Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Leaky Noah’s Ark Tale

Posted on by

I discussed the logic (or lack of logic) in the Garden of Eden story in recent post. The story of Noah and the flood is another fascinating tale from this period and from the same sources.
Let me again address the question many are probably asking: given that this is just an ancient myth, why evaluate it as if it’s history (which I will be doing)? Because for 60 percent of Americans it is literally, word-for-word true. For Protestants, that figure is 73 percent. For Evangelicals, it’s 87 percent.
Prior flood stories
Robert Price in The Reason-Driven Life (pages 102–106) gives a summary of what came before.

[The Noah flood story] is a derivative version of demonstrably much older flood epics from the same area, including the Gilgamesh epic [Sumerian], the Atrahasis epic [Akkadian], the story of Xisuthros [Sumerian], and that of Deucalion and Pyrrha [Greek], all of whom survived the world-devastating flood by setting sail in a protective ark, most of them bringing the animals along for the ride. We find all the familiar details: The decision of the gods to flood the world for some offense committed by the human race, the stipulated dimensions of the ark, the provision for the animals, the onset of the rains, the number of days the flood lasted, the naming of the spot the ark came to rest, the sending forth of birds to find dry ground, the emergence of the refugees, their sacrifice, and the promise of the gods never to doom the world thusly ever again. It’s all there, at least most of it in most versions.

Yes, just because there were prior flood stories from that region doesn’t mean that the Noah story didn’t actually happen. And yes, just because the Sumerian cosmology both preceded Genesis and is the same as that described in Genesis—it water pours in from below and above (see Gen. 7:11)—doesn’t mean that the Genesis account was copied.
But in both cases, that’s certainly an enormous clue pointing to myth.
Contradictions
As with the two Genesis creation stories—six days vs. Garden of Eden—a flood story from the older J source (about 950 BCE) is combined with one from the P source (500 BCE) to make an unhappy compromise. (I discuss this Documentary Hypothesis and the Old Testament’s different sources here.)
The clumsy intermingling of the two stories can be seen, for example, in Genesis 8. The first five verses (the P account) tell about the water receding, the ark coming to rest on Ararat, and land becoming visible. The next seven verses (from J) make clear that land is not yet visible when Noah sent out birds to check for land, but “there was water over all the surface of the earth.”
The P source says that Noah brought just one pair of all animals (Gen. 6:19–20), while the J source says that he also brought seven pairs of all birds and kosher (“clean”) animals (7:2–3).
Why not keep pick one story to keep? According to Price, these two sources each had their partisans, so each had to be preserved. Better to merge them, however imprecisely, than to drop a beloved story element.
Story problems
It’s fun to compare the Noah story with science and history as we know it. Here are some of the problems that I’ve come across..

  • The ark was 137 meters long, making it the largest wooden ship ever built. It would’ve required tens of thousands of big trees. Where did the wood come from? Could four men (Noah and his sons) have built such a craft by hand in less than 100 years?
  • Consider how the square-cube law applies to the ark (discussed more thoroughly at Skeptoid). When you double the size of a ship, you double it in three dimensions. That’s also true for every piece of timber. Take a beam, 6 feet long, with a 4-inch-by-4-inch cross section. Now double it to 12’×8″×8″. The volume has gone up 8-fold, but the cross section has only increased by a factor of 4. It’s 8 times heavier but only 4 times stronger. This means that if you take a small boat and double every dimension, you have a much more fragile boat. To make it seaworthy, you’d have to use much thicker timber. How much cargo space would’ve been available given the massive beams the ark would’ve needed?
  • What did the carnivores eat? There were a few extra kosher animals and birds for sacrificing, but what’s left for the lions and tigers and bears? What’s left for Noah and his family?
  • What did the herbivores eat? Hay could store well, but what about the hummingbirds that drink nectar and bats that eat fruit? Flowers and fruit probably wouldn’t last for the many months of the journey. Did Noah’s sons collect fresh Chinese bamboo for the pandas?
  • What did the insects eat? Biologists today would probably be unable to provide the right kind of food and living environments to ensure 100% survival for all known insects, but we’re to imagine that Noah and his sons had no problem?
  • How did the fish survive? With the earth covered by a single body of water, which was likely turbulent and muddy in parts from the violent flow of water, the freshwater and the saltwater fish couldn’t have both been happy.
  • How did animals travel from far-away places and then get back home afterwards? How did the penguins and polar bears get to Mesopotamia and stay comfortably cool during the trip? How did the kangaroos and koalas get to Australia?
  • What did the carnivores eat after they were released from the Ark? Remember that eating even a single rabbit or zebra would’ve made that species extinct.
  • Could all of today’s plants have survived months of immersion in salt water to recolonize the land?
  • Some Bible literalists try to bypass the problem of finding space on the ark for millions of species by arguing that by “kinds,” the Bible isn’t referring to species but genera (the next-higher taxonomic level). Creationist Ken Ham seems to think that “kinds” were more like biological orders. But this forces them to imagine rapid speciation in the 6000 years after the flood, which is hard for the evolution deniers among them to do.

And let’s simply bypass the problem that geology tells us that there was no global flood.
Of course, God could’ve solved any of these problems with a miracle, but then why tell the story as if Noah and his family did everything? Why not just have God poof into existence a new world with everyone painlessly dead except Noah and his family? Because it’s just a story written with no concern about modern science.
Concluded in part 2.

If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. 
If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. 
The same happens in the absence of prayers. 
— Steve Allen

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/2/13.)
Photo credit: Amazon
 

Illogic of the Garden of Eden Story (2 of 2)

Posted on by

Garden of Eden Genesis BibleLet’s look closer at the details of the Garden of Eden story (part 1 here). As history—or even a coherent story—it doesn’t stand up.

  • Omniscient God isn’t very knowledgeable when he goes into the Garden and doesn’t know where Adam and Eve are (Gen. 3:9). Omnibenevolent God isn’t very benevolent when it comes to delivering their punishment. This is another parallel with the Akkadian Atra-Hasis epic—those gods didn’t know everything and weren’t always benevolent either. As one commenter noted, “God’s powers can’t be that amazing if you can get them from a fruit tree.”
  • As crimes go, this one was a misdemeanor. Admittedly, Adam and Eve did disobey God, but how about just a scolding? This was the first bad act in their lives. Isn’t the trans-generational punishment out of proportion to the crime?
  • Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they didn’t know good and evil. Why blame them for doing something wrong when they couldn’t know it was wrong? It’s like punishing a two-year old for a moral infraction. In fact, Adam and Eve were likely not two years old themselves.
  • If Man understands good and evil today (we possess the knowledge of the Tree), why are we so bad at figuring out good and evil? Okay, let’s assume that selfishness and other base desires muddy the waters. Let’s assume that someone could know the right course of action but choose the easy or pleasurable over the right. Shouldn’t we all at least agree on what’s good? How could post-apple humans be divided on abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, and capital punishment?
  • How can getting wisdom be a bad thing? Solomon was celebrated for being the wisest man on earth (1 Kings 4:30). The Bible makes clear that wisdom is good: “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!” (Prov. 16:16).
  • Could an omniscient God have been surprised at the result of the Garden of Eden experiment? And if he knew the outcome, why go through the charade? (It’s almost like this is all just mythology … ?)
  • Tertullian said of women, “You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.” But read the story—Adam was with her the whole time. Why give Eve extra blame?
  • Why are their descendants cursed for all time—women with labor pain and men with difficult toil—when the descendants didn’t do anything? We see the same thinking in the second commandment (“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”), which probably also came from the J source. It’s nice that God lightens up in later centuries (see Deuteronomy 24:16 or Jeremiah 31:30), though this doesn’t put God’s unchanging moral law in a good light.

At this point in the Bible, Jesus wasn’t even a twinkle in God’s eye, but it is worth noting that while Jesus provides forgiveness of one’s sins, Christians are still punished for Eve’s sin.
This is an aside, but it is curious that Christian Creationists who object to humans evolving from bacteria have no problem with God making Adam from dust (Gen. 2:7). Indeed, the word Adam comes from the Hebrew adamah (dust).
The NET Bible comment on Gen. 2:17 (“for when you eat from [the Tree,] you will surely die”) makes clear that this phrase means that death will happen almost immediately, as if the fruit were coated with poison. But, of course, the serpent was right, and they don’t die. Indeed, Adam lives to be 930 years old.
Apologists respond that this instead means that they will die eventually, that this introduced physical death and they would no longer be immortal. But the text makes clear that they never were immortal. They were driven from the Garden so they wouldn’t eat from the Tree of Life. That’s what makes you immortal.
Apologists try again: they say that “die” meant spiritual death. First off, that’s not what the text says. Second, the animals were driven from the Garden as well, so there’s no reason to imagine that their death was any different than Man’s. If the animals’ death was physical and not spiritual, what’s to argue that Man’s is any different?
Christian theologians tell us that the serpent was Satan in disguise, but (yet again) that’s not what the text tells us. It was a serpent, not Satan, and that’s what Jews today will tell you. And why is the serpent the bad guy? He told the truth! He was the Old Testament’s Prometheus.
I’ll close with comments from Ricky Gervais, who imagined the snake having this to say in response to God’s punishment that he crawl on his belly for the rest of his life.

“But I already.… Oh no! Oh yeah, you’ve done me, yeah. No, we’re even now. I asked for that. Okay, cheers. Oh—how does this work again? Owww—I’m being punished. This is rubbish—I wish I could fly, like normal.”

And the Son of God died; 
it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. 
And He was buried, and rose again; 
the fact is certain, because it is impossible.
— Tertullian

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/26/13.)
Image credit: Wikimedia
 

“A Universe That’s Understandable Points to God,” but How Understandable Is the Universe?

Posted on by

Christian apologeticsWe can understand the universe, but why? Nobel Prize-winning physicist and mathematician Eugene Wigner said in 1960, “The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural science is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.” Albert Einstein expressed a similar thought: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
What some Christian apologists claim
Many Christians have seized on this, claiming that an understandable universe points to God, both because God would want us to understand it and because only a theistic approach can explain such a universe. World-famous apologist William Lane Craig gave this religious interpretation:

It was very evident to me that [naturalists are not] able to provide any sort of an explanation of mathematics’ applicability to the physical world, and this was self-confessed…. Theism [enjoys] a considerable advantage in [being able to answer this question].

Philosopher Nicholas Maxwell added:

Why should the physical universe, utterly foreign to the human mind, nevertheless be comprehensible to the human mind? We have here, it seems, an utterly inexplicable link between the physical universe and the human world…. Of course if God exists, the comprehensibility of the universe is entirely understandable.

Let me push back a little. These interpretations make a huge, unstated assumption that a godless universe could not look like our universe, but what supports this? Do they think that the dependability of physics is only due to God? Do they think that a godless universe would it be unstable, with constants, exponents, and relationships continuously changing? Perhaps in this universe, e = mc2 would be valid one moment but then e = mc2.1 the next and e = 17mc3.5 the next?
That our physics wouldn’t look like it does without God is a very bold claim, for which I see no evidence. Furthermore, “God did it” is unfalsifiable, which is a fatal trait for any theory, let alone one that claims to explain all of science’s most perplexing problems.  (I give a more thorough analysis here.)
Hold on—is the universe understandable?
Let’s reconsider the initial claim, that the universe is understandable. Sure, we can find simple relationships between aspects of reality with scientific laws such as PV = nRT, V = IR, F = Gm1m2/r2, and so on, but things become more complicated. Corrections for relativity must be added to Newton’s Law of Gravity (F = Gm1m2/r2). Ohm’s Law (V = IR) ignores capacitance and inductance, which makes calculations of time-varying voltage or current much more complicated. And the Ideal Gas Law (PV = nRT) makes assumptions about gases that limit its applicability.
The universe is understandable? More precisely, what we understand about the universe is understandable, which isn’t much help in anticipating how science will continue to progress as we push the frontiers. How much about the universe will we eventually understand?

Knowledge about the universe can be divided into four categories, as illustrated by the Venn diagram above.

  1. What we know. This has expanded dramatically since the modern period of scientific discovery beginning around 1800, which includes scientists such as Maxwell, Mendeleev, and Tesla, and even more so since the Enlightenment period, which might include Galileo, Newton, and Pascal. Imagine how small the “What we know” ellipse was 500 years ago.
  2. What we will know. No one knows if we’ll continue learning about the universe at the current rate, but it seems a safe bet that we’ll know much more a thousand years in the future (assuming human society stays safe).
  3. What we’re capable of knowing. What more could we understand if we only asked the right questions or if super-smart aliens taught it to us? Theoretical physics, like science fiction, can only take us to places that its practitioners can dream up.
    Another limit is our finite ability to create technology. To satisfy Big Physics, engineers have built the Large Hadron Collider, the Laser Interferometry Gravity Observatory, and the Hubble Space Telescope, and they’re planning next generation versions. But what if we eventually needed versions that were a thousand times bigger or more expensive? Or a billion times? Human society, even far into the future, might have limits. Without these monster machines, doors to unimaginable truths might remain closed.
  4. All foundational knowledge of reality. The final ellipse is everything—not trivial specifics like the atmospheric composition of Alpha Centauri’s fourth planet but every concept, law, and theory needed to describe life, the universe, and everything.
    Our imperfect brains have limits. Imagine an alien species that is smarter than we are to the same extent that we are smarter than chimpanzees. While we share a common ancestor with chimps from just six million years ago, we can find in chimps only the rudiments of higher-order intelligence such as humor, problem solving, and morality. Chimpanzees are our closest living animal relative, but human children surpass their intelligence at perhaps three years of age. These aliens would intellectually be to us what we are to chimps. If chimps can never understand algebra or geometry, let alone calculus or quantum physics, what would these aliens be able to understand that we could never hope to learn? And if chimps will never understand all the science behind reality, why do we think we will?
    Now take it a step further and make the aliens’ cognitive gap the same as between us and lizards. Our understanding the new science these aliens could teach us might be as unlikely as a lizard understanding a joke.

A pessimistic look at our understanding of reality
The figure above gives one version of what we know (and will know) compared to what we won’t, but that’s just an optimistic guess. Imagine if the four ellipses actually look like this:

With this interpretation, we will still make a lot of progress from what we now know to what we will eventually know, but this more pessimistic version imagines the overwhelming majority of science out of our reach, either because imagination or lack of data let us down (third ellipse) or because it is beyond our cognitive reach (fourth ellipse). Will humans eventually understand 99 percent of the science behind reality? Or 0.1 percent?
Most frustrating, we can never know how big the third and fourth ellipses are! We can never understand the size of our ignorance. We will always perceive only ellipse #1, never sure if we’ve learned most of the science or a tiny fraction, never sure if we will learn much more or if we’re near our inherent limit.


See also: The Argument from Mathematics Doesn’t Add Up to God

Let’s return to our marvelously understandable universe. The universe is indeed understandable … but only to the extent that we can understand it. And how far is that? No one will ever know. “The universe is understandable” is an empty statement.
If Christians want to find proof of God in there somewhere, they must imagine a God who tantalizes us with some bits that are understandable, makes us work very hard to understand more, and refuses to tell us just how much of this mess we will ever understand. Doesn’t sound like a proof of anything to me.

The classic theist dodge
is to declare that God answers all prayers,
but the answer can be “Yes,” “No,” or “Wait.”
This means God has fewer options available to him
than my Magic 8 Ball.
— commenter Kevin K

Image credit: Olga Reznik, flickr, CC

Religion in Public Schools: What Does the First Amendment Allow?

Posted on by

separation of church and stateAs a follow-up to my recent post about prayer in public schools, let’s look at what of religion is allowed in U.S. public schools and what isn’t. As an authority, I’ve used chapter 4 of Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schools from the First Amendment Center.
For brevity, this summary must avoid the nuance and make some gray areas appear black and white, and it only focuses on religious freedom in schools. Remember also that this topic is in flux. It was only in 1940 that the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that religious free exercise should be included in the liberties granted to all citizens by the 14th Amendment (1868).
The First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty in the U.S. Constitution has two clauses.
First Amendment Establishment Clause

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

The Lemon test, from a 1971 Supreme Court case, tests this clause. A negative answer to any of the three questions below means that the law is unconstitutional.

  1. Does the law have a bona fide secular or civic purpose? The purpose of schools is education, so if the only purpose for a school activity is to celebrate a religious holiday (for example), it’s unconstitutional. On the other hand, allowing students religious exemptions from attending sex-education classes is constitutional. Accommodating a student’s religion is valid, but promoting it is not. Permitting a student essay with a religious theme is valid, but requiring it is not.
  2. Is the law neutral? That is, does the primary effect neither advance nor inhibit religion? Allowing students to be released from school to attend religious instruction elsewhere is valid, but promoting such classes is not. Religious groups must be allowed to use school facilities like any other group. Allowing a church to use a school building does advance religion, but an equal-access policy wouldn’t have advancing religion as itsprimary effect.
  3. Does the law avoid excessive government entanglement with religion? The Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman, from which this test comes, found that a state law reimbursing nonpublic schools (mostly Catholic) for secular classes was an excessive government entanglement with religion.

First Amendment Free Exercise Clause

Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]

For this clause, the Sherbert test is applied. First, the student who claims that their Free Exercise rights were violated must meet both tests below.

  1. The student’s actions must have been motivated by sincere religious belief. Religious beliefs are judged only by the student. From the standpoint of a teacher or any other observer, they don’t have to be popular, rational, or sensible; they only have to be sincere. For the purposes of this test, the belief system must “[function] like a religion in the life of the individual,” which would include secular humanism.
  2. The student’s actions have been substantially burdened by the government. The focus is on substantial. Coercion would be substantial; incidental burdens would not be. Forbidding students from handing out religious tracts to classmates might be a substantial burden, but requiring that they do it at a reasonable time and place would not be.

If the student has a valid claim (both 1 and 2 are met), we move to on to see if the government has a compelling reason to impose that burden. The government will win its case if it meets both tests below.

  1. The government must be acting to further a compelling state interest. A compelling state interest might be public health and safety, but “compelling” has limits. Compulsory-attendance laws are a compelling interest, but Amish families successfully argued that it wasn’t compelling enough after eighth grade. Teaching children how to prevent the spread of HIV through sex-education classes is a compelling interest, but this may not be compelling enough if parents object on religious grounds.
  2. The government must have pursued that interest in a manner least burdensome to religion. The school should burden a student’s religious beliefs as little as necessary. If a student objects to an assignment on religious grounds, the school might be required to find an alternative, though one student’s religion can’t determine the curriculum for the rest of the class.

These First Amendment clauses are not in tension
It’s wrong to see one clause favoring religion and the other opposed to it. According to Finding Common Ground, “Both clauses secure the rights of believers and nonbelievers alike to be free from government involvement in matters of conscience.”


See also: Movie Review: “God’s Still Not Dead: You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down”

The bottom line
Let’s consider the court’s stand on typical questions.

  • Prayer, Bible reading, and expressing religious viewpoints are allowed if they’re done by the student. School-sponsored versions are not.
  • Teachers and outside adults do not have the right to pray with students. Students are the ones obliged to be there, and it’s their rights that are protected.
  • Moments of silence are okay, but not if they are used to promote prayer.
  • Religious clubs should be treated like other clubs, though religious groups are prohibited in primary schools because of the risk of younger students being unable to distinguish student speech from government speech.
  • Religious community groups that want to use school facilities after hours should be treated like other groups.
  • Outside adults may not pray at graduation or other school events, though the law is less clear about student-led prayer. The better approach is a privately sponsored voluntary baccalaureate event, separate from graduation.
  • Rules for students handing out literature must be even handed and not favor or discriminate against religious literature. Restrictions are allowed, but schools probably can’t ban all such distribution. Teachers and outside adults, on the other hand, have no right to distribute literature of any kind in schools.

If we are just a bunch of bitter old church people, grumpy at the world, 
yelling at non-believers to get off our proverbial moral lawn, 
that does not show forth light and preserve as salt.
— Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research at 2013 SBC

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/19/13.)
Photo credit: Kim Sacha, flickr, CC
 

Bible Reading in Schools: Still Illegal After Half a Century

Posted on by

Over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Abington v. Schempp (1963) decided eight to one that school-sponsored Bible reading was unconstitutional. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the mother of a plaintiff in a similar case that was consolidated with Schempp. (O’Hair founded American Atheists, also in 1963. Above, see a photo of O’Hair, who Life magazine called “the most hated woman in America” a year later.)
But the battle continues
While it may be a day to celebrate a long-standing legal precedent, we can’t rest on our laurels. Consider the “Mississippi Student Religious Liberties Act of 2013” (SB 2633), also focused on religion in public schools. The title alone sounds pretty good—who would stand in the way of religious liberty?
The bill is full of equality language. Religious and secular viewpoints must be treated “in the same manner,” religious groups must be “given the same access,” a school district policy should be such that it “neither favors nor disfavors” religious groups, and so on. The governor’s press release said that the law “protects students from being discriminated against in a public school.” If you hate discrimination and you’re a fan of the First Amendment, what’s not to like?
Pandora’s box
But who decides what is religious? The law gives no test, so apparently the student decides. Religion in this domain is what each student tells you it is.
This puts a lot of power into questionable hands. Consider the 2011 case from Austria in which a self-described Pastafarian (member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) won the right to wear his spaghetti strainer—religious headgear, he claimed—for his driver’s license photo. Most of us can remember classmates who would delight in seeing how far they could push a rule like this. Remember that this law would apply to high school students. Might they wear a colander or a swastika (which actually is a religious symbol) or a necklace of an extended middle finger, justifying any of these as religious expression?
The law also permits religious speech from students at athletic events and in announcements made at the beginning of the school day. This is not allowed for school staff because, as government employees, their speech would be sanctioned by the government. But why imagine that putting it in the mouth of a student avoids this problem? Every student listening is obliged by law to be at school. They’re captive to all religious messages in the morning announcements.
And remember the Colander Problem: “religion” is in the eyes of student. Aside from vulgar language and time limits, the student has the talking stick. The same public forum that allows a Christian to talk about why Jesus is his savior allows the class jester to explain how Druidism or Satanism or polyamory turned his life around. Students can talk to their captive audience about the worldview of Mormonism or Wicca or Islam or (gasp!) atheism. Can the Christian parent want their child to be forced to sit through these daily messages?
The place for “Mormons and Catholics and atheists will broil in hell at 425° Fahrenheit” is in church, not the public school.
Perhaps the biggest failing in this kind of “religious liberty” is the bad light it shines on Christianity. Christian churches are already permitted, and they’re subsidized by tax-free status. Christians can already preach in the public square and hand out leaflets on street corners. But apparently that’s not enough. According to the government of Mississippi, Christianity is too weak to compete in the marketplace of ideas and needs a little boost. Home and church aren’t sufficient, and public schools need to be enlisted to fight the good fight. Is it just me who sees this as a pathetic admission of the weakness of the Christian message?
How this could play out
Consider other examples of Christian excesses from recent years. In 2007, Seattle-Tacoma airport was decorated for Christmas in a religion-free way after fights the previous year over what religious worldviews would be on display.
Don’t forget the city of Santa Monica, which used a lottery to apportion permission to set up religious displays on public property. When 18 of 21 spots went to atheist and freethought groups for Christmas 2011, Christians belatedly realized that a “let a thousand flowers bloom” policy doesn’t always work out well. (I explored the “War on Christmas” more here.)
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re seeing the pendulum in Mississippi pushed to such an extreme that this law will swing back to smack the legislature—yet. In fact, the Christian extremists in that state have been emboldened so that this year they passed the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” (HB 1523), which provides protection for the Kim Davises and anti-gay bakers in that state to discriminate based on their “religious belief[s] or moral conviction[s].”
I wonder if a Jewish grocery cashier could put up a “Kosher food only at this register” sign or if a Muslim shopkeeper could refuse to serve infidels.
The trend (at least in Mississippi) is in the wrong direction, but I still anticipate that the same kind of reversal we’ve seen with religious displays at Christmas will happen here.
Bottom line
You might object that we still have the First Amendment, so we already have a backstop for any excess that gets past this law. But then why have it? Where this law duplicates the First Amendment, it’s redundant, and where it expands religious freedom, it’s illegal. It’s a solution trying to invent a problem.
But many of you will have already seen the actual purpose of this law. In these days where Christianity is hijacked for the benefit of politicians, the value of the Student Religious Liberties Act is simple posturing. Mississippi politicians, who passed the bill almost unanimously, have thumbed their noses at the Supreme Court and can now brag to voters about their brave support for Jesus.

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should “make no law
respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to Danbury Baptist Assoc., 1802)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/17/13.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia

Criticizing the Logic of the Atonement (2 of 2)

Posted on by

The Christian atonement is the reconciliation of humans to God through the death of Jesus. Let’s conclude our analysis of a discussion between Christian apologist Greg Koukl and skeptic Frances (part 1 here).
Some get heaven … and some don’t
Frances gave as an example twin children who each did the same bad thing. It would be unfair to punish one but not the other. Even if the punishment were appropriate, that doesn’t excuse the dissimilar treatment.
Koukl responded that grace is offered to everyone, “and some turn it down.”
Nope—it’s not an option for me. God’s “grace” has a belief component, and one can’t just believe in something. Belief happens when one has sufficient evidence. I don’t have sufficient evidence of the Christian god, so I can’t believe. (Try believing in leprechauns or fairies if you think that determination will compensate for a lack of evidence.)
Do we all start the race from the same starting line?
Frances asked about people who have never heard the Christian message. Is it fair to send them to hell?
Koukl said that if they haven’t heard the gospel message, they are still guilty before God, and God is justified in punishing them. Paul says that evidence for God is obvious: “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Koukl concludes, “If they reject the Father, how is the Father any further obligated to tell them more about himself—for example, the Son—when they’ve already rejected the most general of revelations?”
The Bible can be a dangerous book, and he who lives by Bible quotes sometimes dies by Bible quotes. Just four chapters later in the same book, Paul also says, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). That is, there is symmetry between Adam getting all of us into our fallen state and Jesus getting us out (again, all of us). In neither situation do we opt in; we’re included whether we like it or not. That means no faith requirement for getting the saving grace of Jesus, which defeats Koukl’s statement that grace is offered to everyone, but “some turn it down.” Nope, we’re saved whether we like it or not.
But back to this point: Koukl takes one verse from Romans and concludes that no one has an excuse, and God’s demands are therefore correct. As he made clear in part 1, Koukl wants to evaluate Christian claims from a Christian worldview—and, unsurprisingly, things make some sense given that viewpoint. But without the unearned presupposition that the Bible is correct, the Christian claim that non-Christians have plenty of evidence for God doesn’t work.
Attack on the atheist position on justice
Koukl got the last word, and with it he waxed unlearnèd. For good measure, he attacked the atheist position on justice and morality: “I don’t see outside of God how there can be any sense of justice at all.”
Then you’ve omitted your most powerful argument, Greg. Show us how the existence of justice here on earth demands God. I see just the opposite. Justice here—at least our imperfect attempt at it—shows that God isn’t necessary at all. The dictionary says nothing about a need for God in its definition of “justice.”
Next, Koukl wonders how atheism can ground the idea of objective morality, which is the only kind of morality we’ve been talking about.
Nope. If Koukl wants objective morality (“moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not,” according to William Lane Craig), he’ll have to show that it exists and that it’s reliably accessible by humans. I’ve seen this tired trick a dozen times—referring to objective morality with appeals to common sense (or nothing, in this case) without doing the hard work of showing that it actually exists. Try again.
And finally, Koukl pontificates that you don’t get morality from mere molecules in motion.
Look up “emergent properties,” Greg. A single molecule of water doesn’t have the properties of fluidity or wetness or pH. Those properties emerge once you have trillions of molecules. Similarly, a single brain cell doesn’t think 10–11 times as fast as a whole human brain with 1011 cells; it doesn’t think at all! Only when you have a critical mass of these things do the emergent properties emerge.
Am I just missing Koukl’s deeper analysis of these topics? Or is he so insulated from or unconcerned about the wider discussion that he has no interest in responding to outside critiques?
Final thoughts
Koukl is like a visitor from Planet Christianity who is telling us how things work there. That’s nice, but we’re here. There is a default idea of justice, and it’s embodied in our justice system. It doesn’t much matter how things work on Greg’s planet, but here, penalties must be fair and you must serve your own punishment. Incredibly, Koukl surely knows and supports this idea of justice. In his own mind, he must know that the Christian claims of substitutionary atonement contradict Western justice. The word “justice” by itself means the Western kind, not the Christian kind.
It’s hard to imagine how Koukl thinks that the outline of his worldview does anything to justify his incompatible version of justice, and I wonder why he even bothers with the justification. It would be simpler to say, “The Christian worldview is correct” and leave it there. That argument would stand on no poorer a foundation.
More on Greg Koukl’s answers to skeptics’ questions:

See also:

Some say that ignorance is bliss,
but it’s only bliss for the ignorant.
— Ricky Gervais

Image credit: U.S. Army, flickr, CC