The Religious Foundation of Groundhog Day

Groundhogs and their connection with ChristianityWe’re all familiar with the major astronomical milestones in the year—the summer and winter solstices, when our hemisphere is tipped maximally toward or away from the sun, and the spring and fall equinoxes, when each day worldwide has roughly 12 hours of sunlight and 12 of darkness. These dates separate the seasons—the spring equinox marks the beginning of spring, and so on. They are to the calendar what north, south, east, and west are to the compass.
In the same way that the angles between the four cardinal compass points are divided by four ordinal points (northeast, southeast, and so on), the seasons defined by the four astronomical dates are divided by four cross-quarter days. These were Gaelic festivals in medieval times. They are Imbolc (February 2), Beltane (May 1), Lughnasadh (August 1), and Samhain (October 31). Imbolc (pronounced i-molk’) lines up with our Groundhog Day.
Most of us are familiar with the idea that on Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve, or Gaelic Samhain), spirits from the next world could enter ours, which is why ghosts and the dead are associated with Halloween. In Gaelic mythology, the veil between our world and the next became thinner not only on Samhain but for each of the cross-quarter days. These days provided opportunities for divining the future using information from beyond.
In the same way that Christmas subsumed pagan holidays on the winter solstice like Saturnalia and Yule, the Christian holiday of Candlemas subsumed Imbolc (February 2). Candlemas celebrates the presentation of Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth.
The Celtic goddess Brigid (or Brigit) was associated with Imbolc, but she too was subsumed into Christianity as Saint Brigid.
Both pagans and the Christians who followed them observed nature on Imbolc/Candlemas to glean clues to how much longer winter would last. Would it go the full six-and-a-half weeks until the spring equinox or would it be a more gentle winter?
German immigrants to America had used hedgehogs to help predict the weather. If it was sunny and the hedgehog could see its shadow, winter would go the distance. But if it was cloudy, winter would be shorter. With no hedgehogs in America, they switched to groundhogs. (The two animals are not closely related, but their habitats are similar.)
This Imbolc, whether you follow Punxsutawney Phil (the center of the biggest Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania) or some lesser-known groundhog prognosticator, keep in mind the spiritual origins of the tradition.

That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut.
Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut
than you have in your head?
You can look it up.
I know some of you are going to say,
“I did look it up, and that’s not true.”
That’s because you looked it up in a book.
Next time, look it up in your gut.
I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.

— Stephen Colbert

(This is a modified version of a post originally posted 2/1/12)
Photo credit: wvholst

Historians Reject the Bible Story

You never find the details of the Jesus story in a history book, like you would for Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great. Why is that? Why is the Bible not cataloged in the library in the History section?
Christians correctly point out that the historical grounding for the Jesus story has some compelling points. For example, there are not one but four gospel accounts. The time gap from original manuscripts to our oldest complete copies is relatively small. And the number of Bible manuscripts is far greater than those referring to anyone else of that time.
The enormous difficulty, however, is that historians reject miracles—not just in the Bible but consistently in any book that claims to be history.
Remember the story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon? The historian Suetonius reported that Julius saw a divine messenger who urged him to cross. This is the same Suetonius that Christians often point to when citing extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Jesus story.
It’s a fact of history that Suetonius wrote about the messenger, but this miraculous appearance isn’t actually part of history.
Remember Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor who reportedly ordered the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1)? Augustus was himself divinely conceived, and he ascended into heaven when he died.
These reports are part of history, but the events are not.
Everyone knows about Alexander the Great, but legends about his life grew up in his own time. Did you hear the one about how the sea bowed in submission during his conquest of the Persian Empire? Or about how ravens miraculously guided his army across the desert?
Ditto—miraculous reports don’t make it into history.
The Alexander story is a plausible natural story with excellent supporting evidence (coins with his likeness, cities with his name, stele with his laws, the spread of Hellenism and the creation of the successor empires, records of his conquests from outsiders, and so on) and a few miracles. The natural part is the noteworthy part; the miracles don’t add much.
Compare this to the Jesus story, an implausible story of a god documented by religious texts and without any supporting evidence. Jesus didn’t leave any writings himself, there is nothing from contemporary historians, and later historians record only the existence of the religion. With this story, only the miraculous part is noteworthy.
Strip away the miracle claims from Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus or Alexander the Great and you’re left with precisely the story of those leaders that we have in history. But strip away the miracle claims from the Jesus story, and you have just the story of an ordinary man—a charismatic rabbi, perhaps, but hardly divine.
Christians argue that we should treat the Gospel story like any other biography of the time, and I agree—but I doubt they will like where that takes them.

I am the punishment of God …
If you had not committed great sins,
God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you
— Genghis Khan

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 9/6/11.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia

God Doesn’t Exist: Christianity Looks Invented

Let me propose this axiom: a human-invented religion will look radically different from the worship of a real god.  That is, human longing for the divine (or human imagination) will cobble together a very poor imitation of the real thing.
Let’s first look at an example in the domain of languages.  Imagine that you’re a linguist and you’re creating a tree of world languages.  Each language should be nearer languages that are related and similar, and it should be farther from those that are dissimilar.  Spanish and Portuguese are next to each other on the tree; add French, Italian, and others and call that the Romance Languages; add other language groups like Germanic, Celtic, and Indic and you get the Indo-European family; and so on.
Here’s your challenge: you have two more languages to fit in.  First, find the spot for English.  It’s pretty easy to see, based on geography, vocabulary, and language structure, that it fits into the Germanic group.  Next, an alien language like a real Klingon or Na’vi.  This one wouldn’t fit in at all and would be unlike every human language.
Now imagine a tree of world religions.  Your challenge is to find the place for Yahweh worship of 1000 BCE.  Is it radically different from all the manmade religions, as unlike manmade religions as the alien language was to human languages?  Or does it fit into the tree comfortably next to the other religions of the Ancient Near East, like English fits nicely into the Germanic group?
You’d expect the worship of the actual creator of the universe to look dramatically different from religions invented by Iron Age tribesmen in Canaan, but religious historians tell us that Yahweh looks similar to other Canaanite deities like Asherah, Baal, Moloch, Astarte, Yam, or Mot.  What could he be but yet another invented god?
Photo credit: Wikipedia
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God Doesn’t Exist: Historians Reject the Bible Story

You’re probably aware that the person making a claim has the burden of proof.  In the courtroom, for example, the prosecution has the burden of proof.  There are no ties—when neither side makes a convincing case, the side that failed to carry its burden of proof loses.
The same is true for people who claim “God exists”—they have the burden of proof.  That makes it easier for atheists.  But now I want to make a positive claim: that atheism explains reality better than Christianity.
I plan a series of posts making arguments in support of the claim “God doesn’t exist.”  Here’s the first argument: historians reject the Bible story.
You never find the details of the Jesus story in a history book, like you would for Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.  Why is that?  Why is the Bible not cataloged in the library in the History section?
Christians correctly point out that the historical grounding for the Jesus story has some compelling points.  For example, there are not one but four gospel accounts.  The time gap from original manuscripts to our oldest complete copies is relatively small.  And the number of Bible manuscripts is far greater than those referring to anyone else of that time.
The enormous difficulty, however, is that historians reject miracles—not just in the Bible but consistently in any book that claims to be history.
Remember the story of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon?  The historian Suetonius reported that Julius saw a divine messenger who urged him to cross.  This is the same Suetonius that Christians often point to when citing extra-biblical evidence for the historicity of the Jesus story.
Remember Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor who reportedly ordered the census that brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem?  He was himself divinely conceived, and he ascended into heaven when he died1—or so the stories went.
Everyone knows about  Alexander the Great, but legends about his life grew up in his own time.  Did you hear the one about how the sea bowed in submission during his conquest of the Persian Empire?
Strip away the miracle claims from Julius Caesar or Caesar Augustus or Alexander the Great and you’re left with precisely the story of those leaders that we have in history.  But strip away the miracle claims from the Jesus story, and you have just the story of an ordinary man—a charismatic rabbi, perhaps, but hardly divine.
Christians argue that we should treat the Gospel story like any other biography of the time, and I agree—but I doubt they will like where that takes them.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
1Charles H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? (Mercer University Press, 1985), p. 32.
Other posts in the God Doesn’t Exist series: