Category Archives: evidence

If the Gospels were History…

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If the gospels were written by eye-witnesses, we should see the use of the first person singular or plural: ‘I saw this happen’, ‘we heard him say that’ and so on. This would not necessarily mean that the author was present, just as he isn’t in the ‘we’ passages in Acts, but it is what we should reasonably expect if the authors were involved in at least some of the events. There are no such instances in any of the gospels.

We would see gospel authors identifying themselves, at the start of their accounts, for example. We don’t.

We would not see an eye-witness lifting significant amounts of material from someone who wasn’t an eye-witness. Yet Matthew plagiarises Mark, ‘improves’ it and passes it off as his own. This isn’t eye-witness behaviour and it is not how eye-witness testimony works.

We would see the gospel writers cite their sources: Mark would tell us he’s recording Peter’s recollections and that he witnessed Jesus’ trial personally (there’s no evidence he did either, speculation from centuries later notwithstanding.) Luke would tell us which accounts he’s referring to in Luke 1:1-2. While we now know he too plagiarises Mark and quite probably Matthew, he doesn’t admit it. We would know the source of events that took place behind closed doors such as Jesus’ interview with Pilate.

We could expect contemporaneous accounts independent of the gospels, recording the miraculous events they claim occurred; the wandering star, the earthquakes, the hours long eclipse, the healings and controlling of nature, the resurrected zombies, the ripping of the 35 foot temple curtain, the resurrection of an executed criminal. Instead there’s nothing, not even in later works such as those of Josephus (because all of these events are metaphorical).

We should expect Cephas (known as Simon Peter in the later gospels) to have recorded his experiences with Jesus. Yet, when he gets his chance, in the letters he supposedly wrote (1 and 2 Peter), he makes no mention of them at all.

We should expect the Christians prior to Paul to have recorded some of these episodes. Some argue that they did, in a document now called Q, but this precious document was, unbelievably, soon lost or abandoned. Alternatively, they may not have seen the need to write anything down because they believed the world was about to end very soon. Either way – no accounts from them about ‘the history of Jesus’.

We should expect Paul to mention aspects of the Jesus story in his letters. After all, he claims to have persecuted Christians for some time before his conversion and to have met and conversed with Cephas for 15 days. Yet he conveys no details at all. Instead, he claims all he knows of Jesus derives from visions and ‘revelations’ in his head. His account of the bread and wine ritual informs Mark’s story of the Last Supper, not the other way round; it is – Paul says clearly – another ‘revelation’ in his head.

We should expect there to be details about Jesus’ earthly life in other books of the NT. Instead we find only a celestial high priest in Hebrews and a warrior Christ in the supposed visions of Revelation. Nothing historical here.

We should, if the gospels are history, expect them to read like history. History, including that written at a similar time does not include angels, devils and apparitions, magic stars, virgin births, miracles and supernatural healings. Where it does, as in Constantine’s vision of the cross, such elements are seen for what they are: myth, not history.

We would not expect the central figure of the gospels to be constructed almost entirely from parts of older religious writing. This is not a technique used in genuine historical records.

We would not expect to find the level of metaphor and mythic tropes – magic, supernatural characters, returns from the dead – in what is ostensibly an informational text. History does not rely heavily on metaphor and symbolic tropes the way the gospels do. There is no ‘logic of history’ in the Jesus story.

We would expect to see geographical and political details relayed reasonably accurately. Instead, Jesus’ trial arrangements are highly improbable; they do not conform with what is known about Roman trials – and we know a lot, because of the records they kept. Jesus would not have had a personal interview with an indecisive Pilate, who would not have consulted the mob, would not have sent Jesus to the Jewish authorities or Herod and would not have offered to exchange Jesus for Barabbas (there was no ‘tradition’ of exchanging one criminal for another) and so on. From what we know of him, Pilate would have authorised the execution without a qualm, as he did for many other would-be messiahs. The rest – the gospel details – are drama, Jewish scripture brought to life with added metaphor. Fiction, in other words.

The Bible as Metaphor (again)

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A few days ago, Dennis and I visited Penrith, a small market town a short distance from the city where we live. What a delight it was to discover that the street preacher who plagues our city – the humourless Dale McAlpine – also inflicts himself on this smaller place. We so enjoyed hearing him bellow out, as we manoeuvered past his confederates handing out poorly written tracts, that we were all sinners – ye, everyone of us – bound for hell.

As we stopped at an ATM we heard Dale announce how Jesus healed lepers and cured leprosy, which patently he did not. He said Jesus’ healing of lepers was a metaphor for what he could do for us all, by removing our sin and making us whole again. His metaphor schtick – an sophisticated one for a simple street preacher – put me in mind of our very own Camp commenter. As Sunday school teacher Don frequently reminds us, the Bible is a) literature and b) largely metaphorical.

In case he’s forgotten and is arguing this week that we should view the bible’s stories as historical accounts (his other favourite tack), here’s what he actually said:

Much of scripture is the kind of literature in which metaphor and other kinds of figurative language is common… you are out of touch with the literary character of ancient literature.

I hope you all feel thoroughly chastised by this. I know I do. Don was taking exception to my post in which I itemised the Bible’s mythical creatures, talking animals and impossible events. So, I’m going to take him, and Dale at their word and take a fresh look at the Bible’s use of ‘metaphor and other kinds of figurative language’

First though, let’s understand that metaphor and figurative language are distinctly literary techniques. In literature and sometimes in speech, metaphors make subtle comparisons and bring to mind a host of associations that the author does not then have to explain. Outside of fiction, they don’t have much of a function. We don’t, for example, attribute metaphorical meaning to human events and interactions in the real world. The present war in the middle east is not a metaphor for something else, like, for example, the warfare that Christians believe rages in the Spirit world. Sleepy Joe Biden’s activity, or lack of it, is not a metaphor for the present condition of the USA (let’s hope not anyway). Our personal relationships are not metaphors for something grander. There is no metaphor embedded in actual events or real world interactions.

No. Metaphor exists almost entirely in literature. While the occasional non-fiction author might add a metaphor for flourish, strictly speaking, metaphor exists in and for fiction and poetry. More than this, when, in fiction, ideas are expressed metaphorically, it signals that the surface meaning is of lesser significance. It is the underlying or hidden meaning that matters. The fiction is the vehicle by which the metaphorical truth is conveyed. Don admits as much in his comment.

Let’s try some illustrations. The underlying metaphor of The Great Gatsby, its truth, is the dark underside of the American dream. Its surface story isn’t real; it is fiction. The metaphor conveyed through Moby Dick – the fictional whale as well as the novel as a whole – is the destructive nature of obsession. Again, as powerful as this is, none of the story that conveys it actually happened. Frankenstein’s central metaphor is the danger that uncontrolled science represents to humankind. The story that carries this message is, however, pure invention. In All The Light We Cannot See, Light is the metaphor, as it frequently is. The characters’ insights into truth are what the author seeks to convey. The fiction is the vehicle of that truth. Choose your own example: fiction embodies metaphor, the ‘truth’ of the story. But the story itself is rarely an actual event. Even when it’s based on one, as the movies say, the narrative is extensively fictionalised.

So, let’s go back to Dale’s leprosy metaphor. In several gospel stories, the authors have Jesus cure lepers precisely to illustrate how he can heal people of their inner leprosy: their sinful nature. Jesus almost certainly did not heal any lepers; this is the fiction. The creators of the gospels designed the story to carry metaphorical meaning, which, in this case, is that Jesus can heal us from sin.

Likewise the stories in which he heals the blind; the blindness is metaphorical. The saviour opens people’s eyes to spiritual truth. He didn’t really cure blind people; that is the fictional vehicle for the metaphor.

He didn’t turn water into wine; the writers of the fourth gospel wanted to convey the spiritual ‘truth’ that the new cult’s beliefs were superseding old Jewish ones; a metaphor was a memorable way to do it.

Lazarus was not raised from the dead; the story is a metaphor to illustrate how God will raise believers at the last day.

The Romans did not execute Jesus; it was the spiritual rulers of the age who, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:8, put the saviour to death. The Romans are the metaphor for the wickedness of these supernatural beings.

Jesus did not rise from the dead. This too is a metaphorical fiction.

How did I do, Don? I’ve interpreted isolated periscopes from the gospels metaphorically. I’ve borne in mind that metaphor and other figurative devices are purely literary, techniques in fiction. I’ve channelled the literary character of ancient literature as defined by you (except of course you never actually do define it.)

You are invited to respond. I offer to post your comment, if it is as lengthy as I expect it to be. You must, however, keep to the point and resist making personal jibes. Choose any of the miracles, healings or pericopes from the gospels and demonstrate that they are real historical events.

It matters to you and to other Christians that the events of Jesus’ life did happen. That they’re not just the invention of clever writers who, taking inspiration from Jewish scriptures, created metaphorical events to convey higher ‘truths’. So persuade us that at least one miracle, healing or episode is more than a literary device, a metaphor for some fanciful theological ‘truth’. Provide the evidence that it really happened. Claiming the disciples witnessed the miracles or healing won’t cut it, when the disciples are themselves characters in the stories, and metaphorical at that.

The Bible Is Fantasy

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The Bible contains:

113 appearances of angels, usually interacting with human beings;

50+ visions, on which all of Christianity hangs: those of Daniel; Cephas and others who ‘saw’ the risen Christ; Paul and John the Elder in Revelation. 

21 supernatural dreams, including those experienced by Jacob, Technicolor Joseph, NT Joseph, the Magi, Pilate’s wife and Paul. 

Numerous apparitions and ghostly appearances, including that of the resurrected Jesus as well as Moses and Elijah and, in the Old Testament, the spirit of Samuel, conjured up from the grave by the witch of Endor.

Innumerable resurrections: not only that of Jesus but several Old Testament characters, and, in the New, Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the young man of Nain and the hordes who rose from their graves at the time of the crucifixion.

Multiple impossible astronomical events, ranging from the sun stopping in its orbit(!); a star wandering and hovering over a small house; a solar eclipse lasting several hours; stars that one day will fall from the sky; a God who lives just above the clouds and a ‘firmament’ between the Earth and the heavens that holds back water;

Several events in which nature is magically controlled: the parting of the Red Sea; Moses’ magician’s staff becoming a snake; the Nile turning to blood; Jonah being swallowed but not digested by a ‘great fish’ and Jesus calming a storm.

An abundance of fantastic beasts and fairy tale creatures: Giants (Genesis 6:1-4, Numbers 13:33); Leviathan the sea monster (Isaiah 27:1 etc); the Behemoth (Job 40:15-24); the Cherubim monsters (Ezekiel 1:4-21); the dragon and other beasts from Revelation

Many characters who are clearly legendary, from Adam & Eve, Noah, Lot and Abraham to Moses, Job, Daniel and gospel Jesus. Some of the Bible’s fictional characters lived to a literally incredible age: Adam 930 years, Seth 912, Methuselah 969, Noah 950, Abraham 175, Moses a pitiful 120. Jesus holds the record being now either 2,000 years old or eternal, depending on how you count it.

5 mythical places: Eden at the beginning of the book; New Jerusalem at the end; Heaven, the abode of God; Sheol the Old Testament place of the dead; Hades (Sheol mark II?) which Jesus visited while supposedly dead in his tomb (Acts 2:27, 31; Matt 16:18).

2 sentient ‘pillars’: one of cloud, one of fire (Exodus 13).

2 talking animals: the serpent in Eden and Balaam’s ass.

1 talking plant (Exodus 3:3).

0 science. No understanding whatsoever of what we now call astronomy, meteorology, germ theory, genetics, evolution, psychology… you name it.

So how do we read all of this? As the ancients themselves would, with an understanding of the world that regarded the supernatural, magic, miracles and monsters as real? We’re told often enough that this is how we should interpret scripture, not from a modern perspective. Perhaps we might credit the creators of the many books of the bible with greater skill, however, and interpret the inclusion of magic and miracle as allegorical or metaphorical; literary pieces, if you will. But then we have to decide which far-fetched stories are myth and which are historical accounts,. There really is no way to do this. A New Testament story awash with impossible events, implausible characters and symbolic tropes is every bit as allegorical or metaphorical as the same kind of story in the Old Testament (or, indeed, in Egyptian, Greek and Roman myth.) The reader who wants to see stories in the Old Testament as carefully crafted allegories has to concede that the Jesus narratives are of the same order.

It looks like we have to read the Bible as 21st century readers, because that is what we are. After all the Bible is supposedly a book for all time. We can, however, recognise the way in which its many creators saw the world – populated with fantasy creatures and subject to impossible events – and accept that they were wrong. Reality is not as they perceived it. What we cannot do is claim that the Jesus story is an oasis of truth in the midst of all this fantasy . 

Mr J: The Defence

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Unfortunately, Mr J is unable to speak for himself so I have taken it upon myself to defend him. I’m going to prove to you he exists and that he loves us all.

The first thing I want to mention is how he created the Earth and everything in it in six days, about six thousand years ago. Or possibly not. It’s might’ve been billion years ago and it might have taken a very long time. Mr J would like to keep his options open.

In any case, he eventually created human beings, either on the sixth day or billions of years later. He quite probably controlled evolution to get to them, killing off billions of other creatures along the way just so humans could emerge. Some might say this was pretty heartless but it’s the only way natural selection could produce Mr J’s favoured creation. All a bit hit and miss, but Mr J knew what he was doing. I read it in a Richard Dawkins book some time.

Anyway, once humans appeared they managed to upset Mr J in some silly, insignificant way, so that he had to come up with a whole series of complicated plans to bring them into line.

The first plan was, admittedly, not all that great. It was necessary though. He drowned the lot of them, every man, woman and child, except for one old drunkard and his family. Needless to say the humans that came along after them weren’t any better than the ones who’d come before. No surprise there! Mr J rightly blamed the humans themselves for the shortcomings he’d built into them. That and the demons with their boss, Satan, whom he’d thoughtfully made right back at the start of the six days. Or maybe it was during the billions of years when he was creating everything by process.

Er… moving swiftly on, his second plan was that he’d just concentrate on one special group. He picked, for reasons best known to himself, a small, nomadic desert tribe. He demanded of those who had them that they should slice the tops off their penises. Weird, I know, but other tribes were doing it and Mr J thought if it was good enough for them and their fertility deities then it was good enough for his besties too. They also had to obey all 613 of the rules he would make up as he went along. This was to set a moral example to his Chosen People so naturally included instructions on how to beat their slaves, how to stone people to death and how to massacre their neighbours. Needless to say, despite how reasonable Mr J’s terms were, the useless humans couldn’t manage to comply with them. He was more than pissed. He let other tribes brutalise them, had them turn on each other and sent them into exile. But still they didn’t learn. You might think he’d have done better offering some encouragement, a little bit of positive enforcement, but you’d be wrong. Mr J always knows best.

The time rolled round for another half-arsed plan. This time Mr J sent a Figment Of His Imagination down to the Earth so the friends for whom he’d set such a good example while punishing them endlessly, could engineer his death. Or maybe it was the Romans who did it. Whatever, the story got around that after his execution this Figment had come back to life, which meant all sort of marvellous things would happen, including a complete reboot of the Earth. The old deal with its dick-docking and interminable lists of rules was over. There was a new deal now: believe it and you’d live forever: don’t and you’d boil forever in a fiery pit while demons tortured you for eternity.

Soon after this (because a thousand years is like a day to him), Mr J became something of a recluse. He removed himself from time and space – no more walking in gardens and masquerading as a burning bush – he would become… transcendent! He also announced, in a revelation to some churchy types, that he wanted, henceforth, to identify as a threesome. He insisted he be called ‘Daddy’, ‘Sonny’ and ‘Friendly Ghost’ all at the same time. It was a mystery why he…

Hang on. I just can’t go on with this. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be defending Mr J but when you see it written down like this, none of it makes sense. None at all. It’s rubbish and if this is what Mr J is all about, he can’t be defended. Not by anyone with half a brain anyway, and I like to think I have at least that. Mr J will just have to defend himself or, failing that, get someone without any critical faculties at all to do it for him.

Evidence of God

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As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.

Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.

Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.

God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!

Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.

For the next few hundred years, Israel falls under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’

Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.

Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.

This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People die at the hands at the Nazis.

Following the second world war, Israel takes possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel becomes a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.

Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.

All of this, according to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve and sheer bloody mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t of course recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.

Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.

*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.

The Inflationary Vacuum

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Not a simulation, not created by a God: so how did the universe come to be? Can something arise naturally from nothing, after all? Many scientists think so, but not because a god overturned the idea that something cannot come from nothing. They also answer the related question of why there is something rather than nothing.

I’m not going to reiterate their explanation here, as you can read a summary for yourself (I’ve linked to a simple one for the sceptical among us and of course the diagram above makes it all clear.) Suffice to say, the theory demonstrates that ‘something’ came about when quantum particles popped into existence from nothing. We know they are capable of doing this, making them the Uncaused Cause. These particles led to ‘a chunk of inflationary vacuum’, from which, everything else arose..  

And no, Don, unless he’s ‘a chunk of inflationary vacuum’, this is not your God. Nor did he conjure up the chunk .Before it appeared at the quantum level there was, according to this scientific theory, nothing: no God, nothing.

The God

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So the universe isn’t a simulation created by a Mind in its mom’s basement. Shame. I thought Don was onto something there.

Let’s consider then another option. The universe, reality and we ourselves were made by a super-being, a God no less. How would that work?

The God looked round. There was nothing, only himself. He did not know for sure that he was a he because he had no Y chromosome or a penis. He hadn’t invented either yet and as an eternal being he had no need of such things. Heavens above, he didn’t even drink or eat so didn’t need dual purpose genitals, not even for urination. He did plan however to create, eventually, when billions of years had past, a sentient being who would have a Y chromosome and a penis. He intended calling this being A Man. This Man would be inherently male so it seemed only right that he, God, should identify as male too.

Damn, he’d digressed again. Where was he? He realised for the billion billionth time (though it was hard to count when time didn’t yet exist and even if it did he’d be outside it) he was nowhere amidst nothing and hadn’t created anything yet. It was time, bearing in mind no time existed, to create the universe, a reality outside of himself.

He looked round again. He was, he had to admit, a bit stuck. There was nothing around with which to create anything; no quarks, no gravity, elements or even Lego; none of the fundamental forces of the universe. There were no fundamental forces because there was no universe. He was going to have to create these things before he could even think about creating a universe. But how? He looked around for something with which to make the quantum realm and gravity and elements and all the other stuff from; but there was nothing. Even as God he was constrained by the principle that something cannot come from nothing. This was a truth universally acknowledged even if there wasn’t yet a universe.

What to do? Could he make a universe from himself, from his own essence as it were? But if he did, would that not diminish him in some way, make him less of a God? A God with a universe-shaped hole in his middle? He didn’t much like the idea of that. It really wouldn’t work.

Could he, he wondered, zap things into existence with just a word? But wouldn’t that be the same as making something from nothing? As such it couldn’t be done. In the far, far future those who believed in him would insist that something could not come from nothing in their arguments with those who doubted his existence. He couldn’t flout the rule and make his acolytes look foolish.

He decided he would have to abandon the whole project. He’d had such plans too, of making his Man and then destroying his descendants in a flood and every other way imaginable until he could send his other Big Idea down to rescue them with special magic. ‘Shit,’ God thought, though that didn’t exist either: ‘I’ll just have to get used to being here all alone with my Big Ideas, surrounded by all this nothing instead of something.’

God’s conundrum demonstrates that it is logically impossible that a God created the universe. Apparently, something cannot be made from nothing, even by a god.

A Reply to a Slave

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I’ve discovered this new gizmo that lets me look stuff up on the Interweb. Goober or somesuch. I used it to find the meaning of ‘doulos’ that the absence of dictionary prevented you from doing. All of the results Goober brought up described doulos thusly:

Doulos (Ancient Greek: δοῦλος, Greek: δούλος, Linear B: do-e-ro) is a Greek masculine noun meaning “slave”. Wikipedia

Doulos (a masculine noun of uncertain derivation) – properly, someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of their own. Biblehub (Christian site)

…anyone could become a slave, in a sense. However, once someone was sold into slavery, they remained a slave for life, and all of their offspring automatically became slaves as well. The only standard way of obtaining freedom was to earn enough money to pay your owner back as much as he had paid for you in the first place. This was a nearly impossible task to accomplish because slave owners did not often facilitate their slaves ability to earn money on the side. As such, most slaves, and their offspring remained slaves for the totality of their lives. Slavesandsons (Christian site)

Doulos is a Greek word in the Bible that has only one true historical option for accurate translation into English, which is slave. It literally means to be owned by someone for a lifetime. This word is found at least 127 times in 119 verses in the New Testament scriptures. It is used in the context of human slavery, which, sadly, was very common throughout the ancient Roman Empire for hundreds of years. Recorder.com (Christian site)

You’ll see none of them say what you say, Don. None think slavery was a nice amicable arrangement. Christian sites especially emphasise how slavery was a downright awful thing so’s they can sermonise about how Jesus saves us from slavery to sin.

If you’re going to reduce real world, God-approved slavery to something akin to a nice comfortable arrangement, you diminish the metaphor of Christ’s redemptive work to… not much at all. (Which of course it isn’t.) I noticed you didn’t comment on this point when I mentioned it in an earlier post and here you are digging yourself in deeper with your ‘slavery wasn’t really all that bad’. Good work, Don!

You’re certainly enslaved to all this Christian mumbo-jumbo. To Christ though, not really. There’s no such being and you certainly don’t give the impression of being a slave in any real world sense. Perhaps that’s because you have no understanding of what slavery was and is.

On Climate Change

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Climate Change is happening.

But, like young Sheldon, I have questions.

The UK’s carbon emissions are, according to the government’s official figures, 1.1%, while China, USA, India, Russia and Japan produce 58% between them: will the UK reducing its output by 1.1% to zero make any substantive difference to carbon levels and the climate?

Why, as Tony Blair asked last week, are ordinary households being expected to foot the bill for the UK government’s net zero measures? Why not those who produce the most carbon?

When China alone produces 28% of the world’s emissions, and is doing nothing to reduce these – in fact it is increasing them year on year – what use will it be if the UK impoverishes itself in its drive to net zero?

Why does the UK government feel the need to regard itself as a world leader in the drive to net zero when no-one cares what the UK is doing?

Is net zero achievable when the generation of power always produces some level of pollution? How is global net zero achievable when powers like China and Russia refuse to reduce their carbon emissions?

If there is widescale changeover to electric vehicles by 2030 (a UK target for new cars) will there be enough electricity to power them? How will all this extra electricity be generated?

Given most carbon emissions worldwide are from electricity plants, why is the population being ‘encouraged’ to change from oil powered vehicles to electric ones that require electricity plants to create their fuel?

Why do Just Stop Oil and other eco-activists travel to their demonstrations in transport powered by oil and other fossil fuels? Why do they heat their homes using these same fuels? Why do they have mobile phones made from plastic derived from oil, to communicate with each other? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why does one of Just Stop Oil‘s leading spokespersons, Dr Grahame Buss, take a £1 million pound pension from Shell Oil while demanding ‘the masses’ must be the ones to make radical changes?

Why do politicians travel by private jet and in motorcades to Climate Change conferences? Why don’t they demonstrate themselves the kind of behaviour they demand from everyone else?

Why, when climate is defined as weather over prolonged periods of time, does the media show us pictures of isolated weather conditions to illustrate climate change?

Do forests spontaneously and naturally combust?

Did the recent wildfires in Greece and elsewhere spontaneously combust as the direct result of high atmospheric temperatures or were they, as the evidence suggests, started either deliberately or through human carelessness? If so, why does the media portray them as examples of the effects of climate change?

Who decided that scrub and undergrowth in forests should no longer be cleared? Why did they, when layers of scrub and undergrowth, once alight, ensure fires spread more rapidly?

If, according to NASA, there has been a decrease in the total number of square kilometers burned each year (and) between 2003 and 2019, that number has dropped by roughly 25 percent’, why are recent, highly localised fires being represented – even by NASA! – as an increase attributable to climate change? 

According to UN Secretary General António Guterres, ‘the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived’. What exactly is it that is ‘boiling’? Is it oceans, rivers and lakes? Soil and rocks? Animal bodies? If so, where is the evidence that this is happening? Is such alarmist hyperbole persuasive or remotely helpful in combatting climate change? Or does it lead ‘the masses’ to believe politicians exaggerate the extent of climate change?

Can we slow down or even reverse climate change when it is a natural, inevitable part of nature’s cycle and, in terms of our own contribution, the biggest polluters are not interested?

Are we all doomed?  

End Of Term Test

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Which of the terms mythological, symbolic, theological is most appropriate when discussing biblical tropes?

Apparently, it’s ‘theological’ because it has an air of respectability, whereas the other terms suggest something with only theoretical underpinning. In fact, this also applies to ‘theological’, which by definition is the study of deities, for which there is no evidential verification. The use of ‘theological’ therefore is as unsubstantive as arguing that a concept is metaphorical or symbolic. None of these terms represents a sound, reliable way to determine the accuracy, historicity or truth of religious claims.

With this in mind see how you do with these questions:

1. Did the original hearers of the Genesis creation story regard it as –

a) true.

b) a theological statement.

c) an entertaining myth.

Of course we’ve no way of knowing what the story’s original hearers thought but there is nothing in the text that suggests they would have regarded the creation story as anything but true. The creators of Jesus’ script certainly seemed to think so, a few centuries later and its original hearers would not have felt the need to preserve it otherwise. In this belief they were wrong.

2. Which of these gospel stories is true, as in ‘really happened more or less as described’ –

a) The virgin birth with its surrounding detail.

b) Jesus meeting with Moses and Elijah (the transfiguration).

c) Resurrected corpses roaming around Jerusalem.

d) The resurrection.

The answer is that either all of them are true or none of them are. If only one of them is mythic, symbolic or ‘theological’ (and more than one of them most certainly is) then it is highly likely the others are too. If we are scrupulous, we cannot assert that one story is symbolic because it’s making a theological point while another equally implausible story is historically accurate because we want it to be.

The criteria for determining the historicity of any story from antiquity are corroborative evidence and, failing that, plausibility. We have already established that there is no independent corroboration for many of the gospel stories. There is no corroboration for some of them even in the Bible itself. We are left then with plausibility: how plausible is it that a virgin gave birth or that resurrected corpses presented themselves to Jewish authorities? Vanishingly small. Jesus’ encounter with Moses and Elijah is equally improbable.

Is his resurrection the exception? No, because dead people do not spring back to life 36 hours after being buried. If the virgin birth, the transfiguration and the resurrection of dead saints are all highly implausible (and they are) then so is the resurrection. It is at best, a story making a theological point but it is not history. The implausibility it shares with many of the other implausible stories in the gospels discounts it as history. There are no grounds for saying it is the exception.

There is also the cumulative effect of implausibility. It is highly unlikely that one of the implausible events above is historical, but it is impossible that all four of them are. Add all the other implausible stories in the gospels – the other miracles; the healings; exorcisms; Jesus sparring with the devil, walking through locked doors and beaming up to heaven: piling implausibility on top of implausibility doesn’t make any of the component implausibilities more plausible. It makes all of them less plausible and collectively impossible.

The things the gospels tell us happened to Gospel Jesus, and those they say he did himself, are equalled only by heroes of myth. Did Osiris or Romulus rise from the dead, as their stories claim? Did Augustus really become a god once he died? Of course not. These are the implausible, improbable events we find in myth. Jesus’ story is no different.

3. While many or all of the gospel stories are highly improbable as history because they are intended to convey a theological point, the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels –

a) are completely accurate.

b) are more or less what he said.

c) passed through an inestimable number of people, being invented, edited and altered in the process, before being written down 40+ years after Jesus supposedly uttered them.

d) are inventions of the gospel writers and/or their particular sect and frequently copied between gospels.

If you’re opting for a or b, you’re now making the logia the exception; the one oasis of historical truth in a desert of implausibility. That’s a big ask. To get this one off the ground, you have to call upon contrivances like –

completely reliable (but different and conflicting) oral traditions;

     hypothetical lists of sayings;

         Peter’s dictation to Mark;

             eyewitness authors;

                  secret teachings;

                     super-translators and

                         the odd spot of collaboration.

So, c and/or d is far more likely to be the answer to this one, representing the explanation that requires the least conjecture and fewest hypothetical components.

How did you do? I expect most of you aced this end of term quiz. If not, better get down to some extra study and repeat the semester next year.