Islam vs. Christianity

Which faith is more destructive to the civilized world, Islam or Christianity? This is a question I think about from time to time. At first, I thought it was an easy one to answer, but despite deceiving first appearances, the question is not so easily answered. Instead of "Christianity vs. Islam", I selected "Islam vs. Christianity" as the title because the more obvious candidate most would consider to be worse is Islam. Not so fast...

More than anything, Islam is what it appears to be. It is unapologetic about what it is and what it intends to do -- convert the world and kill any and everyone who refuses to go along with it. Islam is a monster, a rabid, hideously ugly, monster, with red glowing eyes, and gray, cold, stinky, scaly skin. It's razor sharp claws and well-used, saber-sized, protruding fangs can be seen from a great distance away. The closer you get to the beast, you begin to hear the threatening, and growling sounds of an angry, snarling, beast. From the very outset, there's no question that this creature is hungry and anxiously hell-bent on making a meal out of you. Islam is openly aggressive, expressly intolerant of the beliefs of others, and suicidally violent, no matter what you hear from the proponents of the more toned down versions of modern Islam who tell us it is a religion of peace. Nonsense. Islam is a dangerous disease of the mind, a disease which must be destroyed before it destroys us.

On the other hand, I'm not being tortured, dismembered, or beheaded for choosing a religion, or lack thereof, with the current flavor of Christianity. I observe one group and find blatant savagery, tribal hatred, and a primitive, diabolical faith -- Islam. Then I observe Christianity, a beautiful faith which seems pleasant, clean, soft-toned, and proper in form and comeliness, but when I look at her underhandedness and manipulation of the world, I am equally appalled at what I see.

In the early 90's, just after my high school graduation, I had a job with Subway. One bright Monday afternoon, I was taking orders and making sandwiches as usual when a nicely dressed saleswoman came in, a knockout in the looks department. I noticed she didn't order anything, but just sat down at a table and waited for the line of customers to die down. I was young and naive at the time, and unbeknownst to me, was having a sales pitch pulled on me. It was very cleverly done. She was a smooth operator, peddling some cologne for men. I later learned one of the bright and shining pendants on her suit coat was an award for the most sales at her company. She worked me like a pro, starting in with polished small talk and ready answers for every reason I had not to buy..."What? You don't wear cologne? Women love cologne. Here, check out this sample, doesn't it smell good?" If she hadn't been so damn attractive, I would have felt verbally assaulted and told her to read the sign on the front door, "No Solicitors!" She didn't succeed in selling me, but sure as hell did a good job trying. When I discovered her intentions, the awestruck-ness went away. Her initial kindness and flirtatious personality, her goodly appearance and apparent interest in talking to me was all a nice facade, a put-on. I was no longer interested in what she had to say.

Christianity is a sweet-talking sales gal too. She can be hard to turn away from until we see her true colors. Underneath, she is not as noble and majestic as her contenders would like you to believe she is.

What kind of words can I use to describe Christianity? None really, the reason being, Christianity's forms are always diverse and changing depending on what angle a given set of her promoters are seeking to fight for.

But I am afraid of her...I'm afraid of one day waking up to a nation where the education departments promote creationism along side evolution, lumping superstition in with science. I'm afraid of our nation having to one day face greater difficulties because of religiously influenced leaders and commanders who feel compelled to put our soldiers in harm's way out of the Christian compulsion to keep helping the Jews fight their wars, while it costs the lives of our boys in green. I'm afraid of getting out of bed one day to find a government that has reverted back to oppressive edicts and judgments, like "Blue Law Weekends" and other unwanted products of biblical influences. I'm afraid to think of all the lives that will be lost if Christianity and her proponents continually stand against stem cell research and other developments of the vital sciences out of foolish superstitious paranoia. I'm afraid to one day open my eyes to find censorship increased and freedom of speech hemmed in, resulting in a greater stifling of liberty. I'm afraid to think of the loads of psychological damage inflicted by parents, pastors, and counselors, upon the kids and young adults in their care, who impose the damaging and restricting principles of New Testament morality and sexuality on their minds. I'm afraid to think that the right-wingers will one day get their wish and have abortion banned, forcing many handicapped children into lives of despair, and bringing more unneeded human lives into this world, weakening it. I'm afraid of growing old and one day being incapacitated by a stroke, and finding others having to wait on me, hand and foot, since euthanasia would be outlawed. This is why I am afraid of Christianity.

These changes would happen slowly, with sleight-of-hand motives and pie crust promises of politicians...subtely and discreetly, with the replacing of rulers, and the making of policies.

When I find myself contemplating the underhanded wiles of Christianity, I am reminded of this quote by Cicero...

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Orator (106-43 B.C.E). “Speech in the Roman Senate.”

Like Cicero's description of the traitor, Christianity is a disarming opponent. Few seem prepared to handle her, and this can make her a greater threat than her vicious and cruel stepchild, Islam.

Then there is another factor involved: influence. We have to ask...which faith, with their dangerous and subversive qualities, can be the most far-reaching? Islam does not hold back their hatred of decency or civility. The powers that be - those countries who value love and peace - will see the beast coming, and knowing it's intentions, will knock the atrocious creature down to size and it will scurry off again to try another day. It is easily watched and tracked, and if kept on a short leash, does little harm. The beast is also poorly funded and it's grubby paws do not have access to the latest and best technologies. They can build gas chambers, but not atomic bombs. Christianity, in contrast, is sly, a seductive whore who sleeps with those in power to gain power of her own. She has greater influence, decadent wealth and funding, and access to the best technology on the planet. Currently, she stands as the most numerous of religions. One could well argue that this puts Christianity in the lead as a more dangerous force to be reckoned with.

So which is worse, the diabolical Beast of Islam or the turncoat Bride of Christ? I can't decide. I can't bring myself to identify either of them as categorically worse than the other. They are both abominations to mankind, and the sooner they perish from the face of the earth, the better.

(JH)

Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz.

The Pope visited the Auschwitz concentration camp recently and asked this question: "In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Let me throw this up for Christians to answer. Why did God allow it? Why did God remain silent? Why?

David Wood of Answering Infidels and I have both agreed to a public debate about this very problem, the problem of evil: Former Christian To Debate Former Atheist.

Are there any satisfactory answers available?

Feel free to copy me

In my last blog I discussed David’s census. One of the most common responses to the conflicting numbers presented is “copyist error.” In fact, the entire field of textual criticism centers around “copyist error” and attempting to determine what is, and what is not, an error introduced by a person making a copy.

Once we concede that the manuscripts we have contain errors that were not in the original, it is difficult to be persuasive that the originals were either inerrant, or even inspired. How can we determine what we have now is error or not?

The census presents two different numbers as to how many people were counted. Same census, different numbers. A solution presented is that one of the persons copying the numbers, mis-wrote or made a mistake, and introduced error. The story presents two different years of famine for punishment, 3 or 7. Again, a simple solution being that a copyist, at some point, inadvertently put in a “3” for a “7.” (or vice versa if you prefer.)

These are numbers we can clearly see conflict. If the believer agrees that the numbers we see conflict were due to error, is it not equally as likely that numbers that stand alone may also contain copyist error? Is it persuasive that the ONLY numbers that ever had any copyist error are the ones that we just happen to catch by two differing accounts? Could a copyist, for example, bolstered some numbers, to make a story sound more dramatic? Have David killing 10’s of thousands?

And why should it be limited to numbers? We also see names that conflict. Certainly if a copyist can introduce error in a number, they equally can introduce error in names. Or what about geography? Abraham is reported as traveling as far as the city of Dan. (Gen. 14:14) The only problem is that “Dan” was named after one of the 12 tribes 500 years later! (Joshua 19:47) Now there are arguments that there was another Dan that disappeared (oddly, right in the same line as the subsequent Dan) or that the city name was changed from Dan to Leshem and then coincidently back to Dan.

The better argument is that the story of Abraham was not recorded until long after Dan was an established city, and the author simply used the then-modern name of the city. Or could this, too, be a copyist error? Some writer “correcting” a mistaken name, and putting in what they thought was the correct one?

You see, once we concede there are any copyist errors, without the originals to compare, the best we can do is extrapolate back to the closest copy to the original, and even that becomes a matter of speculation. All of which is well and fine, if we were talking about a human book. But Christians proclaim that the Bible is unique. Different. Divine. I thought the idea was to propel its divinity, not indicate it is comparable to human efforts. The worst arguments that the Bible is unique are the ones that say it is like everything else.

Remember the simple game of telephone? Where you have twenty people in a circle, and the first whispers something to the second, the second whispers what they heard to the third, and so on? By the twentieth, we hear how the sentence has changed dramatically, and laugh. Let’s take that one step further. Instead of a circle, imagine a hub of a wheel, with spokes out.

Assume that the originator provides a document to a person on the hub, call them person 1. Person 1 will provide a copy (or the original) to two People, Person 2 (also on the hub) and Person A (on a spoke.) Then Person(s) 2 and 1A will provide a copy (or the original) to two People, and so on. The question comes up, as to which is the better document? If Person 1A introduces an anomaly, but Person 2 is more accurate, Person 2A is more accurate, Person 3 is more accurate, than someone literally farther from the original could be more accurate than the copy received from Person 1A! Person 3A is four times removed from the original, Person 1A1 is three times removed, and more incorrect. If a person on a hub provides an error, then every person on that spoke will also have that error. If Person 1 introduces an anomaly, ALL of the copies will be modified.

You can start to conceptualize how an error, introduced, can grow fairly quickly. Even to the point that the witnesses in favor of the error could outnumber the original, still in existence! It gets worse. In telephone, Person number 15 has to wait for the whisper to reach them. But particularly in New Testament times, the statements contained in the books would be transported by word of mouth faster than in written form. In our exercise, Person 15 could receive the written copy from Person 14, and already have a pre-formed opinion as to what was contained in the writing. “No, that is not how I heard it, I should make a correction.”

And it is also true that these books were not created in a vacuum. It is possible that rather than one copy, a scribe could have been comparing two. Which brings into play the trouble of which one does the scribe rely upon if there was a conflict?

It is not until the Early Third Century that we begin to have large portions of scripture to begin to compare textually for these copyist errors. Do you know what percentage of the New Testament we have conclusively dated on Papyrus prior to the Third Century? A portion of 18 verses. That is it.

Depending on when one dates the books, this is a time of 100-150 years before we start to have large sections to compare! We do not know if we are looking at copies of an original, a copy of a copy, or a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. We simply have no way of knowing.

In dating these books, we hear a made-up rule of thumb that there were 10 years between Mark and Matthew because that is a speculative guess as to how long it would take to make that copy. The first scrap we have with Mark (P45) is in the third century. Using a late date for Mark, say 70 CE, and an extremely early date for P45, say 200 CE, what happens when we apply this “rule of thumb”? It is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy!

This is a bit of a hyperbole, of course, because we do NOT have a 10 year rule of thumb, and since Matthew and Luke copied Mark, we could say their first appearance validates Mark. I merely point that out to impress how little we know about the formation of these books at the most critical time of their compilation, and how we have no idea as to the number of copies (one? None? Twelve?) made before we begin to have a frame of reference.

All allowing time for copyist error.

Which raises the question—how much was God involved in the transcribing of the Bible? Assuming, for the moment, that God literally inspired the original works. That God only inspired certain works. How much God-involvement was there in the preservation of those works? To begin, review the extremes:

On the one hand we could have God actively, continually and forcefully involved in every transcription, every translation, every copy, every single verse. All copies would be exactly as the original. Every time a verse was cited, it would automatically appear with the correct spelling, words, punctuation and sentence structure. It would be physically impossible to ever introduce an error, no matter how hard one tried. The copyist could become lazy in making the copy.

Admit it. How many typing in word processors (and I assume you are not typing on typewriters) with the “auto-correct” on, have become lazy with spelling? You pound out “envrinment” figuring the computer will figure out you are trying to type “environment” and do the correct spelling for you? Come on. There has to be at least ONE other person besides me guilty of this offense.

With God actively involved at every step we could do the same with the Bible. Want to copy John 3:16? Start writing, “God…love…world…gave…begotten…son...whosoever..” and the next thing you know John 3:16 appears in perfect form and syntax. We could never have another errant copy again. (By the by, this would certainly go a long way towards eliminating atheism!)

Or take the other extreme. God inspired the original, and then was completely hands-off. Whatever copies were made, whatever errors were introduced, He had no intervention. Almost a deistic creator of writing—make it and let it go on its own.

This introduces other problems. What if God inspired the Gospel of Jairus? What? You never heard of the Gospel of Jairus? That is because God was completely hands-off. Sadly, his daughter inadvertently used it to start a fire, and the inspired Gospel was heard of no more. All God did was inspire it in the first place. Whatever happens after that is completely up to humans.

If this proposition is true, what books are inspired and what are not? Why couldn’t the Gospel of Thomas be inspired? Just because it was not well-preserved by humans makes no difference. Using this as an extreme, that most certainly does not disqualify it from inspiration.

We lose any ability to determine what is inspired and what is not. God did not leave any distinguishing marks on those original inspired books. Nothing by which a human could say, “Hey, that’s God’s signature, so we know it was inspired.” The Wisdom of Solomon could be inspired. The Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, the Shepard of Hermas all qualify. 2 Peter may not be. Revelation is up for grabs. And where is there any time-limit on God? He could STILL be inspiring books, and then letting the chips fall where they may. I know many Christians that wish Mere Christianity was inspired!

And what if 2 Timothy was not inspired? We wouldn’t even have the word “God-breathed” by which to claim anything was God-breathed! This becomes just as unworkable as the all-involved God, without any way to determine what was originally inspired, and what was not.

Most believers fall somewhere in-between these two extremes, in that God is somehow partially involved, not only in the original manufacture of these books, but their eventual transcription and prominence in the Christian community. Now the only thing left to do is determine a method, a system, by which we can ascertain where God was involved, and where he was not.

Remember, we started off this discussion on copyist error in numbers. Our method must incorporate some way, some reason, by which we determine either God didn’t care about numbers being mis-copied, or God actively desired numbers to be mis-copied, or some other reason by which God stays involved, and lets errors through.

And this method must include areas besides numbers. However God treated numbers, the method must either make an exception, for some reason, for numbers, OR it must equally treat other areas, such as names, places and events as to how God chose to preserve them or not.

We are aware of the addition of the Story of the Adulterous woman, or the ending of Mark, or the Johannine Comma. Our method must include a way, in which God either did not care, or tacitly sanctioned, or merely allowed such errors to creep in. Textual criticism would reduce to the use of this method to determine God touching it or not.

Seriously, by what means can we possibly come up with any way in which to determine where God was involved in the preservation or not? I cannot fathom, nor have I seen any such system proposed. How can we account for the variations in every single manuscript? Look at the variations we see. This method would require accounting for these variations, why God was involved, or if he stopped being involved, when he stopped.

What I see is a method by fatigue. To avoid the hard work of actually coming up with a method, one throws up one’s hands, and says, “God is involved with what we have today.” What we see is what God was involved in. If there is an error, then God was not involved. If there is not, God was. What we have comes from the inspired. If we don’t have it, it wasn’t inspired.

Immediately we see the problem. This becomes a self-authenticating solution.

1. God preserved these particular scriptures because they are inspired.
2. We know these particular scriptures are inspired because they were preserved.

If the only method we have, to determine either inerrancy or inspiration, is that we have to accept what we have, it becomes no method at all. God’s involvement appears the exact same as any human involvement.

Arguing for how this book looks, acts, transcribes, introduces errors, and is canonized just like any other book is not even remotely compelling for the claim that it is any different. Oh, sure, it is unique. All books, including my teen-age daughter’s diary are unique. The Bible is getting an ad hoc definition of being unique, by conforming the definition of uniqueness to exactly what the Bible is.

We know what ad hoc is—after the fact. If someone is dating a fellow and it doesn’t work out, they say, “Oh, he would not have made a good husband anyway.” Whether he would or would not have, AFTER the fact, when it is no longer an option, he is ruled a poor candidate.

Same thing with the Bible. After the fact we have it, it is defined as unique for its properties. One of the claims that the Bible is unique is how various writers all agreed on the same principles. O.K. Then why not add 1 Clement (another writer) and make it even MORE unique because there are even MORE writers? Or add the Gospel of Peter? Or the Gospel of Thomas? Seems to me, if agreement among various writers is the qualifier, we can find a whole bunch more to REALLY make the Bible stand out. The only reason this is used as an indicator of the uniqueness of the Bible is that it already has a number of different writers.

This is the same act performed with inspiration. An ad hoc determination that what we have stems from the inspired originals, when we have no clue what the originals stated, nor any method to determine original inspiration, nor any method to determine how God was involved in maintaining accurate copies.

Finally—a story on humanity.

I have no clue how many hours I have spent in courtrooms. We sit and wait and wait for our case to be called, watching other cases. Assuming I have seen 5 cases a day (which is quite low for some periods of my life, and high for others) I have seen upwards of 20,000 cases for various reasons. Judges will see 5,000 cases in a year or more.

And some Defendant will have exactly one case—his. He hasn’t seen the 3,500 cases before him, nor will he see the 1,500 cases after. At best, he will see the same 5 cases I get to see waiting for our turn.

Now this defendant is thinking of some way to explain to the judge why he didn’t appear for the previous court hearing, where he was likely going to be sent to jail. The easiest excuse readily available? “I forgot.” But even he knows that is not very believable, since most people are intimately aware of their brushes with the judicial system, nor will the judge be very sympathetic.

So blame it on someone else. That’s the ticket. And in America, it is the United States Postal Service. The Defendant pipes up, “I never received my notice in the mail.”

I suppose they expect the Judge to pause, think for a second, and say, “O.K. I can see that. Things DO get lost in the mail. It must not be your fault.”

But what that defendant doesn’t know (it is, after all, his only case) is that the Judge has heard that exact same excuse before. Three times. That day. And five times the day before. And eight times the day before that. And 25 times the week before. And 100 times the month before. In a Judge’s lifetime, s/he could hear it 25,000 times!

The defendant is presenting the same, tired, excuse that 1000’s before him have presented, and 1000’s after. What makes this excuse, at this time, any different?

I once heard a Judge say, “You know, after hearing how little of my mail gets delivered, I sometimes wonder if the Postal Carrier has some grand conspiracy against me. ‘Ho Ho! A letter from Judge Smith? I will toss that in the wastebasket, because certainly that could never be important.’ After hearing how no mail sent from this courthouse is able to reach its intended recipient, I wondered if there was some great black hole that sucks our mail from the box before it even reaches the post office. And you know what? The funny thing is, every notice we send for someone to come pick up their bond money, THAT notice they seem to get!”

See, we have heard this excuse thousands of times. To the defendant, since it is his/her first shot at it, they think it is unique. To us, it is the same lame excuse the hundredth time over.

I get the same sort of feeling when the Bible is discussed. With the Bible, any errors that portray its humanity should be overlooked, or not considered. With the 1000’s of other books, it is an indication of not being divine. We should overlook the fact that our copies have copies, and variant readings. That is not a sign of humanity, but divinity. We should overlook the fact that inspiration is a circular argument. That is a sign of divinity, whereas other books that make the same claim are clearly human.

What I see is a defendant, scratching their head and coming up with the same excuse that millions of other human endeavors have stated.

If one is going to claim that there are copyist errors in the Bible, time to step up. Explain how the errors we see make it divine, whereas the errors in other books make them human.

America and Christian Nationalism

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A large (and apparently growing) percentage of the American population are not only in favor of making a "Christian nation" of the USA, but of going further: instituting Biblical Law. Rather than examining their arguments, I want to link to some news articles and publications which touch on the subject, and open a thread for comments from our readers. Please leave your feedback.

Recently, Michelle Goldberg wrote an article on Salon (you can read it for free after viewing a short ad, just make sure to allow cookies) entitled, "Kingdom Coming: On the Rise of Christian Nationalism".

Last year, Steve Weissman posted a five-part series on the same subject at truthout.org.

Recently, Sunsara Taylor wrote an article on BattleCry, a ministry which uses military allegories and targets youth in rallies, entitled "Fear and Loathing at Philadelphia's BattleCry."

August Berkshire got a really nice op-ed in a MN paper on religion and law.

I strongly suggest that you read through all of these to get an idea of what is going on, but for a sampler, here are some clips and excerpts from the articles:

Faith + Values Forum: Keep religious texts out of laws, civil marriage
August Berkshire

Twenty years from now, when same-sex marriage is accepted the way other civil rights are accepted today, we can expect religions to claim they were at the forefront of obtaining this right. We know better. Almost every social advance that freed people and gave them more rights was opposed by religion. Examples include abolition of slavery, a woman's right to vote, contraception, abortion rights, civil rights and interracial marriage. Religionists remain a roadblock to the Equal Rights Amendment, same-sex marriage and (in the current administration) universal health care.

The Bible is like a Rorschach inkblot test: you can see just about anything you want in it. That is why Christians themselves cannot agree on such things as masturbation, premarital sex, contraception, abortion, divorce, homosexuality, stem cell research, euthanasia and the death penalty. The Bible or religion as a moral guide? With all this disagreement, how is that possible?

Fear and Loathing at Philadelphia's BattleCry
Sunsara Taylor

Immediately afterward, a preacher took the microphone and led the crowd in prayer. Among other things, he asked the attendees to “Thank God for giving us George Bush.”

On his cue, about 17,000 youths from upward of 2,000 churches across America and Canada directed their thanks heavenward in unison.

Throughout the three and a half hours of BattleCry’s first session, I thought of only one analogy that fit the experience: This must have been what it felt like to watch the Hitler Youth, filled with self-righteous pride, proclaim the supremacy of their beliefs and their willingness to shed blood for them.

And lest you think this is idle paranoia, BattleCry founder Ron Luce told the crowds the next morning (May 13) that he plans to launch a “blitzkrieg” in the communities, schools, malls, etc. against those who don’t share his theocratic vision of society.

Blitzkrieg.

Nothing like a little Nazi imagery to whip up the masses...

...Luce put great emphasis on following every word in the Bible, treating it as an “instruction book,” even when a person doesn’t understand or agree. This is, of course, the logic that leads to the stoning of gays, non-virgin brides, disobedient children and much more—because the Bible says so.

Chillingly, when I confronted Ron explicitly about these passages, he refused to disavow them. During the afternoon preceding the May 12 rally, Luce and about 300 BattleCry acolytes (almost entirely youths) rallied in front of Philadelphia’s Constitution Hall—the location having been chosen because Luce wants to “restore” the Founding Fathers’ vision of a religious society (never mind that the Founders enshrined in the Constitution an explicitly secular framework of government).

I and about 20 people representing various anti-Bush, atheistic and anti-Iraq-war factions made our way into the rally and began interacting with the youths assembled. Some said openly that it was OK that George Bush’s lies have cost the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Why was it OK? Because “God put him [Bush] there.”

For more on this story, see two "hot off the presses" articles on DailyKos:
1) DailyKos 1
2) DailyKos 2

"Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism"
Michelle Goldberg

Speaking to outsiders, most Christian nationalists say they're simply responding to anti-Christian persecution. They say that secularism is itself a religion, one unfairly imposed on them. They say they're the victims in the culture wars. But Christian nationalist ideologues don't want equality, they want dominance. In his book "The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action," George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, wrote:

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.
But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.
World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...
Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ."

America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives? -- Part V: "The Ayatollah of Holy Rollers"
Steve Weissman
As early as 1963, Rushdoony wrote a "Christian revisionist" historical account called The Nature of the American System, in which he rejected the separation of church and state. The authors of the Constitution, he wrote, intended "to perpetuate a Christian order."

He similarly opposed the secular bent of American public schools, becoming an early proponent of Christian home-schooling, which he defended as a First Amendment right of their parents.

"We must use the doctrine of religious liberty ... until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government," explained his son-in-law Gary North. "Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

Rushdoony opposed labor unions, women's equality, and civil rights laws. He favored racial segregation and slavery, which he felt had benefited black people because it introduced them to Christianity. He largely denied the Holocaust. And he made it kosher for Christian leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell openly to despise democracy.

"Supernatural Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies," wrote Rushdoony, "Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life."

For more on Rushdoony, see his Wikipedia entry

America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives? -- Part I: The Lure of Christian Nationalism
Steve Weissman

With all their many sects and denominations, American evangelicals differ on all sorts of questions, from when Jesus Christ will return to the proper way to run a church. But most Southern Baptists and Pentecostals share the belief, more political than religious, that America once was and should again become a Christian nation.

This is Christian nationalism, and no one has done more to popularize it than an energetic young man named David Barton. A self-taught historian, he has dredged up hundreds of fascinating historical quotes and anecdotes in an effort to prove that the founding fathers were primarily "orthodox, evangelical Christians" who intended to create a God-fearing Christian government.

For more on Barton's fraudulence, see a refutation of his claims and expose of his lies by fellow Christians here:
A Critique of David Barton's Views on Church and State (by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty)

America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives? -- Part II: Hang Ten and Fight!
Steve Weissman

According to the polls, most Americans see the Ten Commandments more as a cherished symbol of universal morality than as a statement of religious belief. Yet, in repeated tests, few seem to know very much about them - or about the religious and political conflicts they inevitably invite.

To begin with, they resonate mostly with Jews and Christians, and - to a limited degree - with Muslims. They largely exclude Americans who follow other religious traditions, such as Buddhists and Hindus. They also exclude a growing number of pagans, polytheists, and non-believers, such as myself.

What is My Motivation in Debunking Christianity?

WarrenL asked me the following two questions:

As I understand it you spent a good portion of your life assenting to Christianity and now with your book and regular articles it appears you plan to spend a good portion of it debunking Christianity.
(1) What is your motivation for this?
(2) It seems that religion will always be a part of our culture. Do you see any good or value in Christianity?

Question #1: My motivation for debunking Christianity on the web is pretty much the same as any Christian apologist, except I don’t do it to glorify God, and I’m not taking anyone to heaven with me. Christian apologists want to know that their beliefs are true, and one good way to do that is to get in the ring and argue for them. In doing so, they learn things and find better arguments to defend what they believe. This describes me too. Some want to make a name for themselves, some want the satisfaction of winning an intellectual contest (the competitive urge), while others want to gain some respect from their perceived peers, and still others promote themselves to make some money off what they write. So the motivations of us all are multifaceted.

I personally like an intellectual challenge. Can I describe what I believe in a way that makes some sense to those who disagree? That’s quite a challenge, and I like to try since our control beliefs are so diametrically opposed to each other.

I am a teacher, so I’m also against people believing in wrongheaded Christian ideas that I tend to think are based upon ignorance, although that’s the stuff that maddens me, since many apologists don’t seem ignorant at all! What is it, I ask myself, that makes us believe different things where each side has this strong tendency to think the other side is just plain ignorant? This is where discussing and debating these things intrigues me to the utmost, and so I try again to explain why I see things differently. In the process I get a better glimpse of what it takes to cross that great divide between us, and I test my own explanations of why I see things the way I do. How can we each be so sure the other is wrong? That intrigues me like nothing else I know.

I also believe that life it better from my perspective, having been a former Christian myself. I can be more...well...human. Church people are stuffy people who are so judgmental. I only realized how much this is true after leaving, although I thought it was true while still in the church. There is a life to be lived to the fullest, and Christians are afraid to do this...and once in a while to step out of bounds. I love the freedom to live like I want to without the fear of hell or the judgment of other Christians. Don’t get me wrong here, I still am every bit the honest and good person I was before (without the so-called help of the Holy Spirit), but I no longer feel guilty for what I think about, whereas Christians always seem to struggle with thoughts of hate, greed, lust, and the like. I don't have to anymore, for the most part. I only have to be concerned with what I actually do, not what I think about. I no longer have to give of my hard earned money to fund a church building in hopes God will multiply it back to me, I don’t have to worry about what Ms. Peabody thinks if I go play pool at the bars, and I no longer have to waste so much of my time attending church, reading the Bible, praying, and evangelizing, and the overwhelming guilt that used to come when I failed in these things. If I see a pretty girl I can imagine what she looks like naked if I want to, and comment on her looks to the guys, so long as I do nothing about it, since I’m a very happily married man. I can drink and get buzzed if I want to. If someone does get in my face I don’t have to be a mild mannered man, but I can tell him to get the fuck away from me, and I can say it like I mean it. I can waste away my time watching TV without guilt if I want to. I can drive over the speed limit if I want to without fear of God's judgment, although I don't speed hardly ever. I also love the freedom to think for myself without feeling like I must justify everything I believe in the Bible (have you recently tried to come up with a view of hell from the Bible that passes the moral test?). And I love the fact that my thinking is not hamstrung by fear of being cast into hell, hence I'm a freethinker. I also love being good to people just because I want to, and not because I have to, and I am. Even as an atheist I have reasons to be good without God.

Consider the medieval monks, for instance. They lived ascetic lives on the bare bones of existence, spending their lives reading a Biblical text that was false, rather than living the fullest life possible. Consider modern day Catholic priests, who live life without knowing the warmth of an intimate embrace in the arms of a woman, and the joys of being a father and a grandfather. Lacking this intimacy some of them have resorted to the crime of molesting altar boys, and have received prison sentences and the disgrace of it all. Consider the fundamentalist Baptist minister who never may know what it’s like to have a few drinks and get buzzed (or if he does, he will feel guilty for this). Consider the many nights Christians spend evangelizing others, when those same nights might be better spent with their families or friends (and as a result many a man lost his family while he was out winning the world). Consider the time many Christians spend reading the Bible, when they could enjoy the great novels of their day. Consider the joy one might have in alleviating the person who is suffering for the pure joy of it, rather than doing it for some false heavenly reward. Consider the money that was spent in building great cathedrals and temples to this false sense of ultimate reality that could be better spent on the needs of people, or with what is leftover a cruise in the Bahamas.

I also want to help people who are struggling with their Christian faith to know there are others out there like me. As I was thinking my way out of Christianity I did it alone with my books. I read things. Then I thought about them. And I read some other things. But I struggled, and struggled. I didn’t seek out anyone to talk to about my doubts, because most all of the people I knew were Christians, and I didn’t want to be branded as a heretic, or shunned, nor did I want to create doubt in anyone else, since I wasn’t sure what I would end up believing at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. So my book and this Blog are to help people discuss these things. It’s to let them know there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that others like me have come out of the tunnel and we’re okay. It’s okay to doubt. You’ll be fine. In fact, I believe it’s better over here.

I also believe there are inherent dangers with religious beliefs. They don’t always materialize, but they do have their impact in various ways. There are political reasons, which I don’t touch on here much at all. There is a large voting block of evangelical Christians in America that help elect our local and state and national governmental officials. This large block of evangelical Christians also participate in letter campaigns to change public policy in ways I don’t approve of. Atheists generally think Christian theism inhibits scientific progress, creates class struggles, sexism, homophobia, racism, mass neurosis, intolerance and environmental disasters. There are some dispensationalist Christians in America who believe the Jews are somehow still in God’s plan. So they defend Israel no matter what they do, which fans the flames of war between the militant Muslims and the US.

Christian inclusivist scholar, Charles Kimball, argues that certain tendencies within religions cause evil. “Religious structures and doctrines can be used almost like weapons.” (p. 32). Religion becomes evil, according to Kimball, whenever religion: 1) has absolute truth claims; 2) demands blind obedience; 3) tries to establish the ideal society; 4) utilizes the end justifies any means when defending their group identity; or 5) when they see themselves in a holy war. He says, “A strong case can be made that the history of Christianity contains considerably more violence and destruction than that of most other major religions.” (p. 27) [When Religion Becomes Evil (Harper, 2002)].

According to Bertrand Russell, “one of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.” “Cromwell was persuaded that he was the Divinely appointed instrument of justice for suppressing Catholics and malignants. Andrew Jackson was the agent of Manifest Destiny in freeing North America from the incubus of Sabbath-breaking Spaniards.” Of course, such a political program “assumes a knowledge of the Divine purposes to which no rational man can lay claim, and that in the execution of them it justifies a ruthless cruelty which would be condemned if our program had a merely mundane origin. It is good to know that God is on our side, but a little confusing when you find the enemy equally convinced of the opposite.” “Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many factors of certainty that have afflicted the human race.” “Most of the greatest evils that man has afflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.” [“Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind,” Unpopular Essays (Schuster, 1950), pp. 146-165)].

As far as the second question of WarrenL goes, yes I do see some good in Christianity. It has saved marriages headed for divorce (although it can create an oppressive family structure where the wife is dominated and must obey her husband). It has changed rebellious teenagers who were hell bent on doing drugs, sex, and crime (but there are other down-to-earth reasons why they should change). It offers a heavenly comfort (even if it is a false one) in believing that God can help Christians and will bring them to heaven (although it also requires believing that our neighbors, friends, mother, father, siblings, and cousins might spend forever in hell, however conceived). Christianity inspires kindness to needy people and motivates them to give to help others out but see this.

However, I just don’t see where a Christian society is a better one. And even if Christianity was the main motivator in starting most all early American universities, most all of our hospitals and many food kitchens, and the like, these things still would have been started anyway, if for no reason other than necessity. It just so happened that Christianity has reigned in America for a couple of centuries, that’s all. Besides, these things were probably not started by Christian churches out of altruism, or any desire for a better society, but as a way for those churches to convert people. After all, who are most vulnerable to the Christian message? The sick (hospitals), the poor (food kitchens) and young people leaving home for the first time to enter the world as adults (universities). Most of the earlier universities were all started to train preachers who would evangelize.

Christians have a false and irrational hope, but just don’t know it. They are simply deluded into thinking their lives have some grand ultimate purpose. So who’s better off? Someone who lives a life of delusion, doing things because they think it will matter for eternity, along with the daily guilt for not having lived up to those standards, or someone who lives with his or her feet planted squarely on the ground with the only reality that is to be had? Atheists have offered suggestions why people turn to religion. Sigmund Freud claimed that religion is an expression of the longing for a father figure. Ludwig Feuerbach claimed that God didn’t make man in his image, but rather we made God in our image. Karl Marx taught that religion is the opium of the working class people. It is funded and pushed by the rich class in order to numb the working class from trying to right the injustices put on them by the rich class. Religion keeps the working class focused on a hope of bliss in the hereafter. Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that religion endures because weak people need it. For Jean Paul Sartre, God represented a threat to authentic morality. If God is autonomous, in the Calvinistic sense, then human beings cannot be responsible for themselves. He argued that the rejection of God makes morality and freedom possible, for only then can people take responsibility for their own choices.

Listen finally to Robert W. Funk and Robert M. Price's motivations:

Robert W. Funk in his book, Honest to Jesus (p. 19) wrote: “As I look around me, I am distressed by those who are enslaved by a Christ imposed upon them by a narrow and rigid legacy. There are millions of Americans who are the victims of a mythical Jesus conjured up by modern evangelists to whip their followers into a frenzy of guilt and remorse—and cash contributions. I agonize over their slavery in contrast to my freedom. I have a residual hankering to free my fellow human beings from this bondage. Liberation from fear and ignorance is always a worthy cause. In the last analysis, however, it is because I occasionally glimpse an unknown Jesus lurking in and behind Christian legend and piety that I persist in my efforts to find my way through the mythical and legendary debris of the Christian tradition. And it is the lure of this glimpse that I detect in other questers and that I share with them.”

Robert M. Price: “We are viewed as insidious villains seeking to undermine the belief of the faithful, trying to push them off the heavenly path and into Satan’s arms. But this is not how we view ourselves at all. We find ourselves entering the field as the champions and zealots for a straightforward and accurate understanding of the Bible as an ancient text. In our opinion, it is the fundamentalist, the apologist for Christian supernaturalism, who is propagating false and misleading views of the Bible among the general populace. We are not content to know better and to shake our heads at the foolishness of the untutored masses. We want the Bible to be appreciated for what it is, not for what it is not. And it is not a supernatural oracle book filled with infallible dogmas and wild tales that must be believed at the risk of eternal peril.” [The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Prometheus, 2005), p. 15].

I hope this helps explain.

To read Part II of why I am debunking Christianity see here.

Genesis, Immortality and Failed Prophecies

Got on a Roll here about failed prophecy, 120 year mortality and failed curses.
Originally I posted in the closest related thread, where John Loftus enquires on the power of God to foresee and predict future outcomes -- I feel Genesis gives ample evidence, that Jehovah cannot predict his own behavior, much less, how then to predict anything about his future interactions with man (in the longterm)? Will man even be alive in future centuries, (as with the flood) for God to predict any future?

Gn:6:6: And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (KJV)

Some excerpts:
Gn:6:3: And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. (KJV)

Make that 122 years...

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120 years means 120 years --especially when God says so.
Right? No.

Ask yourself why does Sarah live to be 127?
Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon said nobody back then lived beyond around age 50.

Exaggerated Ages of the Biblical Patriarchs
It is certain that one cannot build up a chronology on the spans of years attributed to the Patriarchs, nor regard it as factual that Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Harran and a hundred when Isaac was born and that Jacob was a hundred and thirty when he went into Egypt, for the evidence from the skeletons in the Jericho tombs shows that the expectations of life at this period was short. Many individuals seem to have died before they were thirty-five, and few seem to have reached the age of fifty.
- Dr. Kathleen Kenyon (the eminent excavator of the city-mound of Jericho)

There's some blatant contradictions in Genesis. Maybe several stories from different sources, spliced together? For instance, Genesis retells the same story about Sarah and two important national leaders... one is Pharoah in Genesis 12, who wishes to have Sarah, and basically the same story is retold in Genesis 20 where Abimelech, King of Gerar wishes to have Sarah, and Abraham lies to both of them that Sarah is his sister -- but she's grossly aged by the time of the second account, obviously aged, since between the two accounts, Genesis 18:12, we read where Sarah laughs "After I am waxed old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women". It is too absurd to think a king would wish to take such an elderly woman to wife, as is implied, "Gn:21:1: And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken. [...] 21:5: And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.[...] 21:7: And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age. (KJV)

However:
Gn:23:1: And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah.
Gn:6:3: And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. (KJV)

Ed Babinski: Other aspects also hint of artifice: In Gen. 6:3 God "allows" man 120 year to live. Subsequently Moses, the supposed author of that passage, goes on to live exactly 120 years. (Yet in Ps. 90:10 we are told that man lives only 70 years, ah, there's that "seven" again.) Joseph went to Egypt, and lo, lived to be the ideal Egyptian age of 110 years, then Joshua retrieves Joseph's bones from Egypt and also lives 110 years. Lastly, compare how awkwardly the author of Gen. 11:10-26 and Gen. 25:8 juxtaposes the scene at Abraham's death with the age of his distant relative, Shem, as though he had no idea that people still lived so long as Shem. For the author states that Abraham died "at a good old age, an old man, after a full life," while Shem, Abraham's 7X great grandfather lived to SEE his 7X great grandson die "at a good old age, an old man, after a full life!" For Shem was, if we take Gen. 11:10-26 literally, alive and 565 years old when Abraham died at a mere 175 years of age.

IN OTHER WORDS, the Good Lord just didn't fulfil on his promise, now did he?
Sort of like that promise to make snake eat dust...

Gn:3:14: And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: (KJV)

and that doesn't happen, so Isaiah comes along centuries later, prophecying:

Is:65:25: The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord. (KJV)

in the "future kingdom"... because it failed fulfilment in Genesis.

I also had elaborated further... while some of the hardest contractions were taking place during the birth of my child, I was *laughing*. Literally. The miracles of modern medicine and a little thing called an epideral. I was paralysed from the waist down and not feeling a thing. Genesis and its curses seemed like a joke at that hour, and I was laughing right up nearly to the point I saw my baby in the doctor's arms.
It was a personal event that places the curse of woman's multiplied sorrows in childbirth into the category of a failed prophecy. I've even heard some Christians imply that these advances in medical science are evidence of "God's mercy". As for "mercy" --if that god of Genesis had ever wanted to show woman "mercy", he'd simply removed his curse and saved medical science the trouble by reducing the intense pain (and life threatening conditions) that's involved with childbirth. After delivering three babies, I can vouch that the pain and dangers in childbirth are still as severe as they ever were... "bedecking their god in stolen plummage".

That's not all. When I was a Christian, seeking proof of an inerrant Bible, I was *amazed* to learn some snakes have vestigial limbs (Photos included there). There's nothing to be amazed at after all. It's possible Jehovah had a bad habit of putting legs on snakes, removing legs, putting them back on again, then gave the snake legs again, only to remove them again in Genesis for "sin"(?).
From the above link: "The West Bank fossils may be snakes whose limbs re-evolved, making them "real snakes, just extinct real snakes" with legs, Greene said. Greene postulates that if animals like the West Bank fossils could re-evolve limbs, then other animals that have certain genes they never lost but whose "triggers" are dormant could re-evolve those traits. Maybe humans will end up with tails again." In fact, that's happened already on occasion.

ED BABINSKI: It is not true that "snakes are the only vertebrates without legs." Besides snakes (which are reptiles without legs), there are species of long snake-like AMPHIBIANS that also lack legs. (Kind of like long snake-like newts without legs.)
There are also some species of reptiles and amphibians with long snake-like bodies and TINY LEGS. (Were they only "half cursed" according to the Bible?)
Of course those snake-like amphibians aren't even mentioned in the Bible.
"Curse on the Serpent" in Genesis Bites the Dust, On JP Holding's Is Genesis Wrong About Snakes Eating Dirt?
"Moreover, some snakes live in lakes or even oceans, and could hardly be described as "dust eaters." Others live high in the branches of tree-canopied rain forests, and seldom if ever rub their bellies on the ground and "eat dust." Besides, virtually all animals "eat" or swallow "dust" or dirt, either voluntarily or accidentally. So, Bob's "apologetical belief" that the Scriptures must jive with modern herpetological science is based on selectively emphasizing only some herpetological observations, ignoring others, viz., stretching the meaning of an obvious literary put down to mean something "scientific sounding," i.e., "tastes" the air."
--
Further question, is the "tree of life" in Genesis, which after reading in context, very much like a physical (not spiritual) immortality?
Gn:3:22: And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: (KJV) An ongoing supplement in the monthly diet? ...
Rv:2:7: ...I give to eat of the tree of life...
Rv:22:2: ...the tree of life... yielded her fruit every month...
Rv:22:14: ...that they may have right to the tree of life...

No spiritual immortality was implied or given to Adam, and upon sinning he is told:
Gn:3:19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (KJV)

However...
Mk:12:25: For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. (KJV)
Mk:12:27: He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err. (KJV)

And indeed, some of the Jews held no such belief:
Acts:23:8: For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both. (KJV)

So, when Jehovah gives his word that he shall fulfil ... rather, he's often given to a change of mind (or at least, change of heart -Gn:6:6).

Let's do better

Simply framing a coherent sentence that provides a possible response to a problem is not enough. We can do better than that. I see a sad tendency (on both sides of the fence, but primarily on the Christian) to “toss out” any conceivable rejoinder to an issue, followed by a sense of satisfaction that the argument was rebutted, succeeded by surprise that the opponent didn’t “bite.”

Frankly, if the Bible is the sole divine revelation, from the sole source of Truth, I am disappointed that Christians would be willing to reduce the standard of its viability down to “any possibility” rather than what is more likely.

I get the chance to see this almost every day. One side of a question will present their evidence, and appear to have a strong position. And then we hear the rest of the story from the opposition, and learn that things are not as clear as originally stated.

But once in a while, it becomes evident that there is no defense to the accusation, and the attorney is simply “grasping at straws.” Claiming anything, saying everything, all in the hopes of somehow stumbling on enough words to convince the judge or jury that, if they talk enough, there must be something worthwhile said which warrants a defense.

Yet in this debate—should that be enough? Any possibility? We never accept that in real life, why would we accept it in what should be the most perfect example of truth available on earth?

Imagine coming home and seeing your son, baseball bat in hand, a broken window, and a ball rolling around the living room floor. An obvious portrayal of the previous moments comes quickly to mind.

Upon being accused, your son assures you that the neighborhood bully, in order to defame your son’s innocence, had just picked up the ball, and thrown it through the window. You barely missed him. Deciding to pursue the matter, you confront the accused’s parents. They assure you that their son had been doing homework at the time, and couldn’t possibly be guilty.

Upon presenting those facts to your son, he claims those parents were lying to protect their son.

On and on you go, and every rabbit trail, every fact dug up, your son has an explanation—a possibility—to interpret away his own guilt. Would you buy it? Would you confidently state, “There is no WAY my son hit that ball through a window, because of the potential that some tortured manufacture of facts could be contrived to demonstrate his innocence”?

Or would you confidently state that there is always the slim chance of his innocence, the far greater likelihood is that he discovered windows make poor outfielders.

The clearest example of this is in the debate on inerrancy. An inerrantist will hold to any possible resolution of any contradiction, as if this would satisfy inerrancy. Resolutions that are bent, twisted and contorted to fit that particular moment, and just as quickly discarded in the next discussion.

Honestly? No body except other inerrantists are buying it. We understand their natural bias to manufacture a resolution. We see it in action by claims of people doing unbelievable things, and allegations of recording history in an unlikely fashion. Inerrantists would never accept these claims in a newspaper, but accept it to keep their Bible error-free. We see the double standard. What is ridiculed in the Qur’an is revered in the Bible. A great example of this is David’s Census.

(To save bandwith, the three accounts of this event are at 2 Samuel 24:1-25, 1 Chronicles 21:1-28 and 1 Chronicles 27:24. Please read at your leisure)

Having read such, I have a few questions. The first few are multiple choice to make it easy. (“A”= 2 Sam., “B”= 1 Chron. 21 and “C”=1 Chron. 27)

1. When did God get angry?
A. Before the census
B. God never gets angry.
C. Because of the census

2. Who incited David to take the Census?
A. God
B. Satan
C. Nobody.

3. What human mandated the census?
A. David
B. David
C. Joab.

4. Who protested against the census?
A. Joab and his captains.
B. Joab.
C. Nobody, Joab just did the census.

5. What was wrong with taking a census?
A. Nothing, God mandated it in Numbers 26:2
B. Nothing, God required it for taxes in Exodus 30:12
C. Nothing, they just did one in the preceding 23 verses!

6. How long did it take to do the census?
A. Nine months, 20 days.
B. Not recorded
C. Didn’t complete the census

7. Who all was counted?
A. All tribes
B. All tribes except Levi and Benjamin
C. Didn’t complete the census.

8. What was the number of the census?
A. 1.3 Million
B. 1.57 Million (with LESS tribes counted!)
C. Number was deliberately not recorded.

9. What stopped the census?
A. Done counting
B. Done counting
C. Wrath of God, census not completed.

10. Who took the blame for doing the census?
A. David
B. David
C. Not recorded, but apparently Joab. (COULDN’T be David. 1 Kings 15:5)

11. What was the first threat of punishment of God?
A. 7 years of famine
B. 3 years of famine
C. No threat, it just came!

12. What is the name of the Jebusite where the angel stopped?
A. Araunah
B. Ornan
C. Umm…What Jebusite? They should all be killed on sight. Deut. 20:17

13. What did the Jebusite do when he saw the Angel of Death?
A. Doesn’t say the Jebusite saw the Angel.
B. Just kept working, just kept working…
C. Excuse me? Jebusite? Didn’t David award Joab his position because he fought and killed the Jebusites? 1 Chron. 11:6

14. What did David buy from the Jebusite?
A. The Threshing floor and the oxen.
B. “the place” (just the floor?)
C. Are you crazy? THERE IS NO @#%%@ JEBUSITE! David would have killed him!

15. How much did David pay the Jebusite?
A. 50 shekels of silver
B. 600 shekels of gold
C. I’m telling you-- There is no Jebusite!

The test you cannot fail—all answers and no answers are correct. REGARDLESS of what you circled, you get 100% right! Depending on which particular passage you read is which answer you will provide.

We are not done. For the Essay portion of our quiz-- In your apologetic, discuss the theological implications of God getting so angry He desires to kill 70,000 people, but His nature of Justice mandates someone has to sin first. Also discuss the punishment of David’s sin being 100,000-200,000 OTHER people have to die. Also discuss Satan’s limitation of “tempting” others unless God allows it. Or (in the alternative) discuss the ramifications of Satan and God working together to allow God to kill 70,000 people for David’s sin.

If, in your apologetic, you claim that God and Satan worked together, discuss other areas in which the two entities worked together, and why each of the authors failed to mention the involvement of the entity’s enemy.

If, in your apologetic, you claim David was prideful and wanted to do the census, please give other examples (with citations) as to David’s pride, and explain why 2 Samuel states God was angry first. You should also address why this sin was not listed in David’s transgressions in 1 Kings.

If, in your apologetic, you claim that David bought more than the house, explain your use of the Hebrew word for “place” and why that entails an entire mountain.

If, in your apologetic, you address the differing numbers of the census, please provide archeological verification that in 1000 B.C. there were more than 50,000 people in the land encompassing Canaan. You should also address the ability of a nation with a possible standing army of at least 1.3 Million, as compared to other nations at that time, and why this military strength is non-existent in archeological records.

You may need to discuss the concept of “rounding” especially in light of all of 1 Chron. 27.

I have raised David’s Census to inerrantists. To give an example of the possibilities proferred, in an attempt to maintain inerrancy:

Israel’s sin angered God enough for Him to release Satanic temptation on David.

A unique resolution of this predicament. Note the precipitating cause: God getting Angry. In every other situation (that I am aware) if God is angry at Israel he sent an army to invade, pestilence, famine, floods, a whole variety of items with which to punish them. Why go through the charade of releasing Satan to make David sin, so God can punish Israel? Quite an indirect route for what should have been a simple 1-2 step. Israel Sins, God sends punishment.

This also creates the conflict in David taking responsibility for the sin of the census.

Is Satan beholden to God, in that he cannot act without God allowing it? Why did Satan want David to sin? Again, remember the precipitating cause, God’s anger. We assume Satan is this no-good, mean, rotten entity that wants everyone to sin at every chance. We forget the painted picture of a clever entity. If God was prohibiting Satan from tempting David, then got Angry, and then allowed Satan to tempt David, is it not likely Satan would have wondered why? And perhaps declined. Let God do his own dirty work.

And again, why the charade? If God could incite David to sin by himself (as 2 Sam. states) and God desired it, why involve Satan at all? If David wanted to do it himself (for pride) why was God angry FIRST and why not let David just do it.

The only apologetic that seems to work is to have God and Satan BOTH desiring David to sin. And this makes God and Satan having a mutual goal. Can we identify other mutual goals of God/Satan?

Obviously God incited David, but not directly. Satan was God’s instrument in this case. He has always used Satan this way. Satan is always pressuring/petitioning God for authorizations to both tempt and destroy mankind

Again, the problem that this was not Satan asking God to do it, but God wanting it done since he was angry. Further, the word used for incite, “cuwth” is the same word used when God did it in 2 Sam. As when Satan did it in 1 Chron. Most apologists say that God’s involvement was indirect, but Satan’s involvement was direct. The problem is that it is the same word. Are we re-defining the word because it warrants re-definition, or are we re-defining the word because we need to resolve a conflict? I go for the simpler explanation – cuwth means the same when it is used in the same situation with the same types of entities.

David delegated the task to Joab, so both were involved.

O.K., but why would the Author of 1 Chron. 27 leave out the important figure here, the King? ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that Joab protested the Census? Even more importantly, when (if it was the same author) 6 Chapters earlier he was more than happy to lay the blame on David and absolve Joab?

Where I do not buy this apologetic, is the claim that this is inspired Scripture. Between human authors, it seems feasible to have missed out important figures, like God, Satan and David. But if God had his hand in it, why are these most important facts missing?

And while we are on that, let’s talk about 2 Samuel missing Satan, and 1 Chronicles missing God in the story. Most apologists say that BOTH were involved, and this is not necessarily contradictory, as 2 Samuel just failed to mention Satan and 1 Chronicles failed to mention God. Can I say, “Huh?”

First (in explaining away “incite”) we have Satan chomping at the bit to get David to sin. But 2 Samuel fails to mention that important fact. Then we have God getting angry and “releasing” Satan. But 1 Chronicles 21 fails to mention that fact. So we say “incite” means two different things. (1 Chronicles 27 fails to mention EITHER of them!)

Now that we have demonstrated how diametrically opposed Satan and God are, we then claim that the authors failed to mention the involvement of these two enemies!

Facts that apologists feel are important to align the passages, the authors did not!

Look at this analogy. (I know it is not perfect. It is designed to point out that leaving out important details is unacceptable.)

Imagine this week you read in Newsweek that Pres. Bush ordered a sniper to kill Tony Blair. You then pick up Time which says Osama bin Laden ordered a sniper to kill Tony Blair. US News & World Report simply says a sniper killed Tony Blair. Would you look at those three reports and think, “Oh, these are complimentary. Clearly Bush had Osama in his control and then allowed bin Laden to hire a sniper”?

OR would you more likely determine that somebody screwed up in the News department in each of these magazines? I find it fascinating that apologists hold the inspired word of God to a lesser standard than they do to a Newspaper or a Magazine. What one would NEVER accept in a news agency, one GLADLY accepts in the Bible. I would think the word of God could be held to a greater standard and still sustain the test. Apparently not.

David’s sin was to disobey God’s voice speaking through his conscience.

Where does it state that God was speaking to David through his conscience? The point is that NOWHERE does it state that taking a census is wrong. Since census taking was not only performed before, but ORDERED by Mosaic Law (for taxes) if it is considered a grave sin in this situation, don’t you think it would be important to point out why? More on how grave of a sin later.

The number “7” (or the number “3”) is reputed to be a copyist error.

Oh, good. A copyist error. Then can anyone show me the copies that had a “3” rather than a “7?” What? There AREN’T ANY? Then how can I possibly say this is a “copyist” error? And which one (2 Sam. Or 1 Chron.) was the “copyist error?” I wonder if apologists ever get tired of trying to explain these situations for God.

Question: How many OTHER copyist errors are in the bible? Apparently there is at least one. (This one.) Since all the copies say “7,” than we can have other portions of the Bible that all the copies say the same thing, yet be a copyist error, right? Since we can’t tell? If this is a copyist error, and I claim that John 3:16 is a copyist error, how can you possibly argue against it?

There seems to have been two different numeric formats involved here, one of them rounding off numbers.

How can I tell the difference between a “rounding” and a copyist error, by the by? The rounding just does not fly. This was a CENSUS. This was not estimation. This was not a guess. This was not an approximation. Joab spent the most part of a year, going through all the land, and he comes back to his King with a “round” number?

And how can we “round” these numbers to get to these two figures (1.3 Million vs 1.57 Million)? Look:

2 Sam. 1 Chron.
Israel – 800,000 1.1 Million
Judah – 470,000 500,000

I get how 1 Chron. Would round up 470,000 to 500,000. (Again, as to the why is questionable) But how can the same “rounding” author round 800,000 to 1.1 Million? That doesn’t make any sense MAYBE if he had rounded to 1 Million, I could see it (although that is a factor of 20%, which would be significant.) But no.

Further, one should address the capabilities of a nation in 1000 BC with a possible army of 1.3 Million men. To say they would be a world-power is underestimating the capabilities.

Worse, if you are claiming consistency with 1 Chron 27, then there were MORE than 1.57 (or 1.3, I can’t tell which) Million men in this possibly army.

They would have decimated any army that came against them. Yet there are NO archeological remnants of such a world-power. Odd.

The Jebusite had a name in each language. Conversion to Judaism was possible. That’s probably why this Jebusite had both a Hebrew name and a Jebusite name.

Bit of circular reasoning here. We know he converted to Judaism because he had two names. He had two names because he converted to Judaism. What other converts from condemned nations had two names?

First of all, God ordered the elimination (Joshua NIV uses the word “extermination”) of the Jebusites. David was FIGHTING the Jebusites. (And apparently not winning with a 1.57 Million army!) Deut. 20:17 does not allow the possibility of “conversion.”

Let’s talk about our Jebusite. Many apologists gloss over this name variation, as little import. But is it?

This Jebusite was allowed to live. This makes him singular, if not unique. He owned land near the principal city, good real estate. He was loyal to King David. As pointed out, he could see angels. He owned land worth 600 shekels of gold (according to the apologetic) which some apologists claim would be the size of a mountain. This was one significant Jebusite! In fact, Solomon’s temple was eventually built on his land (according to some apologists). We do know how significant Solomon’s temple was.

Yet they couldn’t get this guy’s Name straight?

Part of my problem with the apologetic of this entire passage, is what is important to resolve a contradiction in one verse is immediately disregarded and contradicted to resolve a contradiction in the next verse. How can this guy be so important, on one hand, yet get his name wrong on the next?

This verse is a copyist error. The next is NOT a copyist error, but a “rounding.”

Why, oh why do Christians (and I was as to blame) hold the bible to such a slight standard? A standard we would not accept in a third-grader’s homework?

The Bathsheba-Uriah ordeal was David’s only major sin. Why wasn’t the census a major sin? Because God was primarily angry at Israel, not at David, who sinned principally because Satan put extra pressure on him.

Again, if God was mad, why involve Satan-->David-->Joab?

Who said Uriah was David’s only major sin? (1 Kings only mentions Uriah, not Bathsheba.) In fact, if one measures sin by the punishment, this sin was far, far worse. The Third worst individual sin ever recorded. And somehow the author of 1 Kings missed it. Wonder how.

According to the punishment due on Uriah, there should have been 2 deaths (David and Bathsheba) at the most. According to the punishment on the Census, there should have been 100,000-200,000 deaths! While 1 Kings may have downplayed the census, it is truly bizarre to have missed it.

He paid 50 shekels of silver for the threshing floor and oxen, and then six hundred shekels of gold for the entire land.

Again, the facts that one author missed, but the other caught seem completely out of place. Imagine your spouse comes home and says that they bought a radio. Would you think it significant that they missed the fact the radio is in a new car?

As I stated, according to some, 600 shekels of gold would be the equivalent of buying a mountain! The very mountain of the Great Temple! 2 Sam. and 1 Chron. 27 Missed that? The purchase of the land for the Temple? The precipitating cause for where the Temple was to exist?

Now, I propose the following resolution for David’s Census:

There was a legend about a census during Kind David’s reign that resulted in a punishment on the people. At various times, and various places the legend modified, based upon who was telling it. Three different authors wrote it down. Being human, and hearing the legends from humans, they wrote different accounts.

Which is more likely? Human error on these accounts, or a tortured, twisted explanation that bends and turns according to the necessity of that exact clause at that exact moment, which, not surprisingly, happens to coincide with the bias of the person making the proposal.

If it weren’t in the Bible, every person would agree it was “human error” every time. That is why simply coughing out some words that would align one part of one clause of one story, while disregarding the more likely probability of human error is not persuasive.

Predictive Prophecy and Biblical Authority.

Predictive prophecy is used as a support to Biblical authority. In order to predict the future God must have foreknowledge. Can he predict the future, especially of free-willed human beings? What is the basis of God’s foreknowledge?

Philosophical Considerations.
What would be the basis of God knowing the future? That is, how is it logically possible for God to know with absolute certainty that a specific kind of event performed by a free-willed human being would take place?

1) Theological determinism. God simply determines what happens. This is the position of Calvinism. God decrees every event in human history. If God does this then it’s no problem at all for God to foreknow and to predict the future. There are three excellent books that take issue with Calvinism from a traditional Christian understanding: Grace Unlimited and The Grace of God, the Will of Man, both edited by Clark Pinnock, and What the Bible Says About God The Ruler, by Jack Cottrell. An excellent debate on the subject can be found in Basinger & Basinger, eds, Predestination and Free Will.

Suffice it to say that if theological determinism is true, then God cannot be a good God because he decrees all of the evil we experience in human history. All of it. No belief in “God’s inscrutable ways” can absolve God of this guilt. And no alternative definition of human freedom can absolve God of this guilt, either. God not only eternally decrees all of our actions; he also decrees that we want to do those very actions. Yet this God blames us alone for doing these actions and will cast billions of our mothers, siblings, children and friends into hell for his own personal glory. Which means he uses human beings for his own selfish ends. But who would ever think it’s praiseworthy to decree all of the human suffering we have experienced and then to cast billions of us in hell forever? There is no reason why this same God couldn’t have decreed that all of us obeyed him and decreed we’d all be in heaven with him. Furthermore, if God told us to do good things and yet decrees that we should do evil things, then he’s lying to us. He’s telling us that he wants us to do something good, but behind the scenes he’s decreeing that we do the exact opposite. That makes him a liar, plain and simple. Consequently, there is nothing God says in the Bible that we can trust him to do. Those Calvinists who defend such a God are participating in what I call Logical Gerrymandering. See also here,here, and here.

2) God is outside of time so he sees everything as present. If this were so, God would have no problems with predicting the future because it is not actually in the future. He’s merely seeing the present from his perspective. Stephen T. Davis, in his book, Logic and the Nature of God (Eerdmans, 1983), argues against this view by claiming that such a timeless being is “probably incoherent.” If God created this universe, then there was a time when it didn’t yet exist, and then there was a later time when it did exist. So he argues: “it is not clear how a timelessly eternal being can be the creator of this temporal universe.” It would also make 2005 B.C and 2005 A.D. simultaneous in God’s eyes. But they are not simultaneous in human historical space and time. Davis argues, “We have on hand no acceptable concept of atemporal causation, i.e., of what it is for a timeless cause to produce a temporal effect.” (pp. 8-24).

From the timeless view of God come the doctrines of God’s immutability (that he cannot change), and impassibility (God cannot suffer). How is that possible?

The notion of a timeless God can be traced to Greek philosophers. Plato argued that God must be an eternally perfect being. And since any change in an eternally perfect being must be a change for the worst, God cannot change. Aristotle argued that all of God’s potentialities are completely actualized. Therefore, God cannot change because he cannot have unactualized potentialities. Christian thinkers like Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas brought these concepts to the Bible. Boethius: “God lives in an everlasting present.” According to Aquinas God has no past, present or future since everything is “simultaneously whole” for him.

But Plato’s argument, for instance, “is straightforwardly fallacious, because it rests on a false dichotomy. It rests on the assumption that all change is either for the better or for the worst, an assumption that is simply false.” We want a watch to reflect the correct time, and so it must change with the time of day. The watch that stays the same all day long, and didn’t change, would be imperfect. Likewise, “when God began to create the universe he changed, beginning to do something that previously he had not done.” Such a change implies no imperfection in God. [(From William Hasker, in The Openness of God, IVP, 1994, pp. 132-133). See also Thomas Morris, Our Idea of God, and the late Ronald Nash, in The Concept of God].

The whole notion that God doesn’t change seems to imply that God never has a new thought, or idea, since everything is an eternal NOW, and there is nothing he can learn. This is woodenly static. God would not be person, but a block of ice, a thing. To say he does nothing NEW, thinks nothing NEW, feels nothing NEW, basically means he does nothing, thinks nothing, feels nothing, for it’s all been done. What would it mean for a person not to take risks, not to plan (for it’s already been planned), or to think (thinking involves weighing temporal alternatives, does it not?). But if God cannot have a new thought then he cannot think--he is analogous to block of ice.

4) The Inferential View. God just figures out from the range of options which choices we will make. He does this because he knows who we are completely and thoroughly as the “ultimate psychoanalyst.” He can take us in our present state and absolutely with certainty know what we will do next, and next, and next, and so on, and so on. He knows the future because he deduces it from who he knows us to be now. This option actually means, however, that what we do is somehow "programmed" into us. The determinist claims that it's all in the genes and environment, so this viewpoint commits the believer to the same position as the determinist. If God can predict future human actions 500 years from now, based upon what he knows about people living today, then we are merely environmentally and genetically programmed rats. There is no human freedom.

5) The Innate View. God just has comprehensive knowledge of the future. He just “sees it” because he is omniscient. But this isn’t an explanation at all! When I asked Dr. William Lane Craig in class how it is that God has foreknowledge, Craig, who would normally have elaborate arguments and defenses for his views, merely said, as if this is all that needed to be said, "It's innate, God just has it." What? How? This answer actually triggered my mind, and in time led me to reject God’s foreknowledge of future human free-willed choices.

From these philosophical considerations, I just don’t see any real basis for believing that a good God can have absolute and certain foreknowledge of future truly free-willed human actions. Therefore, along with a great many recent Christian philosophers, I do not believe God can predict the future of human history with certainty. God cannot offer prophecies of the future because any prophecy, especially more than 50 years in the future, will depend upon human free actions. And since I also reject theological determinism, then there is no basis for predestination either, whether due to God’s supposed foreknowledge of what we will do, or in God’s decrees.

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

The apostle Paul may have something to tell us about the ethics of evangelism. If eternal souls are at stake, is the "lesser evil" of deception not worth comitting in order to prevent the "greater evil" of an eternal suffering?

1 Cor. 9:19-24 (NIV)
19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. 24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.

Is Paul saying here to misrepresent ones heritage and beliefs, if necessary, so that under false pretenses, more trust would be garnered, and more souls "won"? How much clearer does it get than "by all possible means"? A little clearer:

Phil 1:15-18 (NIV)
15It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. (emphasis mine)

Whether from pretense or transparency, the important thing is the Gospel. Pretty clear. The ends justify the means...at least, according to Paul here.

Why Didn't God Get it Right?

When I decided to start Ionian Spirit, it took me some time to learn the general know-how of building and running a discussion board. I'd had some forum experience, but not as an administrator. Well, as soon as I opened the account, I was one, the Chief Administrator.

The creator of a message board is always Member no.: 1, the Root Administrator, as the rank is called. Though on some boards, multiple people can be added to the Root Admin group, the member #1 position still differs from all other administrators on the board in that the rank is unique by design. As "the" Root Admin, I am in complete control of the board and the software that runs it. I can design or modify any segment of the board from the ground up. I determine the settings of every facet of operation...whether or not we have flood control on posts and for whom and how long, time limits on editing posts, the size and type of avatars that can be uploaded, the number of emoticons one can use per post and per row, the management of permissions and forum access masks for members/groups, etc, etc. I can create any type of group or forum category or sub-category I choose, and give that group the on-board powers I see fit. I can change member account information, reset passwords and post count, even monitor and read personal messages and emails sent between members if I care to. At will, I can edit, suspend, ban, or IP ban any member or guest who comes to my board. Should a member get disorderly and I ban him or her from the forums, and that person is technically savvy and knows how to get past an IP ban, I have the power to IP ban entire ranges of IPs. For instance, I could IP ban anyone trying to get online from, say, Australia or Russia if I really wanted to. I can view anyone's IP and find out their ISP, even if they are guests to the site and have never registered. My fellow admins, non-root admins, have almost all of these same powers except the ability to change my personal account settings and access to certain advanced member monitoring options. I don't have but a few forum administrators. The ones I have are people I trust and who's opinions on running the board I value. They have plenty of say in what goes on in the forums, but if I wanted to, I could demote and ban all other admins and mods, and totally change things at any time. If someone didn't like it, nothing could be done about it because I am in charge and am the one who ultimately calls the shots. As far as the software limitations will take me, you could say I am the "god" of my forums.

No, I am not some narcissistic cyber-control freak. I am just making a comparison. The above is simply a countermodel of the Christian God, the alleged creator of the universe and his administrational powers over it. God is the "root admin" of the cosmos in it's entirety. No aspect of it is hidden from him, nor beyond his control. All power originates from him, no exceptions. He calls all the shots, and nothing can happen in this gigantic "forum" of his without his abiding consent.

Having said that, why does evil exist in God's universe? Why didn't God get it right? The problem may be an old one, but a sufficient answer has never slid off the tongue of a theist. Our illustration has effectively eliminated the many weak explanations often used in an effort to justify the existence of evil (i.e. "God allows freewill.", "God wants us to learn from our mistakes and make us stronger.", etc.). In addition to being poor excuses that do not stand up to the scrutiny of reason, these excuses are eliminated by reason of the fact that God must have created the universe you see before you the way he intended it to be. We have no reason to believe he would allow it to be taken in a direction that was contrary to his merciful, divine will, yet we observe a hostile, unforgiving universe of pain and disharmony, a place where people are buried alive and hard-working fathers are crippled in terrible car accidents.

So when it comes to the idea of an all-powerful god who runs the entire universe, he has no limitations, unlike those restrictions imposed upon me by the Invision Board software. God is the chief administrator of all that exists, yet his theistic servants would have us believe that god was incapable of setting up a system where women are never raped, children are not molested, where murderers are not to be found, and where predators are not forced to consume their helpless prey to stay alive?! I will never apologize for thinking that if an almighty creator existed, he was fully aware and fully capable of preventing the creation of an evil angel, who tricked a gullible woman into eating bad fruit, thereby, plunging the whole human race into decay!

In my forum, things that run contrary to the way my admins and I intend them are changed to accommodate our wishes. How can the same not also be said of the creator of the universe, an infinitely more powerful being with no limitations whatsoever? I cannot rationally assume that the creator of the universe created or allowed the formation of something that was not ideally his will.

Bottom line is, no special pleading can be made for justifying the existence of death and suffering in God's world...that is, unless he expressly wanted it to be so. I have to believe that any creator of the universe would be perfectly capable of fashioning the ideal soul-making environment just as he planned it from the very start. To suggest otherwise is logical lunacy. So again I ask, Why didn't God get it right?

(JH)