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Does the Old Testament Condemn Homosexuality?

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Bible homosexualityThe Sodom and Gomorrah story is where many Christians point when arguing that God rejects homosexuality. That’s a lot to place on just six verses. Let’s look at them:

All the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them [literally: so that we can know them].”

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

“Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door. (Gen. 19:4–9, NET Bible)

There are a couple of interpretations of this story beyond the typical conclusion that homosexuality is so bad that it gets your town destroyed.

Did angels have secret knowledge?

We’re so familiar with to “know” in the Bible meaning “to have sex with” that we forget that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The Hebrew word in question is used 947 times in the King James Version, most of which have nothing to do with sex. For example, “When you eat from [the fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5), “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:22), and so on.

If that’s the interpretation, what might the townspeople have wanted to know? Robert Price suggested that the idea of supernatural visitors wouldn’t have been too surprising within that culture. It was a violent time, and any military advantage for their town would have been helpful. Angels could have provided important information.

What to me undercuts this is Lot’s response, “Don’t do this wicked thing,” which isn’t in keeping with a request for knowledge, though it’s conceivable that this was added by later copyists. But if we conclude that gang rape is commonplace for this community, why is this godly man still living there? The story leaves this unclear.

Does the homosexual argument even make sense?

Let’s consider a second interpretation: if the townsmen were homosexual, why would Lot have offered them his daughters? Perhaps instead they were simply violent bullies who wanted to use rape for domination or humiliation. Isn’t this how rape is sometimes used in prison?

(That Lot volunteered his virgin daughters as if they were merely expensive possessions raises other issues, but let’s not go there.)

One unambiguous conclusion from the story is that gang rape is bad. Okay, no disagreement there. But what critique does this give of a loving homosexual relationship, which is the issue that society is addressing today?

Next time: we’ll conclude with Part 2.

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, 
rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. 
— Gary Zukav

Photo credit: Wikimedia

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/9/12.)

Christians: Why You Need an Atheist Speaker at Your Next Conference

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I read or listen to lots of Christian apologists. Frank Turek. Norm Geisler. Dinesh D’Souza. William Lane Craig. Gary Habermas. Mike Licona. Jim Wallace. Greg Koukl. Peter Kreeft.

I went to John Warrick Montgomery’s two-week Apologetics Academy in Strasbourg, France in 2011. I want to hear the best that Christian apologetics has to offer.

The reverse is rarely true.

Christian conferences

I see the ads for Christian apologetics conferences that promise to equip dedicated Christians to win souls for Christ. Sometimes they cover arguments for a historical Jesus. Or review scientific arguments that can be used to argue for a deity behind nature. Or even role play interaction with mock atheists.

It’s not enough. They need to hear from an actual atheist. A faux atheist is no foe.

To me, their refusal to invite one means that conference organizers don’t trust their material to carry the day. They’re afraid that they’ll get embarrassed or upstaged or that the attendees would get freaked out or overwhelmed with material that’s just too real.

But then how well do they prepare attendees? If the conference must tiptoe through the material to avoid the difficult topics, how will newly minted apologists do when they get out and talk to real, live atheists? If you hope that God will give you the right words as he did with Moses, you are setting yourself up for embarrassment.

If someone wants apologetics lite, they can read a book, but a conference should ramp it up. Attendees shouldn’t be spoon-fed straw man arguments but given the real thing.

In this blog, I’ve responded to many Christian arguments—from books, interviews, articles, blog posts, podcasts, lectures, and debates. It’s one of my favorite kinds of posts because they pretty much write themselves. Christians’ arguments are easy to refute. I’ve seen enough to know that the good stuff isn’t kept secret, like magic tricks, and whispered to worthy initiates. If you’re counting on an apologetics conference to show you the landscape, you will be disappointed. I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.

My proposal

The next time you see a notice for an apologetics conference, tell the organizing team to invite me to speak, either in a debate or with a lecture.

I can educate the audience about atheism. (Yes, atheists have purpose and morality. No, atheists don’t see their worldview as empty or hopeless.) I can argue for same-sex marriage and abortion rights. I can attack intellectual arguments for Christianity, and I can provide positive arguments for atheism. And then you get the last word.

The Christian arguments will be tested in the field. Shouldn’t they be tested in the conference?

My fee: $0

Give me an audience of 50 or more, and I’ll do it for free. Just cover my expenses. I’m meeting you more than halfway—you donate expenses, and I’ll donate a day or a weekend of my time plus preparation.

Read my books and blog to see how I think. I’ll even provide my books to attendees at cost. If you want someone with a higher profile, that’s great. I’ll be happy to make suggestions.

You think that after an atheist presents the best that that worldview has to offer, you can give your audience an adequate response? Great—then an atheist would be an asset to the conference.

You know how to reach me.

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the LORD
— Isaiah 1:18

Dismantling Irreducible Complexity

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Microbiologist Michael Behe coined the term “irreducible complexity” to describe a system in which every part is mandatory. Here is his definition:

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box [Touchstone, 1996], p. 39)

Let’s look at a popular example, the remarkable bacterial flagellum. Built of several dozen different protein types, this tiny motor with a whip-like appendage can propel a bacterium 60 cell lengths per second. Compare this to the cheetah, the fastest land animal, which sprints at 25 body lengths per second. (Here’s a video showing the structure of the flagellum.)

The irreducible complexity claim is this: imagine turning the clock of evolution back. Which protein was the last to be put in place? Pick any of them—the resulting one-protein-less motor wouldn’t work. So if one step back in time from a working flagellum is something useless, no matter which protein you remove, why would evolution have created this thing? Evolution doesn’t spend effort slowly building elaborate nonfunctioning appendages on the remote chance that with a few more mutations over 100,000 generations it might get lucky and create something useful. But Intelligent Design comes to the rescue by postulating a Designer that put everything together all at once.

A parallel example

We can topple this thinking by considering an arch. Which was the last stone to be put in place in an arch? If you try to turn the clock back by removing the central keystone, the arch falls. So that couldn’t have been last. But try removing any stone from the arch and the same thing happens. This makes the arch irreducibly complex, using this Intelligent Design thinking, with a Designer levitating the stones into place all at once as the only explanation.

But of course this is nonsense. If you imagine watching a movie of the building of an arch played backwards, the first change you’d see was not a stone removed but the last piece of scaffolding put into place. Then the remainder of the scaffolding to support the stones, then the stones removed one at a time, and then the scaffolding removed.

In the same way, the step that preceded the bacterial flagellum might have been the removal of an unnecessary piece of scaffolding.

What is “the” bacterial flagellum?

Another problem with the irreducible complexity idea is that it imagines a single, beautiful design. In fact, there are many varieties, just as you’d expect with a messy process like evolution. Look in the other domains of life (Archaea and our domain of Eukarya) and you find even more variety.

Predecessors

The bacterial flagellum might have evolved from the Type III secretory system, a needle-like structure used to detect and infect other cells. For example, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague uses this mechanism to inject toxins. Look to other domains, and other predecessors are possible. These plausible stepping stones show how the flagellum might have evolved.

For a layman like me, the bottom line is that this decades-old argument has had plenty of time to be evaluated, and it hasn’t convinced biologists. Evolution stands.

Science may well have unanswered questions regarding the origin of the flagellum, but “I don’t know” is no reason to invent a Designer. And you can be sure that once the origin of the bacterial flagellum is sufficiently well understood, this argument will be discarded like a used tissue and some other complex feature of biology (and there’s always something) will be seized upon by the Intelligent Design advocate as the wooden stake that will finally destroy the monster that is evolution.

If the past is any indication, our ID friend will have a very long wait.

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is,
without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want?
And my answer is: I do rape all I want.
And the amount I want is zero.
And I do murder all I want,
and the amount I want is zero.
The fact that these people think
that if they didn’t have this person watching over them
that they would go on killing, raping rampages
is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.
— Penn Jillette

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/28/12.)

Photo credit: adair broughton

Why is it Always Men Advancing the Pro-Life Position?

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Pro-life menLook at the pro-life lineup of speakers and authors, and you’ll see far more men than women. Doesn’t it seem unfair that the gender that isn’t personally inconvenienced by pregnancy is the one pushing the restrictions?

I’m not saying that men should be silent, but I would prefer to see participants in the conversation in proportion to how it impacts their lives directly. The woman who’s pregnant? Of course. The man who will help support and nurture the child? Yep. Some self-important blowhard in a pulpit or on a stage or behind a microphone a thousand miles away? Not so much.

The moral debate

I remember a podcast by a popular Christian apologist during which a woman caller asked this question. The apologist (a man) seemed annoyed. He said that murder was murder. (I disagree, but that’s a tangent.)

More to the point, he said that his moral opinion was relevant regardless of his gender. I’ll agree with that, as far as it goes. But I think that the woman had an important point that is rarely acknowledged, since only a woman can have an abortion.

Let me try to turn the tables. This apologist is of the age where he might have been in the draft pool during the Vietnam War. Let’s suppose it’s 1970, and this guy returns from a tour fighting in Vietnam. Readjusting to life in America is tough, and he has nightmares and other symptoms of what we now call PTSD. His wife is sympathetic and, after some prodding, he shares the problem with her.

“Oh, you should go see Dr. Franklin about that,” she says. “I’m part of a community of veterans’ wives, and I’ve heard all about that problem. He does wonders with returning soldiers, and he’ll fix you up in no time.”

Our hero hesitates, not comfortable discussing his demons with a stranger. “I don’t think so.”

“No, really. I’ve heard a lot about this, and that treatment should work for you.”

Tension increases as they go back and forth. Finally, he says, “Honey, I really appreciate your sympathy. I know you want to help. But you must understand that you will never, ever understand what I’ve been through. Put in 18 months in Vietnam and then we’ll have something to talk about. Until then, you don’t get it, and you never will.”

Similarly, our 60-something male apologist will never, ever completely understand what it’s like to be 15 and pregnant, faced with disapproving parents and ridicule from classmates, seeing her life plans crumbling around her, dealing with pro-lifers shouting “murder!” at the suggestion of an abortion, and wondering how she’s ever going to get her life back on track.

If the male apologist wants to comment on the topic, that’s fine, but a big dose of humility (and sympathy) would make his opinion easier to take.

The Portman Effect

About a year ago, I wrote about Republican Senator Rob Portman’s dramatic public reversal on the issue of same-sex marriage after his son came out as gay several years earlier. Bravo, Senator, for taking a politically difficult stand, but why did it take a gay son to bring about this turnaround? You couldn’t figure the issue out by thinking about other people’s gay children? You couldn’t get there by musing, “Gee … what if my son turned out to be gay?” Or even, “What if I’d been gay?”

As clever as humans are about imagining situations and learning from them, Sen. Portman’s experience says that sometimes it does take your own son being gay to make you get it.

Maybe the Portman Effect is what we’re seeing with male pro-lifers. They’re not going to get pregnant, so it’s easy to be pro-life. Any downsides from continuing an unwanted pregnancy don’t directly affect them. Like Portman, they can’t put themselves in the shoes of someone going through this unless it actually happens to them. As men, it never will.

Perhaps they would see things differently if their own 15-year-old daughter got pregnant. (That’d be a great study: look at pro-life parents of teen girls with an unwanted pregnancy and see how many insisted that the same rules applied to their kid vs. how many rationalized that an exception was necessary, just in this case.)

Until that happens, gentlemen, please show a little humility.

Related post: “20 Arguments Against Abortion, Rebutted”

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things:
One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in Hell.
The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth
and you should save it for someone you love.  
— Butch Hancock

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/22/12.)

Faith Shows the Emperor has No Clothes

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Suppose a religion worshipped a god that didn’t exist. How could it endure? Wouldn’t it be immediately exposed as a fraud?
Not if it turned thinking on its head and argued that not reason but faith* is actually the proper way to look at the world, or at least the religious part of it. Fellow believers would encourage this faith-trumps-reason worldview. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and just have faith!
Defending an invisible God and celebrating faith is exactly what Christians would do if their religion were manmade. Faith is always the last resort. If there were convincing evidence, Christians would be celebrating that, not faith.
Augustine said, “Do not understand so you may believe; instead believe so you may understand.” But why? You don’t do that in any other area of life. You don’t pick a belief system first and then select facts to support it; it’s the other way around. You follow the facts where they lead.
Faith is permission to believe without good reason. Believing something because it is reasonable and rational requires no faith at all. If you don’t have enough evidence to cross an intellectual gulf to the belief on the other side, and if only faith will get you there, then don’t cross that gulf.
It’s a bizarre world where faith not only trumps reason but is celebrated since we use reason all the time to get through life. Only by using reason and following the evidence—that is, rejecting beliefs built on faith—did we build the technology-filled world we live in today.
In fact, faith is the worst decision-making and analytical tool possible. You don’t use faith to cross a busy street, or learn French, or treat malaria. It provides no method for distinguishing between true and false propositions. Faith doesn’t provide a reliable answer but simply discourages further questions. It’s even worse than guessing, because with a guess, you’re at least open to revisiting a decision in the face of new evidence. Not so with faith.
No one relies on faith unless their god weren’t just invisible but was actually nonexistent.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic
is no more to the point than the fact
that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
— George Bernard Shaw

(This is an updated post that originally appeared 10/7/11.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia
*By faith, I mean belief without sufficient evidence. Christians might respond that their definition of faith is identical to that for trust: belief in accord with sufficient evidence. In my experience, however, Christians use each of these definitions for faith, switching them as necessary. If they stuck to just one, that might clear up a lot of problems.

Why is Starbucks Taking the Christ out of Croissants?

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Starbucks CroissantThe popular French croissant is said to have been made in the shape of the crescent moon on the Ottoman flag, symbol of Islam, after the defeat of the Muslims by a combined Christian force at the siege of Vienna in 1683.
Every croissant eaten celebrates the destruction of the Muslim forces. But what do we do with croissants that aren’t crescent shaped? Blasphemy of blasphemies, Starbucks has now introduced a square pastry that they’re calling a “croissant.”
Ah, well—not much of an issue on a day that celebrates something that didn’t happen and ignores the thing that does.
Happy Holidays, Christmas, Yule, Solstice, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, etc.!

The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round.
For I have seen the shadow on the moon,
and I have more faith in a shadow
than in the Church.
— Ferdinand Magellan

Inspiration credit: Rada and Anu
Photo credit: Starbucks