"Nobody knows the day or the hour..." - Matthew

The fun bit with Matthew is that that passage is added *BECAUSE* they failed. Early Christian preaching was apocalyptic to some degree from the start. You can see early on the authors pushing the dates back further and further from this generation, to a day is like a thousand years, to you can't predict when it will come. You can pretty much date texts by looking at when they claim the Judgement day will be and subtracting like a decade. If they say it'll be before the Second Temple falls, then they may well be before the second temple fell. If they say that the temple doesn't matter, they are likely writing afterwards.

The line in Matthew is specifically because this sort of stuff was the origin of Christianity. Really, as far as failed apocalyptic preachers go Harold Camping is pretty much on par with Jesus. So all the little "thief in the night" and "nobody can really know" stuff got added after they failed their asses off from the first to third centuries missing every benchmark they set.

The end of the world, "soon", for the last two thousand years. Heck the Jewish doomsayers were wrong so often they gave rise to Christianity. The end of the world is the failiest prediction ever.

So yeah, there's apologetics for why all the doomsayers failed, because starting with Jesus they were always dead wrong. Unless you think that somebody from Jesus' time is still alive, and that generation hasn't known death. And apologetics for the failures got added the the Christian corpus, but Camping is only as wrong as Jesus, with regard to the end of the world. So that's not too bad.

Biblical Marriage

If you read the Bible you'd know that marriage is between one man and several women, girls who were payment to settle debts, virgins who survived genocidal conquests, close relatives, and, occasionally, a dead brother's wife.

I often use this blog to find things I want to express. I had a similar quote and updated it later on to better reflect the Bible. As such, I'm reposting the new version.

AE #611: Bible's Greatest Hits (Genesis Part II)

Rev. Ebenezer Warren, The Bible and Slavery

http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/warren/warren.html

"Nellie's mind was not at rest. The Bible certainly did teach that slavery was a perpetual institution. Its chains were forged in heaven, by God himself, and so fastened, that no power could sunder them but His."

It is an often uncomfortable argument that the Bible condones slavery. Many apologetics are offered to this idea, and many of them were addressed at the time. Rev. E.B. Warren here is a prime example, he argues with perfect clarity and good proof text and solid arguments that slavery is approved by the Bible. Indeed, the North was in a theological bind with sub par and bad arguments to mount a Biblical defense of abolitionism.

This has since been flipped such that nobody finds any moral rationalization for slavery. Such has become of many such arguments: they aren't what they intend to be. This was written to convey the idea that the Slavery is moral because it is approved of by the Bible. Today, however, it succeeds in showing that the Bible is immoral.

Pastor deflected gunshot with Bible...

Shot dead...

I don't know how shooting a bible counts as having a bullet deflected. The myth busters have tried that and it doesn't work.

Police: Ill. pastor deflected gunshot with Bible

Wow. One bullet hit a bible. That's not deflected you dumbass.

MARYVILLE, Ill. – Illinois State Police say the pastor gunned down at a church in a St. Louis suburb used a Bible to deflect the first of four rounds fired during his Sunday sermon.

State Police Director Larry Trent says the Bible exploded, producing what appeared to be confetti.

Wow. The Bible has magical powers.

Trent says only one of the four rounds fired from the .45 caliber handgun struck and killed 45-year-old pastor Fred Winters.

"Struck and killed" apparently the first bullet gets magically stopped (probably just slowed down) the rest get to kill you.

Prediction: Within a week this story is going to passed around without the subsequent death.

Where does the Library of Congress store the Bible?

In the BS section of course!

Ingersoll Morality

Reading Ingersoll About the Holy Bible at 5 in the morning having stayed up all night. He does make a number of fantastic points.

According to the Bible, picking up sticks on a Saturday and murdering your father on a Monday are equal crimes.

Great one liner.

Taking something out of context.

Yes, the Bible does condemn homosexuality, see...

Lev. 20:13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

-- You're taking that out of context.

What?

-- Yes, you took that quote out of context.

Um, the rule before it is if you have sex with your sons wife you get murdered. The rule after it says if you marry a woman and her mother you get put to death. It's a list of laws. It stands alone.

-- So there was more? You took it out of context.

I quoted it.

-- Yes, but the quote appears in a specific part of the text and you didn't copy the entire text.

What?


Theology Non-Rule #19, Taking things out of context is knockdown argument against pretty much any quote in or out of context. One needs never justify the accusation or show how quoting all relevant text and citing the place taken somehow loses context information.

Why do people laugh at creationists?

A worthwhile set of videos. Some of the responses are just snarky. I understand that creationists are just silly. One of the last about the water above sky and how it's nearly impossible to prop it up there is kind of odd. Frankly it seems that in geosync orbit you could have a bunch of water pretty easily floating there without needing to drop to earth. Though still, way too much water. Though that would be totally awesome to have. A bubble around a planet in geosync. The water above the sky refers to the Biblical firmament. Hovind (who made the claim) is right, according to the Bible the world is flat and there is water in the sky which leaks out when it rains (probably also explains the color of the sky). It is a rather silly claim, but only like 50% of Americans believe this crap so it's pretty much moot.

Spoilers... best to ruin the end.

Amoral atheists and the more annoying canard...

PZ beats the dead horse of the Christian myth of amoral atheists some more.

What really gets me about this claim, isn't the obvious implicit statement "you are amoral" -- rather it's the suggestion that the Bible or simply a "belief in God" makes one magically moral. How the hell does that work? You need to ignore massive chunks of the Bible to even make it coherent, and damn near all of it to make a moral system out of it. Pretty much the only thing you are left with is the Golden Rule and that's been produced hundreds of times (in fact Matthew 7:12 where it appears attributes it as "for this is the law and the prophets" rather than Jesus saying he made it up himself). Also, it's more moral in the negative creation than the positive creation. Do not do unto others as you do not wish them to do unto you. If you don't want to be killed, don't kill. However, in the positive formation it would be fine for the mafia to murder a snitch, because they would expect the same.

How does belief in God make a person moral? What magical criteria does one use to sort the nasty bits out of that book? Implicit, almost always, in the claim that atheists are amoral is the claim that religion makes religionists moral or theism makes theists moral. That's the bigger lie.

I dare say it is slightly incumbent on me to explain why I'm moral, or which moral theories I tend to prefer (though it's nearly impossible to come to that conclusion without some major problems in your thinking). However, the assumption that they are moral because of religion or God belief, can't be established. The better response is to turn the question around and ask them where they get their morals and when they say "the Bible", backup slowly, apologizing, and pleading to not be stoned to death.

As if people don't natively understand the very basics of morality. A lot of human instinct has been tuned to this purpose. Empathy, love, reciprocity, pain, anger, sense of fairness, mercy, and other deeply ingrained bits of ourselves goes into keeping us moral, worked out over millions of years by tinkering and they want to give credit to their book. Moral systems take a lot of time and energy to evolve and they want to say that it magically flows from their book! A central focus of which is small amounts of moral understanding between ingroup members and no respect for outgroup members. This isn't the source of morality, these are moral understandings best left to die in order to give rise to better and improved morality within changing zeitgeist of moral philosophy. However religions want to give them a pedestal. It is a testament to human morality that so many religious individuals are moral in spite of the Bible.

On infanticide and turning the other cheak...

Theists tend to want it both ways, I have increasingly come up against the rather stunningly silly argument that you can't judge God. For example, Curious Kitten posted a thread on About Atheism's Forum comparing God to an Abusive Father.

"You are bad. You are so bad that you should be sent far away to a place where you don't get to be around your nice Daddy who loves you. You deserve to be tortured until the end of time, and to be miserable.

"But Daddy is nice. i'm so nice that I'll give you a 'free gift.' I won't let you be tortured by strangers. Remember: You don't deserve to be happy, so I'm a wonderful father to do this for you.

All in all, a great post and interesting take on it. If God, the Father, was a father there would be several Child Protective Services calls needing to be made.

In any event, shortly there after, Sister Hydrogen Bomb of Loving Truth starts in with the that's apples and oranges argument.

A human father, or a sovereign god?

After several more rude, ignorant, and condescending posts, drops this little nugget:

This question makes no sense. God, being God, is outside of our standards.

I've seen this argument here and there before. The original note was that if God was a father we would judge such an individual as patently immoral. To the counter argument that god isn't a human and comparisons fall short.

Now, what about moral statements, does the reverse hold?

Is it moral for God to love people? Sure, it would be good if humans did it, but what about God? It's comparing apples and oranges. God's love is thusly perfectly amoral. When God commands people to murder gays, that's a fine thing to do and we cannot judge those actions as immoral. When God commands people to turn the other cheek, that's a fine thing to do and we can't judge those actions as moral.

Theists can't eat their cake and have it too. They must either condemn all the evil shit God does in the Bible or they can't prop up things in the Bible as virtuous and moral. You either say the entire bible is good from the genocide, the slavery, and the commandments to murder people for picking up sticks... or you don't get to say anything.

Everything good gets attributed to God, and everything bad... eh shit happens or the devil made shit happen. Double standards make baby Jesus cry! Unless they are in God's favor.

Camels and Eyes' of Needle

There's a fun little note the Biblical note that you should give away all your stuff and spread the word. Stupid advice then, just as stupid now. However there is also another interesting line:

Matthew 19:24 - I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Well, as there are many rich people within the religious right, and a good deal of preachers driving fancy cars, so this needs to be defined away. The argument (because it wouldn't be apologetics if there weren't arguments for everything) is that the "eye of a needle" refers to a specific gate in Jerusalem that was just really hard to get one's camels' through. Though not impossible. First, who builds a gate like that? Or narrow pass in the hills, nobody would do that! Also, how do you get around the fact that it's a common place idiom?

They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle. -- Hm?

Why not just redefine the Camel to mean, ant. Camel... that's what they called ants back then. They could do it, it was just pretty rough.

If they sky was a firmament would that be evidence for the Bible?

It seems like an odd question, and I'm kind of torn. Though, asking nobody is certainly not helpful. But, here goes. The authors of the Bible refer to the sky as a firmament or a "Vault of Heaven". Basically they ascribed to Greek astronomy and thought that the stars were embedded in the seventh domed layer, the earth fixed and unmoving and everything in different layers around it.

God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between water and water..."

The firmament kept the water from the sky (rain) from meeting the waters of the earth. And that when it rains, that is God opening up the vault of the sky. The stars were believed to be like little bits of light on the firmament (in revelations they were depicted as falling down to Earth). Rather than a sky like our modern understanding, the world would be much more akin to a snow-globe.

Now back to my question, if that bit of cosmology was right, would it be evidence for the Bible?

There would certainly be arguments in favor of this,

Psalm 19:1, “The heavens [shamayim] tell out the glory of God, the vault of heaven [raqiya] reveals his handiwork.”

The complexity of the firmament certainly suggests a deity right? Well, not really. The reality is more complex and reality doesn't suggest such a thing and though there are no laws of physics which allow for a firmament as such, we would have to have hypothetically different laws of physics to account for this cosmology. Though, maybe with our actual laws of physics and this weird outcome might provide some evidence.

But, they predicted it right and there's no way they could have predicted that the whole world was under this dome sky-like thing, right? Well, that's not true either. First, looking at the sky might give one that impression (plane tangent to sky does seem to be a dome) and secondly the Greeks had that cosmology first. For example, in the Bible is says that the Earth is hung upon nothing. -- a comment to which many creationists pat themselves on the back over and over again. While at the same time ignoring everywhere it says (often right next to it) that the earth was fixed and unmoving.

A while back in a podcast, the Non-Prophets mentioned that it would be evidence for the Bible if there actually was a firmament, but I don't think it would count for the Bible at all. The fact that the idea that the sky is a firmament is dead wrong is an obvious mark against the Bible, but being correct isn't a mark for it either. Which oddly seems to veer off towards Hempel's paradox, noting that exceptions to rules disprove the rule, but that non-exceptions don't make the rule any more or less valid. Though, there's shades of gray concerning the idea of being wrong.

Even if we knew of nothing that discredited the cosmology, history, or understanding of the Bible it would provide absolutely no evidence in favor of the accuracy of the book. And really, that's the essence of science. You try to disprove something until you finally give up and use it for anything you need the idea for. If the rule holds for more things than the previous rule, well then use that rule instead.

The only thing the Bible could hope for would be accuracy and frankly it missed that boat. I think the accuracy of the Bible must have drowned in Noah's flood.

Shirley Phelps-Roper / WBC and the defense of atheists...

More and more, I've run into atheists who support the Phelps family, not financially, politically, ethically, but to the extent we tend to support every religious view. And then some, truth be told, something refreshing about the Phelps family. Namely, honesty. There isn't an ounce of duplicity in anything they say, they say they believe the Bible and they do, they've read it cover to cover and believe everything therein. Their interpretations are, by and large, quite well grounded. I use to believe that perhaps they went a little too far and were going extra-biblical with their "God hate America" and "Thank God for IEDs" comments. However, after listening to the arguments behind them, I must admit that Noah's Ark and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah do at lend them a bit of leeway to make those arguments.



I'm not even sure that they are a hate group. Specifically they don't ever reference themselves. They only announce that "God hates Fags" and "God hates America" -- They never suggest anything of the sort themselves. They are non-violent and stay well within the confines of the law. Which is less than one can say about such great Christian establishments such as the KKK.

Other than cherrypicking there's nothing to attack the Phelps position with. That and the falseness of the Bible. The above video makes some guesses as to why some people might hate the Phelps so much, and I haven't anything better.

It also strikes a number of Christians as odd, that they believe America is doomed, and yet are wasting their time thanking God for bringing about this doom. Personally, I'm impressed by their resolve. They don't do it to convert people, they don't do it to save people, they don't even do it to warn people... they do it to thank and praise God for his judgment and primarily because the Bible tells them to do it.

Westboro Baptist Church - God hates the World

http://view.break.com/278059 - Watch more free videos

Why do people dislike the Phelps? I think it takes a lot of courage to stand up for what you believe in, when what you believe in is so insane as to warrant near disbelief. They believe that the US is like a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah and that all the bad things which happen are the result of God's hatred for America because we are all "fag enablers" -- Apparently not doing what it says to do to homosexuals in the Bible (kill them/their blood will be on them/Lev. 20:13). They feel inclined to warn people that God hates them, and thanking God for the instruments of his wrath (AIDS, IED, Iraq).

Biblically I don't think their argument is that bad. Really, if you read the Bible it's a reasonable conclusion to come to if you are inclined to accept that the Bible is not horrific fiction worthy of scorn.

It seems pretty clear that they are using their first amendment rights to free speech to spread their first amendment right to religion via their first amendment right to protest. Their Biblical interpretations aren't bad... the only thing really that bad in this whole debate is the Bible. Anybody who believes that is going to be this batshit insane. But, they are within their rights and non-violent.

And if you notice from their theology and certain interviews they gives that they never interject their own opinion on the issue, it's always God. God hates fags. God hates America. They are careful not to express such beliefs directly. This is a very real line that they do not cross. It is, I feel, much the same as the line which many atheists are careful not to cross by insulting people. Focusing instead on the beliefs people have rather than the people themselves. Apparently people recognize this distinction just as often in their case. They are very careful to present the Biblical view on reality rather than their own. It is akin to God hates the sin, God hates the sinner.

If the Bible were not cruel bronze-age immoral fiction, they would have a pretty good point. Sadly however, this actual reductio ad absurdum isn't more widely understood. Rather we are left with the vague hatred which says gays shouldn't be allowed to marry their lovers or care for children. Really this is just a purified form of the Biblical hate bantered around to deny people rights. They aren't shallowly using the Bible to justify their own hate, they are presented the hate the Bible expresses as truth. I prefer the Phelps' God's bigotry to the kind which is effective in creating constitutional amendments to get introduced on the floor of congress.

C.S. Lewis' Trilemma

For some unknown reason many layfolks believe that C.S. Lewis is the end all of Christian Apologetics, despite having worse arguments than real Christian apologetics. One of his more famous arguments was the Trilemma: Lunatic, Liar, or Lord. Basically he held that Jesus was either a Lunatic, a Liar, or God. To rule out Lunatic and Liar he basically asked why are you saying such mean things, and then suddenly concluding that Jesus was God. I have no clue how anybody could be bamboozled by this nonsense, but it's apparently as popular as his "atheism is just too easy" argument.

Even skipping the clear problems with his arguments against the first two L-words. We are still left with a false 'trilemma'. We aren't able to conclude that the story is just fiction. It fits perfectly well into the fiction category. The story is written such that it falls perfectly well into the Hero's journey. It makes much more sense from a mythicist point of view than from one based in reality.

Either Hercules was a lunatic, liar, or son of Zeus. Clearly he wasn't lying or crazy. Therefore, he's the son of Zeus. Zeus exists.