Tag Archives: fantasy

A Special Christmas Bible Study

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An angel of the Lord appeared to (the shepherds), and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” (Luke 2:9-16)

Another chunk of scripture that will be proclaimed from pulpits and in nativity plays again this year. Let’s take a closer look at the scenario Luke creates. Does it bear any relation to something that might occur in reality?

First, an angel. Doesn’t this tell us from the outset that we’re in the realms of fantasy fiction? You can’t fault Luke for trying though, he does his best to impress by adding a whole host of them. You can hear him thinking that ‘a great company of angels’ should convince all but the most hardened of hearts. He’s inventing freely, throwing in the tropes of the genre with abandon. Doesn’t he know angels are fierce, two-faced, six-winged creatures (Ezekiel 14:18; Isaiah 6), not handsome youths in glowing white robes? There’s a reason they prefaced their every appearance, including this one, with ‘Do not be afraid’.

Good news that will cause great joy for all the people: All? Even as Luke wrote this paean to wishful thinking he knew that the Jesus myth had not brought joy to ‘all people’. Most had rejected the claims of the new cult and joy was hardly the prevalent emotion in some of the churches Paul wrote to.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. A baby wrapped in cloths, as was the custom, and lying in an animal feeding trough is a ‘sign’? A sign that the Messiah had arrived? Really? Granted a manger is not a conventional place for a new-born but it’s hardly miraculous. And what if by the time the shepherds had abandoned their flocks to the night and its marauding wolves, Mary had, say, picked up the child or found a better place for it? Imagine the confusion! Sorry, Luke but this is a very poorly constructed story. You just didn’t think it through.

As for the angels’ last proclamation, what does it really mean?

Glory to God: this of course is fawning to a God whose ego is more inflated and fragile than Donald Trump’s. He demands continual praise not only from his heavenly messengers but from those here below, or else he’ll go off on one. You really want to spend eternity with such a tyrant, Christians?

…in the highest heavens: a reference to the fact that early Christians believed in different layers of heaven; Paul writes about them too. God resides, as acknowledged here, in the highest, the top floor executive suite. No-one ever gets to go up there. Emails are sent down from on high.

And on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests: what sort of peace? Certainly not the absence of conflict or war. We’ve now had two more millennia of these, some in the past initiated by Christians themselves. Do people who are at peace with themselves start wars? Peace within then. Do Christians know greater peace than anyone else? Hard to say when it’s not something that can be measured but I’m sure Christians will claim it’s so.

On whom his favour rests: who exactly is this? Who enjoys the favour of a capricious deity? How do they know when he visits all manner of trials and tribulations, testing and tempering on those who count themselves as his. I’m sure the early Christians who helped write the angels’ speech thought it was they who enjoyed the Lord’s favour. Today’s Christians probably think the same. YHWH has always played favourites. Everyone else can go to hell.

So, the heralds of Jesus’ birth didn’t exactly bring good news, did they. Not even in Luke’s imaginary, completely invented, never-happened-in-reality and isn’t-even-a-decent-metaphor scenario.

What to make of the Supernatural

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When I was young, about 8 or 9, I was frightened of creatures that invaded my bedroom in the dark: monsters under the bed, devils in human form lurking in the shadows, that kind of thing. One night when I couldn’t sleep through fear, it came to me that if these creatures were real then so too were the super-heroes I loved: Superman, Batman and the Legion of Super-Heroes! Now, I knew these DC characters didn’t really exist and so I reasoned (I think pretty well for a 9 year old!) that that neither did their evil counterparts, the monsters and devils I was scared of. With this realisation, the horrors were vanquished. Shadows were just shadows. There was nothing scary under the bed.

Somewhere in a recent comment, either here or elsewhere (I can’t remember which nor can I find it), someone informed me that I make the a priori assumption that the supernatural isn’t real.

The term a priori is used with abandon by people who don’t necessarily know what it means so here’s how The Oxford English dictionary defines it:

relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from theoretical deduction rather than from observation or experience.

I’ll take that. The only way one can assess the supernatural is through reasoning and deduction. There’s no independent evidence for it that can be considered; no external phenomenon to observe and analyse; no science, history or philosophy books that take it seriously or even consider it. I have no personal experience of the beings that supposedly inhabit the supernatural realm; no gods, angels, spirits, demons, ghosts or goblins have manifested themselves in front of me. I’ve never experienced magic, spells or exorcisms, at least not ones that can’t be explained far more convincingly in other ways. So what does that leave in terms of evidence?

Fantasy stories and religious texts. These are the only sources of information about the supernatural, and at least one of them is entirely fictional. Fantasy stories are by definition fiction. They are made up. Similarly, religious works are the products of minds from before the advent of science; explanations of the world and human experience that their creators could construct only in terms of their localised, pre-scientific superstitions. No-one outside of those who’ve chosen to believe in them takes them seriously, which is why their claims are never considered in serious science or history books (Ken Ham’s ‘scientific’ publications are nothing of the sort; they’re religious texts masquerading as science.)

That the supernatural has to be argued for, from an assumption that it does exist, is clear indication it does not; such powerful beings would surely be apparent in the real world, just as they are in Stranger Things (a fiction in case you’re not sure.) No-one has so far demonstrated that the supernatural is real. It is possible to argue it is but only through reliance on the same religious texts, the authority and reliability of which is in dispute on such matters

So, do I make an a priori assumption the supernatural doesn’t exist? Yes, in the sense I take it a priori that it doesn’t. Is this an assumption? No, it is a conclusion arrived at through an assessment of the evidence – there isn’t any: consideration of accounts of the supernatural reveals they’re fictional or prescientific, while personal experience of the apparently supernatural is better explained by rational means. I don’t therefore assume the supernatural doesn’t exist, I deduce it does not.

Actually, I did this when I was 8 or 9.

Back by unpopular demand – it’s the New Year Pop Quiz!

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All set? Here we go!

1. Which one of these fantasy figures actually exists?

2. For which one of these ideas is there refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence?

3. Which one of these events is demonstrably historical?

4. Which one of these phenomena is verified and corroborated by psychology?

5. Applying logic and reasoning, which of the following scenarios is most likely to be true:

6. Which of these statements is verifiably true?

Answers:

Question 1. The answer is none of them, though C, Donald Trump, comes closest. 10 points if you put C, none if you plumped for any of the others: despite the volumes written about them there isn’t an iota of  evidence that they exist.

Question 2. Award yourself 10 points for B, though if you’re a True Believer this is the only one you think isn’t true. There is an abundance of refutable/verifiable, corroborative scientific evidence that it is. You can only wish there were for the other three.

Question 3. A is correct – 10 points. There is a considerable amount of evidence that the moon landing occurred on 20th July 1969. There is absolutely none at all that the other three are historical. For the sake of argument, let’s say they’re mythical. Nul points if you think otherwise.

Question 4. The answer is all of them. Oh no, wait… that’s my cognitive dissonance speaking. D is the only one of those listed recognised by psychologists. My bad and 10 points to you.

Question 5. The answer is of course E. Award yourself another 10 points if you thought outside the box on this one. (You can also have 10 points if you said they’re all equally likely, as in ‘not at all’.)

Question 6. 10 points for D. 

Scores: 

If you scored 50 or more, congratulations! If you scored nothing at all, you are confirmation that question 6’s answer – D. Human beings are capable of believing just about anything – is true. Well done.

A happy new year to you all.

 

 

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 . 

The Walking Dead

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Let’s take a look at another of the stories from the gospels. This time the miraculous rising from the dead of ‘saints’ at the time of Jesus’ death (or maybe at the time of his resurrection…): 

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many (Matthew 27:51-53).

Yes, it’s another case of Matthew making up a story from bits of Jewish scripture. We know it’s made up not only because of its fantastical nature, but because no-one else thought to record it; no eye-witness, no Roman official, no Jewish priest, no writer of Q. Not Paul, who says Jesus was the first to be resurrected; not even Mark, who doesn’t include it and therefore probably didn’t know of it; nor Luke, who omits it when he copies chunks of Matthew; nor John, who invents his own raising-the-dead story, the one about Lazarus.

So where does Matthew find his inspiration? There are many verses in Jewish scripture that declare YHWH will resurrect his people; Ezekiel 37: 12-14 for example:

Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord (YHWH) says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

And Isaiah 26:19:

But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise – let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy!

Matthew ignores the fact that ‘prophecies’ like this are about the revival of the Jewish nation. He rips them out of context and creates his bizarre, Jesus-related story from them. Bizarre not only because of resurrected dead bodies, but because he has the tombs crack open as Jesus dies, only for the revived occupants to wait more than 36 hours to emerge from them. The poor buggers lie around in their tombs, alive again for a day and a half before they make it out into the outside world (Some scholars think the delay is an interpolation introduced by a later scribe who didn’t want the dead guys getting ahead of Jesus.)

Of course, the story is symbolic. It didn’t happen (though there are those who insist that it did); Matthew invented it, like most of his gospel. It’s another literary recreation of ‘prophecies’ from scripture, intended this time to show that Jesus was the Promised One who was about to bring about the great resurrection of the dead. The verses in their original context say nothing of the sort, of course. There’s no verse in the Jewish scriptures that does (though no doubt there are those who believe there is.)

So, yet another story, yet another symbolic fantasy. We could play this game endlessly: name the gospel story – the resurrection included – and it can be shown to have been created around lines lifted out of context from the Jewish scriptures.

 

 

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The Jesus Story v. Reality

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Whenever the Jesus story comes face to face with reality, it fails. The nativity stories, which only Matthew and Luke think to invent include, are a case in point.

  • Luke tells us the Emperor Augustus decreed there should be a census in what we now know as 4BC. He didn’t. The closest Roman census was in AD6, ten years later and it didn’t entail hordes of people trailing back to their ancestral village.
  • Matthew claims that Herod was so enraged about the birth of the ‘royal’ baby that he killed all little boys under two years old. Except he didn’t. This never happened.
  • According to the same story, a host of supernatural beings appeared announcing that a young woman who’d never had sex with a man had given birth, while a wandering star shone directly over her house.

Where in reality do these kinds of things happen? That’s right: in myths and stories. They are typical literary tropes found in fantasy fiction. The ‘miraculous’ events of the nativity are of this genre.

  • Christians who delude themselves into thinking theirs is an intellectual faith concede the nativity is mythical, its events symbolic. They’re not usually so hot on what they’re symbolic of but say the story conveys truth. Still, they insist, the rest of the Jesus story is true. Evangelicals go even further and say it’s literally true. So, Jesus walking on water really happened (or if your faith is, oxymoronically, intellectual faith, it didn’t.) After all, the illusionist Dynamo walked across the Thames a few years ago (see it here), and if he could walk on water then how much more capable of doing that was the Son of God. Except the modern illusionist‘s feat was – yes, you guessed it – an illusion. So even if Jesus did the same thing, his trick was also an illusion. Those who say the story is included in Mark and Matthew because it’s actually only a parable about faith (or something) are conceding, again, that it didn’t actually happen.
  • Likewise when Jesus turns water into wine, calms the storm, raises the dead, chats with apparitions of long dead Jewish folk-heroes and does every other ‘miracle’ he’s credited with. If they’re only symbolic then, by definition, they didn’t happen. Nor did they happen, if, as Evangelicals believe, they’re being passed off as real events. ‘Miracles’ do not happen in reality. Never have, never will. They happen only in stories.

Well, okay, more enlightened Christians might say, but nonetheless Jesus conveyed to the world what God wanted us to know. He was wise and compassionate and told us how our sins could be forgiven. Except his wisdom comes directly from Jewish scriptures; he had nothing new to say. He was no more compassionate than anyone else and could in fact be an absolute s**t. He was inconsistent across the gospels about how sins were forgiven and much of his teaching in the original Gospel (Mark’s) is lifted from Paul or reflects the beliefs of the early Christ cult. Jesus the holy man is a construct – or rather a series of constructs, a literary device, not a real man.

So, okay; the nativity didn’t happen as depicted. The astounding feats attributed to Jesus didn’t happen and Jesus is whoever the various gospel writers and Paul want to make him. Nothing we’ve seen so far is factually, historically or really (as in reality) true.

But, the crucifixion and resurrection are! Oh yes. The rest is made up, but these two events most certainly are not.

  • Even though Jesus’ trial is historically inaccurate and is, as a consequence, highly implausible.
  • Even though there was no-one to record Jesus’s snappy repartee (or silence depending on which gospel you read) with Pilate or Herod.
  • Even though there was no such Roman custom as releasing a prisoner on the Passover.
  • Even though the synoptics have Jesus crucified on Friday while John says it was a Thursday.
  • Even though characters like Barabbas, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdelene and the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ are evidently and entirely fictional.
  • Even though there was no eclipse of the sun that lasted for hours.
  • Even though there was no earthquake that shook zombies loose from their graves before Jesus had a chance to rise and shine himself.

Such things are not historical. They’re not even feasible. They did not happen in reality. Well, if not the crucifixion per se, Christians say, then definitely the resurrection: that most unlikely of all unlikely events. That really happened.

  • Even though the reports of it are completely at odds with one another.
  • Even though angels are involved once again.
  • Even though Jesus behaves entirely like a ghost, walking through closed doors, altering his appearance and vanishing at will.
  • Even though he levitates into the clouds.
  • Even though some of the disciples find it impossible to believe he’s back.
  • Even though dead people rise only in stories, myths, legends and fantasies.
  • Even though, in reality, dead people do not come back to life after three days, which is why Jesus didn’t either.

Still, I’m sure I’ll be told when I go to a carol service with my friends in a few days, that the story of Jesus’ birth, emotionally powerful as it is, is true from start to finish. Why? Because people’s capacity for believing fantasy stories knows no bounds.

Bible Truths

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If ever there was evidence that Christianity is an entirely human affair it’s the way believers constantly disagree with each another. If the bible really was, in some way, ‘the Word of God’ (they don’t all agree even with what this might mean) then surely it would offer greater clarity on what being a Christian entails. Given what’s at stake – heaven or hell, a life of fullness or one spent mired in sin, helping the poor and hungry or self-indulgence – you’d think God would be just a little more precise about what his expectations are.

Instead, what do we get? A rag bag collection of myths, pseudo-history, folklore, poetry, fantasy, yet more pseudo-history, letters, forgeries and invective. Muddled and inconsistent about what the Supreme Being requires of his creation, it ranges from a forever agreement that says following a set of arbitrary laws is what he wants, along with a spot of male genital-mutilation (Genesis 17.1-16), to a new scheme that involves magical incantation (Romans 10.19), to yet another that says helping those in need is what he requires (Matthew 25.31-40).

I’ve been involved at different times in my life with writing policy documents for a range of organisations. Despite creating what I’d estimate to be around 50 of these documents, it never occurred to me to cobble together myth, stories, letters and fake news in even one of them. They needed to be precise, detailing how the organisation worked, what its take was on various areas of operation and, most importantly spelling out for people as clearly as possible what was expected of them. This precision was important; the documents had to be water-tight and open to as little interpretation as possible. They couldn’t allow for the possibility of one part of the organisation acting in one way in a given area while another acted completely differently in that same area.

If I, a fallible human, could manage this more often than not, why couldn’t God?

Why could he not declare definitively how old the Earth is so as to leave no room for dispute?

Why could he not set out his requirements for pleasing him as one single, unequivocal list? (he’s not averse to bullet points – see his ten commandments, of which he manages to present two largely incompatible versions, both of them fairly useless.)

Why could he not ‘inspire’ scribes contemporaneous with the figures in the Old Testament to record what happened as they happened and not centuries later?

Why could he not ‘inspire’ eye-witnesses of Jesus ‘ministry’ to write about it at the time, instead of waiting decades before giving the job to strangers who’d never met him?

Why could he not say decisively what happens to people when they die?

Why could he not present one definitive way of how to get in his good books instead of offering a range of confused alternatives, about which he is prone to change his mind?

And so on and so forth…

If the managing director of an organisation produced policy documents as shoddy and shambolic as God’s they wouldn’t last five minutes. Nor would the organisation.

But of course God didn’t write, inspire or otherwise cause the bible to be written. It’s human through and through, culturally-bound (to a range of ancient cultures) and not intended by its myriad authors to be a single volume. This fact doesn’t trouble most Christians; they read it selectively, if they read it at all, and believe what they are told about it. Others, who are aware of the bible’s shortcomings, have a variety of ways of negotiating around them. All of these entail great dollops of cognitive dissonance. We’ll look at some of them next time.