Four Blood Moons: Revisiting John Hagee’s Embarrassing Failure

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Televangelist windbags get away with too much. Let’s hold their feet to the fire. Today, let’s revisit John Hagee’s nonsensical Four Blood Moons hoax.

It was useful, of course—useful to Pastor Hagee in shearing the flock of their money and keeping them subservient to his “Oh dear, oh dear, the end is nigh!” message. While this was important to him, it wasn’t helpful to those of us who care about truth.

Hagee’s four scary lunar eclipses ran from April 2014 to October 2015. (Do you remember any world news during that period much more noteworthy than usual for an 18-month period? Me neither.) So weak was his story that not only was there no scientific evidence that anything dramatic should’ve been expected, the Bible itself couldn’t even support his claims.

Astronomical background

Because the plane that the moon orbits in is off by five degrees from the ecliptic (the plane defined by the orbit of the earth around the sun), an opportunity for either lunar or solar eclipses only happens twice a year. Lunar eclipses are quite common, with total lunar eclipses somewhat less so. Much less likely is a total eclipse and then six months later, another, and then another, and then another—four total lunar eclipses over 18 months. Since the year 1 CE, there have been 57 such “tetrads.”

Why are these eclipses interesting religiously?

Now consider the religious connection. The Jewish festivals of Passover and Sukkot begin on full moons, and they are also six months apart. A lunar eclipse tetrad can line up with them—four lunar eclipses on successive Passovers or Sukkots—and there have been eight such alignments since 1 CE, with the last concluding in 2015.

What’s the religious significance of this alignment? None. Joel 2:30–31 talks about the moon turning to blood, but there is nothing about four of them, so Christian Zionist opportunist John Hagee invented a connection. Since total eclipses usually look red, he calls a lunar eclipse tetrad that aligns with the Jewish festivals “four blood moons,” and he says they line up with significant events in Jewish history. He argues his theory by looking at the three alignments that preceded the most recent one (the dates below are of the first eclipse in the tetrad).

  • 1967 was the Six-Day War
  • 1949 was the establishment of Israel
  • 1493 was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain

The sharp-eyed reader will notice that the Jews were actually expelled from Spain one year earlier. The date for the establishment of Israel is also off. Omnipotent God apparently isn’t so good at lining things up.

Apparently, Hagee’s hypothesis was that tetrads mean either good or bad things happening to the Jewish people, with the date a little fuzzy. Note also that not all significant events get a tetrad. The Holocaust during World War II is glaringly absent. God’s message then becomes, “Something good or bad will soon happen to the Jewish people, or has happened, and I might’ve missed a few.” I have far higher standards for Hagee’s god than Hagee does.

What about those tetrads that were omitted?

It gets worse when we consider the four ignored alignments, which began in the years 162, 795, 842, and 860. Hagee doesn’t bother wondering what God was saying with these, because they don’t support his flabby hypothesis. But if God wanted to point to important events for the Jewish people, obvious candidates would have included the three Jewish-Roman Wars. Hagee apparently doesn’t credit his flock with much knowledge, but even they will know the first omission.

  • The First Jewish-Roman War (66 – 74 CE) included the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the deaths of 1.1 million Jews (according to Josephus), and the enslavement of the survivors.
  • The Kitos War (115 – 117 CE) began with ethnic Judeans outside of Palestine rising up to slaughter Roman soldiers and noncombatants—reportedly half a million. The empire violently put down the revolt.
  • The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132 – 136 CE) was, like the First War, conducted in Judea. One source called it a genocide and more significant in damaging Judaism in Judea than the First War.

(For further detail on Hagee’s ill-advised dabblings into prophecy, I’ve written more here. And about his movie. And about what actually makes a good prophecy.)

Piling on with more apocalypse fear

This recent tetrad provided an opportunity for opportunists like Hagee to pile on more stuff with vague, unsupported claims that it is meaningful to Christianity or Judaism says.

  • The last year in a seven-year cycle in the Jewish calendar is a Shemitah year, and Hagee’s tetrad included such a year (which ended 9/13/15). Shemitah is a time to let the land go fallow and forgive debts with fellow Jews. Some said that this was meaningful, but Wikipedia says, “There is little notice of the observance of this year in Biblical history and it appears to have been much neglected.” And why imagine divine wrath when Shemitah is a time of forgiveness?
  • This entire celestial farce was invisible in Israel, with the exception of the final lunar eclipse.
  • Four days before the last of Hagee’s eclipses was the September 23, 2015 apocalypse. Oddly, that didn’t happen, either.

Perhaps the real calamity is the gullibility of Christians who give credence to charlatans like Hagee.

Let’s conclude by trying to figure out what’s actually supposed to happen in part 2.

There’s a sucker born every minute.
— Barnum 3:16

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/25/15.)

Image from krheesy, CC license
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The Quantum Logic of Christian Apologists

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Many technology companies are working on different approaches to quantum computers, and Google recently claimed an impressive success. Their Sycamore quantum processor did in a few minutes what the most powerful supercomputer would take 10,000 years to accomplish. Performing a calculation with a quantum computer that would be practically impossible for a conventional computer is called “quantum supremacy.”

IBM rained on the parade by stating that that supercomputer would’ve completed the calculation in just 2.5 days. Regardless of whether a conventional approach would’ve taken 10,000 years or 2.5 days, it was an impressive achievement, but it did lead to an amusing article title, Google both has and hasn’t achieved “quantum supremacy”.

We need a brief detour to make sure we’re on the same page about why this title is clever, and then we’ll search for that quantum feature within Christianity.

Quantum computers use quantum superposition. A quantum particle that could be in one of two states—let’s say spin up or spin down—can be spin up, spin down, or a superposition of probabilities for being in either one. The superposition goes away if the particle is forced to pick one or the other. It’s a quantum particle’s ability to hold two states at once (or something like that) that allows remarkable parallelism compared to a conventional computer, which uses bits that are either 0 or 1, and that’s it.

Superposition of two states—two states being held at once—is the key to quantum computing, and that was the allusion behind the title, “Google both has and hasn’t achieved quantum supremacy.”

We can find that superposition within Christianity, too.

Christian superposition: what is prayer good for?

My macro-world example of superposition is not Schrödinger’s Cat but Christian apologists. Christians often respond to challenges without considering the consequences so that they’re saying one thing to respond to a challenge but the opposite to respond to another. They answer with blinders on, determined to find a pleasing answer but uninterested in or unaware of how their conclusions will affect the rest of their Christian worldview.

As an example, I wrote about a blatant contradiction within Greg Koukl’s Stand to Reason ministry. During Christmas season last year, one of their staffers (Melinda) suffered a serious head injury. Koukl said:

I don’t know what God’s thinking about things, but I know what Christians are doing and I hope you’re doing with us—you’re praying like crazy. And that’s what we want you to keep doing—praying Melinda out of this.

That’s not surprising. That’s a typical Christian approach to prayer. But six weeks earlier, Koukl responded with a very different response to another tragedy, a mass shooting in a church that killed 25 and injured 20. Those people were very likely praying, but it obviously didn’t do much good. Ever eager to explain away God’s absence, Koukl inverted his argument and stated that it’s foolish to expect God to answer prayers for protection.

Why expect God to help Melinda’s injury but ridicule the idea that God would help Christians praying for their lives in a church? Koukl treats God as a sock puppet whose viewpoint can change completely if necessary.

Christian superposition and the structure of a sitcom

Seeing unchanging and omniscient “God” dance between alternatives as his master demands reminds me of a popular structure for a television comedy. TV Tropes calls it the “Fawlty Towers Plot” (Fawlty Towers was a British sitcom) though it’s evident in I Love Lucy and many others. First, someone tells a small lie. To avoid getting caught, they tell a larger lie, and so on. The snowball rolls downhill until eventually crashing into reality in the end.

In a similar way, the Christian feels obliged to defend Christianity, the Bible, or God regardless of the evidence or the consequences. When that answer is shown to be in conflict with something else, out comes another rationalization that may in turn come back to bite them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Christian superposition: contradictions

Perhaps the clearest example of this superposition is monotheism vs. the doctrine of the Trinity. Muslim apologists gleefully point out the contradiction since both Islam and Christianity inherited the primacy of monotheism from Judaism. Nevertheless, it’s hard to shoehorn “the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty” (from the Athanasian Creed) into a single god.

I attended a Sunday school class on biblical inerrancy. The teacher’s stock answer when faced with two seemingly incompatible Bible passages was, “They’re both true.” The differing numbers of women or angels at the tomb? Jesus’s differing genealogies? How Judas died? Somehow, both options are always true.

Useful homework for Christian apologists would be to create a gospel harmony, a single document that attempts to collect and make sense of every declaration in the four canonical gospels. Tatian’s Diatessaron from the second century is the most famous, but many harmonies have been created. None resolve the contradictions. The naturalistic hypothesis is hard to beat: the Bible is a manmade document composed of mythology, legend, and wishful thinking, plus some accurate history.

The fundamental that apologists always seem to miss is that their goal isn’t to find an answer to every challenge but to find the best answer.

Quantum computing and consciousness are both weird
and therefore equivalent.
(Or not: see SMBC comic for more)

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Image from IBM
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Silver-Bullet Argument #27: Christianity Is Full of Symbolism

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symbolism

Christianity and the Bible are full of symbolism. For example, during the Flood it rained for forty days, not just a good long time. Baptism rinses away sins like water rinses away dirt. In Communion, the faithful consume the flesh and blood of God—at least in a symbolic fashion.

Why doesn’t the Bible read like a history book? That Christianity needs and uses symbolism is a silver-bullet argument against Christianity.

(This is argument 27 in a list that begins here.)

Symbolism in everyday life

Consider first the symbols we see around us. Red means stop and green means go, but together they mean Christmas. Thanksgiving, Halloween, and other holidays have their own colors, as do sports teams, political parties, and political movements. Green means concern for the environmental, or maybe it means concern for money (at least in the US). White means purity, though in China, it means death. In Japan, “death” is a homonym for “four,” which is why gift tea sets for the Japanese market have five cups, not four. Hoping to attract Japanese gamblers who want to avoid unlucky room numbers, there are hotels in Las Vegas where the floor numbering has no 4s, and the floor after 39 is 50.

Movies and television use standard symbols as shorthand. Fireworks might mean sex. Pages can fly off a wall calendar to show the passage of time. The dismantling of a small piece of the Berlin Wall or the toppling of statues of Lenin or Saddam Hussein in themselves meant little, but they are convenient and photogenic symbols of an enormously significant regime change.

Another area of fiction where symbolism can be important is literature. Water at night can be used as a symbol for the unconscious. Fog or a squawking bird might suggest danger. Spring and flowers represent youth and vitality, and falling leaves and snow represent age and death. Mention a rose to suggest love or beauty, or focus on its thorns to suggest danger or deception. The town in the 2016 Preacher television series is Annville (think “anvil”). In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, guilt drives Lady Macbeth to imagine her hands stained with blood that won’t wash off (a denial of another symbol, the cleansing effect of water through baptism).

Red meaning “stop” is arbitrary, but literary symbolism makes a more universal appeal. One purpose of symbolism is to engage the reader. Instead of writing, “Bill’s wicked side slowly overcame his good side in his mind,” you might show a black crow picking at a dead white dove. Readers enjoy figuring things out for themselves. In addition, a symbol can be taken as a more universal statement than, say, the moral contest in a single person’s mind.

Symbolism in science and history

Contrast storytelling in literature or on the screen with science and history, which have no use for literary symbolism. There is no point in the reader having to figure out what the author means. Here, good writing is clear and straightforward.

Let me mention one apparent counterexample. Take one aspect of quantum physics—for example, that the nucleus of an atom has protons and neutrons. This is just a model. We don’t know for certain that this model is exactly how it is in reality, but if we assume that model, we can make very accurate predictions. The theoretical model correctly predicting or explaining experimental results is as good as it gets.

Notice the difference. A scientific model is as clear as possible, like a window. A symbol is something to figure out and think about.

Symbolism in Christianity

Christianity claims to tell us true things that happened in the past (history) and true things about reality (science). Nevertheless, we find lots of symbolism, which puts it in the fiction camp with literature and movies. If there really were a God with a message we needed to understand, he’d just present himself and give us the message. He’s not even constrained by a limited timeframe so that he would need to document his message for posterity in a book. He could effortlessly be on call to every person on earth throughout history.

As an example of Christian symbolism, baptism claims to rinse away sins like water rinses away dirt. You do something in the real world (baptism), and something parallel happens in the supernatural realm (sins washed away).

Christian pilgrims may dial it up by getting baptized in the Holy Land. But baptism is baptism, and there are no bonus points for doing it a second time, doing it in the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, or doing it while wearing a white robe. But they do it anyway. There’s no doubt that these are important to the Christian pilgrims, but they’re just symbolic additions to a symbolic ritual.

Communion is another ritual. As background, remember that this comes from a religion where God was fed with food offerings. The energy of the sacrificed animal would rise up as smoke, which the Bible tells us 37 times is accepted by God as a “pleasing aroma.” We also learn that the food value varies depending on the sacrifice. Larger animals are more valuable than smaller ones, human sacrifices are more valuable than animals, and a god (Jesus) is more than a human. Communion is the Christian’s opportunity to participate in this nourishment, because it is a weekly celebration of the sacrifice of Jesus commemorated by symbolically consuming his flesh and blood (or actually consuming it, according to most Christians).

We see more symbolic blood magic with the idea of “the blood of the Lamb” washing things clean (see Revelation 7).

Number symbolism is also popular. God rested on the seventh day, and Revelation has lots of sevens (bowls, trumpets, and more). There are ten Commandments and ten plagues of Egypt, and some of the parables have tens (ten virgins, ten talents). There were forty days of rain in the Flood and forty years of wandering in the Sinai desert, and Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days.

Harold Camping’s embarrassing prediction of the end of the world on May 21, 2011 was based on that date being, by his calculation, (5 × 10 × 17)² days after the crucifixion. What do those numbers mean? According to Camping, 5 = atonement, 10 = completion, and 17 = heaven, so the Rapture would happen after a time period of (atonement × completion × heaven) squared days. (More on Brother Camping’s $100 million absurdity here.)

There’s more number symbolism, of course. The number of the Beast is 666 (or is it 616?). The disciples made a miraculous catch of 153 fish. There were twelve disciples and twelve tribes. There are four authentic gospels (out of dozens) because there are four winds and four points of the compass. But let’s move on.

The new kingdom as described at the end of Revelation was made with “every kind of precious stone.”

Jesus was described as a lamb, a reference to the unblemished lambs in the Passover meal.

The symbol of a fish (ichthys in Greek) was a secret symbol in the early church. The word was an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

Jesus died to respond to original sin.

Flames symbolized the Holy Spirit visiting the apostles on Pentecost.

A rainbow symbolized God’s promise to stop destroying the planet.

Conclusion

That was a cursory tour, and you can probably think of more instances of symbols within Christianity—things that mean something different in the supernatural world than they do here.

But symbolism is what you do when you’re trying to bridge a gap. Symbolism is used by art and literature, not history and science. You don’t need to conjure up the supernatural with mystical ideas, symbolism, coincidences, numerology, and so on if it really exists.

If the Bible is God’s message, its purpose is presumably to explain his plan. There’s no room for and no need for symbolism. That the Bible has symbolism argues that it has a different purpose than history.

See also: Why Not Call What God Does “Magic”?

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person
for doubting or denying its teachings,
and most of these teachings have been true;
but religion has murdered millions
for doubting or denying her dogmas,
and most of these dogmas have been false.
— Charles L. Wallis, Stories on Stone (1954)

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Image from Thought Catalog, CC license
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Not Even Hitler Can Help This Christian Argument

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In my reading I occasionally come across an argument that makes simple and important observations about a familiar argument that I had missed. I love such occasions, and I wish it happened more often. Let me summarize one case for your benefit, a video and article by NonStampCollector. I’ve added a bit of my own material, but the credit for most of the good stuff goes to the original author.

He begins with a quote that is almost surely by William Lane Craig. (NonStampCollector uses a direct quote to show that he’s responding to authentic Christian arguments but keeps it anonymous to avoid tangents related to the source.)

Introducing Nazi World

William Lane Craig (WLC) uses Nazi Germany’s Holocaust as an example to argue for objectively true morality.

Say Hitler had won the war, and we now lived in a society where because of that, and the propaganda, everyone believed that anti-Semitism was good, and gassing Jews was fine. Would that mean then that that was simply the morality that we accept? Is morality simply, at the end of the day, what society thinks about a matter? Or would it still be wrong even though nobody thought it was wrong?

WLC wants to use our shared revulsion of mass murder and attempted genocide to argue for a God-based grounding of that shared morality, but ignore that. Let’s just use his thought experiment of Nazi World, where Germany’s victory plus propaganda has convinced everyone that the genocide of Jews was right.

Some people living in Nazi World might accept this worldview reluctantly. They might say that, though the Holocaust was a necessary evil, it was still evil. Nevertheless, in this world, the person who labels the Holocaust as irretrievably wrong would be like today’s Nazi skinhead—a member of a tiny, ridiculed, dangerous minority. In Nazi World, Americans would see Hitler as another Lincoln—a man who had the courage to make the tough moral call.

You can be sure that Nazi World historians and public intellectuals would have hammered together detailed arguments to justify the Holocaust. This is a crazy notion in the West in the 21st century, but it is an interesting thought experiment (indeed, more interesting than I’d realized).

I’ve responded to this argument of WLC’s in a prior post, but here’s where NonStampCollector’s argument moves into new territory.

Déjà vu?

Pause and take a long look at Nazi World. It’s outrageous and inconceivable at first glance, but is it really? Think about it. Some traits should seem quite familiar to us today. They surround us. Any Christian who remembers their Sunday School Bible stories will have come across this very thing.

Genocides as unpleasant but necessary? Tribes killed because they deserved it? Those wielding the sword held up as heroes doing unpleasant but necessary work? The Old Testament is full of this!

“[Joshua] left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the [Lord] had commanded” (Joshua 10:40).

“The Lord heard the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites; then they utterly destroyed them and their cities.” (Numbers 21:3).

“[God said:] Strike the Amalekites and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant” (1 Samuel 15:3).

“David attacked the land and did not leave a man or a woman alive” (1 Sam. 27:9).

“You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you; your eye shall not pity them” (Deuteronomy 7:16).

“Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deut. 20:17).

(I’ve written more about God’s passion for genocide and Christian apologists’ weak arguments in God’s defense here, here, and here.)

Christians like WLC tell us that mass murder and genocide are objectively wrong and that the Bible backs up that instinct. They point to the Bible when they say that the Holocaust was immoral, but look at where this takes them. With their blind defense of the Bible, Christians have created Nazi World, that terrible and inconceivable world in which genocide is accepted, both by them and their god!

Could a German victory plus propaganda really create a long-lasting and widespread assurance that genocide was correct? We have an example that’s already lasted longer than Hitler’s hoped-for thousand-year Reich—the widespread belief among the world’s 2.17 billion Christians that the Israelite genocides in Canaan were morally correct.

When apologists like WLC describe Nazi World, they describe Christianity today—a brainwashed dystopia in which genocide is accepted. They’ve simply replaced Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, and Hitler with Joshua, Moses, Gideon, and God.

At the risk of putting too fine a point on this (or perhaps luxuriating in schadenfreude), let’s rewrite the WLC quote above.

Say the Israelites had driven out the inhabitants of Canaan, and we now lived in a society where because of that, and the propaganda, everyone believed that genocide was good, and killing Canaanites was fine, would that mean then that that was simply the morality that we accept? Is morality simply, at the end of the day, what society thinks about a matter? Or would it still be wrong even though nobody thought it was wrong?

“Killing Canaanites was fine” is indeed the morality that Christians typically accept.

Christian rebuttal

In response, Christian apologists demand to know the standard by which we atheists judge the Bible wrong. They’ll charge atheists with appealing to an objective moral standard and so acknowledging an Objective Moral Standard Giver. If instead atheists reject this Morality Giver, they’ve lost their moral foundation. They’re left with whatever morality they can cobble together themselves, but all that gives you is a subjective, changeable, culturally specific morality. (I respond to apologist Greg Koukl trying this trick here and here.)

But whatever reasoning an atheist uses to conclude that Old Testament genocides and murder are barbaric is already better than basing any reasoning on the Bible, because that reasoning is circular: the moral decisions made in the Bible are right because the Bible’s morality says they are. Judging the god who ordered genocide by the standards given by the god who ordered genocide is like saying that Hitler was moral because Hitler said so. The atheist is able to make the obvious call and declare genocide wrong. The Christian response: “It’s complicated.”

Where could you find justification for the Holocaust? Today you find that only in ancient holy books that justify genocide. NonStampCollector ends with this observation: “If there’s a worldview that leads people to excuse and condone appallingly cruel behavior, it’s not atheism, it’s theism.”

Religion is a byproduct of fear.
For much of human history,
it may have been a necessary evil,
but why was it more evil than necessary?
Isn’t killing people in the name of God
a pretty good definition of insanity?
— Arthur C. Clarke

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/13/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

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Prayer: Because Jesus Already Knows What You Want, He Just Wants to Hear You Beg

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You don’t often come across clever atheist memes from Christians, but for me this was an exception. Christian apologist Tom Gilson attacks the meme in the image above in an article published today: “Atheist Memes: Be Wise—Don’t Take the Bait!”

(I commented on another Gilson post just a month ago.)

How Christians are (apparently) supposed to respond

By “Don’t take the bait,” Gilson means:

[I wish] believers would refuse to let atheists bait them. Or if I may switch metaphors, that we’d refuse to play by atheists’ rules.

Huh? What atheist rules? You mean reason and evidence? Are atheists out of line for pointing out (apparently) ridiculous aspects in Christians’ supernatural views? Perhaps what he really wants is for Christians to avoid getting into the ring if they’re likely to get beaten.

But why avoid engaging atheists? Wouldn’t that be a chance to follow 1 Peter 3:15, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”?

The article did contain the hint of one point that I agree with: that atheist/Christian discussions are rarely fruitful and usually frustrating. But that’s not where Gilson wants to go.

Questions Christians should ask

What Would Jesus Do? Apparently, ignore the challenge, assume the rightness of his position, and press forward. In Jesus fashion, Gilson wants to ask questions “to help [atheists] see that their question is built on faulty premises.”

Here are the questions (in italics) in Gilson’s Socratic Method to gently guide the foolish atheist to the Truth.

Tell me, please, what you think prayer is.

Here are the claims made for prayer:

Ask and you will receive (John).

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you (Matthew).

Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours (Mark).

He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do (John).

I wonder where you got that information from?

From Jesus himself, if the Bible is to be believed.

Do you think that’s all there is to prayer? Has it occurred to you there might be more to it?

One answer: Yes, that’s it. If Jesus wanted to qualify the method, he would’ve done so. Surely, Christians must agree that the Holy Bible is a reliable source of the declarations of Jesus.

Another answer: Christians aren’t stupid, and they realize that “Ask and you will receive” isn’t how prayer actually works. So they imagine qualifications that for some reason weren’t included in the gospels—it was your fault for asking for something selfish or foolish, God has a better plan, God isn’t your genie, God did answer it (just not the way you wanted), and so on. I must repeat: while these are popular rationalizations within Christianity, that’s not how prayer is defined by Jesus.

The Christian who is disappointed after taking the gospels’ promises about prayer at face value is told that they need a mature faith. That is, put your faith first and reason second. With a clash between faith (an earnest prayer offered) and reason (an unanswered prayer tells you that the Bible’s claims are flawed), the “mature” Christian will whip up reasons to listen to faith and ignore reason.

Tell me what you understand of the character of Jesus, that would lead you to think he might be pulling a trick on us like the meme suggests?

You ask the wrong question. You don’t take Jesus in the gospel story as a given and then wonder why a prayer wasn’t answered. Instead, you approach this as you would any remarkable claim—say, cure cancer by changing your diet or invest your retirement savings in this new startup. You assume nothing up front. The Bible’s claims about prayer are easy to test, and disconfirming evidence follows quickly. It’s not that “Jesus” is playing a trick, it’s that the Bible’s supernatural claims are false, just like all the others.

If Christians were unbiased, they wouldn’t double down after prayer has been shown not to work but would question whether Christianity is worthy of their belief.

Why do you think Christians pray? Is it because the issue you’ve raised here has never occurred to us?

I know prayer doesn’t work, and so do Christians. The light switch works. The car works. The telephone works. Works is precisely what prayer doesn’t do.

Prayer provides intermittent rewards, and Christians are like pigeons in a Skinner box. Pigeons in cages who are fed food pellets at random times imagine that they somehow caused the food to appear. If they were preening or pecking or flapping when the food appeared, they try to conjure up more food with repetitions of that action. It becomes a superstition.

It’s not that Christian newbies tentatively try prayer, find that it works, and increasingly use it as a reliable tool. No—belief comes first, and prayer is what believers do. They get intermittent reinforcement through the odd coincidence or occasional wish that comes to pass.

Your view of Christians here seems to be that we’re mindless and stupid. Am I right to read you that way, or did I get that wrong?

No, that’s not my view. I’m stuck with the same imperfect brain that you are. I’m subject to the same biases that you are.

Most Christians (indeed, most religious believers) adopt the religion of their surroundings. They believe because they were taught to. The combination of being raised to believe false things and being a smart adult with a mature Bullshit Detector means the adult can either see that their supernatural beliefs are no better grounded than those in Hinduism or Buddhism, or they can double down and use their intelligence to justify their beliefs after the fact (Shermer’s Law). That avoids cognitive dissonance, the discomfort from holding two contradicting beliefs.

Back to your question, it makes sense that children accept the guidance of their community as they grow up. They’re not stupid for believing that the stove can be dangerous, you must be careful crossing the street, and Jesus knows everything. It’s just that society’s truths are wrong sometimes.

What about that meme?

True to his word, Gilson has avoided taking the bait and actually addressing the meme. No, you wouldn’t want to play the atheist’s game and actually respond to the question of why prayer is needed at all when Jesus/God already knows what you want and need.

Other posts on prayer:

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Prayer is an act of doubt, not faith.
If you really thought your god was watching over everything
and you genuinely trusted in his “plan,”
you wouldn’t be praying in the first place.
— seen on the internet

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How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (4 of 4).

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This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

In the (mercifully) final section of their chapter on morality, Geisler and Turek (GT) list five areas of confusion within the topic of absolute vs. relative morality. Since the boys have indeed been quite confused about this, perhaps we’ll get some clarity on the issue. The labels in this enumerated list come from their book.

Confusion #1—absolute morals vs. changing behavior

GT tell us that relativists confuse is and ought. You can change what you do, but you can’t change what you ought to do. GT tell us that relativists sometimes preface their outrage at backwards Christian attitudes about issues like sex with, “This is the twenty-first century!” as if morality adapts to the times.

But of course morality has changed over time—consider changing attitudes toward slavery, genocide, and rape, for example. During every time period, society thinks that they have finally gotten on the right side of these issues. GT can fume about it, but morality changes. Given that the Bible’s morality is abysmal, society’s moral evolution away from that is a good thing.

GT respond to charges that our many approaches to morality undercut the idea of a Moral Law, an objective morality.

But that doesn’t mean there is no unchanging Moral Law; it simply means that we all violate it. (page 182)

No, our contradictory moral actions mean that there is no objective, reliably accessible Morality, which they have already admitted. How they imagine this strengthens their claim of objective morality (when the natural explanation works just fine), I can’t imagine.

There’s also a vague reference to the is-ought problem, which I respond to here.

Confusion #2—absolute morals vs. changing perceptions of the facts

GT try to salvage the idea of objective, unchanging morals with the example of witch burning. We used to burn witches but not anymore. A change in morality? The boys tell us no:

What has changed is not the moral principle that murder is wrong but the perception or factual understanding of whether “witches” can really murder people by their curses. (183)

Not really. The KJV of Exodus 22:18 memorably demands of us, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Western society today includes witches (that is, people who so identify and who have corresponding supernatural beliefs), but only the most fringe Christian would demand the death penalty. This is a change in morality, and our modern morality (which is so familiar as to seem like common sense) wins out over a foreign idea in an ancient book.

Confusion #3—absolute morals vs. applying them to particular situations

Even if two victims wind up disagreeing over the morality of a particular act, this does not mean morality is relative. An absolute Moral Law can exist even if people fail to know the right thing to do in a particular situation. (183)

Translation: “Yeah, but I never said that objective morality was reliably accessible.” (But then what good is it?)

The larger point GT make is, “You haven’t proven me wrong.” That’s correct, but that’s not the skeptic’s job. I’ve given a plausible natural explanation for morality. You want to make the remarkable claim that objective morality exists? I’m listening, but not only have you done nothing but assert it, the moral issues you raise are better explained with natural explanations.

Going forward, I’ll leave pointing out the Assumed Objectivity fallacy as an exercise for the reader.

GT move on to imagine people puzzling over a life-or-death dilemma. They come to different conclusions and conclude that morality is relative.

But the dilemma actually proves the opposite—that morality is absolute. How? Because there would be no dilemma if morality were relative! If morality were relative and there were no absolute right to life, you’d say, “It doesn’t matter what happens!” . . . The very reason we struggle with the dilemma is because we know how valuable life is. (184)

Let’s consider the moral options that GT imagine. They reject option 1, some strange form of laissez-faire, “I have my opinion and you have yours, and whatever you do is fine with me” kind of morality. This strawman morality exists only in GT’s imaginations.

GT hope you’ll pick option 2 and say that an objectively correct answer exists, and our only problem, when faced with a moral dilemma, is calling forth this answer from the phlogiston or ectoplasm or wherever it lives. And GT admit that they have no reliable voodoo to do so.

It’s up to the skeptic to point to option 3, the obvious natural explanation: we all share a common sense of morality, and ambiguous or subtle moral puzzles can separate us into opposing camps. There is no objectively correct answer.

The fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn’t disprove the existence of objective moral laws any more than difficult problems in science disprove the existence of objective natural laws. (184)

Translation: “Ha! You can’t prove me wrong.” That’s not much of an argument.

Yes, there are difficult problems in science, and there are objective natural laws. Science continually pushes through difficult problems and finds those laws. But you say that parallels our search for objective moral laws?

Show me. Science has uncovered many new laws about nature in the last two centuries, so produce one example of a new objective moral law from that time. Eternal aphorisms like the Golden Rule don’t count because they’re old. And if it’s a new development (say, “slavery is bad” or “no genocide”), it can’t be unchanging and is therefore not objective.

The attempted parallel with natural laws fails.

If just one moral obligation exists (such as don’t murder, or don’t rape, or don’t torture babies), then the Moral Law exists. If the Moral Law exists, then so does the Moral Law Giver. (184)

GT are getting desperate now and have ignored the collateral damage. They’ve thrown out of the life raft any claim that their Moral Law is reliably accessible—or even accessible at all. Their objective morality has become a useless bit of trivia—something that exists but might as well not for all the good it does us. They have no explanation for God’s Old Testament rampages and moral errors. As a result, they have discarded any claim to be honestly searching for the truth. This is all to make the claim, “Well, you haven’t proven that objective moral truth is impossible, so God could still exist!”

Would God want to rule the moral wasteland that you’ve left him?

Confusion #4—absolute morals (what) vs. a relative culture (how)

Morality varies by culture—yes, I agree.

Confusion #5—absolute morals vs. moral disagreements

GT note that there are contentious moral issues within society.

Some think abortion is acceptable while others think it’s murder. But just because there are different opinions about abortion doesn’t mean morality is relative. (185)

Not for sure, but it’s a good clue. This is the “You haven’t proven me wrong!” argument again. The burden of proof is yours.

Next up, GT handwave that “each side defends what they think is an absolute moral value.” Redefinition! No one believes in relative morality, and morality is now only absolute morality.

On the heels of that is another redefinition. If you disagree with GT’s anti-abortion stance,

This moral disagreement [about abortion] exists because some people are suppressing the Moral Law in order [to] justify what they want to do. (186)

So if you’re pro-choice, you’re just wrong. As if the arrogance couldn’t get any greater, morality has devolved to become that which GT believe.

I can’t take any more of the same childish errors over and over, so I’m done with this chapter. I’m amazed that the Christian flock is content to be fed such pablum.

I don’t have enough intellectual dishonesty
to be a Christian.
— title of one Amazon review of
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/28/15.)

Image from Wikipedia, CC license
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