Archive
Atheism, Bigotry, and Politics
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Today’s article is by SASHA member Alex Papulis.
I’d like to consider something in response to Dave’s June 14 post, where he explains that he will stop using the word “homophobia” and instead use “bigotry”.
Atheism does not entail any given political position, or any political position at all. There is nothing requiring an atheist to support either high or low taxes, strict or forgiving immigration policies, capital punishment or its abolition, or anything at all. One cannot be an atheist and support abolition of the death penalty because God says don’t murder, but one can be an atheist and support the abolition of the death penalty. According to moral nihilism, there are no positive moral facts about the world, and as moral nihilism follows from naturalistic atheism (see brief argument at end of post if you like), there is no imperative that the atheist support or oppose any particular policy.
Additionally, though, as all positive moral propositions are false, we should note that the atheist is inconsistent in claiming any political position to be wrong, bad, harmful, etc. Any such claim, that is held intolerantly in the face of opposition, is bigotry on the part of the atheist. For what reason could an atheist hold to a belief for which there is no evidence, in the face of opposition?
So, while an atheist certainly cannot consistently claim, for example, that homosexual behavior is bad or harmful, neither can he claim that anti-homosexual behavior is bad or harmful. Laws expanding the definition of marriage are not harmful, but neither are laws that restrict the definition of marriage. And it’s clear that anyone who says that such law is harmful, and is intolerant of those disagreeing, is behaving in a bigoted manner. There is no evidence for their belief, yet they obstinately hold on to it and disapprove of those who do not share their belief.
But surely, you may be thinking, there are political positions that are worse than others. Some taxes are better than none, highways are better than no highways, and firemen, policemen, ambulances, these are all good things, and policies can certainly be harmful in this regard. Surely we all agree on this. But we have to be careful. It may be the case that most of us like these things, and we don’t like things that lessen them, but that doesn’t get us what would be needed to avoid a charge of bigotry. After all, everyone can appeal to what they like, and the anti-homosexual doesn’t get off the hook because he likes restrictive marriage laws. No, in the end, stubbornly and intolerantly moralizing is bigotry.
So what’s left? For one, there are our desires. We prefer certain states of the world over others. We like what certain policies get us and dislike what others get us, even if none is better than another. And of course, atheism doesn’t entail anything about what preferences or desires one should have. It doesn’t require one be tolerant or accepting of differences, though one may like if atheists are these things.
The pro-gay, then, is fundamentally no different than the anti-gay. The bigots are those who intolerantly assert that one of the positions is good or bad. The two sides are simply two groups with different political desires, and they both try to impose those desires on the other via legislation. There is no place for moral indignation.
Moral nihilism: There are two problems with a realist view of morality for the naturalist atheist. First, moral entities (be they properties, relations, values) don’t seem to fit into the naturalist catalog. A quick way of thinking about it is by dissecting a behavior or act into its physical constituents and then considering where the moral properties might be. We can think about all the physical elements and effects of an action, yet when we try to find the “requirement” or “obligation” or “value”, we are unable. Second, even if moral entities did exist, it is unclear how we would be able to ascertain their existence or character. As moral entities don’t seem to fit into a naturalist understanding of the world, similarly it seems that our perception of them would be impossible without some faculty of perception capable of perceiving non-natural things.
After completing an economics degree at Washington University in St Louis, Alex Papulis just finished a year at Mizzou as a non-degree-seeking, non-transfer Degree-seeking Transfer student. He enjoyed it, and looks forward to starting a philosophy MA program in Milwaukee this fall.
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Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
SASHA Guest Post: “Deliver Us From Virtue” by Rocket Kirchner
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Today’s article is a guest post by musician, activist, long-time friend of SASHA, and Christian evangelist Rocket Kirchner.
Lao Tzu says that when a man praises virtue, he turns other men into criminals. WOW! Now, that is really throwing the gauntlet down. I have always found it ludicrous how we humans actually think that we are moral, ethical, virtuous people, and that we actually waste our time seeking to exalt such nonsense. Seems like we need a good absurdist comedian and a busload of clowns to dance around us and burst our pompous bubble. In the Middle Ages they had what was called “The Feast of Fools,” where one day out of the year, people would dress up as magistrates, popes, and cardinals, in a mock ceremony — Harvey Cox wrote a great book on the subject. The somewhat equivalent to this in the Far East is called “Nasty Night,” where monks walk around one night of the year and yell nasty things to anyone or anything.
When we seek to be good, we play with fire. This fire culminates in us externalizing evil (as if we are above it), and establishes the fundamentalist mindset. It matters not what one believes, or what one does not believe, that makes one a fundamentalist. What makes one a Fundie is praising virtue as if it has any intrinsic quality of authentic goodness in and of itself. In reality, this activity has the makings of constructing a ladder of self exaltation over others.
The complete blindness of the man who thinks that his good is the good is the peak of attachment to an illusory self. The root of every bloody political revolution, be it religious or anti-religious, or just plain an ideology of thinking that it will make a difference and make the world a better place, has separated humans from each other. The minute we think we are good, we are doomed. The only crack that we have in an kind of real goodness is not to be conscious of it, not to seek it, but rather to simply love people in word and in deed including loving those who hate us. We must seek to serve others and forget about all of this moralistic crap. Period. For only love and servanthood can deliver us from virtue, and being delivered from virtue is the same as being delivered from evil.
Rocket Kirchner is a long-time friend of SASHA. He is a professional musician, pacifism activist, Christian evangelist, and life-long student of philosophy.
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Remember this one for debates!
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
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Been really sick the past few days, and I apologize for the lack of updates. Here is one to hold you over, and frankly, it says it all:
Pro tip: This goes for any text, not just the Bible or other “holy” texts.
As a reminder, Rick Santorum and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson will be speaking in Columbia today (Friday) at 4 PM. Here is the SASHA Facebook event if you have questions for them!
Also don’t forget that on Sunday at 10 AM, we’re having our monthly “Alternative Church” with coffee, bagels, and the Columbia Atheists group. Check out our Facebook group for more details.
New articles coming soon!
- Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
An excellent example of what’s wrong with the fine-tuning case for a creator-god
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I’ve written before on this blog about the problems with the fine-tuning argument, and last time, I took some criticism for failing to address the anthropic principle. I did say right off the bat that there are many ways to demonstrate why this argument is wrong, and rather than attempt to present an exhaustive list, I was only going to write about 3 of my favorite counters, which I did. I agree with my readers, and with Richard Dawkins as well (as discussed in The God Delusion), that the anthropic principle is also an easy way to show why fine-tuning doesn’t hold water, and it could have well made it into the top three. I’m very grateful to my readers for your honest criticism, and agree with you that this counter-argument deserves attention, which I will address now.
If you’re not familiar, fine-tuning is simply the idea that, because conditions sufficient for life to arise are (it is claimed) so narrowly specific, they MUST have come about by intelligent design. First of all, claiming certainty on this point (“must have”) introduces an epistemological problem, the problem of induction, so at best deists/theists can argue that, based on available evidence, they believe that intelligent design is the most probable explanation, not that it MUST have been intelligent design (although you will rarely hear them admit this). This is an example of the fallacy of a false dilemma, also known as black-and-white thinking, i.e. failing to recognize other possible alternatives (in this case, that the universe created itself, which is also in better accordance with Occam’s Razor; see my previous article about parsimony here).
The idea that fine-tuning is the best explanation for the conditions of our universe has been thoroughly discredited by many qualified physicists, among them Vic Stenger, Brian Cox, and Stephen Hawking, and this information is readily available on Google. However, it’s important that we continue to address the topic because I still hear this hypothesis from believers literally every time we do our Ask an Atheist table on campus. Usually their information comes from theologians, or youth pastors, or at best, mathematicians, chemists, etc, not qualified astrophysicists or cosmologists. I’m convinced it’s just a matter of ignorance and confirmation bias, which are fortunately fixable things.
Aside from the fact that the universe is not actually fine-tuned for life (quite the opposite!), the ultimate problem with this line of reasoning is that it’s backwards—it reverses the order of things. The universe was not set up the way it is with us in mind, but rather, we are the type of thing that our universe grows, given enough time. This is even more obvious when you consider that the universe was here WAY before we grew out of it. As the ancient Buddhist proverb goes, “We are the universe experiencing itself.”
So, on to the subject of today’s article: the Anthropic Principle. Simply put, the anthropic principle is the idea that the universe is set up the way it is in order that we could exist here (rather than the idea that we are set up the way we are and indeed exist all because of the way the universe is set up). There are some other, more-specific versions of this argument, but that’s the basic idea. Douglas Adams famously said in a 1998 speech:
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there’s plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that’s a very dangerous thing to say.
Or, put another way:
Here’s a direct link to the website of the newspaper, the Northwest Indiana Times, where this letter appeared. Here’s a link to the comments section (some are rather amusing).
I should hope that I don’t need to spell this out, but in the interest of curing ignorance—the reason we run this blog—I want to be absolutely sure the point is made clearly: The deer about which Tim Abbott is complaining do not cross the street where they do because the deer-crossing sign is there, as if it were a crosswalk; rather, we put the sign there because that’s where the deer already tended to cross the street. The order here is important; the deer were there long before the highway, freely moving across that area. When we humans built the highway, the deer continued to move across that area, incidentally crossing the highway as they went and causing traffic accidents, and so, we put up a sign to warn drivers that deers cross there. It’s not a crosswalk, and deer don’t know or care about the deer-crossing sign—they crossed there before the highway was around, they crossed there before the sign was added, and they would continue to cross there whether we moved the sign or not.
Similarly, to the best of our knowledge—and we emphatically have no good reasons thus far to suspect otherwise—the universe does not know or care that we happened to have developed in it. The universe does not “know” or “care” about anything; the universe is not an intelligent entity capable of knowledge or feelings.
To assign human qualities like the capacity for knowledge or feelings to an object is what’s called anthropomorphism. This is incredibly common in human cultures, but it’s erroneous—other examples include thinking things like “My car hates me” or saying “Thank you!” to your computer when you are able to recover a file you thought you lost. Computers and cars, even though some people might give them personal names for fun, are not intelligent agents—they are inanimate objects (from the Latin prefix in- meaning lacking or without, and the Latin word anima meaning breath of life/life-blood).
Michael Shermer writes about this in The Believing Brain: When lightning strikes your house, it’s not because anyone is angry at you, gods or otherwise; it’s (very predictably and avoidably) because your house doesn’t have a lightning rod and is the tallest conductive thing nearby. This is why church steeples get struck by lightning so often; it has nothing to do with the Devil and God battling it out in the heavens. It’s just physics. But that’s awesome! Physics is amazing and interesting stuff, and by learning how our world works, to paraphrase Neil DeGrasse Tyson, we can improve our lives.
Until next time!
Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
God vs. Cashiers
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I believe that religion devalues human life. All human life, not just the lives of the religious practitioners. I think that religion indoctrinates innocent people to waste their minds and under-appreciated their lives, their family’s lives, their friend’s lives, and the lives of total strangers as well. If you disagree with that viewpoint and want to know just why I hold it, you’ll be disappointed here; this blog post is not one wherein I seek to affirm that position. I will, however, post on that position later.
Rather, in this post I will take one group of people who (in my experience) are some of the most under-appreciated people out there, and highlight three reasons I believe they are more worthy of our appreciation and love than the God of the Bible.
I want to talk about why the cashiers at Wal-Mart are more important to you than God.
1.) The Cashier is genuinely helping you.
Did the cashier create a manufactured problem and then demand that you take steps to fix it? Did they come into your home, rob you of your supplies, and then demand that you return to Wal-Mart to purchase more in order to avoid starving to death? No, of course they didn’t! Matter of fact, there’s a good chance you don’t even know them beyond the name printed on their nametag; and they don’t know you, either.
God, we are supposed to believe, knows each of us perfectly. If you’re really gullible, you may think he knew us before time even began (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean). However, God set things up in Genesis knowing Adam and Eve would fail and also knowing that the rest of us would sin in their footsteps. He knew from the start that every human being would be in peril of going to hell, but he made the world in a way to accommodate that threat anyway. In short: he’s a prick. He manufactured the problem, then tried to force us to take the “medicine,” which would supposedly be Jesus.
At least the cashier isn’t stuffing you into a problem and then demanding you ask for their help to get out! No, they’re just there to try to help you with problems that you have in one of life’s basic little areas; buying your groceries. But still, when you think about it, that’s more than God ever really does…
2.) The Cashier can affirm you as a human being.
As human beings, we all need interaction with our fellow humans. It’s simply part of what it is to be human. Without interaction with other humans, we quickly start losing our grip on who we are and begin desperately inventing things to talk to (a la Wilson from “Cast Away”). Whenever you pass through a cashier’s line at Wal-Mart, they will at least talk to you and, in so doing, acknowledge your existence has some value. Most of them will even smile and try to make a bit of small-talk.
Now God, on the other hand, if he is real, seems to habitually avoid us. It’s as if he’s the cosmic version of that friend whom you know could answer their phone, but they let it go to voicemail anyway. Believers beg, plead, beseech, and pray all year long, but not once do the clouds part and reveal any attention to validate their actions. Instead, they’re left desperately trying to link disparate events and say it was “God’s work.” That’s a horrible, pathetic reward for so much time spent in prayer. God never speaks to us, smiles at us, laughs with us, or asks us how are day is…all things which, for an omnipotent being, would be infinitely easy to do.
But Wal-Mart cashiers do! I’ve had many chats with them, and I’ve seen others do the same. I’ve seen them smile at me, genuinely laugh at my jokes, and engage in at least somewhat meaningful small-talk. I was a Christian for years and years and never got that sort of treatment from God! When you walk out of Wal-Mart (and if you were lucky enough to get one of the good cashiers) you can, silly as it may sound, feel a bit more like a part of an interconnected community of shared meaning. Again, that’s more than you can say for God…
3.) You can know that cashiers are real.
When it comes to knowledge, it is a tricky business. I’m of the school of thought that we cannot ever 100% know anything; there are for us only degrees of certainty resulting in justified belief.
Still, even taking into account all the Cartesian possibilities, there is more certainty and a greater justifiability in believing that cashiers are real beings than believing that God is a real being. That being the case, there is more reason to give them your acknowledgment, respect, and appreciation. God, on the other hand, is purely hypothetical. Anyone who claims to know he exists (they can be identified online as the ones typing that they KNOW in ALL CAPS, which is OBNOXIOUS) actually only means that they really really really believe he exists; they are convicted in that belief. fervently held belief does not actually count as real knowledge. The fact that we can do tests to show that cashiers are real stands high against the fact that we can do nothing to give even an ounce of credibility to the claim that God is real, not matter how sincerely that claim is made.
So, as real beings just like you, cashiers deserve at least some of our respect and appreciation. They are, after all, our fellow humans, citizens, and sometimes even neighbors. They help us, and they sometimes even try to make our visit to Wal-Mart more pleasant. They are more helpful to you and more apparently real than any god has ever been.
So, the next time you go to Wal-Mart (or any other store) and you’re in the checkout line, smile and talk to your cashier. After all, they’re more important than God!
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SASHA blog guest contributor Brandon Christen, a former Church of Christ preacher-turned-atheist, was born and raised in Missouri. He grew up in a religious family, and joined a far-right conservative church when he was a senior in college. For almost six years, the church dominated all facets of his life and thinking until, in early 2010, he began to openly question its steadfast rejection of science and philosophy. After a protracted struggle with his convictions, Brandon became an atheist in September of that year. These days Brandon remains intensely interested in religion, focusing on religious versus secular moral and ethical issues. Brandon frequently engages in conversations with as many religious individuals as he can in a “grass roots” effort to spread awareness about secular morality. He also acts as a strong voice in the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Central Missouri. While he sees debunking religious falsehoods as important, Brandon’s ultimate focus is on becoming a professional philosopher and emphasizing in ethics so as to lend his voice to the attempt to heal the moral divide between believers and non-believers.
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
CS Lewis says Christian marriages are maintained by God? Well, He’s doing a piss-poor job, then.
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A friend of mine, KLH, posted this quotation, attributed to CS Lewis, on his Facebook wall:
“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling… Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go… But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense — love as distinct from “being in love” — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriage) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God… “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”
- C.S. Lewis
For those interested, I was able to find the source for this on page 63 of The Complete CS Lewis Signature Classics, within the Mere Christianity section, Harper Collins, 2002.
Here is my response:
Interesting quotation. Do you think that’s really true? I ask because, according to the Associated Press, the highest divorce rates are in the Bible Belt (as cited in the link below). This is from ReligiousTolerance.org:
“Divorce rates among conservative Christians were significantly higher than for other faith groups, and much higher than Atheists and Agnostics experience.”
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
These figures are a little old (10ish years), but then again so is that quote from CS Lewis.
Some of the reasons for this are likely related to the younger age at which conservatives tend to get married (increasing the likelihood that they are not ready and rushing into a decision they will regret), and because of the idea that sex should be reserved for marriage (who wants to wait until they are 25 to have sex? (See above link for sources). In reality, 95% of Americans admit to having premarital sex; that may actually be even higher because conservative Christians, who don’t tend to be very willing to talk about their sex lives with random telephone pollsters, may be lying).
Source: Most Americans have premarital sex, study finds (2006)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-19-premarital-sex_x.htmAlso, teen pregnancy rates are highest in the South and among conservative Christians, because of pushes for abstinence-only education:
Source: See page 13 (2010 study of 2005-6 data)
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends.pdf
“Purity rings,” celibacy pledges, etc have been shown to delay sex in teens by only 3-4 months versus teaching how to use condoms and safe-sex practices, and in those cases, teens are more likely to get pregnant because they don’t tend to use protection if they’re not taught how. This article from TIME says that teens are just as likely to have sex regardless of whether they make a virginity pledge or not, and those who do make one are significantly less-likely to use protection:Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1868990,00.html
It seems that the idea that Christian marriages are maintained by God, as CS Lewis suggests here, is really pretty skewed. If God is helping to maintain Christian marriages, he is actually doing a *worse* job at it than non-Christians are doing on their own!
If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend you check out this 1-hour talk from the Skepticon conference by researcher Darrel Ray, based on his brand-new book, “Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality.”
Here’s the book:
and here’s the video of the talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83P6epN1e9w
Here is the 46-page PDF study on which the book is based, which includes TONS of fascinating charts, graphs, and hard data that he and his research partner collected and put together for the book:
His response:
I quote it because it’s interesting, but not because I’ve experienced it. Even if it is true, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s rarely lived out.
[Correction: Darrel Ray has informed me that the PDF study linked above is only the basis of one chapter of the book, not the basis of the whole book, which has many other chapters as well. Thanks, Darrel!]
Until next time,
Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
A God I’d have a beer with…
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“Yeah, I’d vote for Senator What’s-His-Nuts. He seems like he’s pretty real…you know, a regular guy. I could see myself having a beer with him, is what I’m saying.”
I hear that line a lot going in to the voting season (and though I’m not here to talk politics, I will say that I think it’s really stupid).
It seems like a lot of people enjoy evaluating potentially important decisions on who will lead their city, state, or country based on whether or not the person they’re voting for would have a beer with them.
Which is only just *slightly* more civilized than deciding who leads by way of a Viking moot.
However, as of late I’ve seen a lot of Christians seem to adopt roughly this same view on God. They will cuss, drink, and generally act all “in yo’ face” for Christ. This often includes being aggressive in their discussions and debates with Atheists and other non-Christians. When called out on the sophomoric behavior and then (for icing atop the cake) informed that their actions are, in fact, in conflict with the teachings of their Bibles, they will respond in a way that essentially boils down to this: “Yeah, well, just because that’s what it actually says doesn’t mean that’s what it really means.” When pressed for clarification, normally their reasoning is reveled to actually be “I just feel like God approves. Besides, he’s loving and I’m sure he’ll forgive me since I’m devoted to him.” That’s pretty much the theological equivalent of “I think God would have a beer with me.”
M’kay, kid. So, you think that the all-powerful, cosmic, mega-tyrant of the Old Testament (and the son-murdering, earth-ending God of the New Testament) is going to see you transgressing his strict instructions on thoughts and behavior but, just before he smites you, stop and say to himself, “Oh, that’s okay. They have a ‘personal relationship’ with me, so I will overlook it.”
Yeah…I call bullshit. Read the Bible. Yes, there’s plenty about love and forgiveness and blah blah blah in there, that’s true. There’s also quite a few scenes where God over-the-top smites someone for disobeying some part of his commandments. For example, in the book of 2nd Samuel God murders some poor fellow for reaching out and trying to keep the Ark of the Covenant from falling in the mud.
Interestingly, God merely thanked Indie for it. Thanked him, then backed away... timidly.
The reason God killed the guy? Well, Mr. High-and-Mighty had decreed earlier that only certain people (namely priests) were to be permitted to touch the ark. Remember though, the victim (named Uzziah) was only trying to keep the sacred ark from falling on the ground; he had no ill intentions. Hell, it was practically reflexive. Still, God murdered him on the spot for innocent disobedience. We could talk at length about the moral implications from this disgusting story, but the main point I want to emphasize here is that God didn’t care where Uzziah’s heart was or what his intentions were; he just straight up killed him for the physical act of disobedience.
Pictured: a man who would appreciate God's response
Don’t think that sort of murderous tyranny is relegated to the Old Testament only, either. The New Testament has, as its major theme, the idea that people who disagree with God are wicked, foolish, disgusting, and ultimately hell bound. Threats and promises of eternal torment are to be found a plenty in the New Testament, and they are aimed at anyone who refuses to bow down to God in exactly the way he demands that they bow down. So no, God doesn’t seem to laid back about his doctrines in either testament.
At no point does the Bible contain a clause saying “pick the parts you like because God is a cool, laid back deity who ‘gets you’,” so all this nonsense with self-professed Christians cussing out Atheists, making death threats (or wishing death upon us), and just generally acting like assholes under the pretense that God will understand and forgive them needs to stop.
Now, why am I taking the time to say this? Why do I care if Christians match the proper level of piety espoused in their Bibles? Simple: because beliefs shape society, and only earnest beliefs can be changed through rational discourse. Want a society where women are treated as property, knowledge is seen as evil, and bigotry reigns supreme? Easy enough to do, just expose your population only to hard-line, fundamentalist religious doctrines and you’ll have it in no time. Want to undue all those evils I just mentioned? Well, muster up enough logically and emotionally valid arguments to change peoples minds and go hash it out over coffee or some such. It’ll be more difficult and take longer, but eventually through education, logical reasoning, and social grass-roots activism you’ll hopefully accomplish your goal if the people you’re talking to actually care about what they believe.
Hoover, the key point to notice is that for social change to happen, those who are in the wrong must at least take their beliefs seriously enough so as to be able to critically evaluate them. Otherwise, all the activism, logic, and debate in the world won’t elucidate them as to why they are mistaken.
So you’ll get nowhere fast with idiots who don’t even understand or practice their own professed religion. People like that merely use their religion as a thin cover for ignorance and tribalism. Tragically, once they reach that stage there’s usually no arguing with them; the best you can do is ignore them and hope their kids turn out different.
In the end, I’ll be blunt: I detest religion. However, I respect a person who, despite being religious, is at least sincere, well read, and well thought out about where they stand. I can debate, discuss, and reason with just such a person and for that alone they have my appreciation. However, those who act however-the-hell they want or thoughtlessly spew hate in the name of their God of choice while remaining ignorant of the very commandments they’re transgressing have absolutely none of my respect whatsoever.
_________________________________________________________________________
SASHA blog guest contributor Brandon Christen, a former Church of Christ preacher-turned-atheist, was born and raised in Missouri. He grew up in a religious family, and joined a far-right conservative church when he was a senior in college. For almost six years, the church dominated all facets of his life and thinking until, in early 2010, he began to openly question its steadfast rejection of science and philosophy. After a protracted struggle with his convictions, Brandon became an atheist in September of that year. These days Brandon remains intensely interested in religion, focusing on religious versus secular moral and ethical issues. Brandon frequently engages in conversations with as many religious individuals as he can in a “grass roots” effort to spread awareness about secular morality. He also acts as a strong voice in the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Central Missouri. While he sees debunking religious falsehoods as important, Brandon’s ultimate focus is on becoming a professional philosopher and emphasizing in ethics so as to lend his voice to the attempt to heal the moral divide between believers and non-believers.
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
But…but what about faith?
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_________________________________________________________________________
It’s a subject I hear in one form or another quite a bit.
“But what about faith?”
“Aren’t you forgetting about having faith?”
“That’s where faith comes in.”
“I just have faith.”
It seems like I can’t voice my Atheism or demand a good argument without at least one person popping up and, as if they were presenting a novel idea, asking me why I haven’t realized just how important faith is. To be fair, I think it is a decent question to ask someone why they don’t think faith is a good reason to believe in God; I say this merely because so very many people in our society do believe in God, due to faith, that it is of some importance why one would toss out (as I think they should) the epidemiological grounding of “faith.”
To me, it seems, there are several great reasons to dismiss any claim that stakes its ability to be taken seriously in your ability to “just have faith.” I’m now going to, as succinctly and respectfully as I can, outline what my top three reasons are.
Number One: Because it’s just plain stupid.
Imagine, that someone came up to me and informed me that they could, without mechanical assistance whatseover, fly. Just strait up fly.
Ta da
Now what if I believed that person without any evidence? Without a video that wasn’t suspiciously susceptible to being doctored? Without eye witness reports that were definitively genuine and consistent with the facts in addition to being consistent in regards to how they describe the flying man?
You would, justifiably, call me a fool. Now what if I based my life upon the notion that this person could actually fly? What if I justified my every action and vote based on what I thought the flying-person would want? What if I hated, loved, empowered, and oppressed based on what I thought the flying-person would like? What if I did all this still without good, genuine evidence of their powers, and when you asked about it just told you “I simply have faith!”
Yep, you’d call me stupid. And that’s okay! It would be honest. It might not be polite or sensitive…..but meh, fuck it, at least it would be honest. And really, can you be more respectful towards someone than when you are totally honest with them? That’s why I don’t shy away from telling my Christian friends that I think faith is a silly, shitty reason for believing anything. It is sad but true that honesty hurts sometimes.
- Pictured: honesty incarnate
Number Two: Most believers even tacitly admit that it’s stupid.
The thing is, most Theists will confess that faith is a poor excuse for belief in a very round about way. When someone from another religion (or some silly new age spiritualism group) claims that they “just have faith” most God fearing, Bible revering Christians (for example) will try to argue with them and reason with them to follow the Bible’s claims instead. In so doing, they are de facto admitting that reason and evidence ought to trump someone’s faith.
Or what about those times when Theists boldly assert “Atheism isn’t a logical position; it’s based on faith as much as any religion!” Claims like this are normally followed by a list of arguments and evidences (however lame) as to why that particular Theist’s favorite dogma is true. Inherent in this claim/argument setup is the notion that faith isn’t as good as reason and evidence.
Indeed, it seems the rule that for most Theists that the faith defense is only trotted out when their backs are against the wall and it’s clear that they’ve not a single good, well reasoned, logical argument on their side.
Number Three: It’s damned insulting.
I’ll probably wind up writing a separate post about this single subject later on; I simply feel that passionately about it. I personally find faith to be fundamentally insulting to myself, my Christian friends who rely on it, and the human species as a whole. I used to be deeply indoctrinated in the Christian faith; a real fundamentalist. I was steeped in the personal crisis/redemption subculture and my faith in God was absolute, unquestionable, and crucial to my life.
However, steeped in the faith though I was, I fought. I struggled and clawed my way out, bit by painful bit, via reasoning and acknowledgment of evidence. It was a hard won fight, and in the end my faith was gone and I’d gained new respect for my mind and its abilities. But damn it was difficult…
Like trying to climb a mountain made entirely out of bullshit.
Nowadays, when people tell me I ought to go back to just having faith, I get incensed. My mind, such as it is, will never be the absolute best around. Bigger fish in the sea, blah blah blah. Still, with nothing but my grey matter, I figured out huge holes in the faith I was taught to revere (holes which were later confirmed by my reading up on these sorts of things). The point is I’m damn proud of my mind, and I’d hate to see it muddied by the sloppy non-reasoning that is faith.
And, on that point, I’m also irked to see my Theistic friends, who are good people, waste their minds on faith as well. It’s an insult to their inner potential, as it is an insult to the potential of the human species and the powerhouse of a brain we’ve been dealt by nature; a brain that could be put to better use solving the world’s problems and finding beauty and joy in the one life which we know that we have.
Faith is just such a damned waste.
So there we are. The top three reasons I despise “just have faith,” and other such slogans. It is stupid, those espousing it usually tacitly admit that it is stupid, and it is just plain insulting.
We’re done here.
_________________________________________________________________________
SASHA blog guest contributor Brandon Christen, a former Church of Christ preacher-turned-atheist, was born and raised in Missouri. He grew up in a religious family, and joined a far-right conservative church when he was a senior in college. For almost six years, the church dominated all facets of his life and thinking until, in early 2010, he began to openly question its steadfast rejection of science and philosophy. After a protracted struggle with his convictions, Brandon became an atheist in September of that year. These days Brandon remains intensely interested in religion, focusing on religious versus secular moral and ethical issues. Brandon frequently engages in conversations with as many religious individuals as he can in a “grass roots” effort to spread awareness about secular morality. He also acts as a strong voice in the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Central Missouri. While he sees debunking religious falsehoods as important, Brandon’s ultimate focus is on becoming a professional philosopher and emphasizing in ethics so as to lend his voice to the attempt to heal the moral divide between believers and non-believers.
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Dave’s Mailbag: Cite your sources!
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Hello all,
I greatly appreciate it when our readers take the time to poke holes in things we say here. As a skeptic, I want to make it abundantly clear that I love being proven wrong about things; it is only when I find out I was wrong that I have the opportunity to really grow in my knowledge and understanding of the world. So, with that in mind, I want to specifically thank my friend Christian Huls for his response to my post yesterday.
In kind, I want to take some time to respond to his comments point-by-point. Here we go:
Dave, you continually make bold claims and statements as if they are authoritative undisputed fact, site nothing, and stand against ancient testimony that was much closer to the events than you. Your history is more fraudulent than that of Dan Brown’s…
When I’m blogging, I admit that I make less of an effort to cite all my sources for every detail – especially if it interrupts the flow of the post, or if I’m making a humorous point – the way I would in an academic paper. Depending on the subject matter, I often hotlink to sources, and I appreciate you calling me out on this. I will attempt to be more thorough in future posts, and for future reference, if you would ever like to know my source for something I said on here (assuming it’s not original research), please feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll dig it up for you!
You write:
Matthew was not anonymous, nor was it written by someone ignorant of Hebrew. What is your evidence of this? There is good evidence that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic and later translated into Greek.
I would like to see this good evidence. To my knowledge, the only evidence that favors the idea that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and later translated to Greek (as opposed to being composed in Greek), is that Papias, as quoted by Eusebius, made an extremely ambiguous reference to this, which modern scholars by and large reject as either a misunderstanding, or an outright error on his part.
According to the beautiful, highly-regarded 4-volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, (chief ed. Geoffrey Bromiley, a church historian and historical theologian who sadly died two years ago this past August, a Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, ordained in the Church of England, with an MA from Cambridge and a PhD, DD, and post-doctoral D.Litt from the University of Edinburgh), to which I am very grateful to have free access anytime I want here at Mizzou’s Ellis Library (considering it’s about $240 on Amazon), the book we now call “The Gospel according to Matthew” was indeed anonymously written, and the modern scholarly view is that it lacks the characteristic linguistic features one would expect to find in a Greek rendering of a work originally composed in Hebrew. I’m quoting: “The gospel itself says nothing about its sources” and “[Matthew's Greek] reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation” (Vol iii p. 281). On page 280: “Early in the 2nd century, Papias referred to Matthew as the collector of “oracles” [sayings] of Jesus; shortly thereafter the Gospel as a whole was attributed to Matthew. Later traditions about Matthew are mixed and unreliable.”
You wrote:
Papias (60-130), as quoted by Eusebius, makes the following obscure statement about the origin of the gospel testifying to both the author and the language (H.E. 3. 39. 16): “Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew language and everyone interpreted as he was able.”
Irenaeus (130-200) (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1; also quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 5.8.2): “Now Matthew brought forth among the Hebrews a written gospel in their language, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the church.”
Origen (185-254) (as quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 6. 25.3-4) asserts, “Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a tax collector, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew [or Aramaic] language.”
Eusebius wrote of Pantaenos (died c. 190), associated with the church in Alexandria (H.E. 5.10.1-4): “One of these was Pantaenos, and it is said that he went to the Indians, and the tradition is that he found there among some of those there who had known Christ the Gospel of Matthew had preceded his coming; for Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters, which was preserved until the time mentioned” (see H.E. 3.24.5-6). According to Jerome, Pantaenos brought back a copy of this Hebrew version of Matthew to Alexandria (De vir. ill. 36).
Eusebius (H.E. 3.24.6): “For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence.”
Jerome (342-420) stated several times that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and even said that the original Hebrew Gospel was in the library at Caesarea in his day (De vir. ill. 3; see Ad Damas. 20; Ad Hedib. 4).
Epiphanius (315-403) wrote concerning the Nazarenes, “They have the Gospel according to Matthew quite complete in Hebrew, for this Gospel is certainly still preserved among them as it was first written, in Hebrew letters” (Panarion 29.9.4).
My response:
Quoting again from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol iii, p. 282:
The arguments for the priority of Mark and Matthew’s dependence upon Mark are too strong to be overthrown by the testimony of Papias, which as we have seen is difficult to interpret.
Quoting further still:
Almost all scholars agree that our Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek and is not a translated document”… “Our Greek Gospel of Matthew is not the translation of a Hebrew or Aramaic original.” “Matthew’s OT quotations are derived from the LXX [Septuagint] rather than the Hebrew text… the Aramaic Gospel supposedly referred to by Papias can at best be a Proto-Matthew… the majority of NT scholars remain convinced that Markan priority is a superior hypothesis. In the face of these problems it must be concluded that either Papias was wrong in what he said or, giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he has been misunderstood, perhaps by the early church fathers (e.g. Irenaeus, Pantauenus, Origen…)
You wrote:
Perhaps there is some evidence that the Greek translator was not fluent in certain Hebrew/Aramaic idioms. For example, the infamous camel through the eye of a needle phrase – in Aramaic, the word for camel and rope are the same. An interesting article on this http://healing2thenations.net/papers/hebrewmt.htm
Consider also the Aramaic words found in Matthew: Emmanuel, raka, and mammon.
My response:
As I stated above, the scholarly view is that Matthew was composed in Greek. This is the majority view, among both believing-Christian and secular scholars, for reasons available in much greater detail here. As stated, it’s possible that some of the sayings of Jesus came to the author of “Matthew” via Aramaic, which seems to be what Papias was talking about when he says that the author collected tá lógia - it really does all depend on the interpretation of that word. But even then, this goes against Markan priority + Q, for which there is much more solid evidential footing, and which is accepted by the majority of modern NT scholars (see Christopher Tuckett’s “The Current State of the Synoptic Problem,”delivered at the 2008 Oxford Conference in the Synoptic Problem).
I think the best we can say is that it’s inconclusive. Quoting the above encyclopedia yet again (p 281), “Although the evidence allows only speculation, it may well be that what Papias referred to was a collection of sayings of Jesus in Aramaic that ultimately, in Greek, became the core of Matthew’s gospel, and that the whole then took the name of the part – ‘the oracles of the Lord.’ Papias was misunderstood not only because of the ambiguity of the word lógia but also because several Jewish Christian Gospels existed in the 2nd cent. (e.g. the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Ebionites, and of the Hebrews), and it was easy enough to suppose that one or all of them originated in the lógia referred to by Papias. Even the great Jerome first identified one of these Gospels, which he examined in Syria, with the work of Matthew, only later to withdraw this conclusion.”
You wrote:
There is also external evidence for the authorship and early existence of the Gospel of Matthew as well.
Clement of Rome (c. 90) used sections of the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. 5:7; 6:14-15; 7:1-2, 12; with Luke 6:31, 36-38) (1Clem. 13:1-2).
Ignatius used the Gospel of Matthew (c. 100) quoting the phrase “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt 3:15) in discussing Jesus’ baptism (Smyr. 1).
The author of the Didache (c. 110) quoted from Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer (Did. 8:1-3).
Justin Martyr (c. 100-165), whose works I just finished reading in their entirety a few weeks back, frequently quotes from a harmony that he apparently put together of the synoptic gospels. He says that there are only FOUR gospels.
His pupil Tatian (120-180) produced a harmony of the four gospels called the Diatessaron which was the standard text in the Syriac churches until the fifth century. The harmony does not include Jesus’ encounter with the adulteress (John 7:53- 8:11), and no significant text was added. In all, only 56 verses in the canonical Gospels do not have a counterpart in the Diatessaron, mostly the genealogies and the Pericope Adulterae.
Not centuries later. A century later it was in circulation enough that someone had put together a harmony of three of them. They were well known enough even by the critics. And it was common knowledge that there were four, and that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in that order.
Did I say that Matthew was composed centuries ex post facto? I believe I said (or at least, I meant to say) decades, not centuries. If so, that was an error on my part. The consensus scholarly view for the date range of “Matthew’s” gospel is about 15 years after Mark, i.e. circa 85 CE. Aune’s “Blackwell’s Companion to the New Testament,” page 298, specifies the terminus a quo of Matthew’s gospel as “sometime after 70 CE.” He goes on to say:
The range of possibility is 70 to 110 CE. Most scholars prefer a date for Matthew midway between, about 80-90 CE, allowing some years after Mark. This time period is strongly supported by an internal analysis of Matthew and other known historical events.
You wrote:
The earliest fragments of Matthew are dated to the middle or latter half of the first century.
Source? The earliest fragment of Matthew of which I am aware is 
104, over at the Sackler Library at Oxford (aka P.Oxy.LXIV 4404), which dates to the late 2nd century. Here’s a lay source chart indicating that it’s the earliest known fragment. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri database also lists it as “late second century.”
You wrote:
Just because a modern skeptical “scholar,” who doesn’t believe in God and presupposes that miracles are impossible, postulates that these were written in different order, assembled, etc. does prove it to be so.
Couldn’t agree with you more 
You wrote:
These were not merely voted upon out of hundreds of gospels centuries later, but the councils merely affirmed what was already accepted by the churches, as evident by the lists of scriptures by earlier writers.
I don’t see how a council affirming what was “accepted” by tradition lends any credibility to the tradition per se. Lists of scriptures by earlier writers only means that those scriptures, in some form or another, were in existence at that time. We have no way of knowing what they contained or how much they were altered or edited in between. If a Muslim council were to get together today and “affirm” that Muhammad was a true prophet of God, on the basis of earlier writers of the Qur’an and the Hadith, would that be convincing to you? As good scholars (and good scholars and by nature skeptical!), we’d also want to see solid independent, unbiased, external evidence, preferably evidence that comes from undisputed eyewitnesses, etc.
You wrote:
Regarding riding on the colt and the foal of the donkey, this is easily reconciled if the two animals are tied together and if Messiah is riding side saddle on the adult with His feet on the foal. Though this is not even necessarily so either. It could have simply been that the foal remained tied to the other and no one was riding on it.
It’s possible, sure. It’s not parsimonious, and it doesn’t explain why “Luke,” “John,” and “Mark” all specify one animal, as does the alleged prophecy in Zechariah.
You wrote:
Furthermore, early hostile eyewitnesses could have easily disputed this and none did.
You’re right; in fact it’s even worse than that: Early hostile eyewitnesses didn’t mention any of these events at all – almost as if these events never happened and were made up by the gospel writers decades later!
I also want to point out one more thing. You (rightly) called me out for making bold assertions without citing my sources. I hope that I have corrected this to your satisfaction. However, I noticed something in reading over what you wrote…
- “Matthew was not anonymous, nor was it written by someone ignorant of Hebrew…”
- “There is good evidence that Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic and later translated into Greek…”
- ”Papias (60-130), as quoted by Eusebius, makes the following obscure statement about the origin of the gospel…”
The first two things, I would like to ask you, in turn, to provide citations for. But it was this last bit that caught my eye in particular, when you said “makes the following obscure statement…”
I realized I’d read that exact line before. After a quick Google search, I realized you had simply copied & pasted pretty much the entirety of your post from a webinar workbook provided to students of Barry Smith’s Religious Studies 2033 class, “The New Testament and its Context,” at Crandall University in New Brunswick, Canada, a tiny, private Baptist school operated by the Convention of Atlantic Baptist Churches and founded in 1949 as the “United Baptist Bible Training School,” before they changed the name to something that sounded a little less backwater.
By bizarre coincidence, I happen to be familiar with Smith’s research; he went to McMaster Divinity School and also got his PhD from McMaster University in Ontario, where an old friend & colleague of mine happens to teach anthropology (my friend got her undergraduate degree in anthropology here at Mizzou, where I also study anthropology).
If we’re talking about citing sources, I’m not so sure Dr. Smith would be so happy to hear about this, haha. I also want to point out, as I spelled out above, that this interpretation directly opposes the majority view of NT scholars. Not that Dr. Smith isn’t entitled to his professional opinion, but I don’t think it makes sense, if we’re truly trying to unravel this mystery, to draw from 1 uncredited source that contradicts the majority view, without providing overwhelming evidence in favor of this view (re: the assertion that Matthew was not anonymous, the “good evidence” that it was translated into Greek, etc). Am I to understand that the “good evidence” you refer to is simply Papias’ third-hand say-so (4th-century Eusebius, quoting 2nd-century Papias, writing about the as-yet-untitled 1st-century gospel of “Matthew”)?
Thanks again for your feedback, Christian!
- Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current,NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Conversation with a Christian friend
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Hello all,
I recently had this conversation with a Christian friend of mine. I wanted to comment on it further. Here it is:
“T” (Facebook status update). For the record, “T” is getting bachelor’s degrees in psychology & ministry:
Practicing for [Christian campus group] for Monday night
Me:
What happens Monday?
I asked because there has been some talk about this particular Christian campus group getting together with their campus’s skeptic’s group on Monday to talk about morality, and I wanted to know if that’s what he was referring to. It’s 90 miles away, but I’m planning to attend, especially if he’ll be there.
T:
We’re just doing bible study now
Me:
What are you studying though? I’m curious
T:
We’re in Genesis at the moment talking about original sin and stuff like that
Me:
Original sin is in Genesis? It’s my understanding that original sin comes from Paul (Romans 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:22), and from Bishop Irenaeus in the 2nd century.
T:
Well we’re talking about the first sin, that’s what I meant
Me:
ohh, the fall, genesis 2? Out of curiosity, do you think Adam and Eve were two real, literal people?
T:
Yes I do believe they were two actual people
Me:
How come?
T:
There is nothing in the bible that leads me to believe that they are metaphorical
Me:
I’m just trying to understand this, I hope you forgive me for all the questions, haha. Even when I was a Christian, I never myself believed that the Adam & Eve story was literally true. So I guess the next question is, you’re saying you believe it’s literally true because it’s in the Bible? Does that mean that you believe everything written in the bible is literally true unless it explicitly says otherwise?
T:
Not necessarily, there are many things in the bible that are explicitly meant to be metaphors and there are some things that are meant to be taken literally, but I believe that Adam and Eve is literal because there is nothing, to me, that seems to say otherwise
Me:
Right, I mean there are parables and stuff that are obviously not supposed to be literally true. But I mean, if the bible seems to say that something happened, that’s good enough for you to believe it literally happened, unless the bible itself says otherwise?
T:
Yes, why would I doubt the word of God, if I doubted the word of God then I wouldn’t be a Christian, you ask all these questions, but I don’t understand why?
Me:
I think you can be a christian and still have reasons for believing what you believe that aren’t from the bible itself. 1 Peter 3:15 says you should always be ready to give reasons for what you believe to anyone who asks. And when that was written, the bible wasn’t wholly compiled yet, so one could hardly say that all the answers are supposed to come from the bible itself.
One thing I noticed is that you said, “why would i doubt the word of god…” referring to the bible. I guess my real question is, why do you think the bible is the word of god? There are lots of books that claim to be the word of god… the qur’an, the book of mormon… what makes the bible different?
T:
Because of the prophecies fulfilled, none of those other books have the same ones. I still don’t understand why you are prying, I’m not going to change my faith and I know you are not going to change yours
Me:
Oh, I’m not trying to change your mind. I am just curious about why you believe, that’s all. I have no intention of trying to change your mind. I just want to understand your reasons… what prophecies?
T:
Haven’t we gone over this before in [Christian campus group]?????
Me:
We might have… I’ve asked a lot of Christians this over the years and honestly I don’t remember who’s told me what, LOL.
It’s something I ask everybody, when I have the chance… I am always interested in what sorts of things convince people to believe things. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Everybody believes for different reasons and I was just wondering what caused/causes you to believe.
T:
Lol we already talked at [Christian campus group] so yeah lol
—————
When I said that you can be a Christian and still have reasons for what you believe, I was thinking of the late Harvard Divinity School professor James Luther Adams, who, paraphrasing Socrates, said, “The unexamined faith is not worth having, for it can be true only by accident.” Like I mentioned above (1 Peter 3:15), there is also a good biblical basis for this, albeit within the apocryphal Petrine epistles, although it is still technically part of the New Testament canon.
These sorts of conversations are interesting to me, because I used to believe many of the same things, and I used to use much of the same reasoning. I believed the Bible, and that was good enough for me. In fact, I believed in the Bible so much that I wanted to know all about it. That’s why I read it for myself, cover-to-cover, the first time (NIV), and the second time (KJV), and started learning Latin & Greek, so I could read it more truly for myself the way the authors intended. What I found, though, is that the closer you look, the harder it is to keep believing, because in order to do it, the more you have to deny the obvious: That the Bible is a man-made, haphazard, pieced-together collection of fragments and copies-of-copies, and has no more divine authority than the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Analects, or any other “holy book” you’d care to name.
The “prophecies” basis for believing the Bible has divine authority is, frankly, total bullshit. I make no apologies for saying this and I don’t care if it offends anyone, including my Christian friend. I am convinced that the only reason anyone thinks Biblical prophecies are any sort of evidence in favor of divine authorship is that they are ignorant about the real history behind these so-called prophecies.
Now, I do want to say that I am NOT calling people who believe these things stupid. Stupid and ignorant are NOT the same thing. Ignorant simply means “lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about some subject in particular.” This is totally different from stupid, which my friend certainly is not. Fortunately, ignorance is easy to fix
Here’s why belief based on prophecies is bullshit:
Believing that the New Testament is of divine authority, on the basis that it tells tales of fulfilled prophecies first laid out in the Old Testament, makes no more sense than believing that the 7th Harry Potter book is of divine authority, on the basis that it tells tales of fulfilled prophecies first laid out in the first Harry Potter book.
The authors of the New Testament knew exactly what was written in the Old Testament, and they wrote their accounts in order to make them fulfill prophecies in the Old Testament, sometimes explicitly so!
And even more telling, sometimes they misunderstood the prophecies and even get them wrong!
Robert Miller, writing for the journal The Fourth R (Westar Institute), explains it well:
Twelve times in his gospel, Matthew interrupts the story to tell us that the event he is narrating fulfilled a specific prophecy, which he then quotes.
Disclosure: I am an associate member of the Jesus Seminar, which is run by the Westar Institute, and which also publishes the journal The Fourth R.
The author of the book we now call The Gospel According to Matthew (the title was assigned by committee vote decades after its composition, and “Matthew’s” authorship is an attribution – the original text was not only untitled, but anonymously written as well) had access to what we now call the Old Testament. He specifically crafted his stories, in 12 cases explicitly so, to make them fulfill prophecies. His stories do not match up with extra-biblical historical accounts, nor with the other gospel writers.
There are a dozen to choose from, but I think the best example of Matthew “adjusting” events in order to make them more-closely fulfill prophecies from the Old Testament is in Matthew 21:4-5. Let’s start with the prophecy from the Old Testament:
In the Old Testament, in Zechariah 9:9, it’s “foretold” that the king of Zion will make a triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. In beautiful Hebrew poetic form, it reads like this:
גִּילִ֨י מְאֹ֜ד בַּת־צִיֹּ֗ון הָרִ֙יעִי֙ בַּ֣ת יְרוּשָׁלִַ֔ם הִנֵּ֤ה מַלְכֵּךְ֙ יָ֣בֹוא לָ֔ךְ צַדִּ֥יק וְנֹושָׁ֖ע ה֑וּא עָנִי֙ וְרֹכֵ֣ב עַל־חֲמֹ֔ור וְעַל־עַ֖יִר בֶּן־אֲתֹנֹֽות׃
Here’s an English rendering:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
And here is the same passage in Greek. The reason this is important will become clear in a moment:
χαῖρε σφόδρα θύγατερ σιων κήρυσσε θύγατερ ιερουσαλημ ἰδοὺ ὁ βασιλεύς σου ἔρχεταί σοι δίκαιος καὶ σῴζων αὐτός πραῢς καὶ ἐπιβεβηκὼς ἐπὶ ὑποζύγιον καὶ πῶλον νέον
The Greek text above comes from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament rendered by, according to legend, a group of 72 Jewish scholars (thus the name). According to the legend, all 72 scholars were working independently, and yet all 72 of them miraculously rendered exactly the same translation. If anything (other than my “Why Translation Matters” talk) should convince you that translation is not an exact science, this is it: It was literally considered a miracle when multiple people rendered the same translation! I have said this before and I will say it again: There is no such thing as translation, only interpretation. If you are not reading something in its original language, you are reading it through the filter of its translator, and you should ALWAYS keep this in mind if you’re even flirting with the idea of taking something that’s been translated literally.
So, back to Zechariah 9:9. One important thing to note is that the king is riding a donkey; the reason this is significant is that it symbolized that he was coming in peacetime (symbolically, coming on a horse would be warlike). But that’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot!
If you read Greek, you noticed this little tiny word - καὶ – in the Greek rendering, but not in the English rendering (it’s also not in the original Hebrew). This one little word makes a HUGE difference in understanding Matthew’s thought process here. Namely, it shows that Matthew rewrote history in order to make it LOOK like Jesus was fulfilling an Old Testament prophecy, even though in order to do that, he had to make Jesus look either ridiculous or insane within the narrative itself. The reason is that the author of the Gospel of Matthew, who could not read Hebrew, was using the Septuagint as his source for Old Testament prophecies. The Septuagint is in Greek, and among many others, contains one very important translation oddity.
That little word, καὶ, means “and.” And why does it make such a huge difference?
Because in Hebrew, there is a very important poetic device called synonymous parallelism – the repetition of a line, using different wording, for poetic effect. In Hebrew poetry, writers used this all the time. For example, it works like this:
I gave my love a flower
a rose, so red and so soft
Looking at this, anyone who isn’t brain-dead would clearly understand that the author gave his love a total of one (1) flower, and the more-specific type of flower the author gave his love was, in fact, a rose.
However, imagine if the poem said this:
I gave my love a flower
and a rose, so red and so soft
Well, that certainly changes things. It’s a lot harder to look at this now and see that the author obviously meant a total of only 1 flower. That little “and” carries so much meaning here. In linguistics, it’s called a “non-contrasting conjunction” (as opposed to, for example, “but” or “yet”).
Now let’s look back at Zechariah 9:9 (as translated from Hebrew by David Stern), specifically the part about the donkey:
riding on a donkey,
yes, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Anyone familiar with Hebrew would immediately recognize this as the poetic device of a synonymous parallelism, and understand that the author meant only 1 animal. But Matthew, who was reading the Septuagint, a Greek translation, read this, and because his translation said:
riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey
he thought the prophecy was saying that the king would ride into the city ON THE BACKS OF TWO ANIMALS!! (A colt is a male foal; a foal is simply a donkey that’s less than a year old, male or female.)
Unlike Jews, Christians believe that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy when he entered Jerusalem (Jews are still waiting for someone to fulfill it). This event is one of the most important in the entire New Testament: It marks the beginning of the Passion narrative, and takes place just a few days before the Last Supper and Jesus’ crucifixion. The so-called Triumphal Entry is a moveable feast, called Palm Sunday, and is described in all four canonical Gospels.
So, when the author of “Matthew” is telling the story of Jesus obtaining the animal, on the back of which he will ride into the city (21:2), what does he write?
Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,“Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.
Then, in 21:4-5, Matthew MISquotes Zechariah 9:9, using the Septuagint:
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
“Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”
AND! AND! aaah!
And here’s the kicker, in Matthew 21:6-7:
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on.
Come again? They spread their cloaks across BOTH animals, and Jesus rode them into the city? What, like straddling both of them?
Are you picturing this? Maybe this will help:
Still having trouble putting this together in your head? How about another angle?
You probably know that none of the four canonical Gospel writers describe Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30, but did you ever realize THEY ALSO LEFT OUT THE PART ABOUT HIS TIME TRAINING FOR THE RODEO?
People often ask me why, now that I’m an atheist, I still study the Bible “religiously.” The long answer is that regardless of my beliefs, it’s still the most influential book in Western history, and it has a lot to offer scholars in terms of understanding the language, culture, politics, and justifications of the last 3,000 years. The short answer is, BECAUSE IT’S HILARIOUS.
If we ever needed good evidence that the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses (aside from the fact that the author of “Luke” says so explicitly), I think we need look no further than the Triumphal Entry. This event is also described in John 12:12-19 and in Mark 11:1-11 (and also in Luke 19:28-44, although again, “Luke” tells us that he was not an eyewitness). However, in both “John” and “Mark’s” accounts, Jesus was riding only one animal.
Mark’s account was written first, and Matthew “borrowed” heavily from it. In reality, he pretty much took the entire thing verbatim – about 60% of it, in fact – and simply added some stuff, and changed a few other things. For example, he added Joseph’s genealogy and the story of Jesus’ birth, neither of which appear in Mark – Mark starts the story when Jesus, as an adult, gets baptized by John the Baptist. He also changed some stuff – for example, the number of animals Jesus was riding when he came into the city. Why did he do this? He tells us explicitly (Matthew 21:4):
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet.
As I mentioned before, I am convinced that the main reason people believe in the Bible is ignorance. I hope that this article will help some people on their paths toward a better understanding of why the Bible is not a trustworthy source of historical information. Sure, read it for its cultural value – I applaud that. But to quote James Randi, “Enjoy the fantasy, the fun, the stories, but make sure there’s a clear sharp line drawn on the floor. To do otherwise is to embrace madness.”
Until next time,
Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
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Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
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Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
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