Old Testament Slavery—Not so Bad?

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Old Testament SlaveryYou’ve probably been there. You’ve read one too many articles claiming that biblical slavery was not a big deal, that it was actually a good thing for the enslaved, or that biblical slavery wasn’t at all like slavery in America.

Let’s go there.

Seattle columnist Dan Savage delivered a lecture in 2012 to high school students interested in journalism. His point, roughly stated, was that we discard lots of nutty stuff from the Old Testament (no shellfish, slavery, animal sacrifice, etc.), so let’s discard hatred of homosexuality as well.

Christian podcast apologetics.com responded on 5/13/12 with “Sex, Lies & Leviticus” (the second hour is the interesting part, with host Lindsay Brooks and guest Arthur Daniels Jr.). The interview begins with the guest mocking Savage’s claim that the Bible is “radically pro-slavery.”

The Bible is pro-slavery in the same way that it’s pro-commerce. The book of Proverbs says that God demands honest weights and measures—four times, in fact. Commerce is regulated, so it’s pretty clear that God has no problem with commerce. God is happy to set down prohibitions against wicked things, and there are none against honest commerce. By similar thinking (the regulation and the lack of prohibition), the Bible is pro-slavery.

But more on that later—let’s critique the arguments in the interview. Some of the arguments are truly ridiculous, but I include them for completeness and to give atheists a chance to become aware of them and Christians to realize what arguments need discarding.

1. Selection. The Bible prohibits lots of things, not just homosexuality. Dan Savage is happy with prohibitions against murder, rape, stealing, and so on. Why accept most of the Law but reject just the bits you don’t like?

Because no atheist goes to the Bible for moral guidance! No one, including Christians, know that murder, rape, and stealing are wrong because they read it in the Bible. They knew they were wrong first and saw that, coincidentally, the Bible rejects the same things. Our moral compass is internal, and from that we can critique the Bible to know what to keep (don’t murder) and what to reject (acceptance of slavery).

2. Food Laws. Dan Savage ridicules the kosher food laws (rejections of shellfish, for example), but Paul’s epistle of First Timothy (4:4–5) overturns these food restrictions.

In the first place, Pauline authorship for 1 Timothy is largely rejected by biblical scholars. Apparently, these guys want Christians to follow some random dude rather than Jesus himself, who never questioned the kosher laws and indeed demanded that they be upheld. Jesus said:

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17–20)

And secondly, laws aren’t considered and rejected one by one. Do they have a counter-verse to reject death for adultery (Lev. 20:10), for sassing your parents (Lev. 20:9), and every other nutty Old Testament prohibition that no Christian follows? Christians more typically reject the Old Testament laws with a blanket claim that the sacrifice of Jesus made those laws unnecessary (for example, see Hebrews chapters 7, 8, and 10).

The problem there, of course, is that prohibitions against homosexual acts are discarded along with the rest. You don’t get to keep just the ones you’re fond of. I discuss this more here.

3. Ignorance. Dan Savage is speaking out of turn. Like other atheists, he simply doesn’t know his Bible well.

Or not. American atheists are famously better informed than any religious group. And we’ll see that Savage is on target about slavery.

Continued in Part 2.

Americans treat the Bible 
like a website Terms of Use agreement. 
They don’t bother reading it; they just click “I agree.”
— Unknown

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/7/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Prayer Cures Disease? Tried and Found Wanting.

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Does prayer cure disease?In early 2012, Washington state declared an epidemic for pertussis (whooping cough). Pertussis hadn’t been this bad for decades. The 2500 cases during the outbreak was more than ten times higher than the previous year.

Before routine child vaccination in the 1940s, pertussis caused thousands of fatalities annually in the U.S.

You might imagine that this is a story about anti-vaxers, afraid of a perceived vaccine-autism link, who refused to vaccinate their children and helped create this epidemic. Not this time. The anti-vaccine movement seems not to have been a factor.

Instead, the interesting angle on this story is not disease prevented by vaccine but disease prevented by prayer. Kingdom League International, an online ministry based in western Washington, said in a brief article titled “Whooping Cough Epidemic Halted in Jefferson County”:

Churches in Jefferson County [one of those hardest hit by the statewide epidemic] used our strategy to mobilize prayer and establish councils to connect in 7 spheres of society [the Dominionists’ Seven Spheres of Influence]. On Mar 27 they met and a County Commissioner asked them to pray about the whooping cough epidemic. … As of April 13 there has not been one case reported. From epidemic proportions to zero.

A bold claim, but the question is whether we can find natural explanations besides prayer to explain the facts. We can. Epidemics peak and then diminish, particularly when there’s an effective health system in place that can administer vaccines. There were 21 confirmed cases for this county in 2012, with no new cases since mid-April. Is this remarkable? Is this unexplained by the efforts of the public health system? This looks to me like an epidemic that’s simply run its course.

I jumped into a discussion with the author in the comment section. Aside from being quickly asked my faith status (though I’m not sure how this affects one’s ability to evaluate evidence), I got the expected tsunami of miracle claims—a bad knee healed, a barren woman now pregnant, lung cancer cured, demons cast out, blindness healed, a stroke patient recovering, a rainstorm to break a heat wave, a cracked rib healed, and so on.

(For comparison, consider the pinnacle of medical cure sites, Lourdes. After 150 years as a pilgrimage site and with six million visitors per year, the Catholic Church has recognized just 67 miraculous cures.)

I pointed out to my Kingdom League correspondent that natural explanations hadn’t been ruled out. Surprisingly, he had no interest in doing so.

I tried to portray this as a missed opportunity. If any of the many healing claims were more than just anecdotal, this group should create a dossier of x-rays, test results, photographs, or other evidence, both before and after the miracle. Add the report of the doctor who witnessed the change and then show this to the Centers for Disease Control or an epidemiologist or some other qualified authority. Why hide your light under a basket? Jesus had no problem using miracles to prove his divinity.

There seems to be no shortage of these miracles (at least in their minds), so if one miracle claim isn’t convincing, then pray for some more and try again to convince the skeptics.

That this group has no interest in going beyond feel-good anecdotes makes me think that they understand that their claims wouldn’t withstand scrutiny, not because skeptics wouldn’t play fair, but because honestly evaluating the claims would show them to be little more than wishful thinking. Their purpose in celebrating these “answers to prayer” isn’t in convincing others but convincing themselves.

Pray v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled
on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/31/12.)

Photo credit: AJC1

 

A “Personal Relationship” With Jesus? Let’s Test That.

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Personal Relationship with JesusThink about someone you know well—a friend or relative, say. Now list the attributes that make them unique. You could give the physical attributes that would help me find them at the airport—gender and age, height and weight, hair color and style, and so on—but you know much more than that.

You might know how they shake hands and if they like to hug. You might know their favorite music and sports, their favorite foods and food allergies, which TV shows they like and which they hate, their annoying habits, the names of their pets, their medical issues, where they went to school and where they’ve lived, and their past jobs. You may have helped them through a tough patch in life or vice versa.

You recognize their voice and their laugh. You have funny stories you could tell at their retirement party and poignant stories for their funeral—or vice versa.

If you have a “personal relationship with Jesus,” can you say the same thing? Can you list attributes about Jesus? If so, do you imagine that they’re the same as those of other Christians? If not, why call this a relationship?

Christians today only know Jesus from the artwork. But give your Jesus a haircut, a shave, and modern clothes. As Richard Russell (whose essay inspired this post) observed about Jesus, “You couldn’t pick him out of a 1-person lineup.” Jesus is nothing but a costume.

The many flavors of “relationship”

Consider a sequence of relationships, starting with the strongest.

  • 1. Start with the one described above, an intimate, long-term relationship with a family member or close friend.
  • 2. Now we begin to degrade the relationship. Consider a less-intimate relationship with someone you’ve met face to face. This might be neighbor, co-worker, acquaintance from a party, or just the parent of one of your kid’s classmates who you recognize but whose name you’ve forgotten. You have strong evidence that you met someone, though you have few intimate details.
  • 3. This is a voice- or text-only relationship such as a pen pal or online friend. Though these relationships can be intimate, no one would consider them equivalent to a face-to-face relationship. They can be spoofed (I wrote about the unfortunate Manti Teʻo here).
  • 4. Finally, drop even this channel of communication so that there is no objective evidence of any intelligence on the other end of the relationship except a mirror of yourself. You can fool yourself quite easily (and if you’re responding, “No, I can’t!” then you see how unassailable your own flawed ideas can be). Maybe there really is an intelligence that refuses to communicate any way except this one, but this is indistinguishable from an imaginary friend or delusion.

We know what person and relationship mean. We can look them up. “Relationship” #4 is unlike any actual relationship with an actual person. My guess is that we’re seeing what has been called Shermer’s Law: smart Christians using their substantial intellect to defend beliefs they adopted for indefensible reasons. They might be Christians who adopted that worldview from their environment, but as adults, they know that “cuz I was raised that way” is no intellectual justification for their Christian belief. They can’t admit to having an imaginary friend. Instead, they handwave that they have a relationship with an actual person, no less real than their relationship with buddies at the gym or book club.

We see this definition fiddling with other positive words—good, just, and merciful, for example. These are great words to apply to their favorite deity, but, given some of God’s shenanigans, Christians must “improve” the definitions. Sorry—that’s not how words are used.

Perversely, relationship #4 is the one that apologist William Lane Craig insists is the strongest and the least in need of evidence (I’ve written more here). Only in religion, where every day is Opposite Day, could a lack of evidence be heralded as a virtue.

The only reason you keep [claiming
your “deep, personal relationship with Jesus Christ”]
is because it’s the slogan of the club
that some con artist or charlatan has suckered you into believing
you really want to be a member of.
— Richard S. Russell

This post was inspired by “That Deep, Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ” by Richard S. Russell.

Image credit: Don Addis

Christians as Star Trek Fans

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Christians as Star Trek FansChristians are modern people, about as intelligent as any other group, and yet they jump into a world of ancient mythology and act like it’s real. They’re like trekkers who dress up as Vulcans or Klingons at a Star Trek convention. Or as Imperial Storm Troopers or Wolverine at Comicon or Dragon*con.

The difference, of course, is that faux Vulcans or Klingons know that it’s just for fun. They might spend lots of time and money on their costumes. They might learn to speak Vulcan or Klingon. But at the end of the conference, they put conventional clothes back on and reenter conventional society. They realize it’s pretend.

In a similar way, Christians leave church and reenter conventional society. Some know (or suspect) that the mythology isn’t real, like a trekker who’s in it for the pageantry and camaraderie, but many Christians do live the mythology.

Wisdom from M*A*S*H

This reminds me of the M*A*S*H television episode where Radar O’Reilly tells Sidney the psychiatrist that he has a teddy bear and wonders if he’s crazy.

“Me and my teddy bear are very close,” Radar said. “I mean … sometimes I talk to it.”

“Does it ever talk back?” Sidney asked.

“No!”

“You know how many people write letters to Romeo and Juliet and think that ‘I Love Lucy’ is real?” Sidney said. “Those people are living nice, safe lives, with towels and sheets. They’re not up to their ankles in mud, blood, and death the way you are.”

Sidney predicts that Radar probably won’t need the teddy bear once he leaves Korea. In Radar’s last episode, this prophecy is fulfilled.

You can get through life thinking that “I Love Lucy” or some other TV sitcom is real, or that food is produced at the grocery store, or that electricity is made somewhere on the other side of the electric plug but with no idea of how. You can imagine that 9/11 was a government conspiracy, that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax, that homeopathy works, or that we live in the end times.

Or that God exists.

Society’s increasing complexity insulates us from unpleasant reality

During medieval times and before, people did know where food came from (and horseshoes and wagons and cathedrals and any other element of their lives) because if they didn’t participate in that industry personally, they’d at least have seen how it was done.

Though they had a thorough grasp of the simple technology of their world, they also believed lots of nutty stuff, religion included. But, of course, they didn’t have an alternative. They didn’t have modern science to explain away the superstition and poorly evidenced explanations.

Medieval society was harsh and unforgiving, but modern life coddles people. It’s society with air bags and training wheels. Though they have little excuse, people can hold their unsupportable beliefs with little penalty. You want to imagine that that illness can be cured with prayer? Go for it—society will be here to catch you if you fall.

They can see science and technology deliver nine times but still doubt it the tenth time, and they can see religion fail nine times but still expect it to succeed the tenth time.

Society insulates Christians from reality as if they were Klingons at a convention. I just wish that, like the Klingons, they realized that it’s all just pretend.

God is really just the manager of a call center
with shitty customer service.
— hector jones, commenter

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/29/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Sh*t Christians Say

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William Lane Craig Reasonable FaithTom Gilson was provoked to produce his recent book on apologetics because of the 2012 Reason Rally (which I attended). He demands: Why allow the atheists to seize control of the word “reason”?

He said, “The atheists claim to be the party of reason, but they don’t do it that well. Christianity on the other hand has a strong claim to be reasonable and based in reason.”

World famous apologist William Lane Craig agrees:

Christians are genuinely deeper, more thoughtful people than unbelievers are because Christians do wrestle with and think about these very profound, ultimate questions. … We do encourage hard thinking and self-reflection.

Respect for reason

We’re off to a good start. Christians embrace reason, and Christians are eager to wrestle honestly with tough questions their faith raises.

Let’s turn to Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith to see if Craig continues as the strong advocate of reason.

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter. (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition, 48)

Record scratch. The “witness of the Holy Spirit” beats reason? Dr. Craig seems eager to parrot support for reason when pressed, but his true evaluation gives it a secondary role. More from Craig:

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, 47)

Why bother showing the grounding of his belief? That’s hard work, so he just assumes it—he declares it self-authenticating.

We do find some rationalization for this position:

It seems to me inconceivable that God would allow any believer to be in a position where he would be rationally obliged to commit apostasy and renounce Christ. (Source)

Wow—the guy’s got two doctorates and this is what he comes up with? Just assume God and fit the facts to that assumption?

Even [people] who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God’s Holy Spirit. (Reasonable Faith, 50)

Did you see that coming? That’s impressive blame shifting—now it’s the atheist’s fault! Craig elaborates with an analysis of their motivations:

When a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God. (Reasonable Faith, 47)

Aha—so I love darkness. Got it.

More sources of delusion

William Lane Craig has plenty of company in Crazy Town. Are you a Christian who needs a pat on the head and assurance that you’ve backed the right horse? You can check your reason at the door, believe whatever the pastor tells you, and have confidence that you’re right.

  • Martin Luther said: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
  • The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).
  • Apologist Greg Koukl said, “Intuitional truth doesn’t require a defense—a justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge—because this kind of truth isn’t a result of reasoning by steps to a conclusion. It’s an obvious truth that no rational person who understands the nature of the issue would deny.”
  • Philosopher Alvin Plantinga said, “But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism.”
  • The statement of faith of Answers in Genesis begins: “The scientific aspects of creation are important but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.”
  • Kurt Wise has a PhD in geology from Harvard but is a young-earth Creationist. He has an unusual relationship with evidence: “If all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”

An appeal for reason

But the Bible makes clear that Jesus intended his miracles to be evidence of his claims. He said, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works.” Demanding evidence is actually biblically supported.

To paraphrase physicist Paul Dirac: in science one tries to tell people, in a way understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in religion, one tries to tell people, in a grand and mysterious way, something they have no reason to believe—that an invisible God actually exists, that prayers are really answered, and that there is an afterlife.

Continue with “More Sloppy Thinking from William Lane Craig”

[The White Queen said:]
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Photo credit: joseloya

WWJD? Don’t Expect a Consistent Answer

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WWJD? atheism atheistWhat Would Jesus Do?

The WWJD acronym became popular in the nineties as a way to imagine Jesus approaching a particular problem or opportunity. Would Jesus smoke that joint? Would he skip his homework? Would he stop to help that person? Many young Christians wore a WWJD bracelet to keep the question in mind.

The problem is that this question delivers contradictory answers. Ask Fred Phelps what Jesus would do, and he would’ve said with confidence that Jesus would be preaching, “God hates fags.” Ask Harold Camping, and he would’ve said that Jesus would be warning people about the coming end. Pro-lifers think that Jesus would be picketing abortion clinics. Televangelists say that Jesus would want you to donate lots of money.

Many conservative Christians think that Jesus would reduce taxes, encourage Creationism in public schools, push laws against same-sex marriage, and deny climate change. Many liberal Christians think that he’d celebrate the scientific consensus, support healthcare provided by society (another word for “government”), encourage sex education to minimize unwanted pregnancies, and helping the neediest people.

Pick any contentious social issue—abortion, same-sex marriage, gun rights, euthanasia, our obligations to the needy, and so on—and you’ll have millions of thoughtful Christians taking each of the many contradictory positions.

What good is it?

WWJD is a useless slogan because it’s ambiguous. It’s a synonym for “In your most moral frame of mind, what would you do?” The Jesus of the Bible is a ventriloquist’s dummy who says whatever you want him to say.

BOB: Say Jesus, I was thinking of putting a little extra in the offering plate on Sunday for the food bank.

JESUS (in squeaky voice): Good thinking, Bob! After all, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

BOB: And speaking of church, I thought that Frank from across the street was a decent guy until I found out that he’s a Mormon. I think I should give him the silent treatment from now on.

JESUS: You’re right there, Bob! Remember that “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother.”

The problem is pretending that Jesus really is feeding you lines. Dropping this pretense may feel like tightrope walking without a net, but “Jesus” in this case is just a synonym for “conscience.”

If “WWJD” were to become a synonym for “use your best judgment to find the most moral solution to society’s problems,” what’s not to like?

Two hands working
can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
— Unknown

Photo credit: sonofgodresources.com