A central tenet of Christianity is the claim that Yhwh is a perfect being. If he is perfect, then it should follow that he is unchanging, as having to change one's policy indicates that there must have been some flaw in the previous policy that made it inadequate, and required the change. In fact, Yhwh himself tells us that he doesn't change in Malachi 3:6.
Since Yhwh is unchanging, he wouldn't declare that he has enemies whom he hates, and whom he will do ill to (Hosea 9:15; Leviticus 20:23) but declare that his followers must love and do good to those who hate them (Matthew 5:44), right?
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Sunday Sermon: The Devil is in the Footnotes.
The vast majority of (English-Language) Bibles are full to the brim with footnotes. In some instances these footnotes are more or less irrelevant. For instance, anyone who's ever sat through the never ending stream of "sermon on the mount" sermons knows that "Raca" is an aramaic expression of contempt, that doesn't translate directly to any word in english (Matthew 5:22). In this instance, the footnote is more an explanation of a foreign word, that doesn't effect the flow of the story.
In other instances, however, the footnotes have some substantial influence on the story. Consider Mark 1:40-44, in the typical telling of the story, a man has leprosy and asks Jesus to heal him. Jesus is "moved with compassion", heals him, and tells him not to tell anyone about it, but to go straight to the priests so they can declare that he is "clean". If you read this version of the story you tend to get the image of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" who sees a sick man, pities him enough to heal him, and is humble enough to ask that he not going around singing Jesus' praises.
In other instances, however, the footnotes have some substantial influence on the story. Consider Mark 1:40-44, in the typical telling of the story, a man has leprosy and asks Jesus to heal him. Jesus is "moved with compassion", heals him, and tells him not to tell anyone about it, but to go straight to the priests so they can declare that he is "clean". If you read this version of the story you tend to get the image of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" who sees a sick man, pities him enough to heal him, and is humble enough to ask that he not going around singing Jesus' praises.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday Sermon: The Bible As A Source of [Im]Morality
Christians love to claim that the Bible is an infallible source of morality. In this post I intend to demonstrate that the Bible (and, by extension, the deity who supposedly wrote it) is contradictory and imperfect, and therefore cannot be used as an infallible source of morality.
The Contradiction:
Consider the case of "the woman taken in adultery" vs the case of "the man who picked up sticks".In the latter instance the Hebrews find a man gathering sticks on a Saturday (the Sabbath). They're unsure if gathering sticks constitutes a violation of the Sabbath or not, so they take him to Moses and ask Moses to get Yhwh to clarify the law for them. Yhwh instructs the Hebrews to stone the man to death for breaking the Sabbath.
In the former instance, the Pharisees bring Jesus a woman who was caught in adultery, and remind him that the "law of Moses" tells them that the woman must be stoned to death. The Pharisees then ask Jesus what he says her punishment should be, to which Jesus responds "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". Because Judeo-Christian morality holds that all have sinned, the woman is not stoned to death.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Why I Talk About Religion
I was asked recently why I spend so much time talking about religion (esp. christianity). I was asked "Why don't you just let people believe whatever they want to believe?" Honestly, that strikes me as a fair question. After all, at first glance, whether or not someone believes in some sort of deity seems like a fairly trivial, and personal issue that shouldn't concern anyone else. My answer: "What people believe, affects what they think, which affects how they act." Let me try to illustrate this for you.
According to the Bible:
1) You and I deserve to burn because our great, great (X number of times great) grandmother wanted a piece of fruit.
2) One ancient tribe of semitic nomads is superior to all other people who don't belong to that tribe.
3) Enslaving other people, and beating one's slaves is perfectly, morally permissible.
4) Women are essentially stupid creatures who were created to be subservient to men, who are to take orders from men without question, and who should essentially be nothing more than the property of their husbands.
5) (My most personal objection) My girlfriend should be put to death for who she is. To wit, a bisexual womon.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Further, these biblical beliefs effect people's actions. There are hundreds of thousands of people who not only believe that they are worthless without their deity to give meaning to their lives, but believe that everyone's lives are meaningless if they don't worship that same deity. There are people who claim that natural disasters are their deity's way of punishing societies who are accepting of gay people. There are people who hold that other people should be barred from certain aspects of society based on nothing more than their ancestry, skin tone, or who they're attracted to. There are even people (an astounding number of people, I might add) who seem to think that they cannot possibly have a moral code without their deity, never stopping to realize how hideous and immoral their deity's moral code is. As absurd as these beliefs are, there are thousands upon thousands of people who honestly believe that these "principles" are, and should be, binding upon all of humanity.
In light of this, I will be continuing to point out the moral obscenities of a book that many believe to be the infallible word of a flawless deity, until christianity as we know it is nothing more than a fringe cult that is taken less seriously than scientology.
That being said, if you want to follow a principle of "love your neighbor as yourself", or select a few choice gems of scripture and live your life according to those few gems, then please, by all means continue. But always remember that you don't need a god in order to live your life that way. In fact, according to the Bible, your god hasn't spent his OWN existence living according to those principles.
To sum up, in the words of the great, late, Christopher Hitchens: “In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.”
According to the Bible:
1) You and I deserve to burn because our great, great (X number of times great) grandmother wanted a piece of fruit.
2) One ancient tribe of semitic nomads is superior to all other people who don't belong to that tribe.
3) Enslaving other people, and beating one's slaves is perfectly, morally permissible.
4) Women are essentially stupid creatures who were created to be subservient to men, who are to take orders from men without question, and who should essentially be nothing more than the property of their husbands.
5) (My most personal objection) My girlfriend should be put to death for who she is. To wit, a bisexual womon.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Further, these biblical beliefs effect people's actions. There are hundreds of thousands of people who not only believe that they are worthless without their deity to give meaning to their lives, but believe that everyone's lives are meaningless if they don't worship that same deity. There are people who claim that natural disasters are their deity's way of punishing societies who are accepting of gay people. There are people who hold that other people should be barred from certain aspects of society based on nothing more than their ancestry, skin tone, or who they're attracted to. There are even people (an astounding number of people, I might add) who seem to think that they cannot possibly have a moral code without their deity, never stopping to realize how hideous and immoral their deity's moral code is. As absurd as these beliefs are, there are thousands upon thousands of people who honestly believe that these "principles" are, and should be, binding upon all of humanity.
In light of this, I will be continuing to point out the moral obscenities of a book that many believe to be the infallible word of a flawless deity, until christianity as we know it is nothing more than a fringe cult that is taken less seriously than scientology.
That being said, if you want to follow a principle of "love your neighbor as yourself", or select a few choice gems of scripture and live your life according to those few gems, then please, by all means continue. But always remember that you don't need a god in order to live your life that way. In fact, according to the Bible, your god hasn't spent his OWN existence living according to those principles.
To sum up, in the words of the great, late, Christopher Hitchens: “In the ordinary moral universe, the good will do the best they can, the worst will do the worst they can, but if you want to make good people do wicked things, you’ll need religion.”
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Musings on the Philosophy of Art
As I'm nearing the end of a semester of "Philosophy of Art", I can't help but wonder if the best way to define "art" is as "excess". By "excess" I just mean "something that doesn't serve a practical purpose".
For instance, a painting on a wall: It may be pretty, it may be thought provoking, but the wall wouldn't really be any worse off if the painting weren't there. Perhaps we would say that removing the painting takes away a certain feeling of "warmth" in the wall, but that doesn't give the painting a practical purpose, only a psychological purpose.
Similarly, the difference between a show car, and a '93 Ford Escort. It's quite likely that the Escort will be able to get you from point A to point B every bit as well as the show car (maybe even better depending upon what aspect of the car is being showcased), but what makes the show car so much more popular is all of the extra stuff that doesn't really have any bearing on how well the car runs, and perhaps sometimes even would make the car run worse.
The last point I want to make is that I don't think it's actually important that people actually like something in order for it to be art. It's possible that something... *cough* *Duchamp's "Fountain"* *cough* could just simply be "bad" art.
To sum up: I think maybe the best way to define "art" is: Something that a person puts conscious effort into creating, absent any practical reason to do so.
For instance, a painting on a wall: It may be pretty, it may be thought provoking, but the wall wouldn't really be any worse off if the painting weren't there. Perhaps we would say that removing the painting takes away a certain feeling of "warmth" in the wall, but that doesn't give the painting a practical purpose, only a psychological purpose.
Similarly, the difference between a show car, and a '93 Ford Escort. It's quite likely that the Escort will be able to get you from point A to point B every bit as well as the show car (maybe even better depending upon what aspect of the car is being showcased), but what makes the show car so much more popular is all of the extra stuff that doesn't really have any bearing on how well the car runs, and perhaps sometimes even would make the car run worse.
The last point I want to make is that I don't think it's actually important that people actually like something in order for it to be art. It's possible that something... *cough* *Duchamp's "Fountain"* *cough* could just simply be "bad" art.
To sum up: I think maybe the best way to define "art" is: Something that a person puts conscious effort into creating, absent any practical reason to do so.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Initial thoughts on "The Case for Christ"
Tonight I tried to sit down and read "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel. I made it through one chapter. I'd like to offer my initial thoughts.
It has always been my understanding that the strength of a journalist is in his ability to not only ask the right questions, but to analyze the answers given. If this is indeed the case, it has been proven to me Lee Strobel is - beyond a reasonable doubt - among the worst journalists in history.
When questioning Craig L. Blomberg, Ph.D - a New Testament scholar - Strobel asks him how likely it is that three "synoptic" gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Dr. Blomberg replies that "There are no known competitors for these three gospels" and Strobel simply accepts it as an open and shut case. By this logic, Benjamin Franklin was the author of the poem Beowulf, because there is no known competitor for my claim. The gospels are all anonymous, and there is no more reason to believe that Matthew - for example - was written by the Jewish tax-collector-turned-disciple than there is to believe that it was written Pontius Pilate. In fact, Pilate becomes a MORE likely candidate when you consider that there is secular evidence for his existence (the same cannot be said for dear Matthew).
Furthermore, Dr. Blomberg unequivocally states that the vast majority of "early testimony" states that John the disciple was the author of the Gospel of John. This claim seems rather strange when you consider that John never wrote of the "Transfiguration", the raising of Jairus' daughter, or the "Ascension" despite being one of only three people to have supposedly witnessed all three miracles. The claim that John wrote this book becomes even more impressive when you consider that Acts 4:13 clearly states that John was illiterate.
In light of the discovery that I am apparently more knowledgable about the New Testament than a man with a Doctorate in the subject; and more able to examine and cross-examine the presented evidence than a man with a degree in Journalism and an M.S.L. from Yale, I don't think I will be continuing to read this book. I also would like to strongly discourage anyone else from reading this book, or from seriously considering its claims to be "evidence" for the divinity or existence of "Jesus of Nazareth".
It has always been my understanding that the strength of a journalist is in his ability to not only ask the right questions, but to analyze the answers given. If this is indeed the case, it has been proven to me Lee Strobel is - beyond a reasonable doubt - among the worst journalists in history.
When questioning Craig L. Blomberg, Ph.D - a New Testament scholar - Strobel asks him how likely it is that three "synoptic" gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Dr. Blomberg replies that "There are no known competitors for these three gospels" and Strobel simply accepts it as an open and shut case. By this logic, Benjamin Franklin was the author of the poem Beowulf, because there is no known competitor for my claim. The gospels are all anonymous, and there is no more reason to believe that Matthew - for example - was written by the Jewish tax-collector-turned-disciple than there is to believe that it was written Pontius Pilate. In fact, Pilate becomes a MORE likely candidate when you consider that there is secular evidence for his existence (the same cannot be said for dear Matthew).
Furthermore, Dr. Blomberg unequivocally states that the vast majority of "early testimony" states that John the disciple was the author of the Gospel of John. This claim seems rather strange when you consider that John never wrote of the "Transfiguration", the raising of Jairus' daughter, or the "Ascension" despite being one of only three people to have supposedly witnessed all three miracles. The claim that John wrote this book becomes even more impressive when you consider that Acts 4:13 clearly states that John was illiterate.
In light of the discovery that I am apparently more knowledgable about the New Testament than a man with a Doctorate in the subject; and more able to examine and cross-examine the presented evidence than a man with a degree in Journalism and an M.S.L. from Yale, I don't think I will be continuing to read this book. I also would like to strongly discourage anyone else from reading this book, or from seriously considering its claims to be "evidence" for the divinity or existence of "Jesus of Nazareth".
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