can be against the law. Break the law and bad things happen. It’s really not that hard, despite your eagerness to make it so. If your religion denied equal access based on race or carried out human sacrifice, you’d be breaking the law and your religion would lose. The unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in Davis v. Beason (1890) makes this clear: “However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country.”

More from Frank:

Can anyone see any middle ground between 1) you must celebrate my same sex marriage, and 2) God or my conscience prevents me from doing so? There is none. So which “right” will take precedence: the real right or the invented right?

The real rights—in America, at least—are those defined by the Constitution. You’re free to imagine whatever you want within your religion, just don’t pretend that that affects any of us in the rest of society. I wonder how Frank would feel if he worked at a company run by a Jehovah’s Witness or Christian Scientist who imposed their religious views on employees by limiting their health coverage (the Hobby Lobby treatment).

No one demands that you celebrate a marriage, but you must provide equal access as demanded by the law. Your conscience tells you to discriminate and serve only some of your customers? Don’t expect much respect for those views if they run up against the Constitution.

Christians like to imagine that they’re being imposed on, but what’s being imposed on here is their ability to impose their beliefs on others. I’m not sympathetic.

But it’s not just bakers and photographers. Public speakers like Frank are imposed on as well.

Those of us who have a diverse view are being excluded because we don’t exhibit lock-step conformity to their intolerant agenda.

You have a “diverse” view? So does the Ku Klux Klan. You and they are both free to speak, but don’t confuse public pushback with infringement of your rights.

We are being fired and fined for exercising our real God-given rights. How can this be? We can’t work because of our political views—views that are firmly rooted in the biological facts of nature. Is this still America?

“God-given” rights? Talk about it in church, but don’t imagine you can impose your theology on the rest of us.

You say your opinions don’t sell anymore? Tough. Bigotry giveth and bigotry taketh away. The conservative gravy train must’ve been nice while it lasted. Remember when you could tell racist jokes without whining from the PC Police? Ah—good times!

8. Let’s overthrow the government!

No, really—that’s pretty much what Frank calls for.

America needs a state governor who still believes in America—a governor willing to take a page from President Andrew Jackson who once rebuffed [an 1832] Supreme Court decision against the state of Georgia by telling Chief Justice Marshall, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” . . . Are there any statesmen left in America?

When your interpretation of the Constitution differs from that of a state Supreme Court or a federal court, you think a governor should just flex his military muscle? Oh, Frank! You’re a real man, and I get goose bumps when you throw your weight around like that! You gonna punch the bully on the beach for me, too?

While that may create a constitutional crisis, our Constitution is already in crisis! What can be lost that hasn’t ready been lost?

What’s been lost? Are religious freedoms in the U.S. now indistinguishable from those in Saudi Arabia or Yemen? And does a coup have so little downsides that he can allude to it so casually?

The stunt Frank imagines has already been tried. It didn’t turn out well for the governor of Arkansas in 1957 when he called out the Arkansas National Guard to support segregationists opposed to a Supreme Court demand to integrate Little Rock public schools. President Eisenhower’s response was to federalize the Arkansas National Guard to remove it from the governor’s control and replace it with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Game, set, and match.

Frank is big on bravado, but he really needs to think through whom he allies himself with.

Continued in part 4.

Every human being has the same right
to marry someone of the opposite sex.
— Frank Turek

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/13/15.)

Image credit: Pavel Ševela, Wikimedia Commons

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What Is a “Real Man,” According to the Bible? (2 of 2)

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In response to a list of biblical rules for a real man, let’s scour the Bible for more rules (part 1). If the original conservative agenda can guide a selection of rules, then anyone can play the game. Here’s the continuation of our list of 10 More Traits of Real Men.

5. Real men can personally perform miracles

Jesus made clear that his miracles were just the beginning.

Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these (John 14:12).

We see something similar with the Great Commission. It’s pretty clear that Jesus wasn’t giving it to ordinary Christians today but rather the apostles, but for Christians who imagine that Jesus was talking to them, they should expect to get “authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness” (Matthew 10:1) and the authority to decide which sins can be forgiven (John 20:23).

6a. Real men insist that their sassy children be stoned to death

The Bible says that there’s nothing wrong with a good thrashing (“Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being,” Proverbs 20:30), but it gets a lot worse than that.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).

That’s effective! I can’t imagine the son misbehaves after that.

6b. Real men stone non-virgins, too

And by “virgin,” of course, we’re talking about virgin women. Virginal purity isn’t a thing for men—and how fortunate for you gentlemen out there! The Bible has a kind of honesty-in-advertising guideline for women. Fathers, if you offer your daughter as a virgin and she isn’t as advertised, you’ll have to take her back:

[If] the tokens of virginity be not found for the bride, then they shall bring her to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die (Deuteronomy 22:20–21).

The good news is that the problem of feeding another mouth has been addressed.

7. Real men take sex slaves

Israelite forces were successful in battle against Midian. They killed all the men, destroyed all their towns, and returned with women, children, livestock, and other plunder, but Moses greeted them with anger. He said, in effect, “What part of ‘kill everyone’ did you not understand?!” His resolution of the problem:

[Now] kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17–18).

 8. Real men never sin

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them (1 John 5:18; see also 1 John 3:6, 3:9).

9. Real men abandon reason and evidence

The Bible is supposed to be confusing, didn’t you know? Here’s Jesus praying to God:

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children (Matthew 11:25).

It’s best to check your brains at the door and just have faith:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6).

10. Real men keep slaves

But of course real men conduct slavery in a godly way, and the Bible is a helpful resource. For example, can you keep slaves for life?

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 (Leviticus 25:44–6).

Slaves need to know their place, but how much punishment is too much?

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property (Exodus 21:20–21).

We find support in the New Testament as well:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh (1 Peter 1:18).

Hallelujah! How thoughtful of God to clarify. More.

And, of course, there’s more. A real man doesn’t mix things like wool and linen or two different crops in a field, and he doesn’t yoke together different animals like an ox with a donkey (Deuteronomy 22:9–11). A real man doesn’t put up with mixed-race marriages (Deut. 7:3, 23:3). And so on.

Admittedly, I’m picking verses following a let’s-make-the-Bible-look-foolish agenda, but that’s no less honest than the original article’s conservative Christian agenda. The Bible’s wisdom doesn’t look so timeless when you imagine it applied today.

To any Christians annoyed at my list, I encourage them to stop having such a hateful holy book.

So far as I can remember,
there is not one word in the Gospels
in praise of intelligence.
— Bertrand Russell

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Image from TK Hammonds, CC license
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What Is a “Real Man,” According to the Bible?

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What makes a “real man”? We’ve all seen light-hearted rules like real men don’t cry, real men don’t eat quiche, real men don’t let other men eat quiche, and so on. James Dobson’s Family Talk site has a page that claims to have God’s rules for how to be a true man of God. The author summarizes the goal this way: “My wife and kids need a real man, not some wimpy guy that rides the ever-changing cultural tides of our times.”

Here’s that list, built on the rock of the Bible.

God’s Real Man List

  1. Real men don’t leave their wives. See Ephesians 5:25-32, Mark 10:9, Job 31:1
  2. Real men honor their wives as co-heirs. See 1 Peter 3:7
  3. Real men teach their children God’s ways (both in word and in action). See Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 78:5-7
  4. Real men build into the lives of other men. See Proverbs 27:17
  5. Real men don’t use their words to demean others. See Ephesians 4:29
  6. Real men don’t let their anger get away from them. See James 1:19-20
  7. Real men lead best when they love most. See Ephesians 5:1-2; John 13:34-35
  8. Real men are sacrificial for the sake of their Lord, family, and others. See John 15:13
  9. Real men are servants. See Mark 10:45
  10. Real men can show their emotions (this includes crying). See John 11:35, Matthew 21:12, Matthew 9:36

 

But why this list? Don’t forget that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). You really can’t go wrong when pulling Iron Age biblical examples into the 21st century, amirite, Dr. Dobson?

So, with that wind of certitude filling our sails, let’s look further in the Bible to see what else it says and make a new list, 10 More Traits of Real Men.

1. Real men don’t get married

The list above has at least two rules about men’s relationship with their wives, but Paul had no use for marriage:

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 Corinthians 7:8–9).

You can rationalize this one away by saying that Paul wrongly thought that the End was coming soon, but what’s left of your faith when you must say that the books of the New Testament are seriously wrong?

2. Real men listen to God over common-sense morality

God made some crazy demands in the Bible. Christians, what would it take for God to convince you to accept a modern equivalent of these demands?

  • Abraham accepted God’s demand that he sacrifice his son Isaac (more).
  • After discovering the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, Moses commanded the Levites to punish fellow Israelites: “Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor,” and 3000 were killed (Exodus 32:26–29).
  • God demanded human sacrifice: “The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal” (Exodus 13:2). More.
  • God demanded that Babylon be punished, with the Israelites as executioners: “Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished” (Isaiah 13:15–16).
  • God demanded genocide. He said that within the tribes that must be destroyed, “you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16–18) and that, for the Amalekites, Israel should “put to death men and women, children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:2–3). More here, here, and here.

I realize that we’re made in God’s image and that our sense of morality should line up with God’s, but forget that. A real man does what God says, regardless of how it immoral it seems.

3. Real men know that daughters can be sacrificed

In his younger days, God wasn’t omniscient, so he had to send scouts to Sodom to verify the rumors he’d heard. Lot protected these angels from the angry mob eager to teach these strangers who’s boss by raping them. Lot is portrayed as a godly man, though he doesn’t look very godly after he offered his two virgin daughters to the mob as a rape substitute. More.

4. Real men throw the first stone if their friend or relative strays

Suppose a friend suggests that you worship another God. Now imagine that it’s your best friend, or that it’s a family member, maybe a child or your wife. How should you respond?

Forget that freedom of religion is protected by the U.S. Constitution; things work differently in the Bible’s little world.

Do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 13:6–11; see also Deut. 32:41–2, Exodus 22:20).

Concluded in part 2.

There have been nearly 3000 gods so far
but only yours actually exists.
The others are silly made up nonsense.
But not yours. Yours is real.
— Ricky Gervais

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Image from Victor B., CC license
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