Tag Archives: God

Christians’ Favourite Delusions 29: The Resurrection Can’t Be Disproved

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Or can it?Burial

The resurrection can’t be disproved, or so says a Christian on Bob Seidensticker’s Cross Examined blog. If it could be, the commenter tells us, he would abandon his Christian faith. Of course it isn’t up to sceptics to disprove the resurrection, or any other of religion’s fantastic claims. It’s up to those making them to demonstrate their veracity, just as it would be for me to prove I keep an invisible pink unicorn in my garage. There would be no obligation on anyone else to disprove it.

That being said, the resurrection is rather easy to refute. First, let’s qualify what we mean by the term, or rather what Christians usually mean by it: that Jesus rose from the dead in or as the same body that had, a couple of days earlier, died on the cross. There are, it’s true, some liberal Christians who find this such a preposterous idea that they concede the resurrection happened only in some sort of metaphorical fashion. They’re probably right, so our truck is not with these particular believers, even if their evangelical brethren take them to task for their apostasy. No, we are refuting the idea that Jesus rose physically from the grave, fully alive again, after spending slightly under two days completely and entirely dead.

Here’s how we can know this didn’t happen:
1. There’s only one eye-witness account of the resurrected Jesus, and that’s Paul’s (in Galatians 1.11-12 and 1 Corinthians 9.1 & 15.45; I’ve covered this more fully here.) And what does he ‘see’? Not a resurrected body, just a beam of light and a voice, both in his own head as the text makes clear (the Greek states baldly his experience was ‘within’ him). His resurrected Jesus is therefore a vision or an hallucination or an epileptic event. It is most emphatically not an encounter with an actual man returned from the dead.

So much for our only eye-witness. What about the others?

There are no others:

2. All the other resurrection accounts were written, third, fourth, fifth hand, some 40-70 years after the supposed event, so they’re not exactly reliable. They are, in fact, positively unreliable. In these accounts, Jesus is unrecognisable to those who knew him; he walks through walls; disappears at will and beams up into the sky.

I’m sure it won’t escape your attention that these are not something a flesh-and-blood body can do. They are not, as a result, descriptions of real experiences and belong, like Paul’s inner experience, to the realm of fantasy/visions/hallucination. Paul himself was of the view that others’ experiences of the ‘risen Christ’ were exactly the same as his own (1 Corinthians 15.6-8).

Not only this, the gospel accounts of these visions were embellished between the time they occurred (if they did) and their being recorded many years later by different groups of interested parties. They were also significantly tampered with. For example, Mark’s gospel originally had no resurrection appearances; these were added later – possibly 40 years later – 80 after the events they supposedly describe.

And so we come to the most conclusive of the arguments against the resurrection:

3. The dead stay dead. Always, with no exceptions. Once the brain is dead it cannot be revived – certainly not 40 hours after it is extinguished. “Ah, but wait!” say Christians, “Jesus was (the Son of) God so the normal laws of nature don’t apply. He is the one true exception.” But this is special pleading based on circular reasoning: Jesus rose from the dead because he was (the Son of) God. How do we know he was (the Son of) God? Because he rose from the dead. As such, it’s no proof at all – even if, in Romans 1.14, Paul seems to think it is. The man Jesus died and then… he stayed dead.

There are other reasons that lend support to the fact that the resurrection did not happen (for example, all the noise about an empty tomb, which is nothing more than a distracting sleight of hand. So what? What does an empty tomb prove? Certainly not a resurrection.) These three, however, are sufficient evidence that Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead – and without the resurrection, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-19, Christianity falls apart:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…

How right he was.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my invisible pink unicorn for a walk.

It only encourages them

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HealDear Believer,

Let us be direct. We have to tell you, out of love, that we can never serve you in our restaurants, never teach you in our colleges, never supply you with goods we make, never sell you items from our shops. Why? Because of your fake faith.

Your belief in a mythical figure and in eternal life is a sin against the intellect. More than this, it causes you to act in mean-spirited, unloving ways. We cannot endorse such abhorrent, evil practices.

So if you come into our restaurants, classrooms, shops or offices wearing a cross or talking about your faith or praying, you will be turned away. We do this only because it breaks our hearts to see you lost in your delusion and to witness the damage you do to other people as a result of your beliefs.

It is our fervent wish, dear “Christian” friend, that by doing this we can lead you to abandon the illusory path you have chosen so that you may reclaim both your intelligence and humanity.

We hope you understand that all we say and all we intend to do, we do out of love and in the spirit of truth.

faithlessly,

The Freethinkers

What do you think? Too judgemental? Too much of a generalisation? Tars all Christians with the same brush? Unforgiving? Moralistic?

You’re right…

The original version of this letter is a long-winded, sanctimonious diatribe by right-wing Christian, Matt Barber. You can find the full thing at this link, but here are the highlights:

Dear homosexual,

…Let us be direct. According to the unequivocal moral precepts of biblical Christianity, explicit throughout both the Old and New Testaments, your homosexual behavior is sin. Sin is evil. Homosexual behavior is the central, defining characteristic of your counterfeit “gay marriage.” Therefore, “gay marriage” is evil. Christians are obligated to avoid sin – to “do no evil”…

It really is that simple. This is why, as faithful Christians (apostate “Christians” notwithstanding), we will never have anything whatsoever to do with your pagan, sin-based “same-sex wedding” rituals.

We will not bake your fake wedding cake.
We will not arrange your fake wedding flowers.
We will not take your fake wedding pictures.
We will not host your fake wedding reception.

We will not do these things because to do these things is to disobey God. It is to aid you in your sin, to cause you to stumble, which, in and of itself, is to layer sin upon sin…

We’re telling you no because we love you with the love of Christ. But understand this: As we are so commanded, we must, and do, hate the evil conduct by which you define your identity… what you do is wrong. Period. Full stop….

Dear “gay” friend, you will one day realize, hopefully before it becomes too late, that you are not only on the wrong side of history, you are on the wrong side of eternity.

It breaks our hearts to see you there.

And so we refuse to help send you.

Sincerely,

The Christians

Yes, definitely unforgiving and judgemental. Presumptuous too: Matt Barber speaks for all Christians? He writes and signs his letter in your name. Who appointed him to do that?

Arrogant in deciding we’re all sinners, gay people more than any. The whole sin thing is a specifically Christian mindset which – surprise, surprise – not all of us subscribe to, not least because it has little purchase in the real world.

Hypocritical that he condemns everyone, gay people more than any, but conveniently ignores the parts of his saviour’s teaching that says ‘don’t judge unless you want to be judged’ (Matthew 7.1). What does it feel like, Christians, when the tables are turned? Those of you, like Barber, who sit in judgement of others merit judgement in return. This is a sound Biblical principle, every bit as much as, or even more than, the ‘principles’ you use to condemn your ‘gay friends’ as ‘evil’. JC himself said so.

Ignorant too, of the scriptures that say ‘give to all who ask’ (JC again, in Luke 6.30-36). They don’t say, anywhere, ‘refuse to do anything for a group of people you don’t approve of.’ As Christians you’re not given that option, no matter how much you twist unrelated verses to endorse the position you’ve already chosen to take.

No, Christians like Barber who stand on ‘principles’ like these, who think they know the mind of Jesus while ignoring the very words he said are unchristian, unforgiving, unbiblical, arrogant and, whatever they may claim to the contrary, unloving. How attractive they make their faith seem.

There Is No God. And Here’s Why

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adamSometimes I wonder why I continue writing this blog. There seems to be little that can shake believers from their delusions; what I write here doesn’t appear to be it. When they do respond it’s to tell me that I’m in for a shock when, after my death, I stand in front of the the throne of God and have to give an account of myself. I’ll not be smiling then, they tell me. They’re right, I won’t be. Not because of any ‘judgement’, but because dead people don’t smile. Not of their own volition anyway.

Christians can’t seem to see the ludicrousness of their post-mortem proposals. Religion, all religion, is wrong about most things at most levels; it denies death, which does exist, and replaces it with fantasies about supernatural beings, eternal life and judgements, none of which does. Christianity offers false promises, failed prophecies and an impossible morality, which Christians themselves can’t even manage. By and large they don’t even try to (see previous posts on all of this) yet they stick uncritically, unthinkingly, blindly to the fantasy elements of their ‘faith’ because they’re frightened of their own extinction and want to live forever. Christianity deceitfully promises them that they will – the ultimate false promise.

So let’s cut to the chase. There is no God. This is an indisputable fact, though believers will dispute it anyway. Even now, any Christians who are reading this will be muttering something about the fool saying in his heart there is no God; another tired, cliched response, which I’ve already considered here. But there is no God, not because of any foolishness on my part but because of the evidence. Or rather the absence of it. There is no evidence there is anything other than the physical universe or that life came about as the result of anything other than physical processes (it is not the case that scientists do not know how life emerged from non-life; they do and it did) or that humans evolved by any means other than blind, mindless natural selection. God is not required to explain any of this; not necessary to explain anything at all to do with life, the universe and ‘why there is something rather than nothing’. That being the case, we can know for certainty that he wasn’t in any way involved.

Let’s take a more down-to-Earth parallel to illustrate the point: we do not need to resort to stories of the tooth fairy to explain dentistry. I’m guessing that even Christians would agree with this; the tooth fairy has no part in matters of dental hygiene, orthodontist training or even the payment sometimes made by indulgent parents when their child’s tooth falls out. Trying to force the tooth fairy into any of these scenarios is not only entirely unnecessary, it’s erroneous and unhelpful. Dentistry is far better explained without reference to a mythical sprite. The tooth fairy not being needed, we can safely conclude that she doesn’t actually exist; she is a figment invented for children intended to take the away the pain of tooth loss, nothing more.

So it is with God in explanations into which he too is shoe-horned. He’s not needed, he’s superfluous to requirements. That being so, we can similarly conclude that he isn’t real either. A being that isn’t needed to explain anything is one that doesn’t exist.

This is not, note, a rejection of a figure who, even now, is sitting up in the sky somewhere feeling sad or angry because we’re ‘shaking our fist’ at him. If that’s what you’re seeing, you’re still believing in God, even if it is one you might be in the process of rejecting. It’s worse than that, Jim (or better): there is no super-being in the sky, or anywhere else. The universe is devoid of gods and of God; it always has been and always will be. There are none to be found because there are none there; not your pet god, nor those of other faiths, ancient or modern. None. There is only the physical universe itself and for the brief time we are here in it, we are lucky to be here in it. Which is more than any god has ever managed.

The End Times Are Here! Again.

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livelyWhat does the future hold? It’s difficult to say, really, when the future isn’t, as Doris Day once so very wisely expressed it, ours to see. That doesn’t stop Christians from claiming they can though. They know exactly what the future holds, they insist, because the Bible tells them so.

There are at least two problems with this claim, the first being that the Bible’s predictions were written by men with as little ability to see the future as anyone alive today. The second is that their prophecies, like all other predictions, are suitably nebulous. It’s easier to see vague, non-specific claims come true when you can add the details yourself at a later date.

So it is for anti-gay pastor Scott Lively, who, incidentally, wishes to make it known that he’d prefer not to be referred to as anti-gay. This, of course, rests entirely in the anti-gay pastor’s own hands, though you’ll not be able to tell him so as he doesn’t allow comments on his blog. Christian leaders must never be contradicted!

The Reverend Lively, as well as being anti-gay, reckons that abortion, multi-culturalism, international discord and gay marriage are, in all likelihood, paving the way for the Anti-Christ and, ultimately, the end of everything. God is going to get so angry with the good ol’ US of A for all these things that he’s going to bring about the end times prophesied in the Bible.

The Reverend is quick to say he doesn’t know this for certain because God hasn’t actually told him so directly (why not, Scott?) so he’s just making an ‘educated’ guess. He does this by cherry-picking verses from all over the Magic Book – from Daniel to the gospels and Revelation – and shows, or thinks he does, how the USA is really the focus of God’s concerns in these last days. This is an impressive feat when the Bible doesn’t say anything of the sort, not least because its writers were completely unaware of the entire American continent.

From there, anti-gay Scott outlines how the world’s woes, but chiefly gay marriage in the USA, are going to allow the Anti-Christ in. That’s the Anti-Christ of which the Bible doesn’t speak. It doesn’t say, anywhere, that there is one almighty Anti-Christ. There are only four uses of the term in the entire Bible, all in the letters written by a John (not the same John credited with John’s gospel) in the New Testament. Letter-writer John whines about those in the early church who, two thousand years ago, were fomenting dissent; these people, he says, are literally anti Christ. And that’s it; you won’t find the all-powerful Anti-Christ that later fantasists like Scott Lively believe in, either here or anywhere else in ‘God’s Word’.

That’s because Lively and fanatics like him confuse these long dead dissenters with a figure from one of the Bible’s nuttiest books, Revelation. Known as ‘The Beast’, this pantomime villain is actually a caricature of barking-mad Emperor Nero, who began the first wave of persecutions against the early church. But that’s not good enough for nutters believers like Scott. The anti-gay pastor insists that the Beast, whom he mistakenly calls the Anti-Christ, is actually a politician of future times – our times in fact. He – that’s the Beast, not cuddly old Scott – is going, pretty soon, to exploit the mess the world is in, put things right and then take over. In so doing he’ll be usurping Christ’s position as ruler of everything. (You didn’t know Christ was ruler of everything? Just think what a mess the world would be in if he wasn’t.) This, the Reverend warns us – with capital letters to show how significant it all is – will be only the Beginning of Sorrows. Oh, and there’ll be Blood Moons too, just to add a splash of colour.

God is going to be so pissed off with this state of affairs that after a while he’s going to destroy everything, just like Jesus predicted he would be doing around about AD30, and Paul said would happen soon after AD55 and Revelation’s John (no relation to the crank who wrote the anti-Christ letters) claimed was still going to happen soon after AD95. Just as thousands of others have predicted in the 2,000 years since; every one of them wrong.

Statistically, rationally and empirically it isn’t remotely likely that current events in the USA mark the beginning of the end either. The Bible’s writers had absolutely no idea of what the future held, as their disastrous track record shows. Their rambling, vague prophecies didn’t come true when they said they would and they’re not going to now, even with an anti-gay pastor’s US-centric gloss on them. Which isn’t to say the world might not end some day. If it does, however, it certainly won’t be because it is following an expired Biblical timetable, open to a multitude of interpretations.

Better to stick to what you do best, Scott, being anti-gay. Though that’s not exactly going your way at the moment either, is it?

What Christians Believe: Part Two

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AscensionHi, Thea Lojan here talking about the creed. Here’s what else it says, following on from last time:

I believe Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God and will come to judge the living and the dead. As I was saying, Jesus could do amazing things. He could, like, beam up into the sky and out into space – that’s what ‘ascended’ means. Amazing. And he is coming back to judge the Earth, just like he promised. I know he said he’d be back real soon, like while his disciples were still alive, but to God a minute is like a thousand years so a few years can be anything like a million, or something like that. We shouldn’t take it literally when he said he’d be back while his friends were still around, though the Bible is, without a doubt, the literal Word of God.

Anyway, when he returns Jesus is going to send those who don’t believe in him to Hell, where they’ll suffer eternal torment for, like, forever and ever, amen. And he’ll take people who are saved, like me, back to Heaven with him. I can’t actually find the bit in the Bible where he says he’ll be taking me to Heaven, but I have faith so I’m sure he will.

Just a thought, but why doesn’t this creed mention the Bible, and how it’s the ineffable and literal Word of God? You’d think it would, wouldn’t you.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church and the communion of saints. Definitely. The Holy Spirit is like the feeling of God that you get when you’re being blessed. You can’t see it – though it’s actually a ‘him’ because God is a ‘him’ – but it’s there, helping you make decisions, like whether you should buy a new car or install a heated pool in the yard. You definitely get a sense of him then. In my experience, he’s never let me down. He always guides me right.

I’m less sure of the holy Catholic Church because of course we’re not all Catholics and nor should we be when Catholics have got everything so wrong. But the pastor at church says it just means ‘the Body of Christ’ here, the same as ‘the communion of saints’ does, though that makes you wonder why we’ve got it in there twice. The communion of saints means all worshippers everywhere being united and working together. So, yes, I totally believe that because, that’s what we do as Christians; we all love each other. I don’t accept any of those lies that some people put about that there’s, like, 41,000 different kinds of churches. I don’t think God would let that happen, do you?

I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Yes I surely do, for God has forgiven my sins through the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, his son. And if they’re really, really sorry I can forgive the sins of others, except of course if they’re, like, homosexuals. It really grosses me out to think about what so-called “gay” people do with each other. It’s unforgivable and even the Lord doesn’t forgive it. But my sins, yes, he forgives those.

The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Well, I already covered this. This is another repeat. What this really means is that everyone whose sins are forgiven and have been saved will go to live with God in Heaven after they die. Isn’t that amazing? Just think, whatever happens to your body all the time you’re dead, even if it’s been burnt or has rotted away to nothing, God will repair it and make it good as new. And then you’ll live forever in Heaven, because that’s what it means when it says ‘the life everlasting’. Even if I still can’t find that bit in my Bible.

Well, that’s it. That’s my creed, and what Christians everywhere believe. It was written, in fact, by the apostles, that’s Jesus’ friends, way back when he was still alive or just after. If you were to give your life to the Lord – and you really should if you want live forever in Heaven – then it’s what you’d believe too. Isn’t that, like, really, literally incredible?

What Christians Believe: Part One

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A very special guest post by Thea Lojan.

PilateThe Creed

I’m very pleased to have this opportunity to share my testimony with you and give you an idea of what I and millions of other Christians believe. We call this the Apostles’ Creed and it goes like this:

I believe in one God. Actually no… three. Three Gods. One really, but he’s like three, a buy-one-get-two-free kind of God. Yes, okay, he says he’s the one and only God back in the Old Testament, but that’s before he knew he was really three. This doesn’t make him/them anything like those collections of ancient Greek Gods, though, because he’s still only one God really. That’s what’s called the Trinity and I hope I’ve made it clear for you .

Anyway, I believe in one God and in two others besides, creator, or creators, of Heaven and Earth. Yes, he/they definitely did this even though scientists think the universe was created billions of years before the Bible says it was and that God probably wasn’t even involved. But these scientists are all anti-Christian, that’s why they say that. If you have faith you know that of course God was involved. Other people who are also anti-Christian just out of spite say that if God made the Earth and all that is in it therein, then he must’ve made parasites and poisonous bugs and harmful bacteria and disease. But I’ve an answer to all that. Just don’t think about it.

And I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. Yes definitely this, even though Jesus says he’s not really anything like God’s son in three of the eye-witness accounts of his life in God’s Word. I expect he was just a bit muddled when he said this, being away from home and down here instead of up in Heaven with his Heavenly Father. He probably meant to say he was God’s son because it’d be too weird if he really was God’s Son and didn’t know it. We should be grateful to those people who came after him who realised exactly who he was.

And then there’s that bit somewhere about him being ‘begotten not made, of one substance with the father’, or something, which I think means he was more than God’s son. That he was, like, God himself. You’d think he’d remember that, wouldn’t you, when he was down here on Earth. What confuses me though is, if he was God, then who was he praying to all those times? I can’t get my head round that. But anyway, it’s a good job there were even more people who came after him who knew better than him and could tell he really was God.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Well, you’ve got to believe this haven’t you, even though some people say ‘virgin’ should really just say ‘young woman’. A young woman might or might not be a virgin, especially if she wasn’t a Christian to begin with. It does make me wonder that if she was pregnant then it’s more than likely Mary wasn’t a virgin, ’cause we all know how babies get made. Still, if God’s Word says it was the ‘Holy Spirit’ that was the father then that’s what we should believe. If you want to know more about the Holy Spirit that can make people pregnant, well, we’ll get to it soon.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was dead and was buried. He descended into hell and on the third day he rose again. I think a bit got missed out here – all the stuff Jesus said and did in between being born and suffering under Pontius Pilate. Isn’t that important? You bet it is. Pontius Pilate, by the way, was a Roman perculator who worked for Julius Caesar. I can’t find anything about Jesus ‘descending into hell’ in my Bible but I suppose it must be right. I definitely believe though that after three days and nights in the tomb he rose again from the dead. I mean, that’s a really important bit. I know he wasn’t in the tomb for a full three days and nights, even though he said he would be, but a day and a half is close enough. I guess that’s why we say ‘on the third day’ instead; it sounds like three days when it was only a day and half. But, you know, Friday night till Sunday morning – it’s legit to say ‘on the third day’.

And we know he rose from the dead because Saint Paul said so – he saw him himself, in person. Well, not exactly in person but in his head. He was like an amazing flash of light in Paul’s head, a bit like an epileptic event, except, you know, like really real. And then other people started seeing him but not in their heads, as a real person, but one who could walk through walls and disappear if he felt like it. Totally real. Amazing.

I’ll be back next time to tell you what else Christians believe. In the meantime, keep praising the Lord!

 

 

Thea was talking about the Apostles’ Creed, though she also mentions the Nicene Creed. The Apostles’ Creed was created prior to 390CE and the Nicene Creed in 325, both quite a bit after Jesus’ lifetime. Three hundred years after, in fact.

Oh, and Pontius Pilate was a Roman procurator or prefect during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.

Jesus or Paul?

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Nicodemus

Jesus is asked a few times in the gospels about how a person can find eternal life – like that’s the most obvious things to ask a travelling snake-oil salesman. Maybe it is, I don’t know. It was in the first century anyway, if the gospels are to be believed.

Jesus gives a variety of answers in the three earliest gospels: in Matthew 19.17 it’s ‘keep the commandments’ – those terrible, brutal laws I talked about last time. In Mark 12.30-31 he says the way to eternal life is to love God with all your heart and soul, and your neighbour as yourself. In other places he tells his audience that if you want to be forgiven by God then first you must forgive others (Matthew 6.14); if you want God’s compassion then first you must be compassionate (Matthew 25:31-46); if you don’t want to be judged, then you shouldn’t judge others (Luke 6.37).

Jesus is particularly fond of this kind of measure-for-measure salvation; it’s the lynch-pin of his good news – do unto others as you would have God do unto you. And almost every time he mentions it, he connects it with the Law and commandments.

Never does he say, anywhere in the gospels, that if you want to gain eternal life, or find favour with God, or be saved, then what you have to do is believe in the redemptive power of his own imminent death. Even when he could have done so, when he could have worked a little bit of Christian dogma into his teaching, he doesn’t. And that’s strange really, when you consider that Paul’s brand of Christianity – the one that’s come down to us today – is built entirely on the idea that the death and resurrection of Christ is the only thing can save us from God’s wrath.

Paul’s alternative gospel, which is expounded in Romans and summarised in Galatians 3.10-13, goes something like this:

Paul looks at the old Jewish Law and says, ‘actually it’s impossible. None of us can keep it. We’re all under a death sentence for some tiny infringement of it, because any and all infringements lead to the death penalty. But,’ he goes on, ‘Christ has taken that penalty for us by dying in our place. So although the law demands we should die and then suffer for eternity, we won’t, because he died for us. Then he rose again, just as those who believe in him will.’ That last bit – about believers rising from the dead – really doesn’t follow from his premise that the Law is impossible, but this is Paul talking, a man with only a passing acquaintance with logic. He doesn’t, either, have any evidence that Jesus took the penalty for the rest of humankind – he made that bit up too.

And that, in a nutshell – I do mean nut shell – is Paul’s ‘good news’. It bears no relation to the good news that Jesus preaches in the synoptic gospels. Admittedly, the Jesus who wanders his way through the first three gospels is for the most part a pre-death Jesus. You could argue, as a result, that he wouldn’t talk about redemption through his death before it had happened… but then again, why not? He talks about all sorts of other things he thinks are going to happen after he dies and rises again; he’s going to return pretty damn soon in a blaze of glory, through the clouds with an army of angels; heaven and earth are going to pass away; God is going to unleash his kingdom on the new earth.

But in spite of these mad speculations, he doesn’t mention even once in the synoptic gospels that people can be saved merely by accepting that he has paid – or will pay – the penalty for their infringements of the law, their sins if you will. Never. All the more odd when you consider that Mark, Matthew and Luke were putting their gospels together long after Paul preached his particular brand of salvation. Yet they don’t put this message into Jesus’ mouth, nor do they add it to the narrative.

It’s just not there.

So… were the gospel writers not aware of it? If they did know of it, was it that they didn’t like it? Did they know, in fact, that Paul’s formula didn’t square with what Jesus himself had said, or what they at least believed he’d said?

Whatever it was, the result is there are two conflicting versions of the ‘good news’ in the New Testament: Paul’s and Jesus’. One is easier than the other; in Paul’s plan all you have to do is believe. The other is difficult (and if we’re honest, really only designed for Jesus’ fellow Jews); it entails things like forgiving repeatedly, showing compassion, putting others first, turning the other cheek and, especially, following the six hundred and odd commandments that make up the Law.

So guess which one Christians today prefer.

Here’s a clue: it’s not Jesus’ gospel – the one without the magical incantation but with the barbaric Jewish law. But if, as Christians believe, Jesus was the Son of God – maybe even God himself – then why do they always accept Paul’s reinterpretation over and above everything their Lord said? Why do they disregard all that Jesus demands of those who would follow him, and take instead Paul’s easy path?

In the end, though, what Jesus and Paul (as well as the gospel writers and different factions of the early church) are in dispute about is the highly improbable and the absolutely impossible. It doesn’t matter whether they thought you could gain ‘eternal life’ by obeying the commandments or by letting someone else take your punishment for you; humans do not live forever. Just because a zealous first-century preacher thought they could does not make it so. Just because a different fanatic from roughly the same time believed it doesn’t make it happen either. There’s no evidence any human has ever, after this brief earthly existence, gone on to live forever. Equally, there’s no evidence that a deity exists, so those rules that are so important, in different ways, to Jesus and Paul can’t have originated with him. They’re man-made too.

So, with no God and no eternal life, Jesus and Paul might as well have been discussing whether the tooth fairy wears a pink dress or a green dress. What does it matter when she doesn’t exist?

How much more were they wrong about?

How long you got?

Christian love… but not so’s you’d notice

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Church2Today, the world commemorated the relief of Auschwitz seventy years ago, following the murders of millions of Jews, homosexuals and gypsies.

Also today, Christian pastor James Manning said Islamic militants are justified in executing gay people. Another man of God, Ben Carson, implied that Christian bakers might want to add poison to wedding cakes they are ‘forced’ to make for same-sex couples. And just before Christmas, pastor Stephen Anderson said gay people should be exterminated as the means of eradicating AIDS.

Whatever happened to ‘do not kill’? You know, the sixth of the much vaunted ten commandments that believers think should be displayed in public places so that the world might become a better place. I guess it’s far easier to display the commandments than it is to obey them.

What happened too to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’? This doesn’t – big surprise, Christians – mean endlessly pointing out others’ ‘sin’ while relentlessly banging on about ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ like we’ve never heard of him before. Though again, I guess that sort of ‘love’ is a lot easier than actively caring for other people, regardless of their beliefs, values or sexuality, as much as you care for yourself. That, after all, is the whole point of the story of the Good Samaritan; the Samaritans were despised by the Jews of Jesus’ day in much the same way that homosexuals are despised by many of the righteous today. Yet it is a Samaritan whom Jesus makes the epitome of sacrificial neighbourly-love in his story. Still, what did he know?

And really, that’s my beef with Christianity. It just doesn’t work. Believing in Jesus, following him, as he insists you must, to the point of death doesn’t make you a better person. It doesn’t make you loving if you’re not already. Doesn’t make you meet the demands of the very one you claim was God on Earth. It certainly doesn’t make you more compassionate or even more intelligent, as the men of God above more than amply demonstrate.

So what use is it?

 

 

 

All gods must pass

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MardukIf human beings were suddenly wiped from the earth through, say, an Ebola pandemic, what would be left of us? What would become of all the things we’ve invented and created? What would happen to language, mathematics, science, literature, medicine, art, agriculture, architecture, democracy, industry, capitalism, civilisation, education, marriage, religion?

They’d all cease, most of them immediately. Remnants of others would survive for a little while before being reclaimed by nature. The surviving flora and fauna, the weather, climates, oceans, land masses would carry on just as before. Indeed, without humans around to abuse it both carelessly and deliberately, the rest of nature would flourish. Reproduction, evolution and the great cycles of life would continue unimpeded.

Which tells us what? That all of our accomplishments and preoccupations, from language and mathematics to marriage and religion are entirely human-made. When we go, they go. And nothing left behind will care. Our religions, all 4,200 of them, will disappear over night and with them their gods; Yahweh, Allah, Vishna will no longer exist, just as Marduk, Anu and Enlil no longer exist.

You’ve never heard of Marduk, Anu and Enlil? Of course not; this particular holy trinity were among the gods of ancient Babylon, a civilisation that existed two thousand years before the Christian God was even thought of. Their worshippers believed in them as enthusiastically as some people now believe in Jesus. For Babylonians, Anu, Enlil and Lord Marduk, the King of the Gods, were just as real, powerful and caring as Christ and Allah are for believers today.

But Enlil, Anu and Marduk have gone. From our vantage point we know they didn’t exist in the first place. They were nothing more than the product of ancient people’s imaginations. That didn’t stop those same people from having real faith in the three of them, praying to them and knowing in their hearts that they were being watched over by them. But as their civilisation fell, the Babylonians discovered that Marduk and company weren’t there to defend and preserve them. When, in 539 BCE, Babylon finally ceased to exist, so too did its mighty gods.

And so will the mighty gods of our own era. Either when a pandemic destroys us or when we destroy ourselves, or even when – as unlikely as it might seem – we come to our senses and abandon belief in made-up things.

However it happens, there will be no repercussions. Yahweh, Christ, Allah and Vishnu will not smite the Earth in their wrath at our abandonment of them. They will, instead, pass silently from history just as Marduk, Anu, Osiris, Zeus and Woden did before them.

If you still cling to human-made deities – and they’re all human-made – why wait? Why not be ahead of the game and let go of them now? Allow your pet god to go gently into that good night. You’ll not miss him, and he certainly won’t miss you. How can he? He’s not real, after all.

 
This post was prompted by Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

 

Where is the love?

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ExecutionThe picture above has shocked and affected me deeply. It shows a man about to be thrown to his death from a high building in Iraq. According to the original news source, a large crowd was gathered below to watch him fall and then die as he hit the ground many metres below. Another man was then killed in the same way. This happened within the last couple of days; the photo, along with some others, was released by IS on Friday.

The men’s ‘crime’ was that they were deemed to be gay. The method of execution is that prescribed by the Koran.

Religion – in this case Shari’a Islam – lies behind and motivates behaviour of such profound inhumanity. It could be argued too that this is part of the culture in which these people live and as such, must be respected. Really? So what is ‘cultured’ about murdering people?

I’ve been asked recently whether I shouldn’t respect the right of people to hold religious views. But how can I – or anyone in a civilised society – accept the right of others to believe that, simply because someone’s perceived sexuality ‘offends’ an imaginary god, that person should die? And not only that, but that they merit a sentence of such barbarity?

I can’t respect such views, nor anyone’s ‘right’ to hold them; they will, inevitably, act upon them, just as we see here.

There are Christians too who support the death penalty for homosexuals (for example, here, here, here, here and here). Well, you men of God, this is what it looks like, though I guess your preferred method of execution would be to stone them to death, just as your own ‘holy’ book advocates (Leviticus 18.22, 20.13).

No respect is due to people who behave like this towards others, nor to the religions that ‘inspire’ them. Bullies who believe fellow human-beings should be executed because of who they are, and thugs who justify murder because it’s done in the name of an invented deity, are not worthy of anyone’s respect.

Where is the international outcry about this? The solidarity? The politicians linking arms? The advocacy of the civilised world?

Je suis découragé.

 

 

Thank you, Nick, for your question and to Joe.My.God.