Fevered Intellect

A Note of Support to Christopher Hitchens

2010-08-05T11:29:00.002-05:00

I will not bother with any of the usual clichés about being brave and strong and battling the enemy that is cancer, you get enough of all that.
What I do want to say is thank you.
Thank you for all the writing you have done over the years and for the profound affect you have had on forming my current stance on politics, religion and ethics. You have been a powerful voice for reason in the face of an insane world and always with a great sense of humor.

I sincerely hope that you get to add cancer survivor to your lengthy resume and can give the world many more years of the honesty and ruthless wit that it needs. There are still too many nasty characters on the public stage needing to be skewered by your word processor.

I will not bother to pray for you but you will be in my thoughts.

Paul Kalbach

Refutation of article about supposed former atheist

2010-08-04T14:24:00.002-05:00

This Article below appeared on zionica.com on 04 Aug 2010 and was reproduced in full from its original posting on chrisianpost.com. It is fully reproduced below with comments inserted in bold. The post this was taken from is at http://zionica.com/2010/08/04/former-atheist-christianity-really-does-make-sense/

Culture|Mon, Aug. 02 2010 08:25 PM EDT
Former Atheist: Christianity Really Does Make Sense
By Lillian Kwon|Christian Post Reporter

Holly Ordway was a highly educated atheist who thought Christianity was "a historical curiosity" or "a blemish on modern civilization," or both.
"Smart people don’t become Christians," she thought, according to Biola University.
Her worldview, however, began to change at age 31. She recounts her journey from atheism to Christianity in the recently released Not God’s Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith.
"It is no light matter to meet God after having denied Him all one’s life," she writes in the book. "Coming to Him was only the beginning. I can point to a day and time and place of my conversion, and yet since then I have come to understand that He calls me to a fresh conversion every day."

This is a rather classic example of theist prattle, we have an assertion of the gravity of the matter that is design only to get a head nod and an amen from the faithful while being based on nothing. This is then followed by a non-sense statement that is supposed to sound deep. What does it mean to be called? No one knows or can define it. What is this conversation, is it literal? No one knows or will say or will every question her on it. The reporter just regurgitates the line without asking, you really think you hear god? What exactly did he say?

Ordway, a professor of English and literature at a San Diego-area community college, wasn't raised in any religious faith. She never said a prayer in her life and she never went to a church service. Her exposure to Christianity while growing up was minimal and her few encounters with Christians involved televangelists or hellfire and damnation preachers.
"Religion seemed like a story that people told themselves, and I had no evidence to the contrary," she said in an interview with Biola University, where she is currently studying for her second MA, in Christian Apologetics.
To her, the Bible was a collection of folktales and myths – no different than the stories of Zeus or Cinderella.
"I was a college professor – logical, intellectual, rational – and an atheist," she writes.

Now we get the good atheist credentials to make it sound really plausible, say a few things to shock the faithful into hating the bad atheist that she was and draw scorn on logic, intellect and rational thought. Ok, set up done now lets go for the punch.

Though she knew next to nothing about Christianity, she began to mock Christians and belittle their faith, intelligence and character.
"[I]t was fun to consider myself superior to the unenlightened, superstitious masses, and to make snide comments about Christians," Ordway writes.
She was convinced that faith was by definition irrational.
Evangelical invitations to "come to Jesus and get eternal life" sounded like "believing something irrational on demand to get a prize."
"I thought I knew exactly what faith was, and so I declined to look further," she writes. "Or perhaps I was afraid that there was more to it than I was willing to credit – but I didn’t want to deal with that. Easier by far to read only books by atheists that told me what I wanted to hear – that I was much smarter and intellectually honest and morally superior than the poor, deluded Christians.

Now we get the punch of making atheism out to be smug and self-superior but based on ignorance. Forget the fact that most atheist know more about the bible and theology than Christians do; I suggest you test this assertion by talking to a few atheists. Most are what they are because they sought knowledge and could no longer support faith. Sure, some atheists are self-superior. You get them in any crowd but for a Christian to make this accusation of another group goes beyond any statement involving pot and kettles.

"I had built myself a fortress of atheism, secure against any attack by irrational faith. And I lived in it, alone."
Ordway wasn't looking for God. She didn't believe He existed. But she began to be drawn to matters of faith.
One reason for her interest, she explains, is that her "naturalistic worldview was inadequate to explain the nature of reality in a coherent way: it could not explain the origin of the universe, nor could it explain morality."

Here it comes, the grossly unfounded and unsupported claim. The "naturalistic worldview was inadequate to explain the nature of reality in a coherent way: it could not explain the origin of the universe, nor could it explain morality." We are supposed to just nod and amen this comment and not look behind it. The naturalistic worldview has in its favor all of observation in any field of inquiry you can choose. When it makes an assertion it is based on evidence and withholds judgment in favor of agnosticism when there is not enough evidence to decide. The origin of the universe has been explained very well back to the singularity of the big bang and no claim of religion can make a better or more convincing explanation. As for morality this statement simply ignores all of secular philosophy on the subject and ignores all of the intensely moral atheists and agnostics.

"On the other hand, the theistic worldview was both consistent and powerfully explanatory: it offered a convincing, rationally consistent, and logical explanation for everything that the naturalistic worldview explained plus all the things that the naturalistic worldview couldn’t."

This is nothing short of a lie. This is not a different point of view, it is patently untrue. The internal text of the bible is not consistent by any measure and theology differs so radically from sect to sect as to make them irreconcilable. It is only convincing if you are willing to suspend all respect for reality, evidence and rational thought and blindly accept that that which flies in the teeth of all honest inquiry.

After a series of conversations with a mentor and exposure to the writings of authors like J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Ordway went from denying God to committing herself to Christ.
"I was startled to find that Christian theism had significantly better explanatory power than atheistic naturalism, in terms of explaining why the world is the way it is, and in accounting for my own experiences within it," she recounted, according to Biola. "Learning more about the Incarnation and about God, the most holy Trinity, has further reinforced my confidence that Christianity really does make sense of the world in a way no other worldview does."

It took a mentor? Funny how free inquiry and logical thought stands on its own, but maybe I am jaded. “Learning more about the Incarnation and about God, the most holy Trinity” I have grave concerns as to whether this constitutes learning. For one thing, mentioning the trinity which is nothing more than a construct of theology and doesn't even occur in the bible rather undermines even the biblical claim to authority.
And the claim that Christianity makes more sense than anything else is a purely subjective and unsupportable claim.

She found that "St. Paul's forthright declaration that Christianity is based on the historical, witnessed events of Christ’s death and resurrection," that "theology and philosophy offered real answers" to her questions and weren't an appeal to blind faith, and that "the history of the Church did not conform to [her] image of the Christian faith as a self-serving, politically useful fiction."

The problem is the Paul's declaration is just plain wrong. There is no historical accuracy at all. Most of the history that does appear in the New Testament is wrong and there is no way the writers of the gospels ever met Jesus or witnessed a thing. They clearly were fabricated after the fact and built off of each other in attempts to close holes the others left.
She had it right and then walked away from the truth.

Her intellectual pride was broken and she was humbled by God's goodness as she began to see herself as a sinner.

This is such a patently religious cliché I shouldn't even waste time refuting it. All I will bother saying is, show me the goodness...

"I don’t 'believe' because I like the idea and want it to be true. I don’t 'believe' because I think Christianity makes sense intellectually (although that was a necessary foundation to my faith). In fact, I wouldn’t say that I 'believe' in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or that I 'believe' I have a personal relationship with Him: I would say that I know these things to be true," the former atheist emphatically stated in a 2007 blog entry.

Again, this is so programmatic and templated I am not sure if I even believe there ever was a conversion. I just doesn't pass the smell test. It all reads like something made up out of whole cloth to try to convince the already faithful that there is nothing outside the church walls worth looking at. There is no 'knowing' possible in this realm and intellectual sense is one thing it doesn't make.

Ordway currently attends St. Michael's by-the-Sea in Southern California where she says she has grown in her Christian faith. She's hoping her book will help Christians – who may be familiar with the ideas that atheists believe but not understand what it's like to believe those things – in their evangelism.

And here they give away the game. As predicted, this is aimed at the faithful in an attempt to spray paint the church windows lest the congregants have the audacity to look at the world.

Offering some advice to those who approach atheists, she said, "Really, it doesn’t matter whether we like Christianity or not; what matters is, is it true? That approach may not resonate with everyone, but it was what opened the door for me."
Moreover, discipleship is critical, she said.
"I think one of the central elements of my own discipleship so far has been my pastors’ focus on the Cross," she said in the Biola interview. "The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It is terribly painful to give up one’s sins and self-will, to allow one’s old self to be crucified along with Jesus ... and I have been very grateful to my pastors who acknowledge how hard and painful it can be along this Christian journey. But the way of the cross is also the way of life and peace."

I know that is does no good ultimately to refute this sort of non-sense but I feel compelled to say it anyway. I suppose this is because I wasted so much of my life grovelling before this cross of hers and uttering prayers into empty space. She is right about on thing, “what matters is, is it true?” And the emphatic answer is NO.

Morality and Its Origins

2010-08-02T08:57:00.013-05:00

I had a comment on my last blog entry that the reader wished I had dealt with the basis of morality. This was not the subject of the last post and would not have been apropos but I will try to take a stab at it here.

The reason for this even being a subject of discussion is the fact that religion has arrogated to itself the basis for human morality. I primarily pick on Christianity as it is the religious system I am most familiar with, having been raised in it. The assumption is this, the bible teaches us how to be moral and without it as a foundation there is no morality. This is, to steal a phrase from Douglas Adams, a load of foetid dingos kidneys.

Morality is nothing more or less than a set of behaviours that allow us to live together in society. Does this definition tend toward moral relativism and declare no absolutes? No, it does not. There are certain moral rules that are inherent in human societies and if ignored destroy the fabric of society. Taboos against murder, rape, incest and theft are examples. These are not religious rules, they are common sense rules for social animals living in an ordered community. Violating them undermines the security of other members of the community. Violation of these rules also violates what I believe to be the basic foundation of morality - empathy and compassion.

The claim that the bible is the basis of morality is absurd. If you actually read the bible you will come to a few unavoidable conclusions, that god as described in the old testament is a viscous psychopath and that the new testament tries very hard to tip toe around the cruelty and caprice of the old testament god without actually refuting it. In the old testament, god orders his people to commit genocide on numerous occasions, sanctions the taking of sexual slaves as spoils of war, orders women to marry their rapists, demands the killing children and teenagers, sanctions the rape of women to save the dignity of male guests, and personally kills entire populations not only of whole cities but supposedly of the entire world. This just scratches the surface of god's villainy in the old testament and I didn't even get out of the Pentateuch. He called David a man after his own heart after David had multiple wives, committed murder and committed adultery. I suppose for a god that is capable of all the horrible actions attributed to him, a man such as David would be just his sort. See a woman you want, murder her husband and take her; why not, this is mild compared to burning entire cities full of innocent children.

This is the book that we are told is the basis for our morality. This is the book that is held up as the foundation for all right action. No, any morality that is actually claimed by followers of the bible is done in opposition to the bible, by ignoring the sections that urge evil behaviour. If the bible is truly the measure for morality, even for Christians, they would be demanding the legal right to murder witches, stone their own disobedient children, murder anyone that doesn't follow their own sect, demand the right to own slaves and to keep as concubines the virgin daughters of their victims for this is the morality the old testament condones.

The new testament, people will shriek, is a whole new game. The harshness of the old testament was necessary then but Jesus brought in new rules. Hmmm, let's see. Jesus said that he did not come to over turn the law but to fulfil it. He at one point declared that you had to follow the law to the letter plus his new program of poverty and meekness and impossible love for all. He then goes on to tell us that we are to hate our parents and abandon our families and follow him (how this is to be done while obeying the commandment to honour father and mother is utterly beyond rational grasp), and all this before introducing the worst and most vile horror of all, the concept of hell. We now have an eternal torture chamber where, if you take the rules seriously, about 99% of all humanity will be subject to horrors and pain beyond imagining for the crime of not believing in the god that created the hell... but were probably created predestined to this hell anyway so believing doesn't matter...

My point in this rant is to show that the morality supposedly based on the bible is no morality at all. The very god that supposedly is the basis for morality, were his actions and encouraged actions removed form the bible and put before any modern human as a template, would cause revulsion. Our native moral sentiments recoil at the notion of murder and rape and genocide and the abandonment of family and of eternal punishment. Christians impose their own native morality on the bible by ignoring the horrors of it and by constructing theological structures outside of it to rationalize and explain away the evils in it. To then turn around and try to claim that that which has to be mostly ignored is the foundation is absurd at best.

So, where does this leave us? Morality is something that just exists in humans. We have a social sense that evolved in us. Is it absolute in fine detail? No. There are constantly shifting lines of what is and isn't acceptable in a society but the basics remain the static. The big taboos remain and compassion and empathy reign. There will always be those who violate the rules of society. There will always be criminals and sociopaths. We don't need a book of violent and capricious savagery to teach us to be human. All books like the bible do is justify in the minds of criminals and sociopaths their behaviour. The bible makes a great foundation for antisocial behaviour.
Want to burn women at the stake and feel good about it? I got just the book.

Questions I sometimes get asked...

2010-07-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

There are several questions that, as a vocal atheist, one inevitably gets asked. To avoid setting up straw men I will not get overly specific and I also have no intention of being comprehensive. I am going to address two basic questions here that come up repeatedly. Regardless of wording or tone, these questions boil down to this; why are you so anti-religion and why do you hate God?
The second question is easily disposed of thus, I do not. I do not believe that there is a god to hate. As I do not hate the tooth fairy, so I do not hate god. It is an absurd question.
The first question however does demand a bit more attention. Why am I so anti-religion? There are several facets to this answer. In short, it is false, it allows humans to justify vile behaviors and it retards growth of knowledge and understanding.

Religion is false. Religion attempts to make real claims as to the nature of the universe. It does so based not on observation and experience but on revelation made to an individual or group. (I am aware that there are religions that are more philosophical forms than revelations but lets put that aside for the moment) These revelations are invariable at odds with history and science. If we accept the revelation we disregard the observable nature of things, be it the age of the earth and the fossil record, the vastness and expansion of the universe or our own origins. Revelation demands that we place ourselves in a position of central importance in this 'creation'. There is no evidence in biology, geology, astronomy or any other branch of study to support the claims of revelation.

Religion allows humans to justify vile behaviors. Need I submit any evidence beyond the rubble of ground zero in New York? How about the ruins of the Khobar Towers or the bombing of PanAM 103? What about the crusades and witch trials or the bombing or abortion clinics? How about the ritual mutilation of infants all over the world or the oppression of women and homosexuals? It is hard to find a clear example of suffering inflicted by one group on another that does not, at its root, have religion motivating it. There are at the time of writing 38 wars going on around the globe. 36 of them are religious in nature or motivation. Religious groups and regimes are constantly at war to convert or punish or just eliminate those who disagree with them.

Religion retards growth of knowledge and understanding. What motivation is there to investigate the universe and probe the fabric of reality if we take it for granted that all things come from god and there is nothing to learn beyond holy writ? All progress in human knowledge has been gained not with religion but despite it, usually in the face or persecution and torment. It is only because religion has lost its coercive power in certain times and places that we have what we have today. All modern advances in technology, medicine and life quality are had against the pull of religion. Religion is now actively seeking the return to the squalor and ignorance of the middle ages; the jihadist bent on murdering anyone who doesn't follow Islam's 15th century ideals and the Christian fundamentalist trying to crush stem cell research, ban abortions and undermine separate church and state are just two sides of the same coin. No good comes of looking backward to old books that are not even internally consistent.

I could go on and elaborate more on each section but I think I made my points.

Ruminations on the cause of a persistent facial expression observed on a person of passing aquaintence

2010-03-17T06:22:00.006-05:00

Andrew stood middle distance from the center of activity and the corner of the room, not separate but not mingling, his face utterly blank and expressionless, his eyes dead and empty as blighted ponds. The sound of someone calling his name slowly penetrated and he turned to see everyone in the room looking at him and Big Dave, the youth pastor saying, “Here’s our song leader kids. He’s gonna lead you in a few your favorites. Won’t that be fun?” Andrew turned and bounded happily to the center of the room with a smile and a boisterous call to the children, to a casual observer a happy bubbly person. He clapped and sang with the children and moved with extreme animation for 24 and a half minutes until he was sweating visibly through his Fishing for Jesus Summer Camp tee shirt and his hair was wet and running down his cheeks. He then walked back to his position between the center and the corner and switched off, sliding back into a deep funk behind a blank exterior. No one in the room noticed or cared, their attention focused on the activities of the children.

Andrew Jason Screwturn Jr, the only child of Andrew Sr and Emily Elizabeth Friddle, his high school sweet heart, was the baby that was supposed to save their marriage. This was a hollow and cynical joke that his parents stayed together just long enough to firmly imprint on his consciousness. They then split up in a way you couldn’t call amicable in the furthest reaches of hell. They spent the next ten years passing Andrew back and forth between them like a football, making the only crystal clear impressions of his childhood the facts that he was only wanted to deprive the other and that he was a constant burden to both. He attended every summer camp, weekend retreat, scout camporee and lock-in his parents could find between his school, two churches and local social organizations. The turmoil of the divorce and the financial burdens it place on both warring parties cause repeated relocations and he changed schools numerous times ending up a year ahead here, a year behind there, always the new kid, never fitting anywhere. He had no single childhood friend and only vaguely understood what it meant to have a friend. The camps and the outings his parents used to get him out of their way was the only model he knew, short term servings of friends in a structured environment, planned activities that filled up the time and kept the mind from turning inward. He grew up toward an inevitable future of working and counseling in a summer camps. It was a form of inertia or gravity that sucked him in. He related to every lonely upset child that came along. The songs and activities were written in his brain stem just like walking and talking. The Mountain Harbor YMCA camp and surrounding off season charities became his home after high school, the youngest full time camp counselor in their history, only seventeen. This was his universe, his safety zone and where he returned between semesters of college and where he returned after graduating.

Two weeks before the start of the fall session in 08, Melissa Costaine came to the camp as an activity director. She could not have more utterly destroyed the sanctity of Andrew’s safe haven if she had set out to do so with malice of forethought. She had not done so. She had in fact fallen in love with him from the first; the cruelest stroke of all was the simple truth of this.

Melissa grew up in as normal an American home as could be imagined. A strict but loving mother who pushed her daughter to excel without bullying and a father who doted on her without being soft. There were a few “cracked nuts” on the family tree as her father always put it but they were on the outer limbs and not near the trunk. She knew stability. Emily dated a lot throughout high school and college as any pretty and popular girl would but she never fell in love. She liked them well enough but she was too independent and self possessed to ever actually need anyone in her life.

Her independent spirit and vitality born of a truly normal and stable childhood made her irresistible to men but in the end drove them away. Men have a need to be needed and when it is apparent that they are not needed, most do not have the ability to accept that with grace.
When Melissa met Andrew in the dining hall at Mountain Harbor she felt something alien to her. She actually felt a need and desire to be with him. It was immediate and urgent and she pursued it without reservation and with gusto as she did everything in life.

To Andrew, this was as alien an experience as the feeling was to Melissa. He knew all too well what it was to need another person, to feel the size of that echoing hollowness inside when the need is unmet, to feel it like you can feel the vastness of a cavern though the walls vanish in darkness. He knew need for family, for friends, for lovers, for companionship. The need was why he had stuffed every available moment of life with activity and campers and sing-alongs; why, on the off seasons he volunteered at innumerable charities. The need was also the reason why he could not bring himself to trust anyone, bricking up the windows of his soul with a thousand cynical rebuffs to any serious situation and avoiding intimacy with anyone likely to take a chisel to the mortar, why he surrounded himself with children. The little ones droned on and on in and endless chord that prevented closeness or self-examination.
Melissa Costiane didn’t take a chisel to the mortar, she dynamited it.

There was no defense against her invasion. All of the carefully constructed defenses were ripped down in under a week and Andrew did something he never allowed himself to do, he trusted. Her open and obvious interest and desire to just be with him and the casual flow of conversation that ranged topics from the banal to the deepest intimacy had its inevitable affect. He fell. Hard. The howling spaces of his interior landscape were silted full with layer on layer of experience that ran contrary to his expectations and reinforced the trust he felt until it began to be second nature and the veneer of happy that he wore for so long began to penetrate like stain into wood and he was happy.

For Melissa’s part, she loved him. She couldn’t help herself. He wasn’t exactly an Adonis in his collection of cheesy tee shirts and khaki shorts and sandals, with his slightly excess weight and pale complexion and his uninspiring features. What she found irresistible was his earnest desire to do and be good, to toe that line. She respected him at once, he reminded her of her father while being nothing like the man in any tangible way. She found these things and the defects and fears that he was unable to hide from her as he did from the world at large a compelling combination.

For seven months they spent every possible moment in each other’s company and lived each other’s thoughts. Andrew was out of his mind with happiness and would have ignored the little voice of time honored cynicism that kept saying that a fire stoked too hot burns out, had he even heard it.
The first time Melissa canceled plans on him he disregarded it as just a part of life and forced himself to ignore the gentle breeze through the valley of his interior landscape.

When no tangible thing had changed, but the easy expectation of time spent together was replaced by an unspoken need to ask, he chastised himself for not trusting and for being a paranoid fool. She wouldn’t be like everyone else. She wasn’t like his parents, like the kids at schools or the girls in college. She was Melissa and that was all there was to it. He dragged himself up and forced the ‘happy’ back in place. After all, she was still there. It was only a few things, a few times here and there. But there was that intangible shift. What was it, a momentary flash in her eye, the set of her mouth that said ‘oh god here he goes again’? Even though the words were kind and the result usually as he would have liked, there was that something in the air between them, something he couldn’t put his finger on. Or was it that he was afraid to put his finger on it? He feared he knew and it only added to the gulf widening between them.

Melissa had looked at him one morning and found a little voice in her head mocking him. His earnestness and internal battles that made him him were just too much work. She didn’t want to think or to feel the things that he made her think about or feel. She just wanted to go through life enjoying moment by moment and never examining too deeply. She had no ghosts or tormentors under her mental bed, no skeletons in her closets. To her the past was a series of fond memories peppered with a few wistful losses, not the horror show of recurring nightmares that Andrew’s was. She couldn’t get her mind around it and couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just let it go and live in the moment. She started to find it a burden and a misery. The weight of his past that her presence had so lightened for him was slowly crushing her.

Melissa loved him, the truth if this he had seen in all the experiences they had shared. It cut far more deeply, bruised far more painfully than it could have otherwise when she began making excuses he could see through, avoiding his company. She loved him too much to just end it and walk away; she wanted him, just the lighthearted and non-emotionally demanding part of him. The part she could understand. He loved her too much to confront her about her feelings lest his greatest fears be made real. So they descended into the silence of people who avoid all subjects for fear of broaching the one subject. They argued the petty arguments of people avoiding the one argument. And he cried with nearly suffocating intensity when alone after the first conversation between them that descended to small talk. For her part, she thought it a victory; they had had a pleasant conversation that hadn’t taxed her one bit.

One day in late June Andrew was dealing with a child who reminded him too much of himself at that age, coming from a lonely and broken home; the child and the stress of the lost communication with Melissa was just too much and he sank down deep into the well of his own mind. No one would know it without knowing him well for he hid well but he was hurting badly and the part of his mind that was waiting for Melissa to appear and make it better as she had every time since he had met her was arguing with the part of his mind that cynically pronounced that 'she wouldn’t be there this time'. Not this time. It was one time too many. A third part, the wounded and hurting part, the needing part just kept repeating, ‘I trust her, I trust her, I trust her’.

When Melissa rounded the corner of the hallway leading to the activity center and saw Andrew’s face, she knew he was battling inside with something, probably something about the past and it would take a lot of listening and time. She sighed and turned and slipped away, thankful he hadn’t seen her.

He had.

And he knew in a way even an experienced self-deluder cannot deny that she would not be there this time or any time again. The wind howled down the canyon of his mind, carving out the layers of Melissa laid sediments and turning them into adamantine bricks. He froze in his spot mid way between the center of activity and the corner and listened to the agonized refrain of the wounded, ‘I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you’.
And from somewhere deep below the happy mask was handed up and firmly affixed to his face.

It was needed now.

Conversation Between an Atheist and a Christian... on-going...

2009-12-21T14:08:00.002-05:00

The following conversation began with a blog post and following comments. The post is linked below.
The Conversation is between Paul Kalbach (atheist) and Neil Shenvi (Christian). The last several comments are the beginning of the thread then it moves to email.
http://createcognitivedissonance.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/lunatic-liar-lord-legend-logical-leap-what-evidence-or-logic-is-so-compelling-that-we-are-willing-to-believe-accounts-of-jesus%e2%80%99-miracles-guest-post-by-thor-odhner

From Paul Kalbach
To Neil Shevi

Neil,
You never did answer one thing. How is Joseph’s lineage relevant to Jesus if the virgin birth is true?
I haven’t had time to dig into any of the essays on your website yet.
I get what you are saying about inspiration vs. direct revelation. I was raised in an evangelical Christian family so this is very familiar to me. I have a fundamental problem with this concept however. It allows for an infinitely interpretable text. The Bible can be, and is, used to justify anything. There is no authoritative means of saying which interpretation is correct. You either look at the text literally or subject yourself to all sorts of mental gymnastics to decide which parts to take literally and which parts to view symbolically and which parts to ignore all together. The entire field of theology, regardless of its strain, is a fabrication totally outside of the text of the Bible. I studied a good bit of theology in an earlier phase of life, actually contemplating going to seminary, and I ended up extremely frustrated by all of it. Theology is an entirely man-made framework made to eliminate the contradictions in the Bible. It starts with the assumption that everything in the Bible is correct and thus any failure of the text to live up to this assumption is disregarded. Any theological framework, no matter how convoluted and grandiose is acceptable.
All of the things that I was raised to believe in aren’t in the Bible, they were created by theologians - the doctrine of the trinity, dispensationalism, etc.
Acceptance of any theology over another seems to be a dice roll. Thus, literal interpretation is the only thing that makes sense. This, however forces the text to stand on its own…
I have come to the conclusion that all of the good aspects of the New Testament that people cherry pick and call the teaching of Jesus is nothing more or less than good human ethics. There is nothing to prevent people from living by these ethical standards without a supernatural foundation. I find that I am much more successful at living by good ethical standards since I recognize them as what they are instead of trying to please a God. Why is it not enough to base our ethics on how our actions affect others?
Paul

Form Neil Shenvi
To Paul Kalbach

Hi Paul,
Thanks for e-mailing me. I didn't want to monopolize discussion on the blog.

“You never did answer one thing. How is Joseph's lineage relevant to Jesus if the virgin birth is true?” -PK

Well, I think the relevance is that the Messiah was supposed to come from the house and line of David. Your line of reasoning is that if Jesus were not the biological son of Joseph then Joseph's lineage would be irrelevant. But I'm not sure that's true. Let's say that Joseph were in a direct lineage from David and the virgin birth did occur as the gospels attest. Are you arguing that Matthew and Luke should not have cared at all about Joseph's lineage? That, to me, seems unreasonable. The situtation described in the gospels is that you Jesus was conceived supernaturally, but born into a family that traced its roots to David. I think it is only natural for the biographers of Jesus to see Joseph's Davidic ancestry as significant.
Also, recall that in the ancient world, adopted sons could inherit kingship (Caeser Augustus being a classic example, see http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/augustusbio/a/Augustus.htm). If Joseph were really the heir of David, then wouldn't Jesus as his "adopted" son be the true heir as well? The only way to argue against this succession would be to say "No Jesus, you aren't really the true king of Israel because God, not Joseph, is your true father." That strikes me as a pretty weak argument!

“I have a fundamental problem with this concept however. It allows for
an infinitely interpretable text. The Bible can be, and is, used to justify anything. There is no authoritative means of saying which interpretation is correct. You either look at the text literally or subject yourself to all sorts of mental gymnastics to decide which parts to take literally and which parts to view symbolically and which parts to ignore all together.” -PK

I'm sorry if I implied that any of the Bible should be ignored; I didn't mean to. Most evangelicals would agree that "authorial intent" is the goal of all good exegesis. In other words, everything in the Bible should be taken as the author intented. Usually, it is fairly clear when the author intends something to be taken figuratively (i.e. "I am the gate for the sheep") and when he intends it to be taken literally (i.e. "Jesus got into the boat"). There are passages which are difficult, but I believe that the core message of the Bible is quite clear: Jesus Christ came to suffer and die for our sins and if we put our faith in him, we will be reconciled to God.

“The entire field of theology, regardless of its strain, is a fabrication totally outside of the text of the Bible. I studied a good bit of theology in an earlier phase of life, actually contemplating going to seminary, and I ended up extremely frustrated by all of it. Theology is an entirely man-made framework made to eliminate the contradictions in the Bible. It starts with the assumption that everything in the Bible is correct and thus any failure of the text to live up to this assumption is disregarded. Any theological framework, no matter how convoluted and grandiose is acceptable.” -PK

In one sense, I agree with you. It is always a temptation to let our "theology"
take precedence over the Bible itself. But one of the slogans of the Reformation, which unfortunately is sometimes forgotten, is semper reformanda or "always reforming". We must never let our traditional beliefs pass untested, but hold everything up to the light of God's word.
One other point that is crucial is that "theology" has only one legitimate
purpose: to know and love God better. I myself have a great temptation to learn "good theology" in order to boast about it and feel superior to others. But real "theology" is simply a greater and greater knowledge of a person, Jesus Christ.

“All of the things that I was raised to believe in aren't in the Bible, they were created by theologians - the doctrine of the trinity, dispensationalism, etc.” -PK

I can address these issues specifically, but are they really what is keeping you from Jesus? These issues and many others are the kind of thing that can only be wrestled with on the other side of a personal trust in Christ. What is it in particular that is keeping you from him?

“Acceptance of any theology over another seems to be a dice roll. Thus, literal interpretation is the only thing that makes sense. This, however forces the text to stand on its own.” -PK

See above. If by "literal", you mean a reading that attempts to
understand what the author is conveying, then yes I would agree with a literal reading. But if by "literal" you mean, wooden and literalistic with no account taken of context or genre, then I would disagree.

“I have come to the conclusion that all of the good aspects of the New Testament that people cherry pick and call the teaching of Jesus is nothing more or less than good human ethics. There is nothing to prevent people from living by these ethical standards without a supernatural foundation. I find that I am much more successful at living by good ethical standards since I recognize them as what they are instead of trying to please a God. Why is it not enough to base our ethics on how our actions affect others?” -PK

Could I suggest that this might be a misunderstanding of the core
message of the Bible? The Bible is not primarily a list of rules that God tells us to keep so that we can go to heaven. The Bible is primilarly the story of God's intervention in history to rescue people who because of sin have broken
all his rules, are destroying themselves and others, and who apart from his
intervention are doomed to eternal destruction. The gospel is "good news", not "good advice"! Yes, the world would be much better if everyone lived according to Jesus' teachings. But do you? Do I? Do you love God with all your heart and
love your neighbor as yourself, which Jesus said is the essence of God's law? I certainly don't! The Bible is actually good news of what God has done for us. It says: Jesus was mocked and flogged and crucufied for miserable, hopeless, wicked, hard-hearted people like you; trust in him. This is why, in Jesus' day, the prostitutes and tax collectors followed and loved Jesus and why the religious people hated him. The righteous have no need of a savior. But the sinners and the outcasts do.

Anyway, I apologize for the sermonizing; I tend to get excited. I would love to
continue this conversation and to answer your questions as best I can.

-Neil

From Paul Kalbach
To Neil Shenvi

“Well, I think the relevance is that the Messiah was supposed to come from the house and line of David. Your line of reasoning is that if Jesus were not the biological son of Joseph then Joseph's lineage would be irrelevant. But I'm not sure that's true. Let's say that Joseph were in a direct lineage from David and the virgin birth did occur as the gospels attest. Are you arguing that Matthew and Luke should not have cared at all about Joseph's lineage? That, to me, seems unreasonable. The situtation described in the gospels is that you Jesus was conceived supernaturally, but born into a family that traced its roots to David. I think it is only natural for the biographers of Jesus to see Joseph's Davidic ancestry as significant.
Also, recall that in the ancient world, adopted sons could inherit kingship (Caeser Augustus being a classic example, see http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/augustusbio/a/Augustus.htm). If Joseph were really the heir of David, then wouldn't Jesus as his "adopted" son be the true heir as well? The only way to argue against this succession would be to say "No Jesus, you aren't really the true king of Israel because God, not Joseph, is your true father." That strikes me as a pretty weak argument!” -NS
I will grant you the adoption point. I always read this as establishing Jesus' actual lineage. I am not comfortable with the adoption line but I will grant it as viable.

“I'm sorry if I implied that any of the Bible should be ignored; I didn't mean to. Most evangelicals would agree that "authorial intent" is the goal of all good exegesis. In other words, everything in the Bible should be taken as the author intented. Usually, it is fairly clear when the author intends something to be taken figuratively (i.e. "I am the gate for the sheep") and when he intends it to be taken literally (i.e. "Jesus got into the boat"). There are passages which are difficult, but I believe that the core message of the Bible is quite clear: Jesus Christ came to suffer and die for our sins and if we put our faith in him, we will be reconciled to God.” -NS

There are parts of the bible that need to be ignored. The only reason that Christianity today is not the same threat to peace as Islam is that parts of it are ignored. Thankfully no one (in the west at least) is living by 'do not suffer a witch to live' or all the minutia of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Both of those books are riddled with exhortations to commit genocide and every form of intolerance.

“In one sense, I agree with you. It is always a temptation to let our "theology" take precedence over the Bible itself. But one of the slogans of the Reformation, which unfortunately is sometimes forgotten, is semper reformanda or "always reforming". We must never let our traditional beliefs pass untested, but hold everything up to the light of God's word. One other point that is crucial is that "theology" has only one legitimate purpose: to know and love God better. I myself have a great temptation to learn "good theology" in order to boast about it and feel superior to others. But real theology" is simply a greater and greater knowledge of a person, Jesus Christ.” -NS

Even if this is the best approach to theology, is has to be noted that people direct their lives in accordance with theology. If it is always changing and striving, even with the best of motives, people are building on a changing platform. The bible is put forward as the ultimate source or morality and goodness but the theology surrounding it leads to horrible evils. (if you escape theology and go with rigid literalism it gets even worse) I don't have to go into detail on the crusades, witch trials, southern segregation (which was based on protestant beliefs) or the complicity of the Catholic church with fascism in the 20th century. Theology gives people a platform to rationalize anything they want and have god on their side. I have a problem with protestantism for the simple reason the it has no orthodoxy to temper the horrors that people can derive from the text. Without orthodoxy, how can anyone condemn Fred Phelps or David Koresh. You can't without appealing to a humanist ethical stance that has nothing to do with the bible. Every theology is equally justified.

“I can address these issues specifically, but are they really what is keeping you from Jesus? These issues and many others are the kind of thing that can only be wrestled with on the other side of a personal trust in Christ. What is it in particular that is keeping you from him?” –NS

I tried for years to believe and beat myself up constantly with the guilt that is inherent in the doctrine of original sin (something that morally offends me). I grew tired of not living my life and feeling condemned and defective all the time. When I finally listened to the little voice that kept saying 'its all made up, there is no god to worry about' I felt like a huge weight was lifted. I have never been happier or more free. My natural ethical impulse to just be good to others and be honest aren't tainted by groveling before a god who sets standards no human can meet.
So, no these specific issues are not 'keeping me from Jesus'. Its the lack of evidence (what to me means the untruth of it all) and the groveling nature of worshiping anything or anyone that offends me. I have never understood why god, if he exists, would want or need constant subservient worship. I seems arrogant and insecure. Not to mention abusive to the psyche of those doing the worshiping.

“Could I suggest that this might be a misunderstanding of the core
message of the Bible? The Bible is not primarily a list of rules that God tells us to keep so that we can go to heaven. The Bible is primarily the story of God's intervention in history to rescue people who because of sin have broken all his rules, are destroying themselves and others, and who apart from his intervention
are doomed to eternal destruction. The gospel is "good news", not "good advice"! Yes, the world would be much better if everyone lived according to Jesus' teachings. But do you? Do I? Do you love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, which Jesus said is the essence of God's law? I certainly don't! The Bible is actually good news of what God has done for us. It says: Jesus was mocked and flogged and crucufied for miserable, hopeless, wicked, hard-hearted people like you; trust in him. This is why, in Jesus' day, the prostitutes and tax collectors followed and loved Jesus
and why the religious people hated him. The righteous have no need of a savior. But the sinners and the outcasts do.” -NS

I have to disagree on several points. Firstly, the bible is a list of rules. There are thousands of things to do and not to do with the threat of eternal torture always hanging over the head of the reader. As for the statement 'the righteous have no need of a savior' the bible clearly says that all fall short and no one meets the criteria on their own. The threat of hell is always there for everyone, even in the new testament.
This gets to one of my biggest problems with all of it. If god exists and is as he is billed (a huge theological assumption that cannot be backed up logically - even if you take the regression to prime mover arguments as true they imply nothing of the omniscience, omnipotence etc) then he created everything including satan and fallen angel and imperfect humans. You cannot remove the responsibility for all the evil that exists from the creator. If that creator has foreknowledge and the power to prevent evil then he has the responsibility to do so. If he fails to do so then he is complicit. If he has the foreknowledge but not the power then he isn't omnipotent. If he has the power but not the foreknowledge then he isn't omniscient.
You can make all the arguments that you wish about free will but that doesn't escape the immoral sadism of the idea of hell. It is nothing short of sick. If god is so perfect that he cannot be in the presence of evil then he cannot be omnipresent because evil exists now. And there is no argument that I have ever heard that justifies the eternal torture. Simply uncreating the being would serve to save god from having to slum with the imperfect. It would do it better than a 'lake of fire' Once again, the omniscient thing.
All of this might seem silly and it is... it all is silly to the extreme. If there is a god, we have no way of knowing the definites of what it even means, how to define it. The bible, regardless of your theological tradition, tries to do just that, define god and give you a list of rules, always under the threat of eternal torture. I find it all rather offensive.

“Anyway, I apologize for the sermonizing; I tend to get excited. I
would love to continue this conversation and to answer your questions as best I can.” -NS
I find these subjects no end of interesting. I lost what was a real faith, now I find it fascinating from another perspective... I am interested in what people believe and why and what means they use to justify those beliefs.

From Neil Shenvi
To Paul Kalbach

“Even if this is the best approach to theology, is has to be noted that
people direct their lives in accordance with theology. If it is always
changing and striving, even with the best of motives, people are building on
a changing platform. The bible is put forward as the ultimate source or
morality and goodness but the theology surrounding it leads to horrible
evils. (if you escape theology and go with rigid literalism it gets even
worse) I don't have to go into detail on the crusades, witch trials,
southern segregation (which was based on protestant beliefs) or the
complicity of the Catholic church with fascism in the 20th century. Theology
gives people a platform to rationalize anything they want and have god on
their side. I have a problem with protestantism for the simple reason the it
has no orthodoxy to temper the horrors that people can derive from the text.
Without orthodoxy, how can anyone condemn Fred Phelps or David Koresh. You
can't without appealing to a humanist ethical stance that has nothing to do
with the bible. Every theology is equally justified.” -PK

I think the lesson of history is that human beings will rationalize whatever
they want from whatever their worldview, be it Christianity, Buddhism or
atheism. The atrocities committed in the name of Christ are horrific, but they
stand in utter contradiction to the very religion they espouse. Jesus calls us
to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat
us. I agree that human beings will "explain away" these passages in order to
achieve their selfish ends. But that does not reflect on the character of
Jesus but rather on the character of the people themselves.

In contrast, many of the atrocities committed by, say, the Nazi or Stalinist
regimes were entirely consistent with the idealogies of their leaders. I am
glad that you believe in loving one's neighbor, but as an atheist, on what
basis do you do so? To criticize the Crusades or the Holocaust or Jim Crow, we
need some vantage point of absolute morality from which we can evaluate all
three as evil. But within secular humanist worldview, there is no such vantage
point. We as human beings have no more intrinsic worth than a chair and we
evolved through the strong killing off the weak. How can I claim that it is
now wrong for the strong to kill off the weak? If morality is socially
constructed, then on what basis can I condemn people in some other society who
are perfectly content with their current system of morality, even if I dislike
it?

Regarding the Old Testament laws and the conquest of Canaan, I agree that these
are difficult issues. But I always turn back to Jesus himself and his
teaching. If Jesus could read the Old Testament and see a God of love, mercy
and compassion and if Jesus himself is in fact that same God of the Old
Testament, then I may still not understand some of the difficult passages in
the Old Testament, but I can trust that they do not contradict God's character
as revealed in Jesus.
“I tried for years to believe and beat myself up constantly with the guilt that is inherent in the
doctrine of original sin (something that morally offends me). I grew tired of not living my life and feeling condemned and defective all the time.” -PK

But doesn't the gospel say something entirely different? The gospel says that
Jesus completely and finally dealt with sin on the cross so that we can be
completely and permanently forgiven: "there is no condemnation for those who
are in Christ". If we constantly feel guilty and condemned, we have only
grasped the Law of God, which does indeed show us our sinfulness. But we
haven't yet grasped the good news of what Jesus has done for us, taking away
all of our guilt and shame and condemnation because he himself was treated as
guilty and shamed and condemned.
“So, no these specific issues are not 'keeping me from Jesus'. Its the lack
of evidence (what to me means the untruth of it all) and the groveling
nature of worshiping anything or anyone that offends me. I have never
understood why god, if he exists, would want or need constant subservient
worship. I seems arrogant and insecure. Not to mention abusive to the psyche
of those doing the worshiping..” -PK

It's interesting that you bring this issue up, because it's true that every
other religion sees us as bringing something to God that he needs: honor,
worship, respect, obedience. But doesn't Christianity say the opposite: that
salvation is all of grace, completely free? God doesn't need us to worship
him. He doesn't need us to love him. He doesn't need to save us. He does so
purely out of love and grace. It is the very graciousness of salvation that
makes me want to worship him. Seeing how great my debt was and how God didn't
owe me anything but hell, and then seeing him bear that debt himself and give
me heaven, makes me want to praise him!
“I have to disagree on several points. Firstly, the bible is a list of rules.
There are thousands of things to do and not to do with the threat of eternal
torture always hanging over the head of the reader. As for the statement
'the righteous have no need of a savior' the bible clearly says that all
fall short and no one meets the criteria on their own. The threat of hell is
always there for everyone, even in the new testament.” -PK

When I said 'the righteous have no need of a savior' I was thinking of Jesus'
statement in Mark 2:17, when he pointed out that those who think they are
righteous think they have no need of a savior. A religious person typically
approaches God like this: "God, I am not perfect, but I'm pretty good. At
least, I'm a lot better than so-and-so. Therefore, I deserve your blessing." This is the attitude that Jesus condemned over and over in the gospels. It
takes the Law of God to show us that we are not "pretty good"; in fact, we are
filled with selfishness, pride, and hatred and are constantly breaking God's
commands to love him supremely and to love our fellow human beings. Until we
are humbled by God's law and shown how far short we fall, we will never be
ready or even willing to accept the grace that Jesus offers us.
“This gets to one of my biggest problems with all of it. If god exists and is
as he is billed (a huge theological assumption that cannot be backed up
logically - even if you take the regression to prime mover arguments as true
they imply nothing of the omniscience, omnipotence etc) then he created
everything including satan and fallen angel and imperfect humans. You cannot
remove the responsibility for all the evil that exists from the creator. If
that creator has foreknowledge and the power to prevent evil then he has the
responsibility to do so. If he fails to do so then he is complicit. If he
has the foreknowledge but not the power then he isn't omnipotent. If he has
the power but not the foreknowledge then he isn't omniscient.

You can make all the arguments that you wish about free will but that
doesn't escape the immoral sadism of the idea of hell. It is nothing short
of sick. If god is so perfect that he cannot be in the presence of evil then
he cannot be omnipresent because evil exists now. And there is no argument
that I have ever heard that justifies the eternal torture. Simply uncreating
the being would serve to save god from having to slum with the imperfect. It
would do it better than a 'lake of fire' Once again, the omniscient thing.

All of this might seem silly and it is... it all is silly to the extreme. If
there is a god, we have no way of knowing the definites of what it even
means, how to define it. The bible, regardless of your theological
tradition, tries to do just that, define god and give you a list of rules,
always under the threat of eternal torture. I find it all rather offensive.” -PK

Again, I also struggle with the doctrine of hell, but I always turn back to
Jesus. Looking at Jesus' life I cannot help but see his meekness, gentleness,
love and compassion. And yet Jesus himself talked about the reality of hell
more than anyone else in the Bible. I think what troubles us is that we think
that if hell exists, then God must not be good. But the person of Christ
reassures me that God is indeed good and I can rest in that fact.

One important point to note is that one of the key elements of hell, in fact in
my mind the very thing that makes it hell, is the fact that those in hell are
cast out of God's presence. Human beings were made to love God and rejoice in
all that he has done for us. Therefore, to be cast out of God's presence is to
lose everything that is good and beautiful and desirable. But don't you see
that by denying God's existence and living apart from him, we are essentially
choosing hell every moment of the day? It is only God's mercy and compassion
that he is not giving us what we are implicitly demanding every second of our
lives. Instead of the question 'why would God send us to hell?', perhaps a
better quesiton is 'why are we choosing hell every day of our lives? Why do we
so desperately want to be without God?'

Paul, it sounds to me like you are rejecting what you perceive as a bitter,
legalistic, hypocritical religion based on the experiences you've had. But
what if Christianity is actually something different entirely?

Have you ever heard of the book The Reason for God by Tim Keller? I'd highly
recommend it. In fact, I have several copies and if you send me your address,
I will mail you one as an early Christmas/holiday present.

From Paul Kalbach
To Neil Shenvi

Neil,

“I think the lesson of history is that human beings will rationalize whatever
they want from whatever their worldview, be it Christianity, Buddhism or
atheism. The atrocities committed in the name of Christ are horrific, but they
stand in utter contradiction to the very religion they espouse. Jesus calls us
to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat
us. I agree that human beings will "explain away" these passages in order to
achieve their selfish ends. But that does not reflect on the character of
Jesus but rather on the character of the people themselves.” -NS
I agree, humans will justify any form of atrocity. A point I was trying to make earlier about theology is that you cannot say ‘they stand in utter contradiction to the very religion they espouse’. Without an orthodoxy build on some definite foundation how can you say that they are violating the spirit of the thing? On what to you stand that is superior to them?
You say that Jesus ‘calls us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us’. Fine, there are such verses but what of the other side of Jesus? Do passages like Mat 10:14-15 or Mark 6:11 not bother you? A street preacher walks into your town and starts declaring something like a weird twist on an old religion and if you and all your cohabitants don’t agree with him, the retribution will be worse than the wholesale murder of an entire population. This sort of caprice is very Old Testament.
Or Mat 10:34-38 – Love me more than your own parents or children or I will destroy you. If you don’t you aren’t worthy. This is not meekness and love. This is a handbook for abusive relationships
Or Mat 18:24-35 where there is no good guy in this story. The lord in this scenario is kind until he finds out that the kindness wasn’t passed on, he then has the servant tortured. What sort of moral teaching is that?
Do not verses like Mark 3:29 not go against the idea of once and for all salvation that Protestants teach and lean toward the Catholic interpretation where a sin can condemn you even after believing?
I could go on but these are a few starting at the top

“In contrast, many of the atrocities committed by, say, the Nazi or Stalinist
regimes were entirely consistent with the idealogies of their leaders.” -NS
The things done by Hitler were consistent with his deranged beliefs in Arian superiority, a twisted form of social Darwinism and a virulent hatred of the Jews that was built and informed by his Catholicism (which he never renounced and proclaimed to the end), Stalin did what he did based on Marxism not atheism.
“I am glad that you believe in loving one's neighbor, but as an atheist, on what
basis do you do so? To criticize the Crusades or the Holocaust or Jim Crow, we
need some vantage point of absolute morality from which we can evaluate all
three as evil. But within secular humanist worldview, there is no such vantage
point. We as human beings have no more intrinsic worth than a chair and we
evolved through the strong killing off the weak. How can I claim that it is
now wrong for the strong to kill off the weak? If morality is socially
constructed, then on what basis can I condemn people in some other society who
are perfectly content with their current system of morality, even if I dislike
it?” -NS
This is an old argument that gets trotted out every time the subject comes up; the slippery slope, the fear that without a supreme overlord saying so, there is no basis for morality. This has been dealt with handily by many writers far better than I can. If you have read the “God Delusion”, “The End of Faith” and “God is not Great”, and I am guessing you probably have, you know that this argument doesn’t hold water. Aside from the afore-mentioned books (and I only mention them because I read them recently and they are current and well known) there are lots of books on ethics. I don’t think that such basic moral principles as not committing murder, theft, rape etc are based on the bible. These are basic human things that we all feel are wrong and must feel are wrong to able to live together in a society. The violation of such ethical positions imposes suffering on others and violates their own personal rights of self determination. I think that these basic principles of ethics were worked into religion early on and had the god angle imposed on them to make them stronger. There will always be people who are willing to break the social contract and act outside of the ethical realm but they are the minority. As populations grow and become denser, the more of these people there are and more opportunities there are for them to cause harm. I don’t think it is a coincidence that organized religion and priesthoods sprang up in conjunction with increased populations and agriculture.

“Regarding the Old Testament laws and the conquest of Canaan, I agree that these
are difficult issues. But I always turn back to Jesus himself and his teaching. If Jesus could read the Old Testament and see a God of love, mercy and compassion and if Jesus himself is in fact that same God of the Old Testament, then I may still not understand some of the difficult passages in the Old Testament, but I can trust that they do not contradict God's character
as revealed in Jesus.” -NS
Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation is that the stories of the Old Testament are an oral tradition of self aggrandizement by a primitive tribe of herdsman who worshipped power and anything that brought themselves out on top. I don’t see how you can reconcile the orders to commit genocide and in certain cases to take all the women as sex slaves (you can try to plaster over the cracks but telling an army to put all men and elderly and children to the sword, burn the city and take the virgins for your selves only means one thing). Especially if you believe the Jesus is all love and compassion… something I have not been convinced of.
“But doesn't the gospel say something entirely different? The gospel says that
Jesus completely and finally dealt with sin on the cross so that we can be
completely and permanently forgiven: "there is no condemnation for those who
are in Christ". If we constantly feel guilty and condemned, we have only
grasped the Law of God, which does indeed show us our sinfulness. But we
haven't yet grasped the good news of what Jesus has done for us, taking away
all of our guilt and shame and condemnation because he himself was treated as
guilty and shamed and condemned. “ -NS
I was taught that you didn’t lose your salvation per say but you fell out of fellowship and had to confess to even be able to pray and be heard. I spent all my time confessing because every single thought and deed was sinful in some way. It wasn’t a fear of damnation, I had the smug conviction of the evangelical that I was superior and saved; it was fear of being less than I was supposed to be and ending up in the trailer park of heaven as it were.
“It's interesting that you bring this issue up, because it's true that every
other religion sees us as bringing something to God that he needs: honor,
worship, respect, obedience. But doesn't Christianity say the opposite: that
salvation is all of grace, completely free? God doesn't need us to worship
him. He doesn't need us to love him. He doesn't need to save us. He does so
purely out of love and grace. It is the very graciousness of salvation that
makes me want to worship him. Seeing how great my debt was and how God didn't
owe me anything but hell, and then seeing him bear that debt himself and give
me heaven, makes me want to praise him!” -NS
Back to one of my main objections; why the need for salvation if we are only what god created us to be. We are born without our consent, innocent of all things by any just standard and yet told we are worthless and condemned and must rely on the grace of one who created the entire game to begin with. If god knows beforehand that any one individual is going to reject him and he cannot tolerate this, don’t create them. Otherwise he is creating them with no other purpose than to condemn them. This is sick beyond words. Imagine that you can create a race of lesser being over which you have total control and once created they have free minds and wills and an eternal essence. Now hide from them completely. Then leak a few arcane things about yourself to a small group of ignorant and illiterate individuals in a remote area over a few hundred years and rely on oral tradition and various languages to collect these tidbits together. Now demand that every one of them everywhere even before the revelations and in places where it will never reach have to believe in you and by name or you will torture their essence for all eternity.
How fair and gracious is that? Would you be worthy of worship?
“When I said 'the righteous have no need of a savior' I was thinking of Jesus' statement in Mark 2:17, when he pointed out that those who think they are righteous think they have no need of a savior. A religious person typically approaches God like this: "God, I am not perfect, but I'm pretty good. At least, I'm a lot better than so-and-so. Therefore, I deserve your blessing." This is the attitude that Jesus condemned over and over in the gospels. It takes the Law of God to show us that we are not "pretty good"; in fact, we are filled with selfishness, pride, and hatred and are constantly breaking God's commands to love him supremely and to love our fellow human beings. Until we are humbled by God's law and shown how far short we fall, we will never be ready or even willing to accept the grace that Jesus offers us.” -NS
And isn’t pretty good good enough? Why do we mere mammals need to prostrate ourselves and humble ourselves? Why do we need to love that which we cannot see feel hear or touch supremely? Why would he even demand it? I refer back to my previous statement about abusive relationships. All you have to do is look objectively at the mental games religious people play with themselves to see how insidious this is. Look at any cult and you see it concentrated. Any misfortune or failing is put down to I didn’t work hard enough, I am being tested or the devil is attacking me; never squarely facing the reality of a situation. Any good fortune is a blessing and sign they are on the right track. It is never analyzed that while it is imagined that god is intervening to give you all 5 bingo numbers at the church social he is letting 15000 Bangladeshis die in a flood.
“Again, I also struggle with the doctrine of hell, but I always turn back to
Jesus. Looking at Jesus' life I cannot help but see his meekness, gentleness,
love and compassion. And yet Jesus himself talked about the reality of hell
more than anyone else in the Bible. I think what troubles us is that we think
that if hell exists, then God must not be good. But the person of Christ
reassures me that God is indeed good and I can rest in that fact.” -NS
I cannot live with this paradox. I cannot square claims of goodness and meekness and love with a willingness to cause pain and misery and despair.

“One important point to note is that one of the key elements of hell, in fact in
my mind the very thing that makes it hell, is the fact that those in hell are
cast out of God's presence. Human beings were made to love God and rejoice in
all that he has done for us. Therefore, to be cast out of God's presence is to
lose everything that is good and beautiful and desirable. But don't you see
that by denying God's existence and living apart from him, we are essentially
choosing hell every moment of the day? It is only God's mercy and compassion
that he is not giving us what we are implicitly demanding every second of our
lives. Instead of the question 'why would God send us to hell?', perhaps a
better quesiton is 'why are we choosing hell every day of our lives? Why do we
so desperately want to be without God?'” -NS
I don’t choose hell. I chose life. I chose to live my life in the here and now and not spend all my time here worrying about something that no one even knows if it exists. As I have said, I am happier now than I ever was trying to be a Christian.

“Paul, it sounds to me like you are rejecting what you perceive as a bitter, legalistic, hypocritical religion based on the experiences you've had. But what if Christianity is actually something different entirely?” -NS
If Christianity is something different, why are Christians not living it? That is like saying, well you reject a bicycle as a viable way to commute to work because of the distance and the weather and the conditions but what if a bicycle is actually something different? You still have to deal with the facts that it is pedal powered, open to the weather and gives you a great chance of getting killed by large trucks but what if it weren’t. What if it were warm and dry and crash resistant… You can tell yourself it is one thing but if the tangible assets are another, what does it mean? You may look at the words and find a great meaning and it may fill you up and inspire you to be a good person, I am glad it does. I read the same words and I see the bicycle.

“Have you ever heard of the book The Reason for God by Tim Keller? I'd highly
recommend it. In fact, I have several copies and if you send me your address,
I will mail you one as an early Christmas/holiday present.” -NS
Have not heard of this particular book… sure,

. Pick one of the books I mentioned earlier that you haven’t read or let me pick another one… I’ll send you that one… I’ll read yours if you read mine.

From Neil Shenvi
To Paul Kalbach

“I agree, humans will justify any form of atrocity. A point I was trying to make earlier about theology is that you cannot say 'they stand in utter contradiction to the very religion they espouse'. Without an orthodoxy build on some definite foundation how can you say that they are violating the spirit of the thing? On what to you stand that is superior to them?” -PK

Well, it's not some vague spirit of Christianity that they are violating, but the direct commands of Jesus in Scripture.

“You say that Jesus 'calls us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us'. Fine, there are such verses but what of the other side of Jesus? Do passages like Mat 10:14-15 or Mark 6:11 not bother you? A street preacher walks into your town and starts declaring something like a weird twist on an old religion and if you and all your cohabitants don't agree with him, the retribution will be worse than the wholesale murder of an entire population. This sort of caprice is very Old Testament.

Or Mat 10:34-38 - Love me more than your own parents or children or I will destroy you. If you don't you aren't worthy. This is not meekness and love.
This is a handbook for abusive relationships

Or Mat 18:24-35 where there is no good guy in this story. The lord in
this scenario is kind until he finds out that the kindness wasn't
passed on, he then has the servant tortured. What sort of moral teaching is that?” -PK

These passages point to what commentators have always noticed about Jesus'
teaching. On the one hand, his moral teaching is undeniably beautiful and his character is full of compassion, but on the other hand he makes these outlandish claims about himself and requires every human being to choose whether we are with him or against him. If we want to come to Jesus as a good moral teacher, I agree that these commands are wildly offensive and megalomaniacal. But that's the point! We can't come to Jesus as only a moral teacher. He commands us to treat him and love him as God himself (above everything else, our work, our family and even our own life). Either he is God, and then these commands are completely reasonable, or he is not and he is a lunatic and a megalomaniac.
Regarding many of these hard teachings, I think the question is whether we recognize that our relationship to God ought to supersede all others. If a stranger comes to me and rebukes me for not loving him more than I love Derek Jeter, my favorite baseball player, I would dismiss him as a nutcase. But if my wife comes to me and rebukes me for not loving her more than Derek Jeter, I would hang my head in shame because she is right; the relationship that I have with my wife ought to supersede all other relationships. Similarly, what relationship ought we to have with the God who created us, who sustains us every moment of the day, and who has given us every good gift and pleasure that we enjoy? Isn't loving him supremely the only appropriate response we can make?
If Jesus was God, then his commands are simply expressions of the first
commandment: have no other gods before me.

“Do not verses like Mark 3:29 not go against the idea of once and for all salvation that Protestants teach and lean toward the Catholic interpretation where a sin can condemn you even after believing?” -PK

Although commentators disagree what Jesus is referring to, I think the most consistent explanation is that the sin that Jesus is describing is a rejection of his person and his work as satanic. If anyone does reject Jesus in this way, I think it is clear that they are not a Christian (doesn't being a Christian mean recognizing Jesus person and his work as that of God himself?).
If that's the case, how is it possible for a Christian to commit this sin? As to whether a non-Christian can commit this sin and thereby put himself outside the reach of God's forgiveness, I'm not sure. Looking at the rest of Scripture, it seems that God accepts anyone who truly repents. My concern would be that someone who is convinced that Jesus is from Satan will never repent and therefore will never be forgiven.

“I could go on but these are a few starting at the top” -PK

Paul, it seems like you are going through the Scriptures trying to find all of the difficult and confusing passages you can. But why not start with what is clear? There are certainly confusing things in the Bible (the Bible itself says so! See 2 Pet. 3:16), but read almost any book in the New Testament (maybe in Jude or Philemon it is slightly less obvious) and the main message is
clear: Jesus is God who came to die for our sins and by faith in him we can have eternal life. If my salvation depended on understanding everything in the Bible, I personally would be hopeless. There are plenty of passages in the Bible that I don't understand and probably many more that I currently misunderstand. But being a Christian does not mean understanding everything in the Bible; it means trusting in the salvation that comes through Christ.

“This is an old argument that gets trotted out every time the subject comes up; the slippery slope, the fear that without a supreme overlord saying so, there is no basis for morality.” -PK

It is not a fear that without God we will stop behaving morally. I think it is quite possible to be an atheist and to behave morally. I think the objection is much deeper. Without God as the source of absolutes, how do we define what is moral and what is not or even what is "good" and what is "not good"? You could appeal to morality as the set of laws that leads to a stable society or the continuation of civilization, but the Mayans had a stable society for thousands of years that included ritual human sacrifice. Why would you call this society "brutal" and "immoral"?
You could appeal to morality as the innate sense that human beings have evolved for fair play, or the behavior dictated by our conscience, but serial killers may not experience any pangs of conscience over their actions. Why would you call their behavior "wrong" if our consciences are what determine morality?
Why is it wrong to impose suffering on others or to violate their personal rights and self-determination? If we are merely over-evolved animals, where did this moral judgement you are making come from? Is it wrong for rats to steal each others' food or to eat their young, or for the dominant gorilla to surpress the others? Why does morality suddenly and uniquely applicable to one particular class of primates? And why is the univeral morality you advocate so similar to the Judeo-Christian ethic of "love your neighbor" rather than the Nietzchean ethic of "will to power" or the Norse ethic of "strength and honor"?

“I was taught that you didn't lose your salvation per say but you fell out of fellowship and had to confess to even be able to pray and be heard. I spent all my time confessing because every single thought and deed was sinful in some way. It wasn't a fear of damnation, I had the smug conviction of the evangelical that I was superior and saved; it was fear of being less than I was supposed to be and ending up in the trailer park of heaven as it were.” -PK

I sympathize with your experience. I know what it is like to feel (in my opinion, quite rightly) that every one of my thoughts and deeds are sinful.
But the biblical solution is unique. It is not to deny this fact as any other religion would require us to do in order to obtain any kind of peace. Rather the Bible says: stop looking to yourself and look to Him. Your problem is that you still think that your salvation or your relationship with God depends on you, on your merit, on your obedience, on your purity. Christians need to not only repent of their sins, but of their damnable good deeds, their efforts to please God and obtain merit on their own rather than trusting solely in his grace and forgivenss in Jesus. As the old hymn says: "Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet. Stand in Him and Him alone, gloriously complete".

“Have not heard of this particular book. sure,

. Pick one of the books I mentioned earlier that you haven't read or let me pick another one. I'll send you that one. I'll read yours if you read mine.” -PK

Why don't I read "The End of Faith", since I have heard others recommend it?
I'll mail you "The Reason for God"; it should arrive shortly.
-Neil

From Paul Kalbach
To Neil Shenvi

“Well, it's not some vague spirit of Christianity that they are violating, but
the direct commands of Jesus in Scripture.” -NS

My contentions was and is - according to which interpretation? It's hard to find any two people who completely agree on what is or isn't 'commanded'. There are sects preaching that god wants you to be rich and others swearing you have to be poor to be saved. They both have passages on their side. You can claim almost anything is directly commanded or forbidden. I definitely like the teachings that Jesus is all peace and love and mercy better than the 'I come with a sword' Jesus but by what standard do you say those who read things that way are wrong? Thus my point about orthodoxy...

“These passages point to what commentators have always noticed about Jesus'
teaching. On the one hand, his moral teaching is undeniably beautiful and his
character is full of compassion, but on the other hand he makes these
outlandish claims about himself and requires every human being to choose
whether we are with him or against him. If we want to come to Jesus as a good
moral teacher, I agree that these commands are wildly offensive and
megalomaniacal. But that's the point! We can't come to Jesus as only a moral
teacher. He commands us to treat him and love him as God himself (above
everything else, our work, our family and even our own life). Either he is
God, and then these commands are completely reasonable, or he is not and he is
a lunatic and a megalomaniac.”-NS

This argument has been around for a long time and I think it was credited to C S Lewis originally. As many commentators have pointed out, this sets up a false dilemma. There is a third option, he could have been truly mistaken. He may well have been sane yet took some personal religious experience to heart and believed himself the son of god. I am approaching this from the outside though...

“Regarding many of these hard teachings, I think the question is whether we
recognize that our relationship to God ought to supersede all others. If a
stranger comes to me and rebukes me for not loving him more than I love Derek
Jeter, my favorite baseball player, I would dismiss him as a nutcase. But if
my wife comes to me and rebukes me for not loving her more than Derek Jeter, I
would hang my head in shame because she is right; the relationship that I have
with my wife ought to supersede all other relationships. Similarly, what
relationship ought we to have with the God who created us, who sustains us
every moment of the day, and who has given us every good gift and pleasure that
we enjoy? Isn't loving him supremely the only appropriate response we can make?
If Jesus was God, then his commands are simply expressions of the first
commandment: have no other gods before me.” -NS

My wife is in my life, a constant presence and a person with needs and feelings to whom I have real and present obligations. I have never seen, felt, heard or had any experience of god in any way. No one has ever been able to provide me with a single piece of evidence for his existence that could not be more easily explained through science or observation. Even when I was a devoted church goer, I felt silly praying because I w staling to myself. No one ever answered in any tangible way. I had a sever car wreck and people said it was a miracle and god saved my life etc etc. Funny, the EMTs and the trauma surgeon that put me back together didn't think anything was unusual. All the claims were from people who believed and wanted it to be a miracle. I felt nothing, I never lost consciousness, I saw no tunnels and heard no voices. I was also troubled to think that a god would intervene for me and let far better people than myself be hurt or die. My own brother, devout to the ultimate degree, lived his life for Christ, died at 28 of heart failure after running a charity marathon. I was a binge drinking, pot smoking idiot at that age.

Do not verses like Mark 3:29 not go against the idea of once and for all
salvation that Protestants teach and lean toward the Catholic interpretation
where a sin can condemn you even after believing?

“Although commentators disagree what Jesus is referring to, I think the most
consistent explanation is that the sin that Jesus is describing is a rejection
of his person and his work as satanic. If anyone does reject Jesus in this
way, I think it is clear that they are not a Christian (doesn't being a
Christian mean recognizing Jesus person and his work as that of God himself?).
If that's the case, how is it possible for a Christian to commit this sin? As
to whether a non-Christian can commit this sin and thereby put himself outside
the reach of God's forgiveness, I'm not sure. Looking at the rest of
Scripture, it seems that God accepts anyone who truly repents. My concern
would be that someone who is convinced that Jesus is from Satan will never
repent and therefore will never be forgiven.” -NS

What of someone who truly believes for years or decades, then loses their faith utterly and decides that the holy spirit is an imaginary friend?

“Paul, it seems like you are going through the Scriptures trying to find all of
the difficult and confusing passages you can. But why not start with what is
clear? There are certainly confusing things in the Bible (the Bible itself
says so! See 2 Pet. 3:16), but read almost any book in the New Testament
(maybe in Jude or Philemon it is slightly less obvious) and the main message is
clear: Jesus is God who came to die for our sins and by faith in him we can have
eternal life. If my salvation depended on understanding everything in the
Bible, I personally would be hopeless. There are plenty of passages in the
Bible that I don't understand and probably many more that I currently
misunderstand. But being a Christian does not mean understanding everything in
the Bible; it means trusting in the salvation that comes through Christ.” -NS

I am not trying to single out the difficulties, it is consistent or it isn't. It is true or it isn't. God cannot advocate vile things and still get a pass and be called just. You can't have it both ways. This is part of what I was saying about theology. Theology recognizes the internal inconsistencies and builds a framework outside to reconcile them. I just don't see any clear way of reconciling rational thought, observation, and natural causes with scripture. No system of theology does a good job of this. I would love to see one grand unifying theory that brought together all the wants and desires of the human heart and the impersonal reality of the universe. I just don't see it happening.
It doesn't help when you have things like Christians pushing to teach their religious views in the schools and trying to #justify it with pathetic pseudo-science...

“It is not a fear that without God we will stop behaving morally. I think it is
quite possible to be an atheist and to behave morally. I think the objection
is much deeper. Without God as the source of absolutes, how do we define what
is moral and what is not or even what is "good" and what is "not good"? You
could appeal to morality as the set of laws that leads to a stable society or
the continuation of civilization, but the Mayans had a stable society for
thousands of years that included ritual human sacrifice. Why would you call
this society "brutal" and "immoral"?” -NS

Very simple. Ask the sacrifice. I don't need a mandate from god to know brutality when I see it and even it I believed in god and was appalled by this and in that instance was handed absolute proof of god's non-existence would it change my stance? No it would not, it is based on human suffering and the destruction of the human right to self determination. You ignore the fact that without a belief in their gods, which you do not believe in, none of this cruelty would have occurred.

“You could appeal to morality as the innate sense that human beings have evolved
for fair play, or the behavior dictated by our conscience, but serial killers
may not experience any pangs of conscience over their actions. Why would you
call their behavior "wrong" if our consciences are what determine morality?
Why is it wrong to impose suffering on others or to violate their personal
rights and self-determination? If we are merely over-evolved animals, where
did this moral judgement you are making come from? Is it wrong for rats to
steal each others' food or to eat their young, or for the dominant gorilla to
surpress the others? Why does morality suddenly and uniquely applicable to one
particular class of primates? And why is the univeral morality you advocate so
similar to the Judeo-Christian ethic of "love your neighbor" rather than the
Nietzchean ethic of "will to power" or the Norse ethic of "strength and honor"?” -NS

The fact that another has a will and a self awareness and an ability to understand and anticipate pain is reason enough. How far down the evolutionary tree does our moral obligation go? I don't know. I wouldn't kill a chimp, gorilla, bonobo, dolphin or elephant. Why? They have all demonstrated self awareness. Do I hold them all on the same moral level with humans? No, but that may be my failing. I err on the side of compassion and life.

Austin Cline said it well: (Quoted from http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophybranches/p/Ethics.htm)
Myth:
Without God, atheists have no reason to behavior morally. What's the point of being moral is there is no God?

Response:
The idea that atheists have no reason to be moral without a god or religion may be the most popular and repeated myth about atheism out there. It comes up in a variety of forms, but all of them are based on the assumption that the only valid source of morality is a theistic religion, preferably the religion of the speaker which is usually Christianity. Thus without Christianity, people cannot live moral lives. This is supposed to be a reason reject atheism and convert to Christianity.

First, it must be noted that there is no logical connection between this argument's premises and conclusion — it's not a valid argument. Even if we accept that it's true that there is no point in being moral if there is no God, this wouldn't be an argument against atheism in the sense of showing that atheism isn't true, rational, or justified. It wouldn't provide any reason to think that theism generally or Christianity in particular is likely true. It is logically possible that there is no God and that we have no good reasons to behave morally. At most this is a pragmatic reason to adopt some theistic religion, but we'd be doing so on the basis of its supposed usefulness, not because we think it's really true, and this would be contrary to what theistic religions normally teach.

Human Suffering & Morality
There is also a serious but rarely noted problem with this myth in that it assumes that it doesn't matter that more people are happy and fewer people suffer if God does not exist. Consider that carefully for a moment: this myth can only be espoused by someone who doesn't consider either their happiness or their suffering to be especially important unless their god tells them to care. If you are happy, they don't necessarily care. If you suffer, they don't necessarily care. All that matters is whether that happiness or that suffering occurs in the context of the existence of their God or not. If it does, then presumably that happiness and that suffering serve some purpose and so that's OK — otherwise, they're irrelevant.

If a person only refrains from killing because they believe they are so ordered, and the suffering that murder would cause is irrelevant, then what happens when that person starts to think that they have new orders to actually go out and kill? Because the suffering of the victims was never a dispositive issue, what would stop them? This strikes me as an indication that a person is sociopathic. It is, after all, a key characteristic of sociopaths that they are unable to empathize with the feelings of others and, hence, aren't especially concerned if others suffer. I not only reject the assumption that God is necessary to making morality relevant as being illogical, I also reject the implication that the happiness and suffering of others isn't very important as being immoral itself.

Theism & Morality
Now religious theists are certainly entitled to insist that, without orders, they have no good reason to refrain from rape and murder or to help people in need — if the actual suffering of others is completely irrelevant to them, then we should all hope that they continue to believe that they are receiving divine orders to be "good." However irrational or unfounded theism may be, it's preferable that people hold on to these beliefs than that they go around acting on their genuine and sociopathic attitudes. The rest of us, however, are under no obligation to accept the same premises as they — and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try. If the rest of us are able to behave morally without orders or threats from gods, then we should continue to do so and not be dragged down to others' level.

Morally speaking, it really shouldn't matter whether any gods exist or not — the happiness and suffering of others should play an important role in our decision making either way. The existence of this or that god could, in theory, also have an impact upon our decisions — it all really depends upon how this "god" is defined. When you get right down to it, though, the existence of a god can't make it right to cause people suffering or make it wrong to cause people to be more happy. If a person is not a sociopath and is genuinely moral, such that the happiness and suffering of others really matters to them, then neither the presence nor absence of any gods will fundamentally change anything for them in terms of moral decisions.

The Point of Morality?
So what's the point of being moral if God doesn't exist? It's the same "point" that people should acknowledge if God does exist: because the happiness and suffering of other human beings matter to us such that we should seek, whenever possible, to increase their happiness and decrease their suffering. It's also the "point" that morality is required for human social structures and human communities to survive at all. Neither the presence nor the absence of any gods can change this, and while religious theists may find that their beliefs impact their moral decisions, they cannot claim that their beliefs are prerequisites for making any moral decisions at all.

“I sympathize with your experience. I know what it is like to feel (in my
opinion, quite rightly) that every one of my thoughts and deeds are sinful.
But the biblical solution is unique. It is not to deny this fact as any other
religion would require us to do in order to obtain any kind of peace. Rather
the Bible says: stop looking to yourself and look to Him. Your problem is that
you still think that your salvation or your relationship with God depends on
you, on your merit, on your obedience, on your purity. Christians need to not
only repent of their sins, but of their damnable good deeds, their efforts to
please God and obtain merit on their own rather than trusting solely in his
grace and forgivenss in Jesus. As the old hymn says: "Lay your deadly doing
down, down at Jesus' feet. Stand in Him and Him alone, gloriously complete".”- NS

Why? This is an area that I have always had trouble with. Glossing over the self-deprecation of thinking that all of your thoughts and deeds are sinful and the -I don't get it - argument (no offense intended, but that is how it reads), let's look at the whole idea that 'he did all the work'. How can the sacrifice of one person willing or not have anything to do #with the guilt of another? It can't. It is a bizarre claim, a human equivalent of the animal sacrifices of the old testament and those were a primitive form of sympathetic magic where people felt bad about something they would as the local god to forgive them and kill something else. Thankfully this isn't currently being done in any wide-spread means. I just don't see the rational basis for it but if you reject this piece of theology it undermines the whole inverse which is the claim that the human race inherited its sinfulness from Adam; another claim I find deeply offensive. How can anyone be guilty of that which they didn't do and how can any god worthy of the name be so sadistic as to impute the blame? (Not to even mention the fact the is this were true, god would be responsible for the original creation, the free will that committed it, the imputation and the sustainment of the system (if it is transmitted via the semen as the Catholics say))
It might be noted that this guilt by blood is repeated over and over in the bible, sins being visited upon the sons to the 10th generation etc and is also the basis for the Church's venerable charge of deicide against the Jews (one of Hitler's justifications and a main reason the Vatican supported his regime.)

To Paul Kalbach
From Neil Shenvi

“My contention was and is - according to which interpretation? It's hard to find any two people who completely agree on what is or isn't 'commanded'.There are sects preaching that god wants you to be rich and others swearing you have to be poor to be saved. They both have passages on their side. You can claim almost anything is directly commanded or forbidden. I definitely like the teachings that Jesus is all peace and love and mercy better than the 'I come with a sword' Jesus but by what standard do you say those who read things that way are wrong? Thus my point about orthodoxy...” -PK

There are certainly issues on which Christians disagree, but I am always amazed at how I can pick up a copy of Luther's writings or Calvin's or Spurgeon's and find them just as relevant and heart-warming as if they were written a year ago rather than centuries ago. Despite the differences between Christians, there is a solid core of truth running through Scripture and through the history of the church that Christians have always affirmed. The core of the gospel is simply Christ crucified: Jesus dying on the cross to pay for our sins and raised to life for our justification. It certainly is a tragedy that Christians disagree on (and often flagrantly violate) the commands of Jesus. But using this as a reason to reject Jesus would be tragic.

“This argument has been around for a long time and I think it was credited to C S Lewis originally. As many commentators #have pointed out, this sets up a false dilemma. There is a third option, he could have been truly mistaken. He may well #have been sane yet took some personal religious experience to heart and believed himself the son of god. I am #approaching this from the outside though...” -PK

This same argument was actually raised on Create Cognitive Dissonance.
Thor, a fellow reader, argued that his grandfather claimed to speak to dead relatives, but was neither a liar nor a lunatic - merely honestly mistaken. Here's my response:

I agree that it is possible to hold some unconventional beliefs without immediately being classifiable as a liar or a lunatic. For instance, many people have claimed that God is speaking to them and have still led fairly normal, moral, coherent lives. However, I think this argument is simply not applicable in the case of Jesus if we examine seriously the claims he made.
If a man were to merely claim that he had received personal messages from God, it would be possible that he was merely mildly and harmlessly mistaken. But what if that man also claimed to be able to forgive sin (Mk. 2:1-12, Mt. 9:2-8, Lk. 5:18-26, John 8:1-11) claimed that a personal relationship with him was the only way to know God (Matt. 11:27, Lk. 10:22, Jn. 14:6), claimed that he could heal the sick and raise the dead (Matt. 11:5, Lk. 7:22, Jn. 5:28-30), claimed to have preexisted from all eternity (Lk. 10:18, Jn. 8:57-58), claimed that our love for him must be greater than our love for our mother or father or children (Lk. 14:26), claimed that we must love him more than our own life (Mt. 10:37, Lk. 14:27), claimed that our eternal destiny depended entirely on our response to him (Lk. 12:8, Jn. 5:24), claimed that he would rise from the grave three days after being crucified (Mt. 16:21, Mk. 10:34, Jn. 2:19), and claimed that he would return at the end of time to judge all of humanity (Mt. 19:28, Matt.
25:31-46, Jn. 5:28-30)?
Jesus taught an ethic of love, forgiveness and moral purity which is undeniably beautiful. He demonstrated a compassion and tender mercy for the poor, the sinful and the outcast that no one can deny. And yet the same Jesus also made the startling claims to divinity and made demands on our ultimate allegiance that superseded family, culture and nationality. Note that none of these are claims that Jesus made only once or twice; these are claims that are recorded in all of the gospels multiple times and run through all of his teaching. Given these claims, I think the Lord, Liar, Lunatic trilemma is absolutely appropriate, all the more so given the Jewish culture in which Jesus lived.
Thor, do you really think that if Jesus indeed said the things recorded in Scripture that it is possible to classify him as mildly mistaken but harmless and morally neutral? If you don’t think he said the things recorded in the New Testament, what evidence do you have for this belief?
Note also that the LLL trilemma does not appeal at all to Jesus’ deeds. If we could determine that Jesus actually did perform miracles, it might imply that the Lord option is more likely. But the trilemma does not actually make any claim about which answer is true; it merely circumscribes the range of acceptable answers to three: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord.
I think the power of the LLL argument is seen in how desperate we are to escape it. We would much rather believe that these sayings were invented by Jesus’
followers, because then we can escape the force of his call on our lives. But I think this option is historically untenable. Given his gentleness and moral purity, very few people can bring themselves to call Jesus a liar or a lunatic.
To me, the most plausible option, the only option that can truly make sense both of Jesus’ extraordinary claims and also Jesus’ gentleness, goodness, mercy, tenderness and love is that he was telling the truth: He is Lord and God and Savior.

“What of someone who truly believes for years or decades, then loses their faith utterly and decides that the holy spirit is an imaginary friend?” -PK

They certainly are running an awful risk. If they do not repent, then all there is left for them is judgment and condemnation. But if they are worried that they are blaspheming the Holy Spirit by their unbelief, why not repent? As the author of Hebrew writes, speaking of those who are tempted to turn away from Christ, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Paul, if God is calling to you, do not harden your heart. He calls you out of love. You may not have another chance.

-Neil

To Neil Shenvi
From Paul Kalbach

“There are certainly issues on which Christians disagree, but I am always amazed
at how I can pick up a copy of Luther's writings or Calvin's or Spurgeon's and
find them just as relevant and heart-warming as if they were written a year ago rather than centuries ago. Despite the differences between Christians, there is a solid core of truth running through Scripture and through the history of the
church that Christians have always affirmed. The core of the gospel is simply
Christ crucified: Jesus dying on the cross to pay for our sins and raised to
life for our justification. It certainly is a tragedy that Christians disagree on (and often flagrantly violate) the commands of Jesus. But using this as a
reason to reject Jesus would be tragic.” -NS

This still doesn’t answer my question. What standard do you use to determine what is a misinterpretation or violation? Those with whom you disagree will defend their positions from scripture. You have already established a dislike for strict literalism. So by what standard?
Even this basic message doesn’t answer the objections I raised earlier about the injustice of it all. The condemnation from which salvation is deemed necessary is nothing we have done. We as humans are said to be condemned from birth (and if you are Presbyterian, eternal past). I don’t reject Christ on the basis of Christian disagreement. I have a fundamental problem with being told that I am evil and unworthy regardless on my actions and intentions and will be tortured for all eternity if I don’t accept the grace being offered by the one who set up the entire system. It is a cosmic Stockholm syndrome to me.

“This same argument was actually raised on Create Cognitive Dissonance.
Thor, a fellow reader, argued that his grandfather claimed to speak to dead relatives, but was neither a liar nor a lunatic - merely honestly mistaken. Here's my response: (see above)” -NS

All I can really reply to this is to say that I disagree with your assessment. The simplest and most rational response to any extraordinary claim is skepticism. Claims of divinity and an ability to forgive transgressions that are unrelated to oneself are certainly extraordinary though not unique. I am not going to go into the details of the religions of the day but if memory serves, he was the 9th one born of a virgin, offspring of god, resurrected etc. I don’t see why these things should be seen as unique underpinnings of the story and I have said before how I do not agree that the morality teaching stands alone. I need more evidence and proof.

“They certainly are running an awful risk. If they do not repent, then
all there is left for them is judgment and condemnation. But if they are worried that they are blaspheming the Holy Spirit by their unbelief, why not repent?
As the author of Hebrew writes, speaking of those who are tempted to turn away from Christ, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." Paul, if
God is calling to you, do not harden your heart. He calls you out of love. You may not have another chance.” –NS
Well you answered my question, does the bible, in your opinion, say that you can lose your salvation once it is attained by denying the holy spirit? I asked because of the differing theological views. The Catholics say that you have to die in a state of friendship with god, some say that salvation is a one way door and once in you can’t lose it, and Calvinists think they will be alone in heaven with god(each individual one apparently).
I do have to say that this sort of view irritates me. You talk of god’s love and gentleness and compassion etc etc yet you think that he is willing and just to judge and condemn anyone who doesn’t buy what to me is a poorly supported and poorly constructed fabric about which the faithful cannot even agree.

If you don’t object I would like to arrange this entire conversation in order and post it on my blog… address removed of course

To Paul Kalbach
From Neil Shenvi

“I don't reject Christ on the basis of Christian disagreement. I have a
fundamental problem with being told that I am evil and unworthy regardless on my actions and intentions and will be tortured for all eternity if I don't accept the grace being offered by the one who set up the entire system. It is a cosmic Stockholm syndrome to me.” -PK

I'm saddened that you are rejecting Christ for this reason, because it means that you have actually understood the gospel and are rejecting it. Paul, you are a sinner and so am I. You and I have both hurt people: our friends through our manipulativeness, our family through our selfishness, the poor and needy through our neglect, and ultimately God himself through our rejection of him. I know it is in our nature to pretend that we are ok, that we're pretty good people, but it simply isn't true. If you ever come to a point where you are ready to admit that you are a sinner in need of saving, God has promised to accept you.

“All I can really reply to this is to say that I disagree with your
assessment. The simplest and most rational response to any
extraordinary claim is skepticism. Claims of divinity and an ability
to forgive transgressions that are unrelated to oneself are certainly
extraordinary though not unique. I am not going to go into the details
of the religions of the day but if memory serves, he was the 9th one
born of a virgin, offspring of god, resurrected etc. I don't see why
these things should be seen as unique underpinnings of the story and I
have said before how I do not agree that the morality teaching stands alone. I need more evidence and proof.” -PK

Perhaps the book I'm sending will help.

“Well you answered my question, does the bible, in your opinion, say that you can lose your salvation once it is attained by denying the holy spirit? I asked because of the differing theological views. The Catholics say that you have to die in a state of friendship with god, some say that salvation is a one way
door and once in you can't lose it, and Calvinists think they will be alone in heaven with god(each individual one apparently). I do have to say that this sort of view irritates me. You talk of god's love and gentleness and compassion etc etc yet you think that he is willing and just to judge and condemn anyone who doesn't buy what to me is a poorly supported and poorly constructed fabric about which the faithful cannot even agree.” -PK

For the record, I do not believe that a person who has truly been born again through a true faith in Christ will ever lose their salvation. But the Bible is very clear that many people may profess to have faith in Jesus and show by their actions that they do not have real faith in Jesus. But to those who "used to be Christian" and to those who have never claimed to be Christian, the message is still the same: repent of your sins and trust in Christ an you will be forgiven. Paul, from your own account of your time as a Christian, it seems that you never really understood or beleived in your own sinfulness and need of a savior. I think this is the key issue in all of your doubts.

“If you don't object I would like to arrange this entire conversation
in order and post it on my blog. address removed of course.”-PK

You're welcome to post all or any of our conversation. I will continue praying for you. If you're interested, one of the sermons I preached might be of particular interest to you. The text was Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Listen to it and see if it helps you.
http://trinity-baptist.org/sermons/2009.08.30.pm.mp3
-Neil

Another weird encounter...

2009-12-02T09:54:00.000-05:00

I was speaking with one of my uncles, my father's second younger brother, and he make a few remarks worth commenting on.
To explain a bit about this guy, he is a reformed Presbyterian(that means extremely Calvinist (look it up)). He sees everything through a prism of his religion so I wasn't surprised by what he said, it was just warped.
We were stand around talking about some old photos my grandmother had of the first church my grandfather started. It was at a Christian resort in New York back in the 1930s. The land and buildings had been purchased from a Jewish organisation that had build a hotel and casino in the 1020s. My uncle casually commented that the hotel, a 4 story confection of Victorian design had later to be condemned and torn down because it had been build by the Jews. I snapped my head around and looked at him and inquired as to just precisely why the religion of the builders mattered. He claimed that the builders had failed to put footers under the foundation causing the whole structure to flex when the ground froze and thawed and the reason for this failure was the beliefs of the particular sect. Somehow, he thought that they believed the world would end before the foundations of the building mattered.
I muttered something about theology and engineering not belonging in the same book. He took offense at this and said, "bad theology, yes". I couldn't help but laugh. Here is a man who believes the world will end soon and was pointing out the failings of another group for acting on their belifs yet couldn't see how it applied to his own beliefs...

An Interesting and Disappointing yet Unsurprising Experience

2009-11-30T13:11:00.001-05:00

I went to a family reunion for the thanksgiving holiday. This is a biannual gathering of my fathers side of the family. I am aware of the religious and political views of most of that side of the family and I try to keep off of such subjects for the obvious reason of wanting to keep the peace.
I always do all the cooking for these gatherings and thus I am in the kitchen and out of the line of fire. However, relatives coming and talk to me a good bit so I can't avoid all potentially touchy subjects.
A little background, I come from a long line of Baptist missionaries and extreme right wingers. I do not fall into these categories. I am an atheist and tend toward very socially liberal. The one area that certain views cross paths is on the fiscal side of government. I short, I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I want the government out of my bedroom and my wallet.
OK, so I am cooking and my Aunt, my Dad's kid sister, now an elderly lady, comes in the kitchen and starts talking about some nebulous points of politics on the financial side. I agreed with her. I don't like current tax policy and I agreed with this one point. She took it as a wholesale buy-in on her politics and religion apparently. She made a sound like steam releasing pressure and says, "Whew, I am so glad you don't like Obama either." I hadn't said that. I don't like a lot of his policies but I don't hate the guy. She then goes on to say, and I am not kidding here, "I believe he is trying to destroy the country, but at least his presidency will hasten the return of Christ." She actually said that, 'hasten the return of Christ', Obama's presidency.
I knew the religious right despised the man but this was startling. Here was a woman in here 60s suggesting that he is the antichrist or some such boogieman. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh in her face.
People have for centuries been predicting that anything they disagree with was going to have this magical result, so the statement itself, aside from just pathetic, was unsurprising. What gets me is that they hate Obama this much yet look forward to what they think is the ultimate in positive events (how you can be so sick as to think that an event that involves genocide and mass destruction to an unprecedented scale (see Rev 14:20 for a lovely description)I'll never know)It seems that they should help him and try to pass every bill he endorses if they truly believe that they are 'hastening the return of Christ'. It makes no sense.

I always feel queasy after these conversations and wonder how in the hell I came from people who gleefully engage in us versus them, in-group morality systems.

Global Warming Scandal and the Reputation of Science

2009-11-30T11:01:00.001-05:00

I am angry. I am angry at these scientists who have undermined the very foundations of the best weapon humanity has against unreason. By falsifying data and conspiring to destroy those who didn't buy into the program on a subject as big as climate change, they have delivered a damaging blow to the reputation of science. Science is of course innocent, being a system of pure observation and reporting; the problem is that many many people who form and sway public opinion want science to be tarnished to forward their religious views. As I read what was coming out on this subject I could almost here the evangelical preachers shouting 'see, see what science hath wrought!'.
Whether there is a real problem of anthropogenic global warming is not the subject of this article and could be cleared up simply by opening up all data for public inquiry (something that reportedly has not been done). My complaint is with the dishonesty and it's affect on the never-ending war against unreason. I heard Rush Limbaugh talking on the subject and he was correctly saying that if the scientific community does not combat this and quickly it is going to turn on science as a whole. He then said that his faith in God makes him think that we cannot, as humans, destroy the earth. This sort of unreasoned stance, based on no evidence is exactly what we need unmarred science to combat.
I can only come up with a few scenarios as to why this fraud would have been committed. One, the scientists involved believe, truly believe that the situation is dire to the point where they have to conflate the numbers to force a public response in advance of a crisis and don't trust the people to actually respond without lies and threats of death and destruction. Two, they have been bought off by 'green' industry and are hoping for huge returns by creating a culture of fear. Three, they have a political agenda and see an environmental crisis as one thing that crosses all borders and therefore can be used a wedge to force the hand of nations regardless of their affiliations, relationships or politics.
Instinct tells me that the first option is not the case. A true scientist will put their faith in the data and see it as self explanatory. If this option were correct (sans the deceit), there would be scientists giving impassioned pleas and explaining the data. They would be freely providing honest data if they truly believed because the data would support the belief. Nay, they would not have to believe in anything, the data would be enough. If the data supported the claims, no lies would be needed.
That leaves two and three as options. Both are a disgrace to scientific inquiry and need to be investigated, outed and safeguards be made that this never happens again.
We cannot risk free and honest inquiry to be blemished and science to be questioned for fraud when faith is ever at the door providing happy little answers to the simple. It is much easier to believe that we 'can't' destroy the world because God won't let us than it is to work to be good stewards.

Recurring Issue

2009-11-24T11:51:00.010-05:00

Once again, my boss has tried to get me into a religious conversation and convince me that Christianity is the wonderful root and source of all good and morality. I try to not be overly dogmatic in my refutations because he is my boss but I do grow tired of the same old arguments from the religious. There are a few things that get trotted out over and over and over.

First, it is asserted that without God there is no basis for morality and people will be free to do whatever they please. This is a load of non-sense. The fact that a single non-believer (not to mention the millions currently in existence)behaving morally and ethically destroys this argument. Furthermore, human ethics should not be based on aping the behavior of some worshiped entity or from fear of retribution from the same. Why is it not sufficient to base your ethics, as I do, on a desire to make the people around me happy and minimize their suffering? Why is it not sufficient to base your actions on love and respect and an expectation of the same in return? Why do religious people need to inject the threat of punishment?

Secondly, Pascal's wager. This irritating and shallow bit of non-reasoning (I like to think Pascal was being facetious) really gets under my skin. It assumes two things. One, that you can choose to believe and two, that God, if he exists, can't see through the positioning (an insult to deity on the face of it). If you aren't familiar with Pascal's wager, it goes something like this; if you believe in God and he doesn't exist you have lost nothing and gained everything, if you don't believe in God and he does exist, you have lost everything. So you should surely believe in God on the outside chance that if you are wrong he will get you.
To this I only have a rude gesture and the offer of two equally rude words juxtaposed one atop the other in quick succession. I will not live my life in fear and pander to that which has no basis in logic, reason or evidence. I cannot choose to believe in anything. If it is true and I can see that it is true then faith is unnecessary. As for the bet hedging, let us assume there is a God, fine; if he/she/it is worthy of anything called worship then he/she/it would appreciate honest unbelief to dishonest pandering. (Personally, I thing that any being worthy of the name God would despise worship and praise and avoid the faithful like the plague... maybe that is what happened and why we have no signs of god anywhere we look)

Finally, there is the whole immorality of the very premise that God is going to get you. There is no crime capable of being committed in the span of a human life that is worthy of eternal damnation. There is no justice worthy of the name that could write such a sentence. If a human being live for 100 years murdering and raping and burning churches and beating children until they held every record for villainy conceivable, they still would not deserve eternal torture. Even if it could objectively be determined that for each crime, 100 years of torture was just and right, there would be a terminus. Any god so perfect as to not be able to coexist with imperfect beings, firstly shouldn't have created imperfection, would be better served with simply annihilating the condemned. If this god is incapable then they are not the omnipotent being imagined and if capable but unwilling then they are simply sadistic to a level unimaginable to anyone with a shred of morality.

I am sick to death of having to go back over and restate these things only with kidd gloves...

I have a meme. And so do you and you and you...

2009-08-24T10:48:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of discussion in the last few years about the decline of western civilization. Whether western civilization is actually in decline or is merely changing, is debatable. The perceived decline however is without question. A Google search of news and opinion pieces since 2001 will bring up a stagger variety or theories and viewpoints on the subject. They nearly uniformly agree however that western civilization is not as strong as it once was. This begs the question, why do so many people see their own society as failing? Can it all be just written off as a natural tendency to look back to the “good old days” or for every generation to be convinced that the children of the next generation are degenerate? No, I don’t think so. The theory of memetics, (for a succinct rundown of the theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) offers an interesting possible answer. Memetics posits that ideas, beliefs, skills etc are transmitted through society much the same way genes are transmitted within a population. On this foundation, it’s easy to see why the current state of western society would be worrying to a lot of people. Our society used to be based around communities, churches, regions etc that all held if not identical then fairly similar overlapping histories, beliefs and cultural norms. The individuals that came and went from these in groups did little to upset the whole and there was continuity over generations.
Fast forward to today, we have had the upheaval of two world wars, the rise and fall of western communism, and the social revolutions of the 1960s bringing entire classes of society onto more even footing. Following this we have experienced the technological explosions of the information age and the breaking down of geographical barriers by the internet. We are, without a doubt in a unique stage of human societal development. Western society in particular has seen the cultural equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion. Instead of the few long standing traditional memetic pools that characterized society in the past, we now have uncounted new smaller isolated memetic pools. Some still try to hold onto remnants of the tradition and belief structures of their origins but others create their structures out of whole cloth as can be witnessed in some of the neo-pagan communities that pick and choose belief structures from any ancient religion they come across or simply make up what they can’t find. We also have groups, united be behavior, considered to be aberrations in times past coming to forefront and creating their own communities with their own memes. Now, instead of a few pools of cultural norms, we have a large number of smaller, rapidly changing ones. These pools are necessarily shallower and form a less cohesive population.
When put up against societies that have for one reason or another warded off some of the affects of modernity and retain a larger and deeper memetic pools, western society will seem weak. And from a Darwinian standpoint, it is because it is being out competed. Like genes, memes are only as valuable within the pool as they are good at getting themselves replicated. Religion, which can act as societal glue is a subset of the overall meme pool that is particularly good at self replication. Religion also makes a good example for how western civilization is being out competed.
Compare the solid social driving force of millions of Muslims with a fairly close matched belief in a god that encourages the destruction of the infidel and punishes the faithful who fail with a loosely knit group of communities who tacitly believe in a broad spectrum 'gods' who go by the same name but barely compare in actuality. Throw in all of the communities and individuals who believe in all of the diverse neo-pagan religions; add the agnostics and atheists and you have a meme pool that is very broad but shallow. It is easy to see how a more cohesive group can pass on its values more easily than a diverse grouping of subgroups. The values of the diverse subgroups are only getting passed to a small number and may well get absorbed into another completely different group via marriage a deliberate change of lifestyle.
It could be argued that western society is falling victim to its own enlightenment; that the supremacy of the individual as the rightful unit of memetic transmission is not a positive adaptation. Without the community at large to uphold set standards, we will be out-competed by less individualist and more dogmatic societies.

Five Reasons for My Lack of Religious Faith

2009-08-03T08:50:00.003-05:00

1. The concept of the sacred - Do I think that nothing is important or to be revered or take the nihilistic approach? No. I do however take objection to the idea that anything is inviolable to the point that is cannot be questioned. My immediate reaction to anything that cannot be questioned is to wonder why. Can it not stand up to the scrutiny? If not, how can it be true and if it isn't true how is it worthy of its status? I also find it to be extremely arrogant to claim that anything cannot be questioned. Nothing should be too sacred to be examined on its merits.
2. Original Sin or ancestral sin - I find no other doctrine of the Christian faith more repugnant. I fought for years as a Christian with this concept. It offended every single fiber of my being and caused me more doubt, more frustration, more anger than any other single thing. I cannot imagine how anyone can be at peace with the idea that the transgression of one person (and it was a minor one at that) could possibly be the justification for the condemnation by default of an entire species. The very notion that any transgression, even by the individual themselves, is worthy of eternal torture (and that is what the idea of hell is) is absurd. There is no person in human history deserving of that. Not even the great bugbears of history, Hitler, Stalin et al, deserve that. Eternity? Think about it. Assume for the moment that the original sin thing is true, can you even wrap your mind around the staggering arrogance and vindictive malice required of god to carry it off. No being capable of even conceiving of the idea is worthy of contempt let alone worship.
3. Inaccuracy- The 'sacred' texts that underpin religion are riddled with holes. I admittedly have not read the Koran cover to cover and have not examined every religious writing but I have read enough both on my own and the analyses of those who make life's studies of them to conclude that the there is no consistency, no accuracy either to history or science. This, of course, goes back to the first point. Don't question because it might find the holes in the tissue of lies. It boggles my mind what people steadfastly believe. I was raised on the bible so that is the one I am the most familiar with. I tried for years to reconcile what my observation and education told me with what the bible said. I could not do it. The mental gymnastics that the theologians go through to try and prove the historical and scientific accuracy of the bible would be funny if so many people didn't believe it. The simple and observable truth is that the bible was written by and for people who had a very primitive understanding of the world and the universe. Their cosmology was no more advanced than the isolated tribes of the Amazon have today. To base your life around the writings of people who believed that killing goats would influence the weather should be shocking...
4. In-group morality - Religion as a whole tends to engender in-group thinking. Human creatures do not need anything to add to the tribal tendency, the us versus them mentality. Religion does nothing more than add another layer to this and insulate the practitioner from feeling of guilt or remorse for the greatest atrocities. It's ok if we rape and murder and burn and torture because our victims are no us. They are them, the out-group; the enemies of god. No one stops to consider whether or not a god who would permit such things would be worthy of worship. Religion, across the board tends to this by its very nature. Even the most 'peaceful' religions can be moved to violence... anywhere the fundamentalist mindset lives, there will be violence.
5. History - Any organization has its past rolled up into what it is now. The history of religion, and Christianity (regardless of flavor) is no exception, is riddles with violence persecution, injustice and all natures of social evils. I recognize that this is inescapable in any organization over time, be it a nation, a professional club or religion, but there are limits and measures. The United States has, in a number of circumstances, been guilty of horrific acts. Whether these acts were openly sanctioned by the nation as a whole or simply committed by its agents is irrelevant. No honest person will claim that the nation is spotless and blameless. Knowing this I whole heartedly proclaim my love for my country. Why? The United States, despite its flaws, is still one of very few nations in the world or in the history of the world that has ever tried, truly tried, to correct as many failings and injustices as it can. We, by internal means, freed the slaves and gave women their equal status. We seek to do the right thing and give freely to make it happen. This is rare and wonderful. Do terrible things happen? Yes. But the overall aspect and nature of the country is good.

If the Ku Klux Klan started selling cookies door to door and promoting the welfare or orphans I would still not join them. They have a history and overall aspect that is bad. I see it as being the same thing with religion as a whole. (I am not saying that all religious people are akin to Klan members, far from it) Religion, for the reasons stated above does nothing to free people, to correct injustices, to make things better. It traps people in ignorance and makes them revel in that ignorance. It motivated the worst kind of atrocities and is unrepentant about it. The very concept of jihad or 'holy war' taints religion to the core. I find it repellent.

Mercury Poisoning

2008-12-30T11:41:00.003-05:00

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your hat?" She purred.

"No Ma'am, I don't think that would be a good idea. This is a rather disreputable hat and I wouldn't want it on my conscience. You seem to be a nice girl." He said and tossed back the remainder of his scotch.

"Why don't you let me decide what is best for me?" She said sliding into the seat opposite him. "I like the look of your hat."

"Trust me ma'am, you don't. This felt is steeped in evil and would rain ruin down on one such as you. Besides it wouldn't match your pumps."

"If that hat is so rotten why do you wear it? Are you so good that you can't be corrupted? What makes you so special, huh?"

"I'm afraid that I have been so tarnished by the world that this hat can no further mar my soul." He said. "It finds me to be a kindred spirit."

"Oh you are not so tuff. You are still concerned about me. If you were truly corrupt you wouldn't care what hat I wore."

"Step back there sister," He said. "You never said anything about wearing. Wearing is a far cry from introductions. Have you no morals?"

She laughed derisively. "How better to meet a hat than to wear it? How else can a girl get acquainted?"

"I see you like to live dangerously," He said. "That kind of thinking could get you killed. A bad hat is not a laughing matter."

She slid off the seat and walked past him with deliberately amplified hip motions and tucking a card into the band of his fedora whispering, "If you change your mind, ring me up sometime. My head does get so cold on these winter nights."

He watched her leave in the mirror over the bar and then motioned to the barman for another scotch. Reaching up he tossed the fedora on the table and scowled at it. "Why is it all the dames go straight for you? I can't get any action at all since I stuck you on my head. I should trade you in for dapper bowler or a suave panama or a dashing Stetson, anything but you."

The hat just smiled quietly to itself as he downed another double.

Monday

2008-12-29T15:41:00.000-05:00

Headache and tension mark the modern life.
A thousand pricks and cuts the soul degrades.
All beauty and joy rendered to paler shades.
Each day, 'tween office walls doth offer strife
and severs calm as a butcher's knife
doth sever flesh with whetted blades.
Each moment glimpsed of outdoors' shades
doth inflate a longing rife
to saunter out among the leaves
and nature's simple beauty capture.
A longing wells within that naught can ease
but memory of past times retrieves
one moment of nature's rapture
puts again the confined mind at ease.

Strain J-3-16

2008-05-12T06:26:00.001-05:00

He watched her across the room as she peered into her microscope, jotted down some notes, replaced the slide and repeated the action. She continued changing slides and making notes through the entire tray representing the last week's subjects. With each slide she seemed to grow more tired. When she finished, took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, he spoke."New strain?" She nodded her head in response but did not speak. "More compound dwellers? I had leaflets last week - under my door." "No," she said. "Just some mildly paranoid proselytizers. A few apocalyptic tendencies but nothing too volatile."
"Well, that's good I suppose." He said.
"Good? No, it's not good. I'm not worried about the exact characteristics of the strain. It's just that we're seeing a new strain nearly every week. Do you realize that close to 89% of the population feels the 'presence' now?" She sighed and visibly slumped on her stool. "I really think it's time that we act. I think it's time we look into adding anti-virals to the water supply."
He raised his eyebrows at the suggestion and looked at her over his glasses, but didn't say anything.
Her own worries and insecurities leaped to fill the silence. "We would have to do it with complete secrecy or it would be the fluoride scare again, only worse - much worse. But it's a much bigger public health concern than tooth rot. I don't see how we can keep from acting soon"
"They will not love us for it." He said softly.
"What?"
"I said, 'They will not love us for it.' Even if the anti-virals are completely successful as they seem to be in the lab, it will only be the next generation who will benefit. If we do this and it works, there will be chaos. 89% you say; that's probably a low estimate. That many people suddenly cut off from the presence..." He whistled a long low whistle. "Even if we eradicate the virus, the thoughts and the memories are still there, if they find out or even believe a rumor that's close to the truth, they will tear us down and any institution that protects us. Are you prepared for that?"She cocked her head to the side and mockingly replied. "Who's paranoid now?"
"Not paranoid. I just don't want you to have any delusions about what it means to remove the delusions of the god-spoken. When the presence is gone they will seek a reason. Most will assume they have been abandoned due to a lack of faith and zeal. A religious mind deprived of the presence will try to work harder, pray harder, to do something. Kill the viral body and you sow the seeds of zealotry. Some will claim to feel the presence returned and will lead the others. If god has abandoned our nation, our people, it must be because of 'them'. You don't burn your neighbor's house and kill his family if he looks like you and talks like you, he can't be the problem, but another neighborhood, another town... What if they look different, talk different, eat different food? Civilization will burn."
"Could you be more melodramatic? Have you no faith in humanity at all? You make it sound like we shouldn't even try. How many wars and genocides has the presence caused and you say that removing it will cause even more... Supposing you are right, what do we do?"
"You know my stance. We inoculate our children and those we trust and slowly spread through the world, a population of the immune. And there have been some promising results from trials just using rational argument to combat the virus. The team at Cern has indicated that under a certain weight of evidence the virus just gives up and leaves the body."
She laughed derisively, "You are walking paradox. First you see humanity as a volatile mob that can't be trusted with its own freedom from delusion and now you think they can be trusted to take evidence to combat a virus. Wow! You do never cease to amaze."
"Wish you were right, for my son's sake and yours, but I fear your way too."

Department of Defense Contractor Arrested and Charged With Improper Disposal of Classified Materials...

2008-04-25T11:03:00.003-05:00

(Humor Fiction)
Fri Apr 24, 2008 3:15pm EST

Department of Defense Contractor Arrested and Charged With Improper Disposal of Classified Materials

The Individual Believed to Have Worked Alone

CHARLESTON, Apr. 24 /BSNewswire-FUBARNewswire/ --- A Department of Defense
contractor was arrested in Charleston SC on Apr. 24, 2008, and charged with
improperly disposing of U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)classified materials, the Department of Justice announced today. The individual is believed to have acted alone in an ongoing conspiracy to subvert critical elements of national security.

In a fifteen-count indictment returned on Apr. 1, 2008, and unsealed today in
U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Bubba McJunkin was charged with eating, over a period of five years, an estimated 1500 documents classified confidential and top secret. McJunkin then allegedly excreted the documents in an unclassified toilet.

"This case demonstrates that the DOJ will aggressively investigate and prosecute any who attempt to derail the efforts of the Department of Defense to keep the nation's secret. It is not so much that McJunkin consumed the documents in question but that he, with open disregard for his responsibility to his nation, went in an unsecured toilet. The DoD provides clear guidance on the proper use of high flow composting toilets that completely obliterate any readable material in the fecal matter," said Thomas L. Bland, Assistant Attorney General.

According to the indictment, McJunkin conspired to flush the nation's secrets into an unsecured sewer where Al Qaeda could easily retrieve them.

"Investigating corruption and unsecured toilet practices within the Defense Department is a priority for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and this case demonstrates that DCIS will expend the resources to investigate these sorts of allegations, no matter how anal it makes us seem," said Ignatius Patrick Freely, Special Agent in Charge for DCIs.

This indictment is an example of the Department's commitment to protect U.S.
from it's ever present enemies by keeping a tight reign on the bowels of those with access to privileged information. The National Defecation Leakage Prevention Initiative announced in October 2004 is designed to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of improperly flushed document laced feces.

The investigation is being conducted by the Freedom Plotz Division's National
Criminal Enforcement Section and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
Anyone with information concerning illegal conduct in the passing and flushing document laden turds by DOD employees is urged to call the National Criminal Enforcement Section of the Freedom Plotz Division at 202-119-5555.

Open Question of Faith

2007-12-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

I want to pose an open question on faith to world at large.

What do you believe and why?
I know that is too general. What I am looking for is an understanding of what makes people tick. What is convincing and why? So, if you are atheist, agnostic, christian, muslim, hindu, et cetera, why do you believe what you do?

Note: Because X book says so does not cut it.

Some Random Scenes... Thing That Occur To Me

2007-11-28T07:43:00.000-05:00

If rage has a color, true rage, it would not be red or crimson. It would be the pale and hollow white of a blood drained face. Bright reds are angry colors, passionate colors. Rage pumps itself full of blood to the point of bursting and then bleeds out to an anemic pallor. Anger causes violence. Rage levels mountains. Rage burns villages and leaves the bodies of the dead on pig poles to rot.

The spirits of the dead were queuing up outside of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, jockeying for position. I turned to the old man next to me as we watched the scrum. "Does it really do them any good?" I asked. "This flap at the Chapel I mean, does this guy really have any special abilities?"
The old man was silent for a few minutes. He took his time answering, long enough to make me think that he hadn't heard me or was ignoring me. I had just met him but already this habit of slow response was wearing on my nerves. I had been following the pilgrim souls as they made their way to the chapel and the old man had been standing near an olive tree in the piazza watching the crowd form. I approached him and attempted a conversation that was more or less one sided.
"No", he finally said. "He has no special abilities unless you count simple minded concupiscence as a talent."
"Why are so many people, both living and dead flocking here?" I asked. There were as many living souls in and around the Chapel as there were dead. I could see them milling about through the smoked glass veil that separates the worlds.
"Did you ever play a lottery when you were alive?" He asked.
"Yes, on occasion. It was a laugh. I never really hoped to win. Why, what does this have to do with the Chapel?"
The old man shifted his eyes to me for a few seconds, long enough to covey pity or contempt. "Why don't you go ask one of them? You followed them here; surely you must have... faith." He spoke the last word in much the same way one might say cockroach or maggot.
I was silent for a bit as I watched a spirit with a red head scarf work its way into the crowd. "I followed out of hope not faith." I said. "They say that one of the priests here speaks to the dead and gives comfort to the living. I just wanted to... hoped that... it was true."
"As for the lottery thing, I assume that you are telling me not to put my hopes on a long shot." I added.
The old man touched the end of his nose with a bent and gnarled finger and inclined his head. Then he gestured toward the Chapel just as a cheer went up from the spirits and the living fell to their knees and fumbled rosaries.
"What is happening?" I asked. "I can't see." I craned my neck to see over the sea of spirits but it was no good. I was too far back and even climbing on to the low wall surrounding a fountain did nothing for my perspective.
The old man chuckled and muttered, "Behold the Oracle speaketh."
I listened as silence fell through the crowd. One man was speaking, a living man standing on the dais in the Chapel. He spoke slowly in sepulchral tones. The living listened in rapt attention. Some prayed, some wept. As the solemnity of the living grew, so did the agitation of the dead. The agitation was turning to anger as the spirits close enough to hear relayed the words through the crowd.
"What is happening?" I asked. "Why are they so angry?"
"They are getting exactly what they should have expected." The old man turned and walked slowly toward a side ally leading away from the piazza. I stood rooted listening for a few minutes and then hurried after the old man.
"I need to know what is happening. Why should they expect to be angered? Or do you mean that they should not be angry because they should have known something wasn't going their way? I don't understand. All they want is to talk to the priest. Won't he talk to them?"
The old man stopped. He turned halfway and looked me up and down. "You do know that you can't talk to the living. You have tried. You have tried a great deal. It can't be done. But you can talk to me." He continued on his way down the alley. I followed in silence.
I had tried. I had tried for three years straight, watching as my family mourned, then accepted and then moved on. I tried as my pictures got relegated to albums and my children forgot my face. I tried as my wife dated and remarried. The frustration. The anger. The pure rage I felt at being separated with no means to communicate. That is why I followed the pilgrims. That is why I was here. Eventually I stopped accosting strangers and demanding answers. I had only recently despaired to ever watch in silence.

One day as I sat in the middle of a busy roadway, letting the cars and trucks momentarily smear and distort me as they blew through, imagining that I could actually feel it, I heard a rumor. A group of the wandering dead were standing on the sidewalk planning a trip to see a mystic priest who could talk to the dead.
I followed, not believing anymore than I believed in such things when I was alive. I didn't associate with the pilgrims or engage with them at all. I just followed, half way around the world to Southern Italy. Now here in this place I could hear those pilgrims chanting and howling their fury as I walked after the old man.

The old man veered into a public house, made his way to a back corner and settled himself comfortably into a booth already occupied by a living couple. The young woman shivered as the old man passed through her. Her lover instinctively wrapped his coat around her and ordered another drink. I took up the seat opposite sitting in the young man. I matched the man's position for a moment and fixed the old man with a double exposed stare. "I always hate to do this. Occupying the same space as someone else. It creeps me out."
The old man chuckled, "You won't have to for long."
He was right. The couple soon hurried away casting furtive looks over their shoulders at the corner booth. I remained silent for a few moments before asking again what angered the crowd. The old man considered me for bit and finally said. "You really don't know do you?"
I made an exasperated and somewhat rude gesture at the old man who slowly and deliberately said, "You can't talk to the living."
"I know that. You said that already."
"But you can talk to me."
"You said that too. What do you mean? Of course I can talk to you, you are dead."
The old man touched the end of his nose as to indicate a correct response.
"Are you going to explain yourself?" I asked. "OK, I can't talk to the living because I am dead. I can talk to you because you are dead. The pilgrims want to talk to the living but they can't. Are the just mad because he is a fraud?"
"That man is no fraud." The old man said sharply.
"OK, What is it then? He refused to talk to them. He would only talk to a few?"
"No, not exactly. It’s like this; some of the living are open to... possession by spirits. They have to initiate it or be responsive to it."
"So you mean to tell me that if I could find one of these people, I could climb inside and talk to the living that way?" I cut a longing look back at the door and the noise of the crowd.
"Hold your damn horses." The old man snapped. "It ain't that simple. If it was every spirit on this side would be walking around wearing an idiot suite. Don't you see? There are a lot of simple minded, easily manipulated people in the world and a lot of unhappy souls on this side. If you could just find a responsive mind and climb in, chances are you would find that someone beat you to it. Anyway, the universe would be lot more messed up even than it is. People can't keep their mouths shut. Not even the dead. You get possessed bodies running right and left and next thing you know someone has let on about something they couldn't possibly have know about and then it gets out that there actually is an afterlife and spirits and all that. That happens and religion falls apart, governments fall, all hell breaks loose. A lot of very powerful people on both sides get pissed off that happens." “He sighed.”No, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but you got the gist. The old boy is possessed by someone from this side."
“Who? How?”
“Who? No idea. How? I lost interest a long time ago. There are some prices a man like me won’t pay. Now I just wait.”
“For what?”
“Whatever comes. Whatever comes.”

I crept to the edge of the curtain that gives privacy to the small cell. The elderly priest paced back and forth with the agitated energy of a child waiting for something. The priest took a decanter from a shelf and poured water on the floor one, two, three times then extinguished the lone candle. Cued by something I could not see in the gloom, the priest stopped and drew an intricate pattern in the air before him. Suddenly the priest collapsed like a bundle of loose sticks leaving a spirit standing in his place. The spirit adjusted its red head scarf and disappeared through the back wall of the cell. I watched as the priest awoke, crawled onto his narrow bed, pulled his knees up to his chest and wept. He was pleading prayers to the Virgin to protect him and forgive him when I finally left him to his misery.
...This is part of something I have been writing at for a while. Don't know why really...

A Zealot By Any Philosophy

2007-11-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

A zealot by any philosophy is still a zealot. This is a point usually missed by the zealot.

Over the last weekend, I attended a family reunion for the Thanksgiving holiday. The bulk of my father's family are extremely religious. The stripes of religiosity vary but the overall taint is the same. Extreme views abound. I find myself being more and more uncomfortable around extremists no matter what they espouse.

Maybe I am missing something but I have trouble drawing a distinction between the kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out fundamentalist Christian and the strap on twenty pounds of dynamite and meet the virgins Islamic nutter. They both scare me. Thankfully the Christians, at this point in history, have not started putting their guns and ammo to use.

But there is always tomorrow.

With all apologies to Allen Ginsgerg

2007-11-08T12:46:00.000-05:00

...
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Muslims.
Them Muslims them Muslims and them Arabmen. And them Muslims.
The Muslims wants to eat us alive. The Muslims's power mad. He wants to take our morals from out our schools.
Him wants to grab Lady Liberty. Her needs a Qur'an Reader's Digest. her wants our auto plants in the desert. Him big evil terrorist running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes American kids read Qur'an. Him need big green backs.
Hah. Her cut off all our heads. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?

Here I Go Again Opening a Can of Worms

2007-11-05T12:05:00.001-05:00

First the disclaimer for anyone prone to jumping to conclusions and extrapolating: I am not trying to extol or excoriate any faith. I am trying to make a specific point, that is it.
Background: Ann Coulter made some remarks that were typical of Ann Coulter. Here is the transcript--
Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be "perfected" by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.
Coulter made the remarkable statements during an often heated appearance to promote her new book on advertising guru Donny Deutsch's CNBC show "The Big Idea."
In response to a question from Deutsch asking Coulter if "it would be better if we were all Christian," the controversial columnist responded: "Yes."
"We should all be Christian?" Deutsch repeated.
"Yes," Coulter responded, asking Deutsch, who is Jewish, if he would like to "come to church with me."
Deutsch, pressing Coulter further, asked, "We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians?" She responded: "Yeah."
Coulter deflected Deutsch's assertion that her comments were anti-Semitic, matter-of-factly telling the show's obviously upset host, "That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews."
The commentary:
OK, I am not directly commenting on the remarks of Coulter. I am commenting here on the reaction to Coulter. Particularly that of Michael Savage. I am not a Michael Savage fan but I have never thought ill of him either. I just figured that he was another talk show host, interchangeable with any other one. Then I heard him going off on callers over the Ann Coulter thing. Several people called in to defend Coulter. They argued that her remarks reflect the Christian belief that Christ fulfilled the prophecies of the old testament and thus from the Christian perspective Judaism is obsolete. I am paraphrasing but that was the main point the callers made. Savage just exploded, shouted them down. Insulted them and called them "gutter dragging anti-Semites", "bigots"and many other vile names.
Now this is what I find interesting about the whole exchange. There seems to be a strange trend in modern discourse where no one understands what it means to believe. If someone believes, truly believes that god A is the only god. Then there cannot be any possibility within there belief for god B. Therefore, if another person believes in god B, the believer in god A has to (in accordance with his own belief) believe that the believer in god B is wrong. There is no way around it. To sanction the belief in god B is to invalidate the belief in god A. This is not bigotry, it is simply belief. The believer in god A can respect the believer in god B and accept their right to believe in god B but they cannot accept belief in god B as valid.
In the scenario above, if Coulter believes that Christ is the messiah of the Old Testament then she is completely correct within her belief to think that all Jews who reject him as messiah are wrong and hope for their conversion. To think otherwise would be contrary to her own belief and thus invalidate her belief.
Savages remarks and accusations were far more bigoted than Coulter's. One man who called in said that Coulter was hoping that the Jews would be "completed" by conversion. Savage started shouting that he was saying that Jews were only 1/3 or a 1/5 complete spiritual beings because they were not Christians. This is absurd. If a Christian takes his faith seriously then he has to believe that anyone who isn't a Christian is incomplete, is wrong. The same goes for any other religious system. Believing that someone is wrong is not bigotry.
I don't expect any better of people than this miserable failure to think and debate. It would be nice however if the people with the public forums would stop and think before they react. If you follow Savage's logic its wrong to believe anything that is exclusionary of what anyone else believes. Therefore you have to believe everything, but since beliefs are mutually exclusive you must believe in nothing. You cannot believe in nothing, even pure science leaves gaps that must be filled in with conjecture and the scientist has faith in his conjectures.
It all comes back to the fact that no one seems to understand what it means to believe, to respect and to tolerate.

Principia Discordia

2007-11-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

Background: Principia Discordia is one of the funniest tongue-in-cheek false religious books around. It purports to be the holy book of Eris, Greek Goddess of Chaos (Discordia to the Romans).

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/

Impending Political Stupidity

2007-11-02T12:15:00.000-05:00

It looks as though our fearless leader is poised to commit an act of almost astounding political stupidity.
The president has made his latest request for unimaginable amounts of money to fund the war. This is no surprise by now but hidden in the funding bill is a request for 80 plus million to retrofit B2 stealth bombers to carry the MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator (no I am not joking)). The justification for this is "an urgent operational need by theatre commanders". Why is this significant?
The MOP is a deep bunker buster, the largest ever developed. Why do we want such a thing? Well with 160000 men on the ground and untold amounts of equipment in theatre we certainly don't need it in Iraq. We have access to every inch of the country with what ever form of penetration we desire.
The only logical deduction is a planned attack on Iran.
This is political madness. I keep hearing people say that it need to be done and that the president won't leave office with Iran poised to have nuclear weapons; that he can't trust the next president to handle it. Think about that. Really think about it.
First point, does it need to be done? No!
Iran is run by a mad man. This is fact. He is a religious nut but he does not have total control. He is subject to the Imams. The population of Iran is not primarily radical. They are close to revolt. Attacking them will inflame nationalism and deteriorate the internal revolutionary feelings.
People say that if he gets the bomb he will attack Israel with it. No he won't. If you think that Israel is in danger from a Muslim country having the bomb you know nothing of Islam or the region. First, Pakistan is a Muslim country with the bomb. No attack on Israel. Secondly, the third most holy site in all Islam is on the temple mount in Jerusalem. 12th Imam or not, if Ahmadinejad bombed Israel he would have to hire non-Muslim mercenaries. Not going to happen. Thirdly, any nuclear attack on Israel would kill untold numbers of Palestinians. The Palestinian issue (no matter what you think about it) is one of the largest and most galvanising issues in the Muslim world. No Muslim leader is going to openly attack Israel with nuclear weapons.
It is also said that he would sell a nuke to the highest bidder or give it to terrorist to smuggle it into the US. Ok, lets look at that idea. Every non nuclear state in the world looks at nuclear weapons power as the key to the city. The master stroke that makes them piss with the big boys. Do you think that we would be dealing with India as an equal it didn't have nukes, Pakistan? If Iran gets a nuke, they will parade it in the streets like the Soviets did and let the world know they have it. They will demand recognition from the UN, WTF etc and legitimize themselves right out of the terror business. As far selling goes, the previous statement answers that.
Giving a nuke to terrorists, if they have multiple warheads is a possibility but it would have to be delivered manually and there are security measures that could better protect the potential targets (the US) than air strikes on Iran.
Second point: Can the President afford to trust his successor? This is a slap in the face to our political system. One thing that separates us from other nations is that we have always transferred power peacefully no matter the internal turmoil. A deliberate act of preemption based on a lack of trust in a successor (a lack of trust in the voting wisdom of the American people) would deal a terrible blow to this system. It would be devastating to American political stability. We have to trust in our system and let it play out.
Ultimately, an attack on Iran would prove to be an even bigger policy blunder that the Iraq war.

Bending the Mind Into Pretzels

2007-10-29T08:11:00.001-05:00

This article is on one of my favorite theoretical subjects.
http://www.physorg.com/news98468776.html
Now the problem with articles like this is that they get me thinking about what such theories imply, that reality is much weirder than we generally think.
Going off on a tangent... What if the 3 physical dimensions that we are familiar with are like the shadow mentioned in the article? OK, not exactly like they mentioned. Not lacking definition or depth. What if the 3 physical dimensions are a shadow? What do I mean?
When you look at a shadow cast by any object, you only get an impression of its reality, not its entire reality. The details are missing. There are lots of things in the world that it seems we are missing details on. One of those areas is evolution. No one with a rational mind contests the fact that things change and evolution happens. The problem comes in when you extrapolate the observable micro-evolution to the entire fossil record. If we insist on maintaining consistent time-tables, there is a mathematical problem with fitting all of the changes into the estimated age of the earth. We either have to say that evolution occurs in rapid spurts from time to time for unknown reason (which is the prevailing assertion) or we have to say that there is something wrong with the theory.
What if its neither? What if there is an entire dimensional element of nature that we are not taking into consideration and that many of the controlling influences are in this other dimension. The reality that we see and feel is being cast like a shadow from that reality.
A shadow might not be the best analogy because altering a shadow by altering the angle of light or the surface texture on which it is cast does not alter the object casting it. In the reality model I am suggesting, alterations to the shadow reality (this reality) would necessarily affect the casting reality as they would be interconnected.
Ultimately it adds a level of responsibility to life if there is a hidden dimensional realm that affects and is affected by our actions. The stresses we apply to the natural environment could spark changes in species in the hidden realm that would ultimately manifest here as shadows.

Humans As Gas

2007-10-11T13:04:00.001-05:00

There is a popular basic science demonstration where you pump gas into a flask. In low volumes, the gas fills the entire flask in a uniform distribution. Same situation in high volumes. As you increase the volume of gas the individual gas particles begin to move less and less.
This makes an obvious though valuable analogy to human societies. The more bodies added in a limited space, the less freedom afforded to each body. As populations increase, regulations and intrusions upon the individual increase. Simple matter of bumping into your neighbor.

Short Story in a Lovecraftian Mode

2007-10-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

Outside of a small Massachusetts industrial town among the rolling hills and vales of the Essex River valley is a shabby non-descript and thoroughly haunted house. This house, a small single storey pile with asbestos siding and sagging roof lines, occupies the corner of a major highway and a narrow and barely used alleyway. There is nothing about the property to attract the attention of the passer by. It lacks the scale and grandeur of the large colonials or Victorians one expects in the realm of hauntings and it utterly fails at being surrounded by cemeteries, churches or abandon insane asylums. In fact, the only thing close to this house that could possibly elicit even mild curiosity is an abandon barn of the Dutch style.

My experience with this house came about due to a young boy’s natural need for self-reliance. I was about fourteen I would guess. I could do the math but it is not relevant to the story at hand. It was early spring as I recall, that time of year when its warm enough that the snows of winter have gone and the north east is bursting with new life so powerful that you expect the grass to rip through the road ways and break up the foundations of houses. The world feels so alive that just breathing in the heady air produces a cloying madness. It was in this fevered time of year, longing for independence and the spending money independence required that I sought employment with the local widows and house wives cutting back the ever encroaching tide of grass.

The owner of the house in question was an ancient of eastern European extraction; one of those women whose age is unknowable and whose life and motives are inscrutable to a young boy. I only knew her as ‘that old woman who lives over the way’. I was employed to cut the grass through an unknown chain of communication involving my mother grandmother and probably half of the women in the parish; the result being that a fourteen year old boy with a head full of spring, eager to earn spending money, was dispatched to the seemingly ordinary house to perform an ordinary task.

The results, as I will disclose were anything but ordinary.

I arrived at the house early when the morning air still bit and the dew lay thick on the grass. Spider webs woven the night before and silvered with fine dew drops gleamed upon the lawn. I was annoyed by the wetness of the grass, knowing full well that it was too wet to cut but I set about preparing for the task regardless. The old woman kept an aged and battered push mower in her basement, a poorly lit stone-walled edifice accessed via two heavy metal doors set against the front edge of the foundation. Lifting these heavy door to reveal hand-laid stone stairs that must have pre-dated the house by at least fifty years, I descended to the basement. It occurred to me later that the house must have been built on an existing foundation from some earlier house; probably one of the many grand colonials built here in the years after the hardships of settlement had given way to affluence.

The basement was hopelessly cluttered and in the poor light it was impossible to immediately collect the needed mower, gas can, trimmers et cetera. Had I been any but a fourteen year old youth on a mission, I probably would have noticed that all of the copious clutter was concentrated in the first few yards of the room as though for years, people had merely dropped their burdens and hurried from the room with no attempt to straighten. The net result of this arrangement was a clear arc with the rear left corner of the basement as the center point of a large circle three quarters of which lay invisible beyond the walls. I may have also noticed that the circle was oddly clean compared to the rest of the basement. Even the spiders and the ever-present white mold fungus avoided this area. I however saw nothing odd about any of this. I only saw the mess keeping me from immediately moving the mower buried beneath six months of hastily dropped items.

What I did notice, and attributed to my annoyance about having to shift a bunch of junk to get the mower, was that my mood, almost euphoric upon arrival, fell and turned dark as I worked. I was only down in the basement a few minutes fetching the mower and various items but by the time I returned to the yard my mood was all anger and bitter rage. The old woman, now sitting on her porch only barked her course smoke ruined laugh at me when I demonstrated my mood with inappropriate language directed at the hard-starting mower. The laugh, a guttural cackle caught me up short and sobered me but did not lift my mood. I turned to look at her but she just lit a cigarette and stared out across the highway and its constant flowing river of traffic.

I mowed the lawn despite the over wet grass, returning to the basement twice for supplies. Each time I returned I became more agitated and angry. I was particularly frustrated in my attempt to cut the grass around the left rear of the house. The grass grew in this region with a special tenacity. The stalks grew thick and course with an almost wood like quality, sending me back to the basement for an old fashioned swing stick.

At the end of my ordeal with the grass, I made to return the mower to its place in the basement. In my haste I knocked several of the piled boxes over into the place where the mower belonged. To clear the area I climbed over the lowest point in the debris intending to move behind the mess and clear the spot for the mower. It was upon stepping over the debris that I first registered the completely clear area in the rear corner. My anger being near boiling point, I threw furious insults at the air and moved forward intending to throw the fallen boxes into the back corner. It was in the fractional second that my foot touched down on the clear stone inside the arc that it happened.
I was no longer in a basement. I stood in a large parlor of the sort one would expect to find in a stately New England home of the late nineteenth century. The room had large pane glass windows with dark wood trim and green brocade drapes embroidered and trimmed with gold. The wallpaper was a horrid green paisley arranged in vertical stripes and crowned with gold and black on green border. The furnishings were typical late Victorian claw and ball foot chairs and settee. Off white lace doilies adorned the furnishings. Light shone soft and yellow from two oil lamps and from the sunset past the paned windows, reflecting off the pools of blood on the floor. The curtains, wallpaper and furnishings displayed the glistening red black stains of recent arterial lettings.

The body of a woman most gruesomely murdered hung crucified in front of the fire place, wrists spiked to the mantle with long iron nails. The hammer used to commit this outrage still lay at her feet. Deep slashes at her neck gave explanation to the sanguine gouts adorning the walls.

The victims entrails had been loosed by a cruel slash and lay piled at her feet. The knife, a long kitchen blade used for slicing meat had, after working its fell artistry upon the woman, been thrust through her chest with such force as to bury it in the wood behind. Her head, unnaturally aloft for one in her condition stared with wide eyes across the room.

I took in the details of the horror of the envisioned room in a fractional second much as one punched in the stomach convulsively sucks in air. As I staggered back in terror my foot lifted from the floor and I was back in the cold dark basement. My anger forgotten, displaced by a horror and revulsion the likes of which I had never known, I fled the basement and the property. I ran in a blind panic. The old woman laughed her barking laugh again and again as I ran stumbling across the road and away. Her laughter still rang in my ears when I arrived home and locked myself in my bedroom.

My story does not end here as I wish it did. My grim experience with the house was not through. The old woman telephoned my mother to complain that I had not put her mower away properly and I was ordered back to complete the job. All of my protestations fell on deaf ears. The old woman’s place in the parish and my family’s long standing in the community proved a wall un-breachable by the protests of a fourteen year old boy. My mother threatened to make me cut her grass for free all summer if I did not put the mower away and my father, too impatient after long work days to suffer the terrified complaints of a mere boy proved that fourteen was not too big to whip. In the end, with all arguments exhausted, I was cornered into returning. Two days had elapsed and in that time I had convinced myself that my experience had been less that it was; the work of a fevered imagination or momentary madness.

With the new found courage of a stinging backside and the cool rational mind of one determined to root out one’s own weakness, I headed into the basement. Upon entering I stopped and examined the room marking the exactness of the arc of clear floor. Determined not to have a repeat performance of my previous flight, I retraced my steps over the obstructing debris and stopped at the edge of the clear area. Steeling myself, I stepped forward. Once again I found myself in the blood splattered green room. Terror stricken, I wrenched my foot back and stopped myself in mid turn toward the door. I had to clear the area if the mower was going back inside and my still raw backside said it was. Slowly turning, I planted my foot back inside the arc while throwing my weight forward, thus forcing myself to take a full step into the clear corner. The green room flashed around me and I took in the ghastly scene in all its detail. My stomach turned at the metallic odor of blood and viscera but I held my ground. I began walking to my right along what I knew to be the edge of the arc. About two paces on, I felt more than heard movement. Whipping around to face the fireplace and its wretched occupant, I saw it. The dead woman turned her blank staring face to me and cried out a single word. “Run.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. The mower be damned. I nearly broke a knee stumbling up the stone stairs and threw myself gasping and sobbing on the grass. As I regained my breath all I could hear over my drumming hear beats was the old woman laughing.

Terrified and humiliated I ran around the house to the left. I intended to head down hill away from the house and take refuge in a patch of woods that I frequented in those days but as I rounded the house I noticed something that stopped me dead in my tracks.
The thick tufted grass around the rear corner of the building, where I had resorted to a swing stick, formed three quarters of a circle; the last quarter being clear floor inside the basement.

I stood there staring for a few minutes and then I acted. I don’t know to this day what made me do it. Maybe it was spring fever blended with fear, anger and humiliation but I turn around and marched right back past the terrible laughter and back down the steps.
Reaching into the mass of debris to the right of the door I extracted a shovel and a long iron bar. With hastily selected tools I headed back around to the back corner of the house. With a manic effort I began digging, clearing a way through the deep course grass.

Once into the dirt below I dug with a fury and speed I am surprised that my fourteen year old body was able to achieve. About three feet down the earth turned cold and hard and showed signs of frost though the snows of winter were long gone. With the change in soil, my anger returned with a fury and I abandoned the shovel. I turned to the iron bar to loosen the earth. I drove the bar down with both arms into the ground again and again and again. On one such thrust the bar broke into some hidden void deep in the earth and dropped a full foot where it stuck fast with a squeaking thump like an axe going into punky rotted wood. I pulled and wrenched but the bar would not come free. I was twisting the bar with all my strength when I noticed then that the earth was turning black about the bar and the grass was wilting and turning from its lush green to brown before my eyes. The old woman’s laughter that was still audible as I dug turned to screams, the anguished shrieks of the torture victim. I ran. Without looking back, I ran. Oh God I ran.

Two days later my mother mentioned over dinner that the old woman who lived across the way had died. She said that a police man had stopped to check on her because he had noticed her basement doors standing open. She was dead in her chair on the porch.
My mother said that she had apparently suffered a heart attack.
Although she looked meaningfully at me when the told about the open basement doors, she never asked my about the mower.

My family moved away from that town and state before the year was out and I never looked back. Some things are best left buried in the past. And some things should be buried deeper than they are.

Break out the sandwich board signs, grab your bull horns and then lose interest and wander off.

2007-10-03T10:46:00.000-05:00

I really shouldn't listen to the news in the morning (or in the evening) but I just can't seem to help it. I have to know what is going on. I am an avowed news addict. I trawl the Internet and read news wires and blogs from around the world. I like to think that I am well informed. In fact it has been a long time since I actually listened to a news report and didn't know about all of the stories before hand.

This is the problem.

I know what is going on so well from different angles that by the time I here the broadcast news I can see all of the bias the omissions the outright lies. My blood pressures shoots up and I am glad that I am alone in the car or I would wilt the children's ears and cost myself thousands in therapy bills.

I am exaggerating of course but it really has become absurd how certain broadcasts slant things to there own political desires. For example, the President is threatening to VETO the expansion of the SCHIP program. Though he seems determined to imitate a hamster with Downs Syndrome most of the time, he has this one right. If anyone actually took the time to read the bill, it is an obvious and absurd expansion of entitlement. I'll explain. SCHIP is a health insurance program started for the children of the poor. Sounds good. Sounds noble. But now the congress wants to expand it to include children in household that make up to 80K a years and they are defining children as anyone under 25. Its absurd. If you look at the politicians who are promoting it loudly, you realize that they are the ones who want to nationalize health-care under one plan or another. Its a classic case of political types trying to sneak in in increments what the voters reject wholesale.

Anyway, I bring this up because I was listening to NPRs Morning Addiction. I love Morning Addition and The World and all their shows. They have much greater subject base and wide view point on many subjects, so it really irritates me when they do things like this. They kept saying over and over that President Bush was about to veto a "popular children's health insurance program". Every quote they brought in on the subject was from proponents of the bill; including a quote from Harry Reid on how he didn't know how the President "could sleep at night if he doesn't sign this bill." It was all completely biased. Anyone who relies on them for news coverage, and there are many who do, would come away thinking that the President was and Ogre who wanted to hurt poor children. The reality is that for once he got something right, he wants to keep the program as it is and prevent it from becoming another step toward central planning.

OK, I'll get off the soap box now and wander away with the sullen realization that there is nothing to be done about it. People will insist on seeing issues through their own narrow biases.

Random Prattles About the Deline of Human Kind

2007-08-28T07:39:00.000-05:00

My enthusiasm for people is not at an all time high. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of people. I would love to be able to embrace the enlightenment era outlook of man being a noble a progressing creature with limitless possibilities but the more I see of the reality... well let's just say that it is less than heartening.

If you go into any random restaurant, what are your chances of finding an ignorant and uncaring individual behind the counter? People just don't care enough even about themselves to attain a proficiency at assembling a hamburger. Chimps and even lower primates can be taught to stack simple layers evenly for a reward. These creatures do it consistently and well. Why then can't your average human?

It has been stated by those who track such things that the average American IQ is 90-94. Drop a few points to 75 and you have Forrest Gump. If this is correct and we can assume that it is, and we can assume that this number is a mean average arrived at through normal means then we can easily see the problem. The doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, inventors etc are running around 135-145 and up in IQ. No they don't make up a huge percentage of the populace (well lawyers seem to) but enough to make the math pretty obvious. If the average IQ is 90-94 and a chunk of the population is much higher, the actual IQs you are having to interface with are much more Gumpish.

It becomes obvious why the elusive hamburger cannot be assembled correctly. Combine pure simple stupidity with the insipid dunning by "children's television" , the entitlement mentality the seems pandemic (everything down to the big screen TV is a basic human right), and the surgically implanted chip on the shoulder carried by every "group" (ethnic, national, religious, sexual, etc, etc) and what do you get?

You get modern America, the land of Miss Teen South Carolina who "personally believe(s) that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some ... people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, ah, education like such as in South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for."

Really makes you proud...

I think its safe to say that this one will not be skewing the IQ average in a favorable direction. I wonder if she can assemble a hamburger... Except that with her face and... other attributes... she won't have to. We just have to worry about her voting.

Restaurant Nightmares Abound

2007-07-27T07:25:00.000-05:00

I have an unfortunate tendency to go out to eat. I have an undeserving and unearned tenderness for the restaurant industry. The industry never pays me back. I always have this strange desire to get what I pay for and I think that I am paying for a good meal. What I invariably get is either a completely taste neutral or downright vile concoction that wouldn’t pass muster in the first semester of culinary community college in Arkansas. The food at your average American restaurant is bloody awful.

As if insult needed to be added to injury, the service is even worse than the food. You arrive with the false expectation of service from people who are supposedly in a service profession (except that they are not in the profession, they are too good for it and are just biding their time before they make it in there real career of acting, singing, dancing, synchronized swimming, or going on the pro yodeling circuit) but what you get, at best, is tacit acknowledgment of your very presence. (At worst they just ignore you. I have gotten up and left without so much as an acknowledgment after 20 minutes) The service when and if it comes is grudging and performed with the rankest of slack-jawed indifference. The miscreant youth who kill time waiting tables or working the counter at fast food joints are too haughty and too drugged out to be able to actually serve the customer.

I can’t help but think that at the heart of the problem is that American society has raised an entire generation or two that think that service is beneath them. We have an economy now that is based heavily on service sector jobs but no one wants to actually perform service. Everyone want to be served and pampered and be given free pedicures with their order but they don’t want to do the same for anyone else.

I know that this slack-assed nature reaches into every industry but I see it most often and most glaringly in the food services. So far gone is the concept or even glimmer of excellence in performing one’s job that it is hard to even find a hamburger that is assembled correctly. How hard is it to grasp the concept of bun, meat, condiments, bun and to line them up? Not too hard. A chimp can be trained to do it, but then a chimp doesn’t think it’s entitled to the treat its trainer gives it. It is just grateful to get it.

Misenthropic Rant

2007-06-01T13:39:00.000-05:00

OK, maybe I am a jerk in my own right and maybe I am "touched" in the head but it really gets under my skin when people let little insignificant things get under their skin. (Stone me for contradictions of nature...)
What I mean is how one will inevitably have a co-worker who is a shining exemplar of incompetence, and on some level knows this about themselves, but will try endlessly to justify their existence by being an anal retentive adherent to every soul squelching minutia of process.

One will inevitably arrive on this person's radar by means of a minor (actual of imagined) infraction of some fractional gnat's ass of a regulation. Said individual will inevitably make a big deal out of that which is not and when you, the sane person, places the incident into its proper context, the neurotic self-doubting whipped pup will recoil in horror and slink off to their therapist or local gun dealer with much whining and tooth gnashing.

It really makes me crazy having to navigate the corridors of other people's lunacy.