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“Four Blood Moons” Film, John Hagee’s Intellectual Train Wreck

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John Hagee likes to get overwrought about astrology, which is odd given that he’s a Christian pastor.

Background: Hagee’s thesis

The Bible speaks of a blood moon: “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord” (Joel 2:30–31). Hagee proposed a fun new way to look at that. The Jewish spring festival of Passover and fall festival of Sukkot always begin on a full moon. Lunar eclipses only happen during full moons, and with an average of two per year, an eclipse at the beginning of these festivals (somewhere in the world, anyway) is common.

Hagee’s innovation was to (1) call a lunar eclipse (which often makes the moon reddish) a “blood moon,” (2) assign significance to these events happening on the Jewish festivals, and to (3) declare that four in a row (not three or five or some other number) is God telling us something. With the launch of his 2013 book, Hagee said, “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.”

Remember that period? Who hasn’t said, “Where were you during the period April 2014 through October 2015 when that really dramatic thing happened?” We’re lucky to be here talking about it!

It’s refreshing to see a Bible scholar with no reluctance to make God’s unchanging word into a marionette that tells us a new story.

Hagee’s Four Blood Moons became, not only a bestseller (I’ve critiqued Hagee’s book), but a movie. I attended the premiere and made it out to tell the tale.

The Movie

The single showing in my neighborhood was a nearly packed house, and the Christian audience murmured occasional appreciation.

The movie was a string of supposed scenes from history to illustrate the three times in the past 500 years when we’ve had these tetrads (four blood moons on four consecutive Jewish festivals six months apart) interspersed with commentary by various experts.

A JPL scientist was an early expert, and he explained why lunar eclipses are usually red (what little sunlight remains passes through the earth’s atmosphere so that the moon is illuminated only by sunsets), so we’re off to a good start with a grounding in science and logic.

That didn’t last.

Hugh Ross, a retired astrophysicist who’s now an evolution denier, played a surprising and refreshing role as skeptic, but more on that later.

As we began the look at prior tetrads, John Hagee told us to “put doubt aside and believe.” But why? Don’t you have a burden to show us a reason first? He repeated the book’s subtitle, “Something is about to change.” I wondered if the omniscient creator of the universe could be a little clearer—or am I asking too much?

Tetrad 1: Spanish Inquisition and the Edict of Expulsion, 1492

I’m sure the script writers couldn’t get a “damn!” or a bare breast into this Christian script, but they have a torture scene where an ex-Jew, passing as a Catholic during the Inquisition, is tested for his loyalty. I must get offended at the wrong things.

Next, Christopher Columbus is portrayed as a Jewish patriot carrying these Spanish Jews to safety in the New World. A girl in one of the families gives the great explorer a yellow cloth star, an obligatory label the Jews had to wear. (In Nazi Germany, yes, but in Spain five centuries ago? I wasn’t able to find anything to support this, and it sure sounds like artistic license.)

While Columbus’s second voyage in 1493 did have colonization as a goal, it carried just 1200 men (Wikipedia mentions nothing about the Jewish families shown in the movie). The voyage began over a year after Spain’s 100,000 Jews were supposed to have left.

Also a year late was the first blood moon. Hagee would have us believe that God’s 18-month show began a year after the problem. Hagee says that God is shouting his message, but he needs to enunciate a little more clearly.

The movie continues with scenes in America. The goal was to show Jews as part of the American fabric from the beginning, which invited blather from history revisionist David Barton about America as a Christian nation.

Tetrad 2: Establishment of Israel, 1948

This event lines up with a tetrad no better than the previous one. Here again, the first blood moon was a year late. Notice also that the most significant recent event for Israel, the Holocaust, apparently didn’t deserve a tetrad.

We’re told that Israel’s victory in the war launched by Arab states the day after independence was a miracle. If you want surprising tales of victory, you can read about Hannibal’s victories over the Romans or Alexander’s over the Persians or even George Washington’s over the British. No effort was made to show how Israel’s victory—which might indeed have been unexpected—rose to the level of miracle.

Hagee tells us that God has blessed the U.S. because the U.S. has blessed Israel, and we come to see that this is the point of the movie: the U.S. must continue to support Israel financially, militarily, and diplomatically. Or else something.

Tetrad 3: Six-Day War, 1967

We see scenes from the war. Two Israeli soldiers capture an Egyptian platoon. A bomb landed among some civilians but didn’t explode. There’s a story of Egyptian soldiers surrendering to an army of angels.

Happy events? From the standpoint of Israel, sure. Evidence of divine intervention? I don’t think so.

Another expert tells us that our moral compass is broken when we leave God and Judeo-Christian values.

Tetrad 4: 2014 and 2015

Hagee says that this tetrad is even more super-duper than the previous ones since it overlaps a Shemitah (Shmita) year. The Shemitah is the seventh year in a 7-year cycle. It’s a time to let the land go fallow and to forgive debts with fellow Jews. However, Wikipedia says, “There is little notice of the observance of this year in Biblical history and it appears to have been much neglected.”

Hagee has dusted off this old concept and declared that this confluence is unique in human history. First, I’m sure that if we go back before Hagee’s cherry-picked tetrads, we’ll find Shemitah years in there and periods where no dramatic event happened to Israel or to Jews, even with Hagee’s generously sloppy criteria. Second, this Shemitah year only overlaps two of the eclipses. And third, why expect divine wrath if Shemitah is a time of forgiveness?

Panel discussion

The movie ended with a panel discussion with astrophysicist Hugh Ross, rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, pastor John Hagee, and history revisionist David Barton.

Hagee was asked why this wasn’t astrology. He said that astrology is a false science, not at all like what he does. The movie had tried to ground the idea of getting wisdom from the sky with the Star of Bethlehem, but it sounded to me more like seeing portents in comets.

(One of many interpretations of the star of Bethlehem story is full of astrology, and full of holes.)

The biggest surprise in the movie was Hugh Ross saying that this was all just a coincidence (prediction after the fact) and that the number of eclipses was arbitrarily chosen—why four? He also noted that the eclipses couldn’t be seen in Israel—wouldn’t that be important if Israel is the focus? So, yeah—it’s astrology.

Hagee wrapped up with a threat. God said: “I will bless those who bless you [that is, Israel], and whoever curses you I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). God is working through America to support Israel. Stop supporting Israel, and you’ll regret it. We were told to think of the countries who opposed Israel: Babylon, Greece, Rome. But what do we conclude from this? Empires come and go. This is like God’s warning about the fruit in Eden: eat it, and you will surely die. Uh yeah—eventually.

And if God is working through America, what’s the concern? Surely God can’t be stopped by gay-loving liberals who are soft on Israel.

As the movie ended, the audience applauded. And the screen showed an ad for yet another Hagee book.

Damn.

Ardency and sincerity
are no substitute for veracity.
— Richard S. Russell

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/24/15.)

Image from Four Blood Moons movie page, CC license

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25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid (Part 15 and counting)

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Doesn’t time fly? It seems like forever since we checked in with our favorite sitcom, “Christians say the silliest things,” our list of stupid arguments Christians would do well to avoid.

We’ve blown past our initial goal of 25 arguments and are now at argument #46. If you want to start at the beginning, that’s here.

Stupid Argument #46: “God is like a father” and similar comparisons

We don’t see supernatural beings in daily life, so Christian apologists try to compare God to things we do see. In this blog, we’ve seen claims that God is like a father who gets angry when we make mistakes (here and here). God is like a child or an artist who deserves praise (here). Or maybe God is like a romantic partner (here).

Whenever I read such a comparison, I feel like a cat chasing paper tied to a string. As soon as I grab for the analogy to make sense of it, the apologist jerks it away and tells me that it’s not a perfect analogy.

No, it’s not a perfect analogy. It’s not even a good analogy. These comparisons fail because the most boring thing about the person God is compared to (he’s like a spouse, like a father, like a judge) is that that person exists.

A “God is like” analogy is a deepity: to the extent that it’s true, it’s trivial and unhelpful, and to the extent that it’s useful and insightful, it’s false.

More here.

Stupid Argument #47: Appeal to ego

This argument sounds like this: “Don’t be a wimp! You’re smart enough to weigh the evidence for evolution [or climate change or vaccinations or the Big Bang or some other scientific issue]. You don’t need scientists—figure this out yourself.”

An example of this is a long, fruitless discussion I had with Dr. Jay Wile about evolution here. He’s a scientist (nuclear chemistry), but he’s not a biologist. He can speak with authority in his field, but that’s no warrant to correct errors in other scientific fields. Nevertheless, he dumped on me his version of the Appeal to Ego:

If you are a lazy layperson who doesn’t want to think for him/herself, then you have no choice but to accept the scientific consensus. However, if you are a layperson who actually enjoys learning and thinking for him/herself, you can examine the evidence and come to your own conclusion.

Golly—my options apparently are to be an indolent puppet in the hands of my betters, or to stand like a man and decide for myself.

Or maybe there’s a third option: that sciences like biology are very specialized fields that I will always be an outsider to, and, as a result, I am obliged to accept science’s consensus view (where it exists) as the best approximation to the truth. That doesn’t mean that the consensus is necessarily right, just that it’s the layperson’s best bet.

That this is simply a desire for a more pleasing reality rather than a quest for the truth becomes clear when these tough-minded skeptics only challenge the science they don’t like—evolution, Big Bang, climate change, and so on. Their agenda shows when they let stand the science that is truly counterintuitive like Relativity or quantum mechanics.

Sometimes this is an attempt to bypass science. Science isn’t saying what they want to hear, so these armchair scientists bypass science and appeal directly to other laypeople. The Disco Institute is an Intelligent Design thinktank that does this. They don’t spend their money on unbiased research that might change the scientific consensus. They’ve already lost that war, so they write popular-level books and newsletters to appeal to individuals.

The most popular example that I come across is the typical fundamentalist attitude toward evolution. No ivory-tower geeks are going to shove nutty atheist science down the throats of these red-blooded Americans. And yet they accept Christianity! It would be nice if a little of that tough skepticism were applied to Christianity.

Or, we can look at it from the other side. Christians often tell atheists to drop their arrogance and have some humility, to admit they don’t know everything, and to open their minds to the possibility of the supernatural. The irony is when some of these Christians go on to push the Appeal to Ego, which is 190-proof arrogance.

More about the scientific consensus here and here.

Stupid Argument #48: Wishful thinking

The idea here is to adopt a worldview simply because it’s more pleasing than the one with the evidence. The SMBC comic above neatly illustrates this view with this syllogism:

If P is false, I will be sad;

I do not wish to be sad;

Therefore, P is true.

(h/t Greg G.)

Here’s a specific example. Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell illustrated the Problem of Evil with the example of a dying child and asked how a good god could allow such a thing. Christian apologist Greg Koukl answered this way:

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offered this response: “What is the atheist Bertrand Russell going to say when kneeling at the bed of a dying child? ‘Too bad’? ‘Tough luck’? ‘That’s the way it goes’?” No happy ending? No silver lining? Nothing but devastating, senseless evil?

What??? “No happy ending?” The child is dying! No, there’s no goddamn happy ending. (And notice that the original problem remains: they’ve offered no defense for why this would be part of an all-good god’s plan.)

An atheist comforting the dying child would do what a Christian would: read books or tell stories or remember happy events or in some way help the child feel comfortable and loved. The difference would be that the atheist wouldn’t handwave comfort, either for themselves or the child, through stories from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Greek myth of Hades, the Hindu idea of reincarnation, Christian heaven and hell, or whatever afterlife story happens to be popular in the local culture.

Koukl responds with claims about the Christian worldview—God is patient and merciful, God has a plan, and so on—without evidence, as if that counts for something. He skips over that messy supporting-evidence step and just takes his worldview as a given, claiming the win because he thinks his worldview is happier.

This is the Pragmatic Fallacy—some custom or practice is worthwhile because it makes me feel better, not because its claims are true. More here and here.

Continue with #49, Science is Built on Christianity.

If your faith is so fragile
it cannot handle questions, doubts, and honest inquiry,
if it is so threatened by the full engagement of your heart & mind
it runs from potential challenges,
that’s not faith; it’s fear.
— Christian apologist Rachel Held Evans

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Image from SMBC, used with permission
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10 Skeptical Principles for Evaluating the Bible (2 of 2)

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Let’s conclude our ten principles for evaluating the Bible. This list is in response to a Christian version by Jim Wallace, “Ten Principles When Considering Alleged Bible Contradictions,” critiqued here. Part 1 of my skeptical list is introduced here.

Let’s continue.

6. Missed opportunities count

God could’ve given us soap or told us that the earth is a sphere. Jesus could’ve eliminated all disease—and poverty, war, and famine while he was at it. But they didn’t.

What does that tell you? Apologists will say that the Bible isn’t a science textbook (though many will then take the Creation story literally). They’ll say that it simply wasn’t part of the plan for God to make life easy or even make the Bible message obvious so that there would be no need for the thousands of denominations of Christianity.

Even though the Bible doesn’t tell us anything that wasn’t already known to people of that time and place, that doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist. But what can we learn from the fact that the Bible is ambiguous and contradictory, that life on earth sucks for many people, and that the “God” character has no more knowledge or wisdom than the primitive people who wrote his story? This world and all the problems in it do not look like they were created by an all-loving and omnipotent deity.

7. If it looks like a book written by a primitive people, it almost certainly is

The best explanation for the Bible is that primitive people of the time wrote the story and that the Bible is just the blog of an early Iron Age desert tribe. We can’t ignore the many examples of mythology from other ancient cultures, and the Bible looks like just one more.

We need an enormous amount of evidence to conclude that Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Hindu Vedas are mythology, but the Bible, which looks so similar, is actually history.

8. Natural evidence provides poor support for a supernatural conclusion

Many Christians “just believe,” but to get there by an intellectual route takes much evidence. On one hand, we can suppose that an omniscient god who wanted to convince us that he existed would be able to reach the most skeptical atheist. For example, God could reveal himself to everyone on the same day so that we would have everyone else’s verification that our senses are reliable.

But how would you rule out very intelligent aliens? Imagine if you went back just 200 years in time with today’s modern technology—antibiotics, telephones, CGI movies and Photoshopped photos, airplanes, weapons, and so on. It would be easy to convince many people that you were a god.

Now imagine how we’d respond to someone from a technology 200 years more advanced than us. Now make it two million years. If they wanted to convince us that they were the creator of the universe, how would we know any different? (More.)

Consider from a more abstract level the problem of finding proof for the supernatural. Using natural evidence to prove the existence of the supernatural may be like Flatlanders using evidence in their 2D world to prove that there is a 3D world out there. (More.)

9. Don’t read in your own desires

Was God wrong to demand genocide or not? Did God demand human sacrifice or not? Did God approve of slavery and polygamy or not?

Christians are often quick to come to God’s rescue to find counter-verses to argue that God shares our modern sensibilities on these matters. (One wonders why God can’t make things clear himself, but never mind.) These apologists are certain that they and God are on the right side of these moral matters despite what a plain reading of the Bible indicates.

And while they’re at it, they’ll find support for their own particular views on homosexuality, abortion, and other social issues—either pro or con, it doesn’t matter because the Bible can be mined to find support for just about anything..

The honest critic lets the Bible speak for itself. If it seems to contradict itself, that may be explained by the many books of the Bible coming from many authors from different cultures and with different ideas of God.

10. Don’t presuppose God

The Christian set of 10 principles ended with this one: “Remember who’s boss.” That is, don’t forget that God is in charge and that we aren’t empowered to judge him. Whether the problem is ambiguity or contradictions in the Bible or evil in the world, we can’t even understand the situation enough to convict him.

But of course this simply starts with the conclusion. We can’t start by assuming that God exists and the Bible is his word any more than we’d start a critique of Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology with an assumption that they were correct. We’re not trying to judge God but simply decide if the Bible is anything more than what it looks like, an ancient myth.

Bonus: #11. Don’t abdicate your role as judge

There is no objective authority to lean on. As a Christian, you might rely on a pastor, televangelist, or biblical scholar. You can read the Bible, trying to resolve its various interpretations applied by its various partisans. And still the problem remains—you take their input, but the buck stops with you.

You ain’t much, but you’re all you’ve got.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is,
it doesn’t matter how smart you are.
If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
— Richard P. Feynman

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/16/15.)

Image from Martin Thomas, CC license
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10 Skeptical Principles for Evaluating the Bible

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I recently analyzed “Ten Principles When Considering Alleged Bible Contradictions” (here) from Christian blogger Jim Wallace. I didn’t think much of them.

I’d like to offer my own version. Here are ten skeptical principles for evaluating the Bible that I think are more honest than Wallace’s.

1. Don’t confuse genres

Wallace is a murder investigator, and he tries to find parallels between the analysis done by the legal system and the study of evidence in the Bible. He finds this parallel with Bible contradictions:

It’s my job, as the investigator, to determine why the eyewitnesses appear to contradict one another, even though there is no doubt the event occurred and the witnesses were telling the truth.

A murder that you’re sure happened because you’ve read the coroner’s report and seen the body at the crime scene is quite different from a resurrection that is only a poorly evidenced story told 2000 years ago within a credulous prescientific culture.

In the case of the Bible, we don’t begin our study certain that a single word is true. It might be no more factual than the story of Gilgamesh. We have stories far removed from whatever actual events triggered them, while in a murder investigation we start with the fact of the dead body.

2. Never begin with the assumption that the Bible must be right

Making sense of the Bible isn’t easy—there are 45,000 denominations of Christianity based on different interpretations of God’s plan. The hypothesis that the Bible is wrong at a particular place needs to be one of the candidates since it sometimes makes the most sense of the evidence.

For example, consider the simplicity of the Documentary Hypothesis (that the early books of the Bible are an amalgam from four primary sources). Many facts are explained by few assumptions, the mark of a good theory.

If your religion demands that you begin with the conclusion that the Bible is right, you’re no longer following the evidence.

3. Science wins

For learning about reality, science has an excellent track record, while Christianity has taught us nothing. Science isn’t perfect, but it’s the best that we’ve got, and when the Bible says something that contradicts the science, what can we do but go with the discipline that delivers?

Apologists like William Lane Craig admit the value of science when he cites the Big Bang. He wants a beginning to the universe, and the Big Bang gives him that. It has the backing of famous scientists that he can quote (he likes quotes from famous scientists). Unfortunately, evolution steps on his theological toes, so he rejects it.

This nonscientist imagines himself the Judge of All Science, able to sift out the good stuff (Big Bang) from the nonsense (evolution), but with this ridiculous and ill-informed position, he has lost any standing as a commenter of science.

Laypeople like Craig and me have no option but to accept the scientific consensus where it exists. It’s not perfect, but we have nothing better.

Apologists often praise science where they can but fall back on handwaving when the evidence is inconvenient. Beware.

4. Be consistent: use the same standard to evaluate all truth claims.

Whenever you reject a pseudoscientific claim like astrology or a supernatural worldview like Islam, check to see if your reasoning would also reject Christianity. And whenever you accept a Christian claim (the Resurrection, a Jesus miracle, the Bible’s creation story), see if your criteria would also accept similar stories from other religions. Don’t demand tough standards for the other guy but give your cherished beliefs a pass.

Prophecy is a good example. Don’t laugh at people impressed by Nostradamus or who find clues in the Bible Code or who got caught up on Harold Camping’s hysteria about the end of the world if you apply the same poor thinking to the Bible’s claims of prophecy. We all know what a good prophecy is, but Christians seem to forget that when it’s their own claims in the spotlight.

(I’ve explored prophecy claims in Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, the virgin birth, and Daniel.)

5. Don’t judge competing interpretations based on your agenda. Let the Bible speak for itself.

What if the Bible seems to contradict itself? For example,

  • The Bible says that faith alone is required for salvation (Romans 3:28) but also that works are sufficient to earn eternal life (Matthew 25:31–46).
  • Jesus had a physical body after the resurrection (Luke 24:37–43). Or did he (Luke 24:31, 36)?
  • The Bible’s six-day creation story conflicts with the Garden of Eden story.

The context should be the whole Bible.

Apologists pick their way through the minefield of verses, highlighting the ones that make their case and ignoring those that don’t. I suppose they depend on their readers’ ignorance (or complicity).

Don’t make the Bible into a sock puppet that says whatever you need it to. If the Bible says contradictory things, let it speak for itself. Don’t apologize for it.

Maybe (remember rule 2) the Bible is simply wrong.

To be concluded in part 2.

A god unexamined is a god not worth believing in.
A god examined is a god not possible to believe in.
— commenter MNb

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/12/15.)

Image credit: Olga Berrios, flickr, CC
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Debunking 10 Popular Christian Principles for Reading the Bible (3 of 3)

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Let’s wrap up our critique of Jim Wallace’s article, “Ten Principles When Considering Alleged Bible Contradictions.” (Part 1 here.)

Principle #8: Description is Different Than Approval.

“Remember, just because a Biblical author writes about something, this does not mean God condones it or supports it.”

Wallace wrestles with the problem of polygamy in the Bible. Many patriarchs are shown with multiple wives, and wise king Solomon in particular had a large harem. Does this make clear that God is fine with polygamy? Apparently not, as Wallace assures us that “from the very beginning, anyone who had more than one wife was in sin and was living in opposition to God’s will.”

His evidence is the vague clue that overseers should have one wife and the demand that kings should have few wives—hardly evidence that God hates polygamy. Wallace must ignore polygamy practiced by most of the patriarchs without a peep of protest against polygamy by God. God even told David that he had blessed him with many wives and would’ve been happy to give him more (2 Samuel 12:8).

Why do you think God dislikes polygamy? Just because you do? This is an unusually blatant example of our Christian apologist playing God like a sock puppet by reading into the Bible his own views on a social issue.

Principle #9: Don’t Fret Copyist Variants.

True, there are variants in the thousands of Bible manuscripts, but none challenge anything important. And it’s not like these variants are an embarrassing secret—they’re acknowledged in the footnotes of just about every Bible.

The example this time is of conflicting accounts of a battle. In one account (2 Samuel 8:3–4), David captured 700 horsemen, while in another account of the same battle (1 Chronicles 18:3–4), he captured 7000.

Wallace notes that this isn’t especially important, and I agree. Note, though, that Wallace is again discarding biblical inerrancy. The Bible isn’t magically protected against error, so even he must accept the Bible being occasionally wrong.

But by tossing out this trivial example, Wallace may hope to camouflage an important issue. Here’s where it gets interesting. We agree that copies of Bible books can contain errors, and we agree that very, very few of the original copies from the first couple of centuries have survived. Scholars have thousands of cases of two or more variants of a single passage where we have manuscripts documenting those variants. The famous long ending of Mark is an example. Wallace will point to modern Bibles that show the most reliable version and footnote the alternative version. So where’s the problem?

Here it is: imagine a fork in the historical road, with two different manuscript traditions of a single verse, for which we have copies from only one tradition. Do we have the accurate version now? We wouldn’t even know to ask the question! Only with copies of both traditions can we distinguish verses that have been changed from those that have been copied flawlessly from the original (more here, here).

Who knows what we’d discover if we could access every single manuscript copy. Maybe our Bible would have a thousand significant changes or maybe zero—we simply don’t know.

Principle #10: Remember Who’s Boss.

“Sometimes the God of the Old Testament can seem pretty harsh. . . . But we need to read the Scriptures carefully and remember God alone is God. . . . He gets to make decisions over life and death, even when we don’t understand all the details.”

The example he gives is a tough one, God’s demand of genocide for the Amalekites (I discuss this here). Wallace’s response is a bit like what God says to Job as he justifies his might-makes-right position, which I paraphrase as: “You talking to me, bitch? Uh yeah, get back to me after you’ve created a universe.”

Wallace’s argument is a popular response to this Problem of Evil. First, we assume objective morality. Second, work God in: “Objective, transcendent standards require an objective, transcendent standard giver.” Finally, declare that the Problem of Evil assumes objective morality; otherwise, “there can be no apparent injustice.”

See how that works? Atheists bring up the Problem of Evil, but this assumes objective morality, which in turn demands God as the objective morality source, and the atheists have shot themselves in the foot!

Let’s consider the problems with each step. First, he gives no support for his claim to objective morality, and I’ve never seen any. What we see around us are shared (and sometimes deeply held) moral beliefs, but that doesn’t make them objective moral truths.

Second, evolution nicely explains human morality. Evolution selects for altruistic traits in social animals like humans and other primates. We’re all the same species, which is why your moral sense is pretty much the same as everyone else’s.

Finally, morality works just fine without being objective (grounded outside of humanity). Look it up: morality and the ideas behind it such as good and bad are defined in the dictionary with no reliance on objective grounding.

Things get a bit embarrassing as Wallace justifies God’s murderous rampages as documented in the Old Testament: “If you create a piece of art, you have the right to destroy it, even though I do not. After all, it is your creation and, therefore, it is your property.”

We’re not talking about art, we’re talking about things that feel. A rock is different from a rabbit, and you can’t treat them the same.

The property argument also doesn’t work. If you create a building or a bridge, you’re not the boss once you sell or give it away. It’s not yours anymore. The same is true for a donated kidney or unit of blood that’s now in someone else. An artist can’t destroy their art once it’s in a museum or private collection. And if God gave life to an animal, it’s no longer his life to take back (h/t commenters Kodie and Greg G.).

In our eyes, humans are immoral when they kill a living creature just for the hell of it. In the same way, God doesn’t get a pass when he kills people with no reason besides “because he can.”

And why must Wallace defend God’s “perfect plan”? Why doesn’t God come down himself and give us his perfect justification? Omniscient gods shouldn’t need apologists.

Wallace’s goal here was to give fair rules for evaluating the Bible, but his bias is apparent as he concludes:

Am I going to stand as [the Bible’s] critic, or am I going to allow the Bible stand as a critic over me? Either I am going to decide what’s true or false in the Bible, or the Bible is going to decide what is true or false in me.

No one would yield to the sovereignty of a god before thoroughly and skeptically evaluating claims for that god, which is exactly what this article was supposed to help us do. But apparently an honest evaluation of the Bible doesn’t give him the advantage that he needs, so Wallace wants to first assume God and then the Bible’s supernatural claims. This is the Hypothetical God fallacy. It’s also circular logic.

No, we don’t assume God first. Honest adults start with the null hypothesis, which is that Christian supernatural belief is no more accurate than that of any other religion. They follow the evidence where it leads, regardless of whether they like it or not.

The lack of understanding of something is not evidence of God.
It’s evidence of a lack of understanding.
— Lawrence Krauss

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/10/15.)

Image from Dean McCoy, CC license

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What Do Churches Have to Hide? The Solution Is Simple.

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Nonprofit organizations in the U.S. make a contract: society allows donations to be tax deductible, and in return those organizations make their financial records public to show that they used that income wisely. Every nonprofit fills out an annual IRS 990 form to make its cash flow public—every nonprofit, that is, except churches.

Not only is this exemption unfair, it makes churches look like they have something to hide. Given past financial scandals, some do, but this secrecy makes most churches look undeservedly bad. Christians should demand that this exemption be removed. This change would improve the reputation of American churches at a time when a little reputation polishing would be welcome.

This article has four sections: a brief overview of the problem enabled by the exemption, arguments against removing the exemption, arguments for removing it, and a conclusion.

Church scandals

This isn’t an indictment of all churches, just the bad actors hiding behind the good ones.

One problem enabled by secrecy is fraud. “In 2000, an estimated $7 billion was embezzled by leaders of churches and religious organizations in the United States. Several other studies have suggested that about fifteen percent of all individual churches will suffer embezzlement.”[1] Worldwide, the estimate of fraud is $35 billion annually.[2][3]

Scandals of various sorts have brought down famous church leaders—Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Mark Driscoll, and others.[4] James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel is just the most recent.[5] Even sex scandals sometimes have a financial component, such as the hush money paid by Jim Bakker.[6]

Secret finances have sheltered outlandish salaries, like Jim Bakker’s $1.6 million more than thirty years ago.[7] While that salary wasn’t illegal, it was embarrassing. It’s only fair that the people who are ultimately paying know how their money is spent.

Church finances can be hidden even from church leadership. In James MacDonald’s church, “one elder resigned over this, after asking to see the finances and being overruled by the rest of the board.”[8]

Of course, the presence of a few bad actors doesn’t mean that churches don’t do good work, that Christians are bad people, and so on, but that’s precisely the point. When good and bad churches blend together into an indistinguishable gray mass, public financial disclosure would let the good churches be seen for what they are.

Contrast the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse lawsuits, paid using church funds,[9] with conventional nonprofits. Yes, there have been scandals with them—excessive CEO compensation with United Way in 1992 and the Smithsonian Institution in 2007, for example[10]—but all evidence argues that financial transparency has prevented far worse. Churches would benefit from following their lead.

The status quo is broken. It’s ridiculous to imagine that all church financial scandals are behind us. Fortunately, we have a simple solution: the IRS 990 form has been around for 75 years, it’s tuned for large and small nonprofits, and filing one annually should be mandatory for all of them.

Let’s move on to consider arguments pro and con mandatory filing of 990s. First, the arguments against.

CON #1: Churches are trustworthy

The assumption that churches are inherently trustworthy was the reason churches were given the exemption in the first place in 1943,[11] but the summary above shows that that assumption fails. Churches are run by imperfect people, and people sometimes do bad things. The Bible says, “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin,”[12] but if church leaders aren’t sinning, they’re certainly doing something questionable. Daystar spent half a million dollars sponsoring a Christian NASCAR driver, Ken and Gloria Copeland live tax-free in a $6.3 million “parsonage,”[13] and Mark Driscoll spent $210,000 of church funds to buy his way onto the New York Times bestseller list.[14]

When outlandish expenses are made public, credibility can be lost. Pastors Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis, and Ken Copeland publicly asked for extra donations for new business jets costing tens of millions of dollars, and the public responded with ridicule. One commenter asked, “Can a business jet pass through the eye of a needle?”[15]

CON #2: Let disclosure be at the churches’ option

This argument wants to let church leaders decide to open the books or not, as they choose, but in practice they choose secrecy. In one list of America’s biggest evangelists, seven are religious nonprofits, and they all file 990s as required. The remaining 23 are churches (“televangelists” might be more accurate), and none file 990s.[16] Of the 250,000 churches registered with the IRS, only two percent file 990s.[17]

CON #3: This violates the First Amendment

Would requiring the filing of a 990 form be a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

It would not. The rules of tax-exempt status have nothing to do with religion. To encourage nonprofit organizations that do good for society (including churches), the IRS created the 501(c)(3) category. Donors can give to these organizations tax free. In return, the organizations make public their finances by filing annual 990 forms.

This demand for transparency is no special burden on churches. In fact, the reverse is true: giving an exemption unfairly benefits religion and so violates the First Amendment’s requirement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Removing the exemption is no violation of rights when it shouldn’t have been given in the first place, especially when churches have shown that they can’t self-govern.

Churches aren’t a law unto themselves, and they must obey laws just like any other organization—laws about building codes, public safety, protection of copyright, liability, and so on. Financial transparency is just one more obligation of nonprofit organizations that are good citizens within society.

CON #4: Filing a 990 is too burdensome

We don’t hear church leaders arguing that it’s too big a burden for the 1.5 million nonprofits who now must fill them out; rather, they’re just saying that it’s too much of a burden for them. No, if other nonprofits can fill out a form, churches can too.

The 990 has evolved in the 75 years that it’s been around, so any church’s worries about the form have been raised long ago. There is a four-page 990-EZ version for organizations with less than $200,000 in annual revenue, and a 990-N for organizations with less than $50,000 in revenue. The 990-N takes minutes to complete, so the fear of overburdening a church with a tiny congregation is unfounded.

Completed 990s were first made public in 1950, organizations were obliged to mail one to anyone who asked by 1996, and they began to be put online in 1998.[18] Today, a researcher can use sites like Foundation Center, Charity Navigator, or the IRS itself to bring up financial data on any nonprofit in seconds. For example, the 990 for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is here. Income, expenses, assets, and the salaries of key employees—it’s all there. In 2016, it had $308 million in revenue and $143 million in assets, and Pat Robertson’s salary was $478,299.

What if the church doesn’t keep good financial records so that filling out the form is difficult? (The stereotypical example might be the disorganized small business owner dropping a shoebox stuffed with last year’s receipts onto the accountant’s desk.) Putting good financial management practices into place might be difficult, but they would be their own reward. “We’re too disorganized” is no reason for an exemption. Good financial management is proper stewardship of the money the congregation has entrusted to the church.

Five years after removing the exemption, once the 990 becomes assumed and churches are comfortable with the process, I predict that almost no one would advocate for going back to secret finances.

CON #5: It’s unnecessary, because we provide information to our members

Many churches share financial information with their members (though not all do), but this is not enough. Tax-exempt status is a financial bonus to nonprofit organizations, but the lost tax revenue must come from somewhere. Less tax on nonprofits means more tax on ordinary citizens. Since they’re footing the bill, they deserve to know, whether or not they’re members of a particular church.

Even when members can technically access financial information, this can be a difficult route. Asking a pastor to see the books might imply criticism and could harm a parishioner’s standing within the church. By contrast, access to a 990 is anonymous.

CON #6: We already have a solution—the ECFA

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was created in 1979 in response to public pressure from mainline churches against televangelists. Member organizations make a limited financial disclosure to the ECFA (not to the public), and ECFA membership provides a public seal of approval.

But why invent something new when the 990 had been in place for decades? Christian leaders were trying to complete the awkward sentence, “Churches need secrecy and can self-regulate because ___,” and they opted for transparency with training wheels. Yet again, this suggests their members have something to hide.

We’ve had forty years with the ECFA, and church scandals continue. Self-regulation relies on the consent of the regulated, and bad actors can simply not bother to join. The ECFA has 1700 members, of which only 150 are churches[19] (out of 330,000 churches in the U.S.), so it is no satisfactory alternative to true financial transparency.

CON #7: It’s not the government’s job to judge churches’ conduct

“Government should not be determining if a minister is living too lavishly. It’s not for the government to determine if someone really needs an airplane for their ministry. That’s just not something government should be getting into.”[20]

That’s a fair point, but that’s not the goal of mandatory 990s. With anonymous access to financial information, parishioners (not government) can decide if their church is using their donations wisely. If they disapprove, they can find a better fit by looking into other churches.

This is one of the advantages of the 990—it’s already being collected from other nonprofits, and adding churches to the list doesn’t increase the IRS bureaucracy. Checking on churches’ financial stewardship can be crowdsourced, a nice application of the “sunlight is the best disinfectant” principle.

CON #8: Disclosure would embarrass some churches

This is not an argument any church leader would admit to, but it’s likely the real reason. U.S. churches don’t want public critique of how they spend their $34 billion in annual income.[21]

Conventional nonprofits file 990s, and publicly traded corporations file disclosures mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Their disclosures may invite uncomfortable questions, but they muddle through. If a few churches need to scramble to clean up their acts before their finances become public, that’s a good thing.

Let’s now consider the pro arguments, those in favor of mandatory 990 filing for churches.

PRO #1: The status quo embarrasses all churches

This is the dual of the previous argument, and it may be the most powerful. Church scandals tar all churches. You can argue that your church is above reproach, but that’s just what the bad church was saying before its scandal became public. Make finances public, let them speak for themselves, and the churches that can be proud of their financial stewardship will separate from the rest.

PRO #2: If God knows, why can’t we all know?

From the Christian standpoint, any human disapproval is inconsequential compared to God’s. God knows everything, including how church leaders spend the money entrusted to them. If God is satisfied with the finances, how could a church be embarrassed to open its books to society? Said the other way around, if they’re embarrassed to show society, they’ve got some serious explaining to do before God.

Those church leaders who hesitate to open their books to the public place man before God as an authority. One wonders if they believe their own story.

PRO #3: The Bible encourages financial openness

It shouldn’t be necessary to argue that financial transparency is a cornerstone of good church management, but the Bible supports this principle.

We want to avoid any criticism of the way we administer this liberal gift. For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of man. (2 Corinthians 8:20–21)

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (1 Peter 2:12)

PRO #4: Transparency discourages impropriety

Open financial records mean that church members can monitor church operations. 990s aren’t the same as on-demand access to the church’s financial spreadsheet, but they can be read anonymously and are far better than the status quo.

Anyone who can spend the church’s money would know that it’s more than just God looking over their shoulder, which should reduce the temptation toward both embezzlement and unjustifiable expenses. Any financial scandals that are still possible might be caught earlier when they are smaller and less embarrassing.

This principle that openness encourages honesty pushed Billy Graham and some associates in 1948 to write the Modesto Manifesto, a set of guidelines for avoiding scandals that were a problem among Christian leaders even then. His organization published annual financial audits, and it summarized the financial results of revival meetings in local newspapers.[22]

Knowing that self-imposed rules could be broken, Graham constrained himself with these external rules. According to his biographer, “He has never thought that he was beyond temptation or that anything he wanted to do was all right.”[23]

PRO #5: Transparency is honest to taxpayers

The subsidy that American society gives religion because of its tax-exempt status is estimated at $83 billion per year.[24] The 990 would be the way for churches to say to the American taxpayers who are picking up the slack, “Thank you, and here’s how we’re spending the money you gave us.” Removing the exemption would also be fair to the other nonprofits who must fill out the 990.

Christians might defer to church leadership on spiritual matters, but it doesn’t follow that taxpayers should defer to church leadership on financial matters.

PRO #6: We find transparency in other contracts

Anyone who gets a patent receives legal protection for the invention in return for revealing the secrets of the invention. And any organization that gets 501(c)(3) status receives tax-free donations in return for opening its books.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said, “Having tax-exempt status is a great privilege, and in exchange for that privilege, all other groups must file a detailed report annually to the IRS and the public on how we spend donations. . . . Why should churches be exempt from basic financial reporting requirements? Equally important, why would churches not wish to be accountable?”[25]

PRO #7: Transparency is honest to church members

American taxpayers are subsidizing religion, but it’s the members themselves who are directly footing the bill. Not only must churches open their books to be fair to those members, but polls show that members want more transparency.

Financial secrecy helped keep the Catholic sexual abuse scandals hidden for so long, and Catholics are pushing back by demanding more financial transparency.

A 2002 Gallup poll found that sixty-five percent of Catholics agreed that the church should be more accountable for its finances, and seventy-nine percent wanted bishops to give a complete account of the financial impact of sexual abuse victim settlements. A study conducted by the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management found that a majority of Catholics wanted “full financial disclosure” from the church [emphasis added].[26]

That certainly seems fair, given that their donations fund the settlements.

Another case is Daystar, a Christian television network with over $200 million in assets and which takes in donations of $35 million annually. As a church, its books are secret, but records made available due to a lawsuit show that far less of the donations are given away as charity than promised. One experienced nonprofit analyst said, “Daystar needs to tell people that only about 5 percent of their contributions are going toward hospitals, churches, needy individuals.”[27]

Is 5 percent a lot or a little? Does it match what Daystar has promised on air or not? That’s not for me to judge, but it is for the donors to judge. Covert finances are not honest.

PRO #8: What cults are hiding behind this IRS loophole?

Scientology filed thousands of nuisance lawsuits against the IRS to protest its loss of church status. It finally dropped its lawsuits in return for nonprofit status.[28] What churches would you like to see the finances of? Hare Krishna? The Unification Church (“the Moonies”)? Nxivm? You may think that your church is operating ethically, but what about the other guys?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation argues that financial secretiveness allowed Jim Jones to hide the early signs of his church’s meltdown that led to the 1978 massacre of almost a thousand church members in Jonestown.[29]

And it would be good to get the IRS out of the church-defining business. While the IRS never reviews or assesses religious doctrine,[30] it does have a 14-point checklist[31] to decide if an organization is a “church.” The IRS says, “Because beliefs and practices vary so widely, there is no single definition of the word church for tax purposes. The IRS considers the facts and circumstances of each organization applying for church status.”[32]

With no 990 loophole, the IRS wouldn’t have to decide who is and who isn’t a church.

PRO #9: There is no argument for secrecy

Fill in the blank: “In our church/denomination, we want to maintain financial secrecy because ___.” Do you want to stand before the congregation and justify the explanation?

Or imagine it from the other direction. Suppose churches have been using the 990 for years, and everyone is accustomed to the transparency. Now someone proposes that the IRS provide a loophole to exempt churches from that requirement, and you need to make the argument. How would you argue for financial secrecy in the future?

Churches should be more financially transparent than the Mafia.

PRO #10: The 990 makes church governance easier

Church scandals often center around charismatic leaders who bully others in church leadership to get their way. Someone on the church board might suggest more financial transparency to the membership. Perhaps it’s criticism of an extravagant expense or a suggestion to apply the financial checks and balances used in business. They’re all shot down by the charismatic leader. Board members could push harder, but they risk their position on the board and their reputation within the church. Let’s make it easier on these church leaders who try to do the right thing by resolving this debate for them.

Here’s one take on the difficult position of these church leaders.

Those who confront pastors . . . may be told that they are “unsubmissive” or “disloyal”. . . . Churches, as they currently exist, actually foster and shelter malfeasance. The dynamics of religious leadership discourage laypeople from pressing for financial accountability even in more democratic polities, suggesting that it is imperative for the government to apply the same laws to churches that mandate transparency for other nonprofits.[33]

Mandatory 990s are like round thermostats. In the 1950s, industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss noticed that rectangular thermostats were often mounted on the wall slightly crooked. He designed the popular Honeywell round thermostat that couldn’t be mounted on the wall crooked. The opportunity to mount it wrong was gone. 990s are like that—the debate about how open to be and who is allowed to see what information is gone. Constraints can be freeing.

The risk to board members with a potentially bullying pastor is also reduced. The hands of the board are tied—churches must be financially transparent; the debate is over; next issue. The IRS becomes the hero in this story, because they took the burden from the board.

PRO #11: More transparency might mean more revenue

Is the IRS 990 bitter medicine, or is it the route to greater church income?

Financial transparency helps revenue in two ways. First, it gives members more confidence that their money is being spent wisely. Second, it reduces the chance that one church scandal will contaminate the entire community. Members can state that their church isn’t like the one with the scandal and back that up with data.

One study found that “giving rates within the Catholic Church varied in proportion to transparency and accountability” and almost half of respondents to another said they’d be more generous “if [they] understood better what the church does with its money.”[34]

At a time when churches nationwide are scrambling for members, wise financial stewardship is a nice selling feature. Your church might be more generous in helping the less fortunate than other churches in your neighborhood, but without universal 990s, how would anyone know?

Conclusion

Our situation is a little like that of the food industry in the U.S. in the late 1800s. Milk was sometimes diluted with water infused with chalk or plaster to cut costs. Pepper was sometimes diluted with charred rope or dirt. Formaldehyde and borax were food preservatives. Some food dyes contained lead or arsenic, and so on.[35] The food industry was constrained by few laws, and they encouraged politicians to keep it that way.

The food industry was in bed with politicians in the late 1800s, and church leaders are in bed with politicians today. Filing 990s might be embarrassing, so politicians removed that little problem for their friends. Churches and politicians (with some exceptions) like the status quo.

The food industry liked the status quo, too, but with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, there was a new sheriff in town. Adulterating or mislabeling food and drugs had become a crime. The food industry and politicians, who would theoretically be responsible for identifying and solving the problem, were actually part of the problem. The industry couldn’t be trusted to police itself. Change came after citizens woke to the problem and demanded change. Press about the science behind the problem plus exposés like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1904) made the difference.

That’s the lesson for financial transparency today. Trusting churches to police themselves doesn’t work, and change apparently won’t come through church leadership, who have assured politicians that the exemption is a political third rail. Maybe they can eventually be cajoled to do the right thing, but they won’t be leading the charge. Change will come after citizens see the problem and demand change. Better: Christians, we need you to see the problem and demand change.

There are many beneficiaries from financial transparency. Not only are typical Christians the biggest winners from this change—by opening church finances that had looked suspicious—they’re the ones with the power. Politicians will listen to them.

At the turn of the twentieth century, we needed new science to build the case for food safety. Today, we don’t need anything new to make the case for financial transparency, since the case is obvious to anyone interested enough to look for it. What we need is a critical mass of Christians demanding change.

My Christian friends, raise this topic with others in your congregation. Forward them this article. Write a letter to the editor. Complain to your congressperson. Do something to make this an important topic of conversation.

Don’t look to church leadership to do it for you. This is your fight, and you’ll be the beneficiary.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants;
electric light the most efficient policeman.
— Future SCOTUS Justice Louis Brandeis

.

Acknowledgement: I found a law journal article particular helpful, both for the authority of its comments on constitutionality and its extensive research: “The Law and Financial Transparency in Churches: Reconsidering the Form 990 Exemption” by John Montague.

[1] John Montague, “The Law and Financial Transparency in Churches: Reconsidering the Form 990 Exemption,” Cardozo Law Review 35, no. 203 (2013): 232.

[2] Veronica Dagher, “Trust in the Lord…But Check Out the Church,” Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2012.

[3] “Status of Global Mission, 2014,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 38, no. 1, see item 56 (Ecclesiastical crime).

[4] Montague, 236.

[5] Libby Anne, “The Harvest Bible Chapel Scandal in a Nutshell (And Why You Should Care),” Love, Joy, Feminism blog, February 20, 2019.

[6] Montague, 218.

[7] Montague, 218.

[8] Libby Anne.

[9] Montague, 238.

[10] Montague, 222–3.

[11] Montague, 230.

[12] 1 John 5:18; see also 1 John 3:6–9.

[13] John Burnett, “Can A Television Network Be A Church? The IRS Says Yes,” NPR, April 1, 2014.

[14] Husna Haq, “Pastor reportedly buys his way onto New York Times bestseller list,” The Christian Science Monitor, March 7, 2014.

[15] Washington Post, “Televangelist wants his followers to pay for a $54-million private jet. It would be his fourth plane,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2018.

[16] “Thirty Leading Religious Broadcasters,” NPR, April 1, 2014.

[17] Leonardo Blair, “Growing Fraud Sucks Billions From Churches Annually; This IRS Fix Could Help, Expert Says,” The Christian Post, August 12, 2018.

[18] Montague, 213, 224, and 229.

[19] Montague, 256.

[20] John Burnett.

[21] Montague, 206.

[22] Montague, 254–5.

[23] Montague, 255.

[24] Dylan Matthews, “You give religions more than $82.5 billion a year,” The Washington Post, August 22, 2013.

[25] Freedom From Religion Foundation, “FFRF sues IRS over preferential treatment of churches,” Freethought Today, Jan/Feb 2013.

[26] Montague, 252.

[27] John Burnett.

[28] “Scientology and law,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

[29] Annie Laurie Gaylor, “To avoid another Jonestown, reform IRS church reporting policy,” Freethought Now!, November 19, 2018.

[30] “Tax Guide for Churches & Religious Organizations,” IRS Publication 1828, 2015.

[31] “ ‘Churches’ Defined,” IRS.

[32] “Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization,” IRS publication 557, 2018.

[33] Montague, 243–4.

[34] Montague, 247–8.

[35] Ari Shapiro, “How A 19th Century Chemist Took On The Food Industry With A Grisly Experiment,” NPR, October 8, 2018.