Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Testament Manuscript Reliability: the Visual Edition

Posted on by

poor evidence for new testament bible

Christian apologists say that our copies of the New Testament are backed by early manuscript evidence.

Not really. I’ve responded to that argument in depth here, but let’s revisit the argument visually.

Matthew manuscripts

Here’s the manuscript data for Matthew. Start at year 1 at the bottom of the chart. The years advance moving up, along the left side.

The crucifixion is at about 30 CE, and Matthew was written in about 80. The reddish bar representing this original Matthew, the document we’re trying to recreate, is at year 80 (on the left side). That bar is 1071 verses wide (see the verse count along the bottom).

Cross Examined blog at Patheos.com
Moving up the chart, the first manuscript data point is at the year 150, papyrus #104 (P104) with 7 verses.

Next are three more small manuscripts containing 9, 5, and 10 verses, dated to roughly 200.

At the year 250, we have four more, including Matthew’s largest early manuscript, P45, which has 62 verses.

In 300, we get four more, including our first uncial manuscript, U171, which has 15 verses.

(The oldest New Testament manuscripts are categorized as papyrus [written on papyrus] and uncials [written on parchment using capital Greek letters]. Minuscules [small Greek letters on parchment] and lectionaries [Bible selections used for church services] are additional categories, but those manuscripts aren’t old enough to be on our list.)

Finally, at the top, is Codex Sinaiticus from about 350 CE, which is our oldest complete New Testament.

There are lots more manuscripts containing Matthew, but none older than these. This is the data that attempts to support the argument that our copies of Matthew were built on a reliable foundation of early manuscript evidence.

These 12 pre-Sinaiticus manuscripts were once complete copies of Matthew, but time has eroded them down to just this. What would we learn about Matthew and the volatile message of the early church if these 12 manuscripts were complete? What would we learn if we had every early manuscript copy of Matthew? There might have been dozens. Maybe hundreds.

This chart helps illustrate what little we have to go on when trying to narrow the 300-year gap from originals to the fourth-century codices like Sinaiticus. New Testament scholars do impressive work when finding the likely earliest reading from contradicting sources, but they’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has all the pieces but no certainty that any of those pieces are correct. Seen another way, suppose a new papyrus fragment were uncovered that had the vocabulary of a Christian document but didn’t match any known New Testament or noncanonical document. Who’s to say that that’s not actually part of the New Testament but in so early and different a form that we just don’t recognize it?

Finally, let me repeat two caveats. The dates are just educated guesses, and the copies are fragmentary. P45, a few pages of which are shown above, doesn’t contain 62 complete verses of Matthew but contains fragments of 62 verses.

Manuscripts of Paul’s epistles

Let’s look at another section of the New Testament, the seven authentic Pauline epistles, and we’ll find a slightly different story. These epistles are Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

Cross Examined blog at Patheos.com

The big difference is P46, which has ninety percent of the verses in these 7 letters. While that’s an important contribution, let’s not read too much in it. Instead of one large early manuscript, as with Matthew, we have two for Paul. Remember that the apologist bragging point that started this series of posts was, “There are 25,000 New Testament manuscripts, making it the most reliable ancient document!” It doesn’t really work that way in practice, when only a handful of the oldest manuscripts form the Greek core that is used to make a modern translation.

As discussed in that earlier post, four manuscripts (P45, P46, P66, and P75) are early and large enough to give new insights into the complete New Testament that we have with Sinaiticus. Another 65 manuscripts that also precede Sinaiticus are useful but tiny (some can be seen in the charts above).

Acknowledgement: a thoughtful suggestion from long-time commenter epeeist pushed me to analyze the data visually.

Related posts:

[Why doesn’t God ever appear?]
We only ever seem to get the monkey,
never the organ grinder.
And the monkey always says,
“This is what I say my god wants.”
— commenter epeeist

.

Image from Wikimedia, public domain
.

God Created the Universe From Nothing—Or Did He?

Posted on by

The Christian idea of creation ex nihilo, that God created the universe from nothing, is a doctrine within many denominations. The problem appears when Christians try to find it in the Genesis six-day creation story. It’s not there.

Like so many confidently stated doctrines, the Bible doesn’t cooperate. Letting the Bible speak for itself exposes the unsupported claims.

“In the beginning . . .”

The first verse of the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NIV). It doesn’t say that God created out of nothing, and only the lack of specified materials that God worked with supports creation ex nihilo.

Look more closely at the word created (the Hebrew word bara). This word is used 55 times in the Old Testament. Most instances are translated as “create,” but not all, and few could be read as “create from nothing.” For example, it’s “make a signpost” in Ezekiel 21:19 and “create in me a pure heart” in Psalm 51:10, which are obviously talking about forming out of existing material. The NET Bible agrees: “The verb does not necessarily describe creation out of nothing . . . it often stresses forming anew, reforming, renewing.”

Early church fathers like Justin Martyr and Origen also held that the Genesis creation was from something.

One intriguing hypothesis is that that verse should read, “In the beginning God separated the heavens and the earth” since the universe in Genesis 1 is built with separations. Light is separated from darkness (verse 1:4), water above is separated from water below (1:7), and land is separated from water (1:9).

You can respond that this is educated guesswork and that “create” might still be the best word, but it still doesn’t say “create from nothing.” (And, of course, centuries separate the original Genesis from our best copies and it was oral history before that, so it’s also guesswork what the original said.)

The next story in Genesis, the centuries-older Garden of Eden story, also has God creating, but here he creates using something else—for example, Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and Adam was created from dust.

God did use existing matter—water

Let’s continue the Genesis 1 creation story with verse 2: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The “deep” is the ocean, and the metaphorically relevant aspect here is the ocean as chaos. The six-day creation story shows God creating order from chaos.

This water wasn’t made by God but was material that he worked with. He separated the water into two parts, the sky (held up by a vault) and the ocean (Gen. 1:7). Next, we read “Let [the ocean water] be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear,” so God didn’t create the land either.

The New Testament agrees:

By God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water (2 Peter 3:5).

Combat Myth

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have already noticed hints of the Combat Myth (also known as Chaoskampf, German for “struggle against chaos”). This is a common story structure that appears in the mythology of many cultures. Some of the cultures in the ancient Near East with this myth are (oldest to youngest) Akkadia, Babylon, Ugarit, and Israel. The details were unique to each culture, but the outline is largely the same (more).

First, there’s a threat to the status quo. The threat isn’t evil, it’s chaos. The council of the gods argues about what to do, and none of the older generation of gods steps up to fight the chaos monster. A younger god (unimportant to this point) volunteers. After a fierce battle, this god defeats chaos, order is restored, and he takes his place as the chief god. The human world is formed from the body of the slain chaos monster.

For example, the Akkadian myth has Enlil as the king of the gods. Anzu steals the symbol of kingship, creating chaos. Ninurta steps up to fight Anzu. A clever trick allows Ninurta to defeat Anzu, and he becomes the new king.

Elements of the Genesis story are a little easier to see in the Babylonian version of the combat myth, documented in their creation myth, the Enuma Elis. Tiamat (the female dragon who represented salt water) and Absu (the male fresh water god) were the first gods, and their children formed the younger generation of gods.

Absu eventually grew annoyed with his noisy children and planned on killing them, but they discovered his plan and killed him first. His consort Tiamat was furious and planned revenge. Marduk the storm god responded to the threat, and he killed Tiamat, making him the king of the gods. He formed our world from the body of Tiamat, splitting it and making the heavens from one half and the earth from the other.

Note the similarities:

  • Yahweh and Marduk were both storm gods. Each fought and defeated a threat by chaos, the sea monster. For Marduk, it was Tiamat. For Yahweh, it was Leviathan (also known as Rahab). Job 41 is an entire chapter devoted to its description: “double coat of armor . . . fearsome teeth . . . its back has rows of shields . . . flames stream from its mouth.”
  • The Babylonian story begins with the gods of salt water and of fresh water. Water is also essential in the Genesis story, and “the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
  • Marduk creates the heavens and the earth from two halves of Tiamat’s body. Yahweh separates the waters into two parts, the sky and the earth.
  • Another connection is linguistic. The word Tiamat is a linguistic cognate with the Hebrew tehom (the deep).

What we don’t find in Genesis is the beginning of the combat myth, though fragments of that are elsewhere in the Bible. Given the obvious parallels, the earlier Babylonian story must be in the lineage of the Genesis story somewhere, but not every story element made it.

Genesis not only doesn’t say that God created ex nihilo, it makes clear that he didn’t. He used pre-existing water to bring order to chaos. Genesis strongly parallels earlier combat myths, which very explicitly didn’t create from nothing but used the body of the defeated chaos monster.

Related posts:

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
— David Hume

.

Image from Wikipedia, CC license
.

Turning the Tables on Same-Sex Marriage? Not with THIS Argument (2 of 2).

Posted on by

In part 1, we reviewed an inept attempt to prove the hypocrisy of same-sex marriage proponents. You say it’s wrong for a Christian baker to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake? Let’s see how you like it when the tables are turned! So they surveyed pro-gay bakers and asked them to bake a wedding cake for a straight wedding.

Kidding! There’d be no story in that case, because the bakers would’ve all been happy for the business. And why not? Same-sex marriage advocates (going forward, I’ll sometimes call them “liberals”) are embracing marriage, not disparaging it. No, the experiment was actually to ask pro-gay bakers to bake a cake with the slogan, “Gay Marriage is Wrong.” I discussed the problems with this experiment in part 1.

Blogger Tom Gilson has wrestled with problem of why the anti-same-sex (“conservative”) position has done poorly.

Six steps to a stronger conservative position.

How do the conservatives improve their strategy? Gilson offers some suggestions.

“First, we need to do our homework.” He encourages his side to study the argument thoroughly.

No, he doesn’t want to reconsider his position.

Or consider that same-sex marriage expands marriage rather than attacks it.

Or observe that it does absolutely nothing to harm the marriages of straight people and that if straight people don’t like gay marriage, they can just not get gay married.

Or wonder if maybe there are far bigger problems in the world that deserve their attention or ask what Jesus would do.

No, he just wants to double down on the conservative position and work on positioning the message with better PR.

“Second, we need to identify the other side’s rhetorical weakness.” The pro-same-sex marriage side shows a sympathetic face when arguing for their position, he says, but they’re nasty when attacking the conservative position. He gives some examples of weak points in his opponents’ position.

2a: Liberals say the conservatives are haters. But when they disagree, they’re just as hateful.

We can say that disagreement = hatred, and with that definition the two sides would be symmetric. But the goals are different, and expanding marriage is a far more loving goal than making it a gated community. Your rhetorical problem remains.

2b: Liberals blather on about marriage equality, but they don’t really believe that. They put constraints on marriage, too.

A definition makes clear what is included as well as what is not. Obviously, everyone puts limits on the definition of marriage just like they do for every other word. Gilson imagines that “marriage equality” must mean no constraints at all and that it accepts incestuous, bigamous, and other controversial unions. A quick look at how the term is used makes clear that this disingenuous complaint is groundless.

And note that his examples are arguably harmful options. Same-sex marriage isn’t harmful to anyone, not even to Christians. If it makes Jesus sad, he should let us know.

“Third, we need to be wiser about finding points of rhetorical symmetry.” Instead of demanding that gay bakers make hateful cakes (which he never sees the rhetorical problem with), he says that it would be rhetorically more productive to ask them to cater conferences for the anti-same-sex marriage position. “If they refuse, then that’s clearly discriminating.” Gotcha!

No, it doesn’t work that way. U.S. federal law recognizes protected classes that can’t be discriminated against. A business that provides public accommodation must (with few exceptions) serve all the public and can’t discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, age, and other categories. States have added additional classes. For example, Colorado made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in 2008. This was the law broken in the 2012 Masterpiece Cakeshop case in which a Christian baker refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

Retail stores have rights to free speech and can limit their customers, but those rights have limits. They violate the law if they refuse to serve someone simply because they’re in a class that’s protected. You can’t refuse to serve someone because they’re a Christian, a woman, or a Mexican, and (at least in Colorado) you can’t refuse to serve someone because that person is homosexual. On the other hand, a baker breaks no law when refusing to cater a National Organization of Marriage conference against same-sex marriage or a Westboro (“God Hates Fags”) Baptist Church picnic.

Again, I make the challenge: ask pro-gay bakers to bake wedding cakes for straight weddings. Show me one who won’t make an inoffensive wedding cake for a straight, Christian couple, and I’m on your side.

“Fourth, we need to put real faces on our position.” He suggests finding adult children of same-sex couples who have bad stories to tell.

Sure, you can find people who had a bad experience growing up with same-sex parents. But you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who had problems growing up with straight parents. What does that tell us? Seems to me that it says that marriage in the real world is imperfect. If you want to fret about marriage, focus on the social conditions that put pressure on all marriages.

“Fifth, even though it’s an uphill battle, we need to continue to explain and defend moral truth.”

Your “moral truth” is looking pretty hateful right about now; that’s why it’s an uphill battle. You still want to go with that as your final answer? Thirty years from now, the predominant Christian message on this subject will celebrate Christian leaders who took the tough stand to embrace homosexuals and accept same-sex marriage. History is listening.

“Finally and most importantly, we need to bear in mind that there is a spiritual asymmetry here as well.” The point here seems to be that Christians can’t forget the biblical reasons to reject same-sex marriage.

First, biblical reasons mean nothing in the secular public square. U.S. local, state, and federal government can’t make laws to advance a religious goal. In this domain, an argument that has only a Christian justification has no justification.

Second, the biblical argument against same-sex marriage is nonexistent (here, here). The Bible is a Rorschach test, and you read yourself into it. Don’t pretend that the Bible speaks unambiguously on this subject.

Look around you. There are millions of Christians happy to accept the liberal position. Two adults want to celebrate their love for each other—what’s not to like? These Christians feel no tension with their religious beliefs. What does it say about you that you can’t go there?

Some points of agreement

I think there’s more common ground than Gilson wants to admit. Obvious fact #1: the definition of marriage has changed over time. Biblical marriage, with its polygamy and other weird rules is a distant memory, and marriage continues to change today. Just in my lifetime, laws in the U.S. restricting marriage to people of the same race have been eliminated, divorce has become much easier, adultery is being decriminalized, and marital rape is now illegal. Even today, there are subtle differences between states’ definitions of marriage—different ages of consent, different restrictions on whether cousins can be married, different eligibility requirements, and so on.

Obvious fact #2: a definition imposes limits. Whether same-sex marriage is legal or illegal, there is no slippery slope problem. Conservatives don’t want to broaden marriage so that someone can marry their sex toy, and neither do liberals.

When you drop the fantasy that marriage is an unchanged institution since Adam and Eve, the same-sex marriage position seems a lot more reasonable. I doubt this will be persuasive, though. I think that Gilson is stuck with his position and doesn’t care which side has the stronger argument. He uses his substantial intellect to defend the conservative position, right or wrong.

A final jab

Gilson concludes his article by doubling down on the original message.

Before [this] experiment, no one ever seems to have thought of doing anything so thoughtlessly rude, except for the gays who asked conservatives to make cakes for their celebrations.

Seriously? Gays are thoughtlessly rude to expect equal access in public accommodation? Understand the law.

Gilson wants to know what the big deal is. So Straight-laced Christian Cakes won’t serve “your kind”? Not a problem:

I thought about the reported responses the conservatives gave: respectful, offering advice on other places people could be served, and compared it to [the angry responses] reportedly heard in response to [the request to bake “Gay Marriage is Wrong” cakes].

Are you also okay with a baker telling the Chinese couple or mixed-race couple that he didn’t approve of their marriage, but that there were other bakers in town without his high standards who might stoop to serve them?

And if same-sex marriage doesn’t exist for you, then what’s the problem? As far as you’re concerned, this is just a cake for a party. (h/t commenter Kodie)

While we’re offering “respectful” advice, let me offer some: if a wedding cake baker can’t follow the law, they can bake something besides wedding cakes or find another job.

And then I thought, Why do they accuse us of being the haters?

A trick question, perhaps? In this case, it’s because the experiment you applaud was hateful! And I keep coming back to the central issue. We’re not talking about a cake sculpture illustrating a lynching, a massacre, or the Kama Sutra. It’s a cake for a wedding! I can hardly imagine a worse event for conservative Christians to line up against.

You’re trying to improve your PR, but you’re still stuck with opposing a wedding cake. And you’re baffled why you’re labeled as haters?

Think about it for a minute.

Why is it that the same justices so eager
to bestow human rights upon corporations
are so reluctant to recognize them
as applying to actual human beings?
— Richard S. Russell

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/28/15.)

Image credit: andrluXphoto, flickr, CC

.

Turning the Tables on Same-Sex Marriage? Not with THIS Argument.

Posted on by

The Masterpiece Cakeshop case was decided by the Supreme Court last summer in favor of the baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage, but it was a narrow ruling that set little or no precedent. It remains an open question how far “My religion demands that I not serve your kind” can go.

Before that case was decided, a Christian blogger wanted to demonstrate the hypocrisy of gay couples asking Christian bakers for wedding cakes. So it’s not okay for Christian bakers to refuse? Let’s see how gay bakers like it when the tables are turned!

The Freedom Outpost blogger asked thirteen gay or pro-gay bakers for a cake that said, “Gay Marriage is Wrong.” Each baker turned him down.

If anyone who objects [says] our request for the cake was hateful, this is exactly the type of thing the homosexual activists do to Christian bakeries when they use the state to coerce them to make a cake with an explicitly pro homosexual slogan on it. Well, to turn it against them, we asked for an explicitly anti-homosexual marriage cake.

Blatant hypocrisy, right?

This inept experiment fails since the two positions aren’t symmetrical. The gay couple in the 2012 Colorado case simply wanted a wedding cake, not an anti-Christian or anti-conservative statement or even a political statement of any kind. It’s just a wedding cake—a symbol of love, remember? If someone is determined to take offense at that or see the wedding not as a loving couple wanting to get married but a deliberate poke in the eye of their lord and savior . . . well, I guess there’s not much you can do about that. But an objective observer would not see the imagined crime.

(Going forward, I’ll sometimes use conservative/liberal as synonyms for the clumsier phrases “same-sex marriage opponent/proponent.” This may bring to mind politics, but that’s fine since politics seems to be at least as much of a driving force as Christianity.)

The “Gay Marriage is Wrong” cake was just hate speech. You’re welcome to say that, but you’re not entitled to demand someone else to do so. You want a symmetric experiment? Ask a gay baker to bake a wedding cake for a straight couple with the familiar bride/groom cake topper. If the baker demands that you take your business elsewhere because they don’t serve “your kind,” then you’ve got a case.

I’m sure that Freedom Outpost knew that that request wouldn’t cause any sparks, which is why they didn’t try an honest symmetric experiment but opted instead for a groundless grandstanding opportunity.

Tom Gilson of the Thinking Christian blog supported this experiment:

Every gay marriage wedding cake, no matter how it’s decorated, says the man-woman-only view of marriage is wrong; but it takes special effort to make a man and woman’s wedding cake communicate that gay marriage is wrong.

First, the cake does have a point to make, but “the man/woman-only view is wrong” is not it. How hateful do you have to be to take a couple’s celebration of their special day and insist that the purpose is actually just to be mean to you?

If you enjoy being cantankerous, you could see the same kind of message in a man/woman wedding cake. Is this cake a deliberate jab at the couples who couldn’t afford a wedding this nice? Or the couples who only bought a small cake because they don’t have as many friends? Or the people whose potential mate turned them down?

Who would imagine any of those messages as subtext in a wedding cake? Who would think that that is a primary message of the wedding? If you’re thin-skinned, see this as a winner-take-all political game, and are determined to be offended, then you might see every gay wedding cake as a personal affront, but that’s your problem.

Onto the second point, that it’s hard to make the statement “gay marriage is wrong” with an ordinary wedding cake. That’s right, and that’s why the experiment was irredeemably flawed. A symmetric cake doesn’t actually make an objectively offensive message.

Is it always politics?

There’s an obvious lesson here—that a truly symmetric cake would actually send a loving message, so the objection to anti-discrimination laws was motivated by politics rather than logic—but that’s not where Thinking Christian wants to go with this. The post takes the conservative, anti-same-sex marriage position as a given and explores the argument from a strategic standpoint. How can conservatives make their message more palatable?

He summarizes the two positions this way:

Natural marriage proponents are defending an institution and standing in the way of gay couples’ desire to marry. [They] seek to disrupt two real people’s desires, hopes, and felt needs.

Same-sex “marriage” proponents are attacking an institution and defending couples’ desires to marry. [They] seek to disrupt the historic institution of marriage.

(It’s fun how he adds scare quotes to same-sex “marriage.” My position has been insulted even before he gets started!)

There’s a big difference between attacking marriage and seeking to expand it. And I presume by “disrupt the historic institution of marriage,” this is a claim that marriage is unchanging. It’s not and has been dramatically changed just in my own lifetime (more on that later).

I do understand his predicament as he lays it out. He must be the hard-ass, burdened with the unpalatable message. He’s attacking real people, while his opponents are attacking an institution. (That’s how he sees it, anyway. In fact it’s even more difficult since his opponents are attacking just one calcified interpretation of the institution. Making the institution of marriage open to more people has historically been on the right side of history.)

Then we get the predictable, tired arguments in favor of the conservative position: marriage is important for children (actually, healthy families are important to children), same-sex marriage is morally wrong (you’re free to avoid same-sex marriage if you don’t like it, but you’re not free to put your supernatural conclusions into laws), and so on.

And I must respond to his use of the phrase “natural marriage.” Marriage is not natural; it’s a manmade institution, and it can be defined any way that society decides. What he’s confusing with marriage is sex. Sex is natural, and marriage is not. Marriage wasn’t even a Christian sacrament until 1215.

Gilson wrings his hand at his difficulty.

Gay “marriage” doesn’t have to be right to win rhetorically. . . .

We ask gay bakers to make cakes for us that express our position, just as gays have asked some of us to [bake] cakes that express their position. Their request comes across as rhetorically natural, ours is clumsy and awkward.

You’re determined to miss the point. No, your request comes across not as awkward but as hateful because your game is not symmetric. This ridiculous demand to make a “Gay Marriage is Wrong” cake is as relevant to the issue as demanding a Ku Klux Klan cake. Neither is the symmetric version of a cake for a gay wedding.

Continue to part 2 for a critique of six steps the author recommends to help conservatives strengthen their rhetorical position.

Related post: 20 Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage, Rebutted

To call homosexuality [acceptable]
as long it doesn’t include sex
is like the sound of one hand clapping.
— commenter Y. A. Warren

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/26/15.)

Image credit: Arallyn!, flickr, CC

.

20 Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage, Rebutted (Part 6)

Posted on by

This is the concluding post looking at popular arguments against same-sex marriage. Conservative radio host Frank Turek provides most of them. (Part 1 here.)

17. Christians are obliged to reject same-sex marriage!

Frank gives society some tough love:

If we celebrate harmful behavior we are being unloving. Love requires we tell people the truth, even if it upsets them.

We’ve already established that homosexuality is no more inherently harmful than heterosexuality (see argument 15). Franks “harm” is simply a caution against unsafe sex.

You can imagine that God creates homosexuals and then somehow is disgusted by his own creation, but it’s curious how God’s views seem to line up so conveniently well with your own—so conveniently that I wonder if you’re playing “God” like a sock puppet.

First show that your severe god and his supernatural world exists. Only then will worrying about his desires make sense. Until then, I have no respect for your fantasy.

18. Society will collapse!

Frank considers same-sex marriage in society and doesn’t like the orgy that he expects it to cause within the straight community.

Legally equating [straight and same-sex] relationships breaks the link between marriage and childbearing which leads to higher illegitimacy and a chain of negative effects that fall like dominoes—illegitimacy leads to poverty, crime, and higher welfare costs which lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and a slower economy.

So same-sex marriage lets slip that it’s actually sex that produces babies, not marriage? That’s already obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention. Frank concludes that this insight will cause straight people to have more sex outside of marriage, and that will produce more illegitimate children, but how does that follow?

Ignoring the incoherence of the orgy argument, it sounds like he’s confusing illegitimate children with unwanted children. Illegitimacy can simply be redefined. If illegitimacy causes problems, encourage society to define the problem away. As for unwanted children, I get it—that is indeed a problem. For that, I urge Frank to stop making abortion more difficult (more here).

19. There is no genetic basis for homosexual desire!

Frank gives us the benefit of his years of research into the biology of homosexuality.

After many years of intense research, a genetic component to homosexual desires has not been discovered. Twin studies show that identical twins do not consistently have the same sexual orientation. In fact, genetics probably explains very little about homosexual desires.

That may be right, but so what? We could wrestle with why someone is homosexual (one source: “Scientists hypothesize that a combination of genetic, hormonal, and social factors determine sexual orientation”) but that’s off topic. Frank wrongly implies from this incompletely answered question that no one is homosexual. I wonder if he’ll next tell us that, since he isn’t left handed, left handedness doesn’t exist.

Though conversion therapy (the conversion of someone from a homosexual into a heterosexual) still exists, its reputation is poor today, and it is illegal in some states. If people call themselves ex-gay and are satisfied with that self-image, that’s fine. Sexual identity is a spectrum, and a bisexual person might see themselves as gay one year and ex-gay the next. Just don’t conclude that homosexuality is bad, that it should be suppressed, or that no one is homosexual.

Exodus International was a Christian ministry devoted to conversion therapy. It operated for almost 40 years before disbanding in 2013. Its president admitted that their work had changed almost no one.

20. But same-sex marriage is unnatural. Just think about it. . . yuck!

[Marriages of this type are] alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them.

Hold on. No, that’s my bad. This is actually from an 1878 Virginia Supreme Court decision, and the marriages that so bothered the judges in this case were mixed-race marriages.

But this is basically identical to what modern opponents to same-sex marriage say. Here is the 2003 view of Anglican archbishop of Nigeria Peter Akinola:

I cannot think of how a man in his right senses would be having sexual relations with another man. It is so unnatural, so unscriptural.

First off, homosexuality is natural. It has been documented in 1500 species of animals, including all great apes (of which humans are a part).

Second, if it freaks you out to think about two guys doing it, then don’t think about it. There are straight couples that do the same thing, and quite possibly in larger numbers—does that bother you?

You think gay sex is yucky? What’s yucky is the Christian as imaginary voyeur, peeking through the window into someone’s bedroom to criticize what they’re doing.

Third, let’s not put that much stock in whether something is supported by scripture or not. Slavery, polygamy, and genocide have clear support in scripture. Christians happily condemn those practices today, so the Bible obviously no longer binds us.

Fourth, the Bible says nothing about same-sex marriage. Even the widely cited verses arguing that homosexuality is wrong make a weak case.

Fifth, marriage was invented by humans. It’s changed in important ways in my own lifetime (see argument #3), and the legality of same-sex marriage is just one more change.

Finally, consider IVF, abortions, surrogate mothers, and modern technology that saves the lives of premature infants. Add to that erectile dysfunction pills, birth control pills, morning-after pills, and testosterone pills and tell me that there aren’t plenty of unnatural elements of sex within marriage already. And the focus of marriage laws is to a large extent on unnatural things like property rights.

Final thoughts

In the 1996 Romer v. Evans case, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prevented any local government from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class. It stated, “If the constitutional conception of ‘equal protection of the laws’ [from the Fourteenth Amendment] means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest.” When we consider them, we find that the arguments raised by the anti-same-sex marriage crowd either have no legitimate governmental interest or are simply factually wrong.

To any Christians who may be having second thoughts on their opposition to same-sex marriage, let me suggest a graceful exit. Stop parroting conservative politicians and instead follow the lead of Jesus. We have no record of Jesus scolding homosexuals for what they did between the sheets, but we read much about his concern for the poor and sick. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Homosexuality isn’t a lifestyle choice, but hateful Christianity is.

Despite Obergefell, the June, 2015 Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, Frank Turek is still flogging this dead horse because it benefits him. He has an audience who will pay him to pat them on the head and assure them that their prejudice is not only reasonable but God given.

We can find a parallel in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In the lead-up to the games, Russian president Vladimir Putin caused waves with his anti-gay pronouncements. With Russia in the spotlight, why would he make his country look bad within the international community? But Putin’s intended audience wasn’t the international community; he was grandstanding to the folks back home who rewarded a tough-on-gays attitude.

In a similar way, I doubt Frank cares much what outsiders think. I doubt he expects to convert many liberal Christians to his way of thinking. He just wants to please his conservative Christian constituents. Frank is the anti-gay Pied Piper, leading nervous Christians who are delighted to follow someone who will assure them that the sky is indeed falling and eager to pay for the privilege of being in his club.

If Jesus wants to perform an impressive miracle, he could get these Christians to focus on the actual problems in the world. God knows there are hundreds more important than this one.

“Every human being [already] has the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex”? That’s seriously the empty and heartless sentiment you want to be remembered for, Frank?

History is listening.

How ironic that most of the same people squawking,
“You can’t redefine marriage”
have been trying to redefine “murder” since 1973.
— commenter Sven2547,
referring to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision

.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/21/15.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia
.

Why Not Call What God Does “Magic”? (2 of 2)

Posted on by

What do you call the magic words and curses, relics and charms, prophecies, potions, divination, numerology, and more that godly people have (and still do) use? How about “magic”?

In this conclusion, we’ll look at curses, magic words, divination, and numerology used by the players in the Christian story. (Part 1 here).

Curses

God cursed Cain (Genesis 4:11). Noah cursed the descendants of Ham (Gen. 9:25). Elisha cursed the boys who insulted his bald head (2 Kings 2:23–4). Jesus cursed a fig tree (Mark 11:14).

The Psalms are full of curses on enemies. Here’s a fragment from Psalm 109.

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.

May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.

May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

And on and on it goes. Fun fact: these old curses can be dusted off and used today. (In polite company, these are called “imprecatory prayers”—so much nicer than “curses.”) For example, pastor Wiley Drake in 2009 publicly declared that he called down a curse on President Obama. That’s right—he asked God to kill President Obama. The assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller weeks earlier had been, in his mind, an answer to his prayers. Jesus does talk about turning the other cheek, but who has time for that when there’s righteous smiting to be done?

I suppose the logic is, if you can pray for good things for people, why not bad things? And if you can imagine that prayers for good might nudge the Almighty to grant your wish, you can imagine the same for the prayers for bad. There’s no need to feel bound by the ordinary laws of nature when Jesus promised, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these” (John 14:12).

More on prayer here.

Magic words

Then there are words of the “abracadabra” variety. For example, God spoke the universe into existence (“Let there be light,” etc.). Jesus healed Lazarus with words. The gospel of Mark, written in Greek, carefully noted the Aramaic words Jesus used to heal a mute man (7:33–5) and raise a dead girl (5:35–42).

Missionary John Chau’s personal introduction to the Sentinelese people, “My name is John, I love you, and Jesus loves you,” was in English, which suggests that he was hoping for divine assistance. Perhaps he wanted the magical eloquence that God promised Moses when Moses protested against public speaking (Exodus 4:12).

We find the idea of magic words in English when we say “God bless you” after a sneeze (originally, a shield against evil). “Goodbye” originally meant “God be with ye,” expressing the wish that God keep you safe on your journey.

Divination

This is the “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” category. Several Bible passages tell us that sorcery and related arts are forbidden:

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. (Deuteronomy 18:10–11)

The story of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28) also paints witches in a bad light.

And yet the Bible also speaks favorably about divination. Joseph foretold the future by interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams (Genesis 41), and we learn that he could read the future by scrying with a silver cup (Gen. 44:5). The high priest used the Urim and Thummim, magic stones that divined God’s will (Exodus 28:30, Numbers 27:21, 1 Samuel 14:41–2). The disciples of Jesus cast lots (cleromancy) to determine the successor to Judas (Acts 1:26).

Numerology

Nutty Harold Camping believed in numerology, the idea that numbers have magical meaning. He predicted that the end of the world would happen on May 21, 2011, which was, by his reckoning, (5 × 10 × 17)² days after the crucifixion. That number may seem like an odd bit of trivia, but Brother Camping used the biblical pairing of numbers with meaning.

Do you remember on what day God rested after creating the world? It was the seventh day, and 7 is the number of completion. Noah’s 40 days and 40 nights of rain? The number for a long period of time is 40, and we see it in Jesus’s temptation in the desert (40 days) and the Israelites’ wandering in the Sinai (40 years).

Back to Harold Camping: biblical numerologists say that 5 = atonement, 10 = completion, and 17 = heaven, so the number of days from crucifixion to May 21, 2011 was (atonement × completion × heaven) squared. (Events didn’t work out as Camping planned.)

A few years ago, Paula White decided that the verse du jour was 1 Chronicles 22:9. This verse was particularly important because 229 would (in dollars) make a nice stretch goal for her followers. So she spun that verse into an appeal for $229, ignoring that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses wasn’t done by the original authors and is in fact a fairly recent addition (verses were first labeled in the mid-1500s and chapters a few centuries before that).

Conclusion

And there’s more.

  • Jesus commanded demons, and some denominations do exorcisms today.
  • Holy water acts like a potion.
  • The laying of hands onto a sick or possessed person is thought to have magical power in some denominations.
  • Moses and Aaron got into a magic contest with Pharaoh’s magicians, and once the ten plagues started, the magicians even tried to duplicate them (Exodus 7:22).

And so on.

How is an imprecatory prayer different from an incantation? How is a miracle different from magic? Calling supernatural results “miracles” for God and Friends and “magic” for everyone else is just a groundless Christian conceit. You can define the words that way, but know that that’s an expression of your agenda and not how Merriam-Webster defines them.

This is another instance of Judaism and Christianity looking pretty much the same as all the other religions. Yes, the Bible has its own unique take on magic, but none of this is fundamentally new. The Bible borrows the magical ideas from related religions. If all religions were manmade except for Christianity, Bible magic wouldn’t look like that of neighboring religions.

If Christians really have the 100% direct poop
on what’s moral and what isn’t,
directly from God’s lips to their ears,
how come they can’t agree on what it is?
— commenter RichardSRussell

.

Image from Leonardo Yip, CC license
.