Religions Continue to Diverge—What Does that Tell Us?

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Suppose supernatural truths exist, but we could only dimly perceive them. What would this look like? How could we tell that we lived in such a world?

We might see a Babel of religions because of our imperfect understanding, but we’d also see convergence. As the disparate religious groups compared notes, common supernatural truths would become apparent. We’d see positive feedback as we matched our tentative consensus against that rudimentary understanding of the Divine. And if that supernatural Divine wanted us to understand, it would nudge us in the right direction so Humanity would gradually cobble together an accurate understanding.

Of course, in the Christian example where God is eager for each of us to have a relationship with him, we should see not a nudge or a vague hint of the celestial truth but overwhelming and unmistakable evidence that he exists.

Follow the evidence

What we see is neither overwhelming evidence nor even dimly perceived evidence. Humanity sees no common truth that pushes religions toward a single consensus view—there isn’t even any agreement on the number of gods or their names, let alone what it takes to please him/them. Religion’s fragmentation is bad and getting worse. For example, Christianity has 45,000 denominations now, and that is expected to grow to 70,000 by 2050.

Important new denominations within Christianity including Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarian Universalist Church, Salvation Army, Assemblies of God, Messianic Judaism, Shakers, Mormonism, and Pentecostalism. Outside of Christianity we find new religions such as Rastafari, Church of Satan, Cargo cults, Theosophical Society, Transcendental Meditation movement, Wicca, Neopaganism, and UFO cults such as Raëlism, Heaven’s Gate, Nation of Islam, and Scientology. Dozens of new religious movements spring up each year just in the United States.

The unstoppable growth of religious diversity is shown by the tree of world religions and the map of world religions.

If there is a supernatural truth out there and if beliefs are steered by reality (instead of wishful thinking, say), you’d think that religious claims would be tested and either kept or dropped based on how well they matched reality. With this view, we’d see humankind gradually converge on a single religious story. And yet we see the opposite because the assumption that beliefs are measured against the evidence is wrong. Evidence doesn’t drive the search for religious truth.

Christian response

What then explains the popular Christian apologists who weave elaborate intellectual arguments for the strength of the Christian position? They’re simply supporting conclusions already made, and they get their support from Christians who want a pat on the head and assurance that there’s scholarly backing for beliefs they hold for no more substantial reason than that they were part of their environment growing up.

(Yes, adults do switch religions, but this is rare. Believers adopt a religion, not because it is the truth, but because it’s the religion of their culture. Only one percent of believers switch in as adults.)

The Christian response is often to emphasize Christianity’s unique aspects. “Okay, maybe Christianity wasn’t the first to celebrate a virgin birth or have a dying-and-rising god,” they admit, “but look at its unique features!” Sure, Christianity is unique. Every religion is unique. But the problem remains: if your correct religion looks like yet another manmade religion, why would we think it’s correct? Why pick it over the rest? Since it looks like nothing more than a manmade religion, it should be rejected just like the rest.

Another popular response is to argue that the one true God could have his reasons for not making clear the correct path. We simply don’t understand them. Yes, this is possible, but this is the “Aha—you haven’t proven me wrong!” gambit, which again is no justification for belief. You don’t hold beliefs because they haven’t been proven wrong; you hold them because there’s evidence that they’re right. We follow the evidence, and it doesn’t point to Christianity.

Where does this leave Christianity?

Christians agree that people invent religions. That’s how they explain all those other religions. But in explaining away these other religions, they’ve explained away their own. Christianity looks like just one more manmade religion.

Religion is controlled by human imagination and emotions, evolving as conditions change with no immutable truth to constrain it. There is no loving god desiring a relationship who would make his existence known to us, and Christians must celebrate faith to paper over this embarrassing fact. There’s not even a cosmic truth “seen through a glass, darkly” (that is, seen in a mirror, dimly). The glass isn’t dark; it’s black. There is no external truth nudging us in the right direction.

Christians, drop the pretense that this is an intellectual project. Admit, at least to yourselves, that your belief is cultural and built on nothing more solid than tradition.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair

Photo credit: Mike Mozart, flickr, CC

Christian Apologists Find No Meaning in Life

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Meaning in lifeThe meaning in life is a popular topic among many Christian apologists. They’re eager to push it because they think their product has a competitive benefit: they offer ultimate meaning. It’s not that ordinary meaning isn’t as nice as their deluxe version, it’s that they’ve made ordinary meaning obsolete. With Christianity, they don’t just have the superior product; they have the only product.

I recently heard world-famous apologist William Lane Craig clucking worriedly about fellow Patheos blogger Ryan Bell’s recent departure from Christianity. WLC said:

No one can actually live happily and consistently with the view that life is objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless. … So when [Ryan Bell] says that he has found that now, as an atheist, life is more meaningful to him and more precious and so forth, this only shows that he hasn’t understood that the claim is about objective meaning, value, and purpose.

No one can live without objective meaning? Reading Bell’s comments about his new post-Christian life, it sounds like he’s doing just fine.

I want to experience as much happiness and pleasure as I can while helping others to attain their happiness. I construct meaning in my life from many sources, including love, family, friendships, service, learning and so on. Popular Christian theology, on the other hand, renders this life less meaningful by anchoring all notions of value and purpose to a paradise somewhere in the future, in a place other than where we are right now. Ironically, my Christian upbringing taught me that ultimately this life doesn’t matter, which tends to make believers apathetic about suffering and think that things will only get worse before God suddenly solves everything on the last day. …

Without dependency on a cosmic savior who is coming to rescue us, we are free to recognize that we are the ones we’re waiting for. If we don’t make the world a fair and habitable place, no one else is going to do it for us. Our lives matter because our choices affect others and our children’s future.

That’s a tough act to follow. Anyone could be proud to live a life with that as its polestar. By contrast, WLC is stuck with the purpose for life given by the Westminster Confession: the chief end of man is “to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever,” and WLC is eager to be just one more sycophant for God.

Here’s a similar take from Aaron Brake at the Please Convince Me blog:

There is no difference between living the life of a saint or a sociopath, no difference between a Mother Theresa and an Adolf Hitler. Mention of morality is simply incoherent babbling….

If atheism is true, and if atheists honestly reflect on their own eventual non-existence as well as the fact that their actions in this life have no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, it seems hard to avoid the overwhelming feelings of depression, despair, and dejection.

This is self-debasing crap. You can’t figure out a meaning for your life, so you must have it assigned to you? It’s ultimate meaning or nothing?

He quotes WLC:

If God does not exist, then you are just a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life … the end of everything is death… In short, life is utterly without reason… Unfortunately, most people don’t realize this fact. They continue on as though nothing has changed.

What’s hard to realize? You’re right, I don’t have ultimate meaning in my life. That’s a “problem” like not being as strong as Superman is a problem—it might be nice if that were true, but it ain’t gonna happen. Adults squarely face the difficult reality that we’re not Superman and soldier on with life.

I thought to write this post after realizing that one of my favorite Christmas movies shows the emptiness of these apologists’ bluster. In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey sacrifices for others. Everyone else seems to have left town to achieve their dreams and get rich or famous, but he must stay in Bedford Falls to mind the bank, the town’s only alternative to the greedy Mr. Potter. Finally, a loss of money becomes one crisis too many. George is about to commit suicide so that his life insurance will resolve the problem but is stopped by Clarence, his guardian angel. Clarence shows him how the town would be like if he’d never been born. His bank failed, and the town is now Pottersville, full of sleazy bars. George sees all the important people in his life, all worse off for his not being there. Finally, he finds his wife, a lonely spinster.

His prayer to be returned to his life is granted. He returns home and finds that everyone has pitched in to solve the problem. After a lifetime of putting his own dreams last, he realizes that he’s become the richest man in town.

The movie topped the American Film Institute’s list of most inspirational movies, and I’ll admit that I always get choked up at the end.

Yes, Christianity is alluded to in the movie, but ultimate meaning isn’t the point. George Bailey realized the rich, full life he had made for himself. He didn’t need ultimate meaning; the ordinary kind as defined in the dictionary worked just fine. He had striven for the same goal as Ryan Bell outlined above, and his was indeed a wonderful life.

Think back on our apologists’ complaints about a life without ultimate meaning. A purposeless life? Life without reason? Depression, despair, and dejection? Not only can life be full, satisfying, and complete with ordinary meaning, these apologists’ “ultimate” meaning isn’t the brilliant jewel that they imagine. They’re just selling elbow deodorant, and they haven’t shown me that I need any.

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread
winding its way through our political and cultural life,
nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that
“my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
— Isaac Asimov

Image credit: Wikimedia

Christianity, the Ultimate Unfalsifiable Hypothesis

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Christian truthCharlie Brown keeps trusting in Lucy, and she keeps pulling away the football at the last minute. And still Charlie Brown comes back for more. Doesn’t he ever learn? What would it take for him to see that his trust is misplaced?

This is how God belief works. Christians tell themselves that God exists, and maybe they have a special experience or feeling that reassures them that they’ve backed the right horse. But then there’s that tempting call to connect with the external world and provide evidence that the belief is firmly grounded. Like Lucy with the football, they’re often disappointed when the evidence doesn’t stand up.

A popular example of Christian “evidence” is that when you pray and get what you wanted, then God did it. When you don’t get what you wanted, God did that too.

If I point to puppies, sunsets, and other good things in life, the Christian might say it’s because God is a perfect designer. If I point to cancer, tsunamis, and other bad things, that’s because of the Fall. God can’t lose.

When something good happens, that’s God’s gentle and loving hand taking care of his special people. But when something bad happens, that’s God testing us or improving us.

If someone is good, then that’s due to nudging from the Holy Spirit. If they’re bad, that’s their fault.

There’s a snappy answer or rationalization for every situation. If God’s existence is always a given, then we’re going to bend the reality to fit that assumption. But no one approaches truth that way in any other sector of life. We don’t start with an assumption and then try to twist the facts to support it. It’s the other way around: we start with the facts and ask what the most reasonable explanation is.

To any Christian reading this, what would it take for you to see Christianity as false? What would it take for you to see that God doesn’t exist?

I’ve talked to lots of Christians who say that they do demand evidence, and that they would go where the evidence points. I have my doubts—I think that for many of them belief comes first and evidence is marshaled after the fact to support this presupposition— but let’s leave that for now.

I’ve also talked to Christians who admit that nothing would change their minds. That is, they can’t (or refuse to) imagine anything that could remove faith from their lives. Christianity is then the ultimate unfalsifiable hypothesis—“ultimate” because God is the most fantastic thing imaginable and “unfalsifiable” because for many believers, nothing will change their minds.

World famous apologist William Lane Craig uses rational arguments and points to science to support them. You’d think that he above all other apologists would put evidence ahead of agenda.

Not so:

It is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that gives us the fundamental knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition, p. 47)

(I’ve explored Craig’s unhealthy relationship with evidence more here.)

Some people are beyond evidence. Christianity for them is like the T-1000 in the film Terminator 2, the liquid metal robot that takes a beating and then reshapes itself after an injury to continue its rampage.

Consider a much more wholesome attitude toward evidence. Artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky said, “As scientists, we like to make our theories as delicate and fragile as possible. We like to arrange things so that if the slightest thing goes wrong, everything will collapse at once!”

Scientists want their theories to collapse if they’re wrong. If they’re wrong, they want to know it, since their goal is the truth, not to support a Bronze Age presupposition. Imagine a world where all Christians were this eager to understand reality, where they followed the evidence where it led rather than making their worldview unfalsifiable.

You can’t rationally argue out 
what wasn’t rationally argued in.
— credited to George Bernard Shaw

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/5/13.)

Image credit: Nic Fonseca, flickr, CC

Wondering What to Give that Christian or Atheist on Your List?

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I’d like to suggest a couple of ideas for the hard-to-buy-for people on your Christmas list—something a little more intellectual than a tie or gift certificate. My books Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey (2011) and A Modern Christmas Carol (2013) are available online as paperbacks or ebooks. Both are novels that wrestle with the God question.

atheist giftsWhile many books discuss the Christianity vs. atheism debate, Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey takes a fictional approach to tough apologetics arguments. Indeed, the intellectual debate becomes another character within the story.

The book targets two audiences. First, it gives thoughtful Christians something to think about and encourages complacent Christians to critique the foundations of their religion. Many Christian leaders make exactly this point, that they too want to push Christians to think. The book is an intellectual workout—a taxing project, perhaps, but one that leaves the reader a stronger person.

Second, I hope to reach atheists who might enjoy approaching these intellectual arguments in fiction rather than in the usual nonfiction form.

The book is set in Los Angeles in 1906, in an odd new church suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. The pastor’s prediction of imminent disaster had been front-page news the day before the great San Francisco earthquake—true story. Here’s the back-cover summary:

In 1906, three men share a destiny forged by a prophecy of destruction. That prophecy comes true with staggering force with the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and young assistant pastor Paul Winston is cast into spiritual darkness when his fiancée is among the dead. Soon Paul finds himself torn between two powerful mentors: the charismatic pastor who rescued him from the street and an eccentric atheist who gradually undercuts Christianity’s intellectual foundation.

As he grapples with the shock to love and faith, Paul’s past haunts him. He struggles to retain his faith, the redemptive lifesaver that keeps him afloat in a sea of guilt. But the belief that once saved him now threatens to destroy the man he is becoming.

Paul discovers that redemption comes in many forms. A miracle of life. A fall from grace. A friend resurrected. A secret discovered. And maybe, a new path taken. He realizes that religion is too important to let someone else decide it for him. The choice in the end is his—will it be one he can live with? 

Cross Examined challenges the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up … or discard them. Take the journey and see where it leads you. About this book, Robert M. Price said, “A fascinating novel of ideas … puts a whole new light on apologetics.” Paul Gabel, author of Inventing Jesus said, “Cross Examined is a great read on two fronts. You won’t find a better book on Christian apologetics and the rebuttals … and the story is compelling, with a startling climax. Highly recommended.”

Buy copies for those hard-to-buy-for friends ($10.76 paperback or $2.99 ebook) who would enjoy a little different approach to the Christian/atheist debate. It’s guaranteed to be more intellectually stimulating than a necktie (and less cliché than frankincense or myrrh).

Journalists and bloggers: contact me for a review copy.

 

atheist giftsIn a thought-provoking retelling of the Dickens classic, A Modern Christmas Carol tells the story of a shrewdly successful televangelist who receives unexpected Christmas visitors: first, his long-dead partner, and then three ghostly guides.

Finally able to acknowledge the shallowness of his message and doubts he has long suppressed, he makes amends with far-reaching consequences.

Most readers will enjoy seeing a televangelist get his comeuppance, but this book is more than that. It explores faith and the evidence for Christianity, and it should provoke and intrigue any reader interested in the impact Christianity has on modern society. It will engage thoughtful readers who enjoyed the intellectual workout of books such as C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity or Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.

It’s a novella like the original, so it’s a quick read, and it’s a good fit with the Christmas season. The book is available on Amazon as a 115-page paperback ($5.39) and ebook ($1.99).

Journalists and bloggers: contact me for a review copy.

Critiques

“[A] masterful retelling … well done!”
— Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine and author of The Trouble with Christmas

“Clever and brilliantly told, I’ll even admit to tears at the end! A Christmas story I’m happy to share.”
— Gretta Vosper, minister and author of With or Without God

“A clever little book, filled with insights, that takes the conceptual framework of Dickens’s Christmas Carol to new heights of rationality without sacrificing any of its compassion.”
— Paul Gabel, author of Inventing Jesus

It seems like the War on Christmas 
comes earlier every year.
— seen on the internet

Was the Colorado Springs Shooter No Worse Than Planned Parenthood Itself?

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I stumbled across an article on TheBlaze, Glenn Beck’s entertainment and news network, claiming “Abortionists and Planned Parenthood Shooter Are Just Two Sides Of The Same Coin.” Matt Walsh is the author, and his goal is to show that it wasn’t the outrageous rhetoric of pro-life fanatics that pushed a gunman to shoot up a Colorado Planned Parenthood facility, killing three and injuring nine.

Colorado planned parenthood shooting
I’m not Walsh’s audience. He’s preaching to his choir, using terms like “pro-aborts” and “abortion fanatics” to refer to people like me, but the article gives an insight into the hostility of and rationalization by this community.

Violent talk has consequences. Walsh wants to walk away from any consequences of violent rhetoric from extreme quarters of the pro-life movement.

[Clues that he’s unlike the typical pro-life terrorist] has not prevented abortion enthusiasts on the left from gleefully spiking the football as if some point has been proven by the random violent outburst of a paranoid hermit.

The point is that speech can have consequences. Spin a story about how Planned Parenthood is an evil organization, and this kind of violence may be a consequence. If you don’t think it through, impressionable readers might not either. As the Bible says, you’ve sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.

As another example of speech having consequences, one mother tried to kill herself and her two daughters to avoid the Tribulation predicted by Harold Camping for May 21, 2011 (more here and here). Did Camping deserve no condemnation for saying that the world would end, knowing that some of his gullible flock might take him seriously?

Here’s an example of extreme anti-abortion speech from video evangelist Joshua Feuerstein:

I say, tonight, we punish Planned Parenthood. I think it’s time that abortion doctors should have to run and hide and be afraid for their life. (7/29/15)

That was in response to the anti-Planned Parenthood videos. After the Colorado shooting, pro-lifers tweeted about “babies” saved.

How pro-life is the pro-life movement?

Walsh says it goes without saying that he’s shocked by the shooter’s actions.

It goes without saying because, for one thing, we’re pro-life.

No, you’re pro-birth. How about being pro-health care? Or working to improve the society into which these babies are born? And isn’t it inconsistent when most of those who oppose abortions also accept the death penalty?

For another, there’s no logic in it.

Wrong. You went on and on about the deaths of “over 50 million babies.” That’s BS, of course—there’s a spectrum of personhood across the gestation period, and a single cell isn’t a baby, a human being, or a person—but it is quite logical to kill a few lives to save many. You can’t argue that abortion is murder but then claim that murder to reduce abortions is illogical.

The lives that were snuffed out in the front of the building weren’t any more or less human than the lives exterminated in the back. Our humanity does not exist on a spectrum.

Walsh imagines that Homo sapiens DNA is all that makes someone human, but with this he invents single-celled humans. Indeed, humanness does exist on a spectrum. A single cell isn’t very human, while the trillion-cell newborn nine months later is. (If you’d prefer, say that the single cell isn’t a person while the newborn is.)

Why shoehorn gestation into a binary situation? Drop the ridiculous idea that a single cell is a “baby” or “person.” Say that the single cell isn’t a person, the newborn is, and it’s a spectrum in between.

[A pro-choice advocate outraged at the vitriol is] like a Nazi standing up at Nuremberg and scolding society for hating him.

Nope. The Nazi was on trial for crimes against humanity. Planned Parenthood kills a fetus that isn’t yet a person. Walsh will predictably respond that it will be a person if given time, but this simply becomes the Argument from Potential—it isn’t inherently worth protecting now, but it will be. Which is no argument at all.

Apologies. Walsh rejects the shooter’s actions, but he chafes at this obligation.

We’re the ones who have to be seen condemning murder, as if there’s any reasonable question at all about where we stand on the subject? 

You demand that moderate Muslims apologize for Muslim violence, don’t you? If so, you can appreciate how we’d like some assurance from the pro-life community that they reject the shooter’s actions that they might have triggered, but there’s still an asymmetry. The Friendly Atheist notes the difference between how Muslims after the Paris attacks are treated and how anti-Planned Parenthood activists are treated.

Unlike the seemingly endless stream of demands and condemnations that followed the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, no one has suggested that churches in which Planned Parenthood are routinely depicted as the devil’s spawn be closed; no one has demanded that Evangelicals who believe performers of abortions are committing crimes against humanity should be issued with special identity cards; and no one has called for arresting or deporting the inciters who exploit such incidents to whip up hate (and garner more votes).

Dismissing murder. Walsh says that the shooter’s actions were bad, but. He can’t leave it at that. He can’t ignore a grandstanding opportunity to argue the other side of the issue, that the shared enemy, abortion providers, are the worst people imaginable.

George Tiller, the heinous late-term baby executioner who ruthlessly slaughtered thousands of viable and fully developed infants, is the only abortion worker to be killed by an abortion opponent this century. That’s it. One. And he was one of the most dangerous, vicious, and murderous human beings to have ever lived.

You make it sound like working at a Planned Parenthood clinic is no more risky than being a librarian. Not so: “Between 1997 and 2012, there were seventy-three violent attacks at abortion clinics across the country” (source).

Go research why women went to Tiller to get abortions. Was it because they didn’t want to be so fat? Or was it a more substantial reason—birth defects, mother’s health, catastrophic changes in financial status, or something similar?

And let’s pause to listen to your rhetoric. Was Tiller seriously “one of the most dangerous, vicious, and murderous human beings to have ever lived”? Few of us would morally object to going back in time to assassinate Joseph Mengele or Heinrich Himmler or Adolph Hitler. You’ve intentionally put Tiller with this company, so why do you object to the shooter’s actions?

This hypocrisy is the problem that Walsh can’t acknowledge. He wants to say that the shooter was a killer and Planned Parenthood kills, so they’re in the same boat. He’s cut from different cloth because he’s pro-life.

But the rage he reveals in this article gives just as strong an argument for a very different arrangement: now it’s the killer with Walsh in the same boat because of his venomous rhetoric that could easily provoke violent action. Planned Parenthood is the odd man out because it provides legal abortions before the fetus is a person.

As the article progresses, Walsh is on a roll, and the indignant “Of course we deplore violence—we’re pro-life!” attitude is gone. With no ear for irony, he repeats the line the killer is said to have used:

Planned Parenthood sells the parts of dead babies.

Wrong again. The mother can choose to donate the fetus for research, and Planned Parenthood can be reimbursed for their costs.

Planned Parenthood is a rotten, corrupt, depraved, vile, disgusting, brutal, murderous conglomerate of butchers and mercenaries.

And yet you wonder how anyone could possibly be incited to violence?

Abortion fanatics hate pro-lifers personally. They hate Christianity. They hate children. They hate life itself. Theirs is the sort of hatred that destroys the soul and dissolves the human conscience. We hate what is evil; they hate what is good.

And now it’s just a rant.

Improving society.

Why don’t you [Planned Parenthood] just shut up and work on not killing babies?

Are you? What are you doing to minimize unwanted pregnancies?

Among countries in the West, the U.S. compares poorly. In the United States, the annual birth rate was 56 per 1000 women aged 15–19. Compare this to 8 in the Netherlands. The U.S. abortion rate for that group of women was 30 per 1000, while it was 4 in the Netherlands. What are we doing wrong (or what is the Netherlands doing right)? Clearly, there’s enormous room for improvement.

Is it better sex education? Is it easier access to contraception? Whatever it is, cutting the number of abortions in half in five years simply through more effective education and policy seems possible. Why are you approaching it the hard way? Instead of swimming upstream, you could work with pro-choice people who want the same thing. It almost sounds like you’re not really serious about this, and abortion isn’t the holocaust you claim it to be.

The trolley problem. Almost everyone has heard of this thought experiment, but let me give a brief summary. I think it’s relevant to this situation.

Imagine a trolley that’s heading toward five unsuspecting workers on the track. If it continues, it will kill them all. But there’s a switch, and you can reroute the trolley down another path with only one worker. Would you switch the trolley?

Most people say they would. But what if you’ve got the same trolley heading for the five workers, and you’re on a bridge over the tracks. The only way to stop the trolley is with a large weight in its path. You’re not big enough to stop it, but there’s a fat man on the bridge who is. Do you push him over?

Most people say they wouldn’t, but it’s the same calculation, five deaths vs. one.

The Colorado shooter has in effect pushed the fat man over. He’s taken the unthinkable but logical step—logical given Walsh’s own analysis. Walsh is left fuming about protocol—it’s one thing to label abortion providers as the most wicked scum on the earth, but in polite society one doesn’t actually act on it! He wants his rage but won’t accept the consequences.

But the consequence of using language like that, can be very dangerous.
I think candidates need to step back, take a deep breath, and understand …
we have a responsibility to use thoughtful and careful language.
— Wendy Davis, the former Texas state senator
who filibustered to block legislation that would restrict abortion

Image credit: Kit Clutch, flickr, CC

Yet More on the Bible’s Confused Relationship with Science (2 of 2)

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Bible scienceThis post wraps up our look at science in the Bible. It’s the conclusion of an analysis of Bible verses that contradict modern science (read part 1). Another recent post looked at Christian claims that the Bible actually anticipated modern science with correct statements about the world that were otherwise unknown during that time.

Let’s continue enumerating scientific errors in the Bible.

Cosmology and earth science

7. The moon creates light rather than reflecting it

God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night (Genesis 1:16).

The sun and moon are said to be greater and lesser versions of the same thing with no acknowledgement that one creates light while the other only reflects it. We see the confusion more clearly in this verse:

The moon shall not cause her light to shine (Isaiah 13:10).

No, the moon doesn’t make its own light.

8. The stars are teeny light sources

The Bible dismisses the stars by imagining their creation this way:

[God] also made the stars (Genesis 1:16).

That’s it. 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars are only worth a single Hebrew word in the original (a more literal reading is “(and) the stars”).

We see the stars according to the Sumerian cosmological model here:

God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth (Gen. 1:17).

They’re dismissed as tiny when they’re imagined to fall to earth:

The stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind (Revelation 6:13).

9. The earth was flooded

The Bible tells us that the entire earth was flooded, but the fossil evidence disagrees (long-extinct dinosaurs and modern animals living in the same habitats aren’t fossilized in the same strata).

The geological evidence disagrees (the impact of the ocean is present in many stone layers, but a global flood isn’t).

The DNA evidence disagrees (clues to a DNA choke point about 4000 years ago should be obvious in all living land animals from their having descended from very few individuals).

More about Noah’s flood here and here.

Biology and health

10. Germs? What germs?

The Bible isn’t a reliable source of health information. When the Pharisees scold Jesus for not following Jewish hand washing rules, Jesus focuses on spiritual defilement and dismisses unsanitary defilement.

It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth (Matthew 15:11).

I’ll grant that washing your hands with soap (the simple recipe for which was not included in the Bible) doesn’t touch on spiritual purity, but physical health and basic hygienic precautions are not obvious and are worth a mention somewhere. How about telling us that boiling water minimizes disease? Or how to site latrines to safeguard the water supply?

A prior post reviewed apologists’ excitement about the Bible teaching ritual washing, but that can’t count for much when Jesus rejects it here.

According to the Bible, evil spirits cause disease. In the story of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, what sounds like mental illness is actually caused by demons.

[Jesus] had been saying to [the sick man], “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” (Mark 5:8)

And physical infirmity can also be caused by demons:

There was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double, and could not straighten up at all (Luke 13:11).

Are some categories of illness caused by demon possession? That modern medicine finds no value in this hypothesis makes clear that they aren’t.

Jesus also thinks disease can be caused by sin:

You are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. (John 5:14)

For more on the pre-scientific approach to disease given in the New Testament, see this post.

11. Animals’ offspring change based on what the mother was looking at during conception

Jacob made a deal with his father-in-law Laban to tend his flocks. All the white sheep and goats would remain Laban’s, but any spotted or black ones would be taken by Jacob as wages. The larger story of Jacob is full of tricks, and he employs one here to tip the balance in his favor.

Jacob took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. (Genesis 30:37–9)

This idea that what a woman sees during pregnancy can affect the baby continues as a myth today, but there is no science behind it.

12. Miscellaneous errors

The Bible betrays its uninformed roots when it says that a bat is a bird (Deuteronomy 14:11–18), insects have four feet (Leviticus 11:20–23), rabbits chew their cud (Lev. 11:6), camels have hooves (Lev. 11:4), and the mustard seed is the smallest seed on earth (Matt. 13:31-32). None of that is true.

Concluding thoughts

The problem with science for many Christians is that a belief built on science must change as the science changes. This won’t satisfy someone determined to create an unchanging worldview. The result is an unrealistic and childish relationship with science, embracing it when it appears to support the Christian conclusion and denigrating or ignoring it when it becomes a problem.

To illustrate the tension between religion and science, here’s what Pat Robertson observed about Christians in developing countries. They experience healing miracles far more often than Christians in the West, he says, not because they’re unscientific or ignorant or gullible but because they haven’t been corrupted by education and science.

Overseas, they’re simple, humble. You tell them God loves ’em, and they say, okay, he loves me, and you say God’ll do miracles, and they say, okay, we believe him. That’s what God’s looking for; that’s why they have miracles.

There’s no scientific skepticism in these model Christians with their childlike faith, though why that’s a plus, I don’t know. I wonder if Robertson wrestles with the irony that the technology in his worldwide CBN television network was built exclusively on the teachings of science, not God.

Science is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We don’t have the box top with the picture of the finished puzzle and we only have some of the pieces, so the puzzle is always incomplete. If a new piece won’t fit in, we have to decide if we’re misunderstanding the piece or if we were wrong about the rest of the puzzle. The Christian view is like having the box with a picture of God on the top and then imagining magic to morph every newly discovered piece so that it fits. “God did it” answers everything, but as an unfalsifiable hypothesis, it answers nothing (more here).

Let me close with a paraphrase of an idea from AronRa: When the answer is known, science knows it. But when science doesn’t know it, neither does religion.

 Since the Bible and the church are obviously mistaken
in telling us where we came from,
how can we trust them to tell us where we are going?
— Anonymous

Photo credit: Angel Visha, flickr, CC