Category Archives: Religion

Entertainment, Philosophy, Random, Reason, Religion

Speaker’s Corner

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Some of you may have heard of Speaker’s Corner, in Londonbox – an area of Hyde Park where, for over 100 years, people have turned up (generally on Sundays) to speak their brains about whatever they feel is important. The majority of this consists of religious nutbarness, as you might expect, but with a smattering of political, social and ecological viewpoints.

You’re not protected by law, as many people seem to think – but police do tend to steer clear, so as long as you don’t try to wash the colour off a black man or anything similarly importunate you’re probably ok.

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Philosophy, Religion

YouTube’s TheoreticalBullshit

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“A simple, apostolic yearning for a genuine biblical revival in our day,” Revival Conference, an event held throughout the year, around the world, and with no cost for admission, is an extension of the ministry of SermonIndex.net, both being frequent platforms for Paul Washer, the founder of and Minister of the Gospel, his actual title, at Heart Cry Missionary Society. Revival Conference, SemonIndex.net, Paul Washer, and Heart Cry Missionary Society express non-denomitionalism, but an affiliated church, the Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, expresses, with emphasis, a devotion to the historic Baptist doctrine and references the Rev. John Newton Brown’s 1833 New Hampshire Confession, although, with doubtlessly unintended irony, it is modified slightly. And, so, while this event and these organizations and this person and, indeed, a great many more, may express non-denominationalism, they are certainly not beyond categorization and one can trace the theological and culture ideologies which inform their current iteration; non-denominationalism, however, is not a theological argument, but an ecclesiological argument.

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Philosophy, Reason, Religion

“Established Facts.”

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But there are actually three established facts recognized by the majority of New Testament historians today which I believe are best explained by the resurrection of Jesus.

– William Lane Craig

One can imagine the impact on an untutored mind of a phrase as commanding as “established facts’ or the idea that to challenge these facts is to challenge the consensus of historians; one would have to be crazy to go against the mainstream findings of an academic discipline, setting aside Creationism for a moment. Unlike many of the arguments for the existence of God, which are essentially matters of pure philosophy and therefore, while I would prefer to preserve them for the experts, we are all on some level capable to engaging them, the Argument for the Existence of God from the Historicity of the Resurrection requires some skill as an historian to refute and one must have access to substantial library. Offering the Argument for the Existence of God from the Historicity of the Resurrection, however, requires almost no skill as an historian, which is not to suggest that only the unskilled offer it; I am reminded that nonsense is the one of the few things that is harder to destroy than it is to create.

I stopped into a library to see if I could put my hands on a book about the historicity of Jesus, his life, times, death, the near effects of this death, and possibly his resurrection, ‘possibly’ because I can predict that a certain level of skepticism might reject the proposition that history is capable of establishing the existence of a miracle. Charmingly, because it feels like it’s becoming antiquated, the library utilized the Dewey Decimal Classification (it’s no longer a system, as I remember being taught in elementary school) and I made my way to the 232s, putting my finger on The Historical Figure of Jesus by E.P. Sanders. Libraries, I have long believed, are sacred places, mausoleums, on the one hand, and full of life, on the other; it is here, after all, that we store the longest lasting effects of our species’ best minds, and here, inevitably, where we go to better our own. This particular library pleases me: it is small, which means the librarian has to take considerably more care in selected which books which fill the shelves, and, on a personal level, I sat on the committee which hired our current librarian.

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Philosophy, Reason, Religion

“Fundamentalism is always sporadic.”

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Recently, there has been a renewed flurry of interest in the date of Jesus’ execution, and I have added an appendix on this topic. Here I wish to comment generally on the mistakes (as I perceive them to be) of the scholars who bring forth extreme proposals on such points, such as that Jesus was executed in 26 or 36. Since the evidence is diverse and hard to reconcile precisely, there is a tendency to seize on one point, to say that is determinative, and then to beat the other pieces of evidence into the necessary shape. That is, there is a danger of sporadic fundamentalism in studying ancient texts – not just the Bible. ‘Fundamentalism’ refers to the notion that some ancient text – or ancient literature in general – tells the precise and unvarnished truth. Fundamentalism, however, is always sporadic: fundamentalists believe that some people never exaggerated, made mistakes or mislaid their notes; or, at least, that some sections of some texts are perfectly reliable. Reading chronological studies on the New Testament reveals a lot of fundamentalism – usually sporadic. A scholar will maintain, for example, that John’s chronology is better than Mark’s and Matthew’s (and thus that theirs is not true.) Next, he or she will accept John on the numerous points where that gospel disagrees with the other three: there were three Passovers during Jesus’ public career rather than one, he was executed on 14 Nisan rather than 15 Nisan, and during his ministry he was in his forties (he was ‘not yet fifty’, John 8.57) rather than in his thirties, as Luke has it. Having dismissed the chronology of Matthew, Mark and Luke, some scholar then seize upon Matthew’s story of the star that stood over Jesus’ birthplace, and they try to match it with the appearance of a comet – apparently not noticing that this particular star, according to our only description of it, did not blaze across the heavens, but rather ‘stopped over the place where the child was’ (Matt. 2.9). Why take the star of Matthew’s story to be a real astral event and ignore what the author says about it? Why pay attention to Matthew’s star anyway, since he was wrong about the date of Jesus’ death (which John got perfectly right)?

“External Sources,’ The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 55. E. P. Sanders.

Philosophy, Reason, Religion

Certainty.

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Most scholars who write about the ancient world feel obliged to warn their readers that our knowledge can be at best partial and that certainty is seldom attained. A book about a first-century Jew who lived in a rather unimportant part of the Roman empire must be prefaced by such a warning. We know about Jesus from books written a few decades after his death, probably by people who were not among his followers during his lifetime. They quote him in Greek, which was not his primary language, and in any case the differences among our sources show that his words and deeds were not perfectly preserved. We have very little information about him apart from the works written to glorify him. Today, we do not have good documentation for such out-of-the-way places as Palestine; nor did the authors of our sources. They had no archives and no official records of any kind. They did not even have access to good maps. These limitations, which were common in the ancient world, result in a good deal of uncertainty.

“Preface,’ The Historical Figure of Jesus. E. P. Sanders.

Literature, Philosophy, Reason, Religion

Why Do We Care?

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One of the most common rebuttals I face, generally from well-meaning friends, is the old chestnut: “Why do you care? What’s wrong with religion if it doesn’t directly affect you? Why can’t you leave people alone?”

This stance neatly condemns any attacks on “soft” theism/deism whilst open-endedly permitting criticism of religion that does directly affect me, or people in general.

I am constantly at pains to sculpt my position with the utmost clarity. I don’t like religion. I don’t like unfounded beliefs that have more in common with delusional fairy tales than a rational response to the universe; similarly I am compelled to wax vitriol against beliefs in the supernatural, in the pseudoscientific. But as far as religion goes, I am restrained.

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Reason, Religion, Science

Gleeful Public Evisceration

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So the other day my free copy of Creation or Evolution, Does It Really Matter What You Believe? arrived on my doormat. As those of you who read the Pharyngula blog (and if you don’t you really should) will no doubt remember PZ was recently complaining about some awful creationist ads that keep appearing along side his posts over at ScienceBlogs. Unable to do anything to get them removed the betenticalled one came up with a cunning plan. He asked that his readers simply take them up on their offer of a completely free 60 page glossy booklet on creation vs evolution, read it and then “all join in a gleeful public evisceration of their crappy little booklet.” If he is going to be forced to give them publicity then “it will be the harshest, nastiest, meanest publicity possible, we will do everything we can to make sure that when someone googles their organization or their booklet, all that comes back is a mountain of snarling contempt.” Well, I thought, sign me up for a bit of that. My copy has now arrived and seeing that there is a PDF version available online you can all read along at home. Let the gleeful public evisceration begin.

 

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Religion

How to do nothing and think you are helping

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You’ve got to love stories like this. If you have looked at the news or even had the most basic of human contact in the last few months then you will know about the swine flu. Well over in Israel, where the flu is simply called “H1N1” because pigs are seen as unclean, they have come up with a rather innovative way of combating the virus. See if you can see a flaw in this plan, you’ll have to really pay attention to spot it:

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.

 

About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars.

 

The flight’s aim was “to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it”, Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

 

Now obviously their mistake here is one of instrumentation. As you all no doubt know ceremonial horns are used for fighting bacterial infections while consecrated pan pipes are the musical instrument of choice when dealing with viruses. But despite this fundamental mistake it seems it may have been effective.

 

“We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” added Mr Batzri was quoted as saying.

 

Well you can’t argue with that.

News, Reason, Religion, Science

Andrew Parker Lost The Game (And The Metro, Happily, Did Not)

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The last few hours have been full of nonsense.

Initially, a brief article in the London Lite detailing how a medium has told Jade Goody’s mother how Jade still loves Jack Tweed – the violent, sociopathic ass that he is – but doesn’t like him sleeping with other women.

That must have been the easiest work the medium ever did. “You’re the mother of a famous recently dead quasi-celebrity stupid racist bint . . . who could we possibly be here to talk about?”

There is no afterlife and anyone who says they can talk to the dead is either deluded or knowingly deceitful. And anyone who says they can talk to the dead and pretends to do so for bereaved relatives is just . . . reprehensible.

And this morning I found an article in the Metro, an interview with one Andrew Parker – an Oxford Uni biologist – who claims that God is behind the big bang, and has written a book (The Genesis Enigma – Why The Bible Is Scientifically Accurate). I was expecting to read the interview and find it full of mealy-mouthed delicacy and tolerance, but it seems the interviewer, Graeme Green, certainly isn’t taking Parker’s claims at face value. In fact, within the constraints of civility, Parker leaves with his ass in a sling. Instead of respecting Parker’s beliefs, something which happens with depressing regularity these days, Green submits him to fairly rigorous criticism – even levelling accusations of quote mining, a foul deed that all too many fundamentalists remain unchallenged on. In fact, I need to isolate that segment as you can practically hear Dr. Parker stumble:

“You say the second ‘Let there be light’¦’ refers to the evolution of the eye but you edited out the rest of the line, which clearly refers to the Sun, Moon and stars. There’s no mention in Genesis of the evolution of the eye.
Um, OK. I’ll probably have a look at this in more detail again. The first page of the Bible doesn’t spell out the eye but it doesn’t spell out any of the science in detail.”

“I’ll probably have a look at this in more detail again”? He’s already written the book, how come it’s only now that he’s deciding to reassess his source material thanks to a well-aimed question during a short interview? And he thinks creationism is unfounded and dangerous despite apparently subscribing to just that belief by thinking Genesis is completely true.

Full interview here.

And, of course, Parker would seem to be one of those people who doesn’t get how the eye could have evolved. For a recent diatribe on creationist tactics regarding ocular evolution CLICK THIS THING

Philosophy, Reason, Religion, Science

If Antony Flew Believes In God, Isn’t That Good Enough?

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Congratulations to our two promo winners!

 

Now, this is a recurring trend in fundamentalist debate (and there are so many recurring trends . . . just so many, and it hurts a little). It’s a variation on the “Einstein believed in God, and he’s the father of science, so just . . . shut up, ok? Shut up and take it” argument.

The difference is that most of the notable figures who fundies claim to have believed in God didn’t, of course. Einstein didn’t, Darwin didn’t – claims to the contrary are supported by careful quote mining. But Antony Flew is a goldmine for the right kind of fundamentalist mindset – a notable atheist who decided he believed in a higher power after all. This, despite the possibility of his advancing years causing mental decline, is sadly – or happily, depending on your outlook – incontrovertible.

The thinking is always that, if someone like Flew can renounce atheism, surely that’s good enough for you? There are a few other names of deconvertees that occasionally arise at this point in the debate (generally, it’s around this time that fundies will start to link you to Hovind videos as well) but I can’t recall them. There aren’t very many, though. Fred Hoyle is sometimes used, as his perception of the fine-tuning of physical laws led him to theistic views.

How to defeat this argument? Simple. As with most of the logicfails committed by our opponents, the best way to rebuke is to turn it back. So if a famous atheist deconverting is proof for God . . . surely a famous theist deconverting is proof for God not existing? Douglas Adams, say. He’s famous. He used to believe the whole thing, until he stopped and listened to a street preacher and decided it was nonsense. Is that proof of God being nonexistent? No, of course it isn’t! Neither argument is worth anything; the thing is to get fundamentalists to realise that if our version is meaningless, so is theirs.