You know how those local County Board meetings have that annoying little habit of starting the meeting by giving a ‘religious’ invocation? Well, in Cobb County an atheist recently took advantage of the fact that anyone, apparantly, can sign up to invocate:
Atheist gives invocation at Cobb meeting
By MARCUS K. GARNER
The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionNo need to bow your heads, folks.
That’s what Smyrna atheist Edward Buckner told people before leading the invocation Tuesday night at the Cobb County Board of Commissioners meeting.
“It’s actually a protest against invocations,” the president of American Atheists said Wednesday night. “My goal is to get them to stop doing invocations.”
County board of commissioners chairman Sam Olens, reached by phone Wednesday night, said he was offended by Buckner’s actions.
“Did I find his comments repugnant and insulting? Yes,” Olens said. “He abused the process by giving an opinion … rather than providing inspiration.”
What Buckner did was thumb his nose at what he believed was an unconstitutional cross-section of religion and government, he admitted in his words Tuesday night.
Rather than any form of deity, he invoked “the 700,000 people who live in this county — especially the majority (yes, over half) of those 700,000 who are not members of any church, mosque, temple, or other religious organization,” he said.
“I speak as well for those political leaders who despair that success in politics cannot be achieved without hypocritical piety from politicians and who would prefer to run for office and to govern based on competence and political philosophy rather than on beliefs, real or pretended, in any supernatural beings.”
Olens, a candidate for state Attorney General, said he was surprised by Buckner’s tirade.
“I expected that it would be in the context of inspiration,” Olens said.
Buckner said he was disappointed that Olens made a “disclaimer” before he spoke, saying that federal law requires the county to let anyone who signs up make an invocation.
“This county is pro-religion and they act like anybody who isn’t is a second class citizen,” Buckner said.
Buckner is no stranger to protesting religion in government.
In 2005, he was one of seven Cobb residents who with the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit to halt the practice of invocations before board of commissioners’ and planning commission’s meetings.
But last year, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in a 2-1 ruling with a lawsuit’s contention that the Constitution permits only nonsectarian prayers.
And earlier this month, Buckner spoke out during public comment against the commissioners’ approval of a plan by the county’s development authority to issue up to $14 million in bonds to lend to North Cobb Christian School for renovations.
Olens said the county received an E-mail from Buckner requesting to do an invocation, and allowed it because of First Amendment laws.
“Had I stopped him before he started, he then would’ve had a federal action against the county,” Olens said. “That’s the price you pay for being American.”
Buckner had this to say for those he may have offended.
“Join me in asking Cobb County to stop having invocations,” he said.
Do you think that Buckner went overboard in using the invocation to protest invocations rather than giving something more (or less, depending on how you look at it) inspirational?
I dunno. I have a hard time feeling sorry for all of those Christians who now know what it feels like to be offended by an ‘invocation’ after so many years of atheists being offended by government work being preceded by Jesus time.
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In my last post on the Tower of Babel I ended on the following question:
Can a serious intellectual conversation be had with somebody who believes in the literal historical reality of biblical fairy tales? Is such person’s understanding of history and historical method too far from rescuing?
Here is one answer that I received (with some underlining added):
As for your question, it sounds like you think people who believe the Bible to be God’s true word are incapable of having an intellectual conversation and in need of “rescuing”. So maybe not with you but possibly with two people who could listen to each other’s beliefs and not mock what they say and call what they believe to be the truth “fairy tales”. At any rate, it’s difficult for two people with very different beliefs to have a civil conversation, it’s just a very touchy subject and you usually don’t get too far. You can obviously tell that I do hold God’s Word as truth and it’s not going to change because of something someone says. It is interesting to try to understand why people believe what they believe so that could be a way to have an intellectual conversation without seeming like you are pushing your beliefs on someone else. Have a blessed day!
I find it deeply ironic how this person writes how two people willing to listen to each other’s beliefs could have an intellectual conversation (which apparantly I cannot) and then turns around to flat out state that she will never change her beliefs no matter what anybody else says! I can imagine how well an intellectual conversation with her would go.
This is an anttitude that is all too frequently encountered with believers: They complain that we are not open minded enough or that we are not willing to sit down and take their beliefs seriously. Then, seemingly without batting an eye, they explain in no uncertain terms how their faith is essentially non-negotiable - no matter what the evidence.
Have fun wrapping your minds around that one…
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I have been hanging out an commenting over at the Christian Post’s Food for Soul blog for a week or so now – albeit on Randal Rauser’s posts. Another contributer named Linda Weddle wrote a post yesterday describing a radio show that she frequently listens to. The show is called “No Stupid Questions” and the hosts promise not to laugh or mock any of the callers, no matter how stupid their questions are. When somebody brought up the Bible, however, things quickly changed:
But the mood changed when a young man inquired “Where did languages come from? How come there are so many? Why don’t we all speak the same language?”
For the next little while I listened to people’s theories and concluded that they should rename the program “Lots of Stupid Answers.”
Then out of this mish-mash of myths, a lady called and calmly explained that it all had begun at the Tower of Babel. She spoke with confidence and clarity as she flawlessly related the facts from the Bible.
Suddenly the no snickering, no mockery and no contempt rule dissipated somewhere in the invisible airwaves.
“Why are you bringing the Bible into it?” the one host snickered with mockery and contempt. “We don’t need to be talking about the Bible.”
They cut her off and that was the end of that.
But here’s the thing. Even though the talk show hosts did not want to listen to the lady (and broke their own snickering/mockery/contempt rules in interacting with her), the lady knew the correct answer. She was absolutely right. She had her facts down to the very jot and tittle. The talk show hosts unbelief did not negate the truthfulness of what she said.
Linda here clearly reveals her belief in the historical fact of the Tower of Babel episode. Needless to say, she received some “mocking” of her own in the comments section of this post, for which Randal Rauser subsequently took readers to task. He writes:
Interestingly, this post was then answered in a scathing fashion by a number of skeptics and atheists, many of which have the same names that fill my posts. And, perhaps predictably, their comments consisted of more snickers, mockery and contempt, albeit directed now at the blogger rather than the radio caller.
The whole exchange — if it can be called that — strikes me as unfortunate.
On the one hand we have a blog post which accepts the Tower of Babel Story as fact, even though this story strikes many people as myth….In addition, the blogger sets herself up for ridicule by stating that those who find this position absurd are simply manifesting unbelief. Of course people will ridicule that. If a Native American chief insisted that the world was literally birthed by an eagle laying an egg, and that any dissent from this opinion was mere rebellion, well many people would ridicule that too.
But the fault lies not only with the blogger. The atheists and skeptics did not even attempt to explain how, from their view, this appeared to be exceedingly implausible. They didn’t attempt to articulate hermeneutical inconsistencies or an unchallenged confirmation bias. They simply ridiculed. What’s the point of that? To demonstrate how clever we are? Why not restrain oneself from yet more cheap jabs and actually get down in the trenches to engage in serious intellectual exchange?
I replied to the above with the following comment:
It would hard to engage in a “serious” intellectual exchange with a person who actually believes that our languages resulted from the knee-jerk reaction of a jealous god who was worried about human beings actually being able to build a “tower to heaven” (any such ancient tower so obviously being surpassed by todays skyscrapers) – and that one ancient Near Eastern culture happened to preserve this nugget of a historical memory for posterity.
In fact, I once tried to do precisely that.
You might as well have a serious intellectual exchange with the Native American chief about the divine Eagle.
–AnAtheist.Net
What do you think? Can a serious intellectual conversation be had with somebody who believes in the literal historical reality of biblical fairy tales? Is such person’s understanding of history and historical method too far from rescuing?
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Unsurprisingly, the July 27th opinion piece by Sam Harris on the nomination of Francis Collins to the NIH has generated many letters to the New York Times, a handful of which they published here. A few are good, others not so much. Let’s take a look:
Sam Harris’s article attacking Dr. Francis S. Collins, President Obama’s nominee to be the director of the National Institutes of Health, demonstrates nothing so much as Mr. Harris’s own deeply held prejudices against religion.
Dr. Collins’s sin, despite credentials Mr. Harris calls “impeccable,” is that he is a Christian. Mr. Harris is not alone in holding this view. A leading science blogger, also attacking Dr. Collins, demonstrated his own commitment to reasoned dialogue by calling the scientist a “clown” and a “flaming idjit.” When reason has such defenders, Heaven help us.
The disconnect from reality in such attacks is striking. Dr. Collins’s visionary work on cystic fibrosis set the stage for the Human Genome Project, which he then led to a magnificent conclusion — not just ahead of time and under budget, but as a model for cutting-edge collaborative research.
The suspicion that Dr. Collins’s faith would lead him to suppress research is sharply contradicted by his administration of the genome project and the profound scientific curiosity that has marked his entire career.
Francis Collins is a remarkable scientist and a visionary administrator.
He is exactly the right person to head the N.I.H.
Kenneth Miller
Providence, R.I., July 28, 2009The writer is a professor of biology at Brown University.
Miller is a Catholic who has championed evolution in his books Finding Darwin’s God and Only a Theory. Like Collins he is both a defender of faith and science – albeit without the evangelist flare. But as PZ Myers has already noted this morning, Miller is wrong to reduce Harris’ critque of Collins to the simple observation that Collins is a Christian. To quote Myers, “The fact that Collins is a Christian is not a problem at all — we are not interested in narrowing the search pool for science administration to the extent that we exclude the majority of people in this country. What is disturbing is that Collins is a fervent evangelical believer who inserts his superstition where it doesn’t belong, in the execution of his job.”
To reduce Harris’ arguments to mere prejudice against religion is simply ridiculous. Harris has cogently pointed out the problems with Collins’ beliefs and their relation to science, but Ken Miller doesn’t want to listen to that. Next.
To the Editor:
Sam Harris is right to be concerned about the effect of religious faith upon science if Dr. Francis S. Collins becomes N.I.H. director. From a scientific perspective, it is essential that research into unsolved problems not be short-circuited by conclusions already reached through unscientific methods.
Science finds it intrinsically hard to justify the position that “at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components — including an immortal soul.”
Religion must continue to ask, “Why is there something and not nothing?” The mythic answers it supplies may lack scientific weight, but are not thereby meaningless.
Science reaches beyond itself to undervalue mythic insight, and religion is wrong to impose it as a substitute for what can become clearer if we let the scientific method function.
(Rev.) Joseph D. Herring
Alpharetta, Ga., July 27, 2009
The Reverend Herring, unlike Mr. Miller, has precisely understood the substance of Harris’ critique. Collins has frequently made statements to suggest that certain areas of scientific research are essentially closed because of his particular religious beliefs. Although the mythic answers that religion supplies may be meaningful in a limited sense, however, they are hardly useful.
To the Editor:
Francis S. Collins’s appointment bodes well for science as well as for the National Institutes of Health. Advocates of science, whether people of faith or not, can welcome as N.I.H. director an esteemed scientist who is also helping his fellow evangelicals to accept evolution, support embryonic stem cell research and embrace scientific insights.
David Myers
Holland, Mich., July 27, 2009The writer is a professor of psychology and the author of “A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God Is Good and Faith Isn’t Evil.”
This letter just misses the point. It may be true and indeed good that Collins does attempt to help evangelicals to accept more scientific findings, but at what price?
To the Editor:
Sam Harris’s article is very cogently illustrative of the Obama administration’s search for, not the best, but for compromise, in its major appointments.
Just as the selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for an opening on the Supreme Court bypassed at least 100 candidates better suited to take on the Scalia-Roberts cabal, so the selection of Francis S. Collins as the next director of the National Institutes of Health is disappointing to those of us who expected real change from the evangelical Christian bias of the Bush administration choices.
Certainly, the Obama promise of change is not fulfilled in such choices.
Jack Schaps
La Jolla, Calif., July 27, 2009
I don’t know Mr. Shaps, but I am proud to call him a neighbor!
To the Editor:
Does Sam Harris really want to make atheism a requirement for the position of director of the National Institutes of Health? Or is it Francis S. Collins’s faith in particular that disturbs him because he elucidates it so rationally and well?
The objection Mr. Harris raises against Dr. Collins seems most concerned with what he would have us believe was a contradiction: belief in God and open-mindedness. He’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea of someone believing in something that he cannot see — an ability without which science would not have gotten very far.
Suzanne Hoffman Levin
New York, July 28, 2009
No, Suzanne, it is because Collins does not elucidate it so rationally or well that disturbs Harris. We have every right to be uncomfortable with the idea of someone believing in somthing that cannot be seen, detected, or otherwise known – by most definition that just might qualify as mental illness. While science has become particuarly adept at uncovering that which is hidden, religion has simply remained hidden.
To the Editor:
The unreasonable attack by Sam Harris on the nomination of Francis S. Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health is disturbing on several counts. First, it raises a constitutional issue in advocating a religious test for holding public office. Second, given that the majority of people in the United States are theists, it risks driving a wedge between science and the sensibilities of the common person. This is not a tactic that will increase financing for the biological and health sciences. Many scientists applaud Dr. Collins for providing a theologically sensitive rationale for Christians and other theists to accept evolution.
Third, the attack is manifestly unfair to Dr. Collins, whom the vast majority of working scientists regard as a brilliant researcher and an evenhanded administrator.
Kenneth Lange
Los Angeles, July 27, 2009The writer is chairman of the department of human genetics at the Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A.
First, Harris is not suggesting a religious test for holding public office. He is critiquing some of Collins’ less brilliant ideas and questioning to what extent this would affect his work (if any). Second, while many theists can applaud Dr. Collins for providing a theologically sensititve rationale for Christians and other theists to accept evolution, that doesn’t make his rationale any more plausible or worthy of belief. Third, your attack has been manifestly unfair to Mr. Harris. Dr. Collins’ brillance as a researcher or administrator does not excuse him from holding wacky beliefs.
To the Editor:
Sam Harris declares that few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion. Accordingly, he suggests that Francis S. Collins, a devout Christian, is unsuited to the work of science and to leading the National Institutes of Health. Too bad Mr. Harris wasn’t around to teach Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Maxwell, Dobzhansky and countless other scientific luminaries that their theological understanding was an obstacle to their science.
These explorers, of course, all realized that sacred texts and theology are not a source of scientific information, and hence that there can be no real conflict between science and faith.
Galileo’s marvelous Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, for example, emphasizes that Scripture responds to a completely different kind of question from those of science. The God who gave us our intellects, he said, would never require that we look to inspired texts or theology for answers we can find by the natural use of our own faculties.
Dr. Collins is familiar with this instruction. Mr. Harris apparently is not.
John F. Haught
Lake George, N.Y., July 28, 2009The writer is a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University, and the author of “God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens.”
Once againk, this takes Harris critique further than how it was expressed. Nobody is suggesting that being a Christian makes one unsuitable for doing science – past or present. However, the argument was that certain forms of religious thinking have a tendency to suppress or ignore scientific research where such science is inconsistent with certain religiously held beliefs. As far as I can tell, Mr. Haught nor any of these letters have offered a rebuttal to that point.
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Recently my atheist news twitter service tweeted a story about a Texas mother who murdered her child and blamed the devil. In a nutshell:
Police said they found a 3 1/2-week-old infant stabbed and decapitated in a Texas home on Sunday and his mother screaming that she killed her son after the devil told her to do it.
Two people tweeted me the same message in reply shortly after the story was posted:
We need to remember that this is a product of mental illness and not something to blame on religion. Re: Devil makes mom kill
I don’t think that anyone can doubt that this woman is mentally disturbed. Certainly, nobody is suggesting that religion is directly to blame. The above message, however, would have us not focus any attention on religion.
I think that is unfortunate.
It seems to me that there is a fine line between believing that evil supernatural entities like the Devil actually exist and are somehow responsible for much evil and temptation to do evil in the world (which many millions do believe) and believing all of that plus said entity speaks to you. Given the former (which would probably classify someone as mentally ill were it not a part of mainstream religious beliefs) the latter is not a terribly far leap in logic.
It is impossible to say for sure whether or not this woman would have still killed her son anyway had she been an atheist or at least did not seriously believe in religious nonsense. Yet one still has to wonder to what extent we make such behavior more likely to occur by encouraging or otherwise not criticizing such unfounded beliefs in devils and demons in the first place?
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God keeps trying to tell this Texas Pastor something – and I still don’t think that he has got the message:
Southeast Texas church damaged for a third time in four years
By Lauren Heartsill, Communications Intern
Published: July 23, 2009
ORANGE—Hurricane Rita destroyed Old First Baptist Church’s worship center in 2005, electrical problems started a fire that destroyed the church parsonage in 2007, and on July 18, lightening caused a fire that damaged the church again.
So, why is there a celebration?Pastor Bailey Harris wore his brightest shirt the Sunday morning after the fire because he sees a bright future for the church.
“God’s going to use this for good,” he said.
“Sunday was just great celebration. It’s just another circumstance, and we can fix it and move forward.”
The fire, which caused no injuries, burned a 20-foot by 20-foot hole through the roof. The fire damaged the communion table, offering plates and carpet, and church leaders do not know about damage to walls and woodwork.
Services will be held in the gymnasium for now.
Smoke damage left the office suites, adult classrooms and children’s rooms unusable, but Harris hopes these rooms will be repaired soon. The church is insured, and church leaders will meet with an adjuster soon.
But not everything has been negative. Harris already sees affirming effects from the situation.
A police officer who assisted with the fire asked a church ministry assistant who the people were who came by during the fire, Harris said. The assistant told the officer the people were family, and “We’re here to support each other.”
The officer said he normally does not see something like that.
A couple whose son attends the church and went to the church during the fire visited on Sunday, and they told Harris they “didn’t see what we expected to see from the people. There was a real positive spirit.”
After experiencing damage for the past four years, some wonder why.
“It’s OK to ask why,” Harris said. “We’re asking that question. Not ‘Why me, oh Lord?” But, ‘Is there a message that he’s trying to teach?’ We hope to get it right this time.”
Harris guessed it would take six to nine months for the church to be repaired.
“We’re going to get it built. We’re carrying on,” he said. “It’s not going to stop us.”
There just might be a message in there, Bailey.
However, if the whole world burned down except for him and his congregation I still think that Bailey would say “God’s going to use this for good.” Makes it hard to wonder what exactly Bailey would consider as proof of his god’s complete indifference — or even disapproval.
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In my earlier post on the historical reliability of the gospels I responded to Arthenor’s post at http://arthenor.wordpress.com/, as far as those gospels and an historical Jesus were concerned; there were other issues in his blog post that required some attention, but were not relevant to the topic of the gospels. Unless you read Arthenor’s blog post most of this will seem rather random, if you are interested you can check it out at the above link. I will briefly go over these other concerns now, though again I will not be going point by point through Arthenor’s post; it would be too long and they can really be covered in an overall manner. These other issues are a significant misunderstanding of my position as it pertains to god, Biblical matters such as the flood or Ezekiel, and allegations of philosophical bias; and that old canard of “science is like religion” that I felt was implied.
At some point the notion has crept in that I simply wish to disbelieve in the supernatural, and so deny the existence of all supernatural things, people, events or books that contain such as real occurrences without any reason beyond preference. This notion has allowed circular arguments to be invented for me and absurd definitions attributed to me. It has also been utilized to frame my argument against an historical Jesus as nothing more than a philosophical bias hidden under a veneer of historical argument; this suggests that I disbelieve for the sake of disbelief, and my position is essentially an irrational one based on personal desire. The greater topic of the Bible came up out of my reference that it was fiction and a requested expansion on that reference. Not everything I mentioned was claimed as a specific contradiction within the book; the absurdities of Ezekiel are just that-fiction, absurdities-not a contradiction to any other part of the Bible. Though the story does have at least one, it is not of concern here. As to why I consider tales of creation, flood and Ezekiel’s ravings about fantastical creatures to name but a few to be fiction, it has nothing to do with a simplistic notion that I just don’t want to believe because I do not like it.
Let me explain-to impart any credibility to any given claim we must demand credible evidence; that is to say that merely taking a story as evidence enough by itself does not suffice. First we can see if the claim is plausible. If the claim is that in ancient times a man walked up a mountain and saw a goat then it is certainly plausible. After all there is nothing unusual about such a thing: men, mountains and goats are all known to exist and such an event is well within the realms of probability. If one were to replace goat with fire breathing dragon (the big ones of fantasy tales say) then we have a problem, for dragons are not known to exist nor known to ever have existed, so the claim is no longer immediately plausible. If a claim is of an extraordinary nature then we should also demand an extraordinary level of evidence. The creatures and events of the Bible are not above this requirement. We should also ask if said claim is in breach of any physical laws that for every other known thing to exist are so far inviolable and have a wealth of experimental and observational evidence to back them up; to further ask does the supernatural explanation posited advance our understanding and intellectual ability or stunt it. We should also postulate more plausible explanations before concluding in dragons, as Mr. Dawkins said, “if you hear hooves clip clopping down the street one night it may very well be a zebra or even a unicorn but, before we assume that it’s anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence”. Of course it goes without saying that the burden of proof lies with those who make such claims or argue for the truth of claims beyond the ordinary; it is impossible for me to prove a negative.
When I encounter god, creation stories, global floods and Ezekiel’s ranting I ask myself, what is the evidence to support these claims? One book of stories is all there is, a single unverifiable source. There is no other reference to these things or events; there are no present day examples of these weird creatures Ezekiel saw, no fossil evidence or even other descriptions from alternate sources. The alleged god stopped making any form of demonstrable act millennia before anyone was in a position to create useful records; in fact this alleged god is so uninvolved these days, He may as well not be present at all. The stories of creation and flood also stand in direct opposition to a very healthy body of scientific observation, experimentation and data which tells far more about the formation of the world than that “god did it” excuse. I reject this absurd excuse because there is no objective evidence for the claims and what evidence we do have tells a different story; no personal philosophy, no preferred world view, just the evaluation of the existing scientific evidence and deductive reasoning. Now unless anyone can provide objective evidence for the existence of this god, creation, flood and Ezekiel’s ramblings beyond one biased, subjectively interpreted tome — even amongst Christians — then I have nothing to change my provisional conclusion that none of it ever existed.[1] Much like I — and Arthenor I’d wager — provisionally conclude that powerful and easily upset Zeus, Thor and his mighty hammer Mjolnir or leprechauns also do not exist. Furthermore the many contradictions of the Bible, the bizarre activities of an allegedly omnipotent and omniscient being, the manifest flaws of the plan and His frankly deplorable genocidal maniac OT character further argue against the existence of Christian Judaeo god; I am certain that He does not exist.
So until anyone can objectively prove His existence then it is not acceptable to use the argument from ignorance of “god did it” to paper over any absurdity that crops up. If every time we encountered the then unexplainable and posited an omnipotent deity to be responsible then we would learn nothing, no scientific discovery; so why should we make an exception for one group solely because it was written? Actually it is interesting to note that leaning on His omnipotence to excuse what is otherwise a physical improbability is replete with pitfalls for the theist. In the Floods case we might ask that if He was so perfect why His only solution was a murdering deluge instead of just fixing His creation, in fact how did He create such broken creations in the first instance never minding that due to His omniscience He should have seen it all coming. Why was He even angry given the inevitability of it all, how could a perfect being become angry in that manner? That is just a mere taster of the illogical quandary anyone invoking omnipotent “god did it” will bring and I don’t see any other variety.
Mr. Arthenor on the other hand appears to just believe, to accept anything once it was written down, written down in one specific book mind and he apparently does not consider objective scientific evidence in this matter. What is most unhelpful is when he resorts to making stuff up in an attempt to protect his position by making out that I think like he does, and that this makes my arguments against him as valid when turned against me, belief versus belief:
He says, “However, in the case of divine creation, it is not the evidence, but philosophical bias of the exact kind you demonstrated when you argued the gospels should be rejected as historical based on the laws of physics which has been used to rule out divine creation.”
Ahem, utter rubbish. I reject the Biblical divine creation precisely because the evidence — contained in Evolution and other sources — contradicts it and there is no objective evidence to support the existence of a creator. Nor have I ever utilized the laws of physics against the supernatural miracles to dismiss the gospels, I merely pointed out that the miracle stories additionally contravened the well tested laws of physics, and could not be accepted as real without corroborating evidence, though this was evidently not recalled. A natural explanation is where the evidence has led us, so I can see no ‘a priori’ assumption or ‘philosophical bias’ to lend these allegations any succor here.
The entire paragraph on secular bias is of a similar vein, depending on his self-serving notions of how and why I think or what supposed version of scientific analysis I am using; essentially one big straw-man. Allow me to once again clarify; first I think that I have adequately explained my position on the historical usefulness of the gospels, and also made clear just why any claims of the supernatural are not to be accepted at face value. At no point did I offer a justification of atheism, certainly not on the grounds Arthenor created. His creation of four points of what I may allegedly mean by science and then choosing the most advantageous is illogical; his writing it does not make it so. I use the evidence and data gained by scientific observation and experimentation, the opinion of those qualified in their respective fields, and along with my — hopefully — critical, rational reasoning reach a conclusion based upon a good evidential foundation. There is no arbitrary preference in these matters; there is evidence existing, lack of it, and reason.
When I said that science is not a competing dogma I said it, and explained it as a counter to Arthenor’s suggestion that science ‘needed’ to discredit Jesus and his miracles to remain relevant; as though science was like another religious dogma trying to assert it’s authority. By my reading of his words he was suggesting that science was a structured set of beliefs without evidential foundation followed by a group of people that find them pleasing, as in a faith much like religion. This frankly stupid canard is routinely trotted out in an attempt to drag science to religions level, one must wonder at how poorly theists think of their beliefs when their argument is to accuse opposition of being as poor as that opposition views religion. Like I have repeatedly said above, science = observation, experimentation, data, peer review and conclusion based upon previous; as Sagan said, it is our best tool.[2] All the religious dogma I know on the other hand is a structured set of beliefs lacking any credible foundational evidence, often followed by people that largely just accept it, no demand for objective evidence, no critical appraisal, just faith. That is why many theists make such a great deal over the importance of faith, faith is of such importance in religious matters precisely because without it there is no evidence to be relied upon.
Hopefully it is now clear that I do not just arbitrarily dismiss supernatural claims, solely because they conflict with some personal desire for a non-supernatural world without god. I evaluate the evidence and have so far found no compelling evidence to support supernatural claims, be they Biblical or any other; in fact the evidence we do have is often contrary to these claims. Therefore these supernatural Biblical events for all intents and purposes did not take place, and so they must be fictional creations by their authors for metaphorical purposes; which in turn suggests that the Bible’s origins are not divine. I would also suggest that in the future any opinion on my position be phrased as such, and refrain from absolute declarations on how I think, so we might avoid further mistaken statements.
[1] Intriguingly Arthenor was keen to dismiss Phlegon’s Marvels as tongue in cheek to make his reference to the Jesus crucifixion event more concrete and not that of a man given to flights of fancy. I wonder, in what manner was Phlegon dismissed yet Ezekiel found plausible? It looks like shifting standards.
[2] “There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything” (Carl Sagan, scientist, Cosmos, 1980[my emphasis]).
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Sam Harris‘ Op-Ed piece in the New York Times yesterday on Francis Collins‘ appointment by President Obama as the new NIH director has ignited a renewed storm of discussion around the internet. I don’t have much to add to that commentary but I would like to record my initial, gut reaction to the slides from a 2008 talk that Collins gave at Berkely and that Harris included in his piece:
Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”
Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”
Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”
Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”
Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?”
Yes, slides 1-4 are nothing more than nonsensical religious assertions. On to Slide 5. Here is a newsflash for Collins: We are already living our lives quite comfortabley within that worldview! Did Collins ever bother to check on us and see how we are doing? Of course not. Because if he actually did make a legitimate effort to understand the unescapable fact that atheists generally leave pretty normal and moral lives then that would crush his favorite argument for the existence of the Christian God.
And God forbid that a scientists would actually want to do something like that.
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This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.
Monday! That means that all the heavenly bodies are once again perfectly aligned for another session of Monday School – STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!” (And it’s likely to remain that way until I’m stupid enough to let my pet tiger out of his cage to help me write these entries.)
Today’s Lesson: What’s The Connection Between Astrology And The Bible?
According to the fundamentalist Baptist I befriended in junior high, there is NO connection. In my friend’s view, the Bible is the word of God Almighty and astrology is one of the black arts of Satan that the Bible condemns in passages such as these:
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” – Deuteronomy 18:10-12
“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. Behold, they shall be as stubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.” – Isaiah 47:13-14
“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.” – Jeremiah 10:2
Unfortunately for my friend and others like him, there are other Bible passages that seem to lend credence to the claims of astrologers:
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years….” – Genesis 1:14
“They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” – Judges 5:20
“Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?” – Job 38:31
(The speaker here is allegedly God Himself. The Pleiades, according to Greek myth, were the seven daughters of Atlas who were transformed into stars. You can still see these “sisters” in the constellation of Taurus today.)
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars….” – Luke 21:25
- Image via Wikipedia
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on astrology, “… it does not appear impossible that in Daniel’s time exiled Jews practiced astrology. Judging from Daniel v, 5, 7, it is possible that the prophet himself held a high rank among the astrologers of the Babylonian court.”
As I’ve pointed out repeatedly in previous Monday School lessons, the Bible did not come from God, perfect and unique, but is the creation of human beings who lived in specific times and places. These human beings were very much products of their cultures, and as these cultures changed, so, too, did the nature of what was created and how prior creations were interpreted.
Astrology seems to have been very much a part of the world that created the Bible. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, looking to the sky in search of signs of coming calamity can be traced as far back as 1800 BCE Babylonia. The more refined sort of astrology which claims that the position of heavenly bodies controls what happens here on earth can be traced back to 300 BCE Hellenistic Egypt, with most of the essential elements we associate with astrology today being in place by about 100 BCE. An interesting foreshadowing or echo of the 12 signs of the zodiac can be found in Genesis 49 where a dying Jacob assigns qualities and animal symbols to each of his 12 sons – sons destined to give rise to the 12 tribes of Israel. (For one person’s very interesting views on this and other apparent connections between astrology and the Bible, click here.)
More generally, the sky seems to have long played a huge role in many religions all around the world. According to David Leeming and Jake Page’s God: Myths of the Male Divine
Cultures as diverse as that of the Egyptians, the Aztecs, and the Japanese have had Sun Gods. Many cultures have associated the moon with a goddess. Easter and Ramadan are just two religious holidays which are determined by observation of the moon. The many holidays associated with the end of December are derived from the winter solstice – that time of the year when the night is longest and the sun is lowest in the sky in the northern hemisphere. It seems that some of the oldest priestly classes that we know of arose by virtue of close observation of the heavens and the learned ability to make predictions about the movements of the heavenly bodies and related seasonal events (e.g., the annual flooding of the Nile).
Matthew 2:1 touches on one of these priestly classes when it says “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem….” According to Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, “‘Wise men’ is a translation of the Greek ‘magoi,’ which has entered our language by way of the Latin as ‘magi.’ The word is derived from ‘magu,’ the name given to their priests by the Persian Zoroastrians. Throughout ancient history, the priests were considered the repository of important knowledge. Not only did they know the techniques for the propitiation of the gods, but – in Babylon in particular – they studied the heavenly bodies…. The priests were therefore learned astrologers….” (p. 788). How ironic that the very Bible my fundamentalist friend claimed condemned astrology actually presents astrologers as being some of the first people to recognize the greatness of Jesus!
According to William Harwood’s Mythology’s Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, “The fable of the magi’s visit to Jerusalem and Bethlehem was consistent with at least one previous instance of alleged magi behaviour. Seven hundred years earlier magi were said to have followed a new star to the birthplace of Zarathustra, whom they presented with expensive gifts. And before that new stars had heralded the births of Abraham and Krishna” (p. 257). Once again, it seems that religions like to recycle stories almost as much as Hollywood does.
An article by Frank Zindler that appeared in the June 1992 issue of American Atheist magazine explains the connection between older religions, astrology, and Christianity in much more detail. According to Zindler, “The mystery religion to which Christianity seems most closely related is Mithraism. Mithra (also spelled Mithras), a Graeco-Persian invention, was born of a virgin on the winter solstice…. Being a solar deity, Mithra was worshiped on Sundays; after Mithra had become amalgamated with Helios, he was depicted with a halo…. In some cases it is difficult to tell if ancient images were intended as depictions of Mithra or Jesus. The leader of the cult was called a pope (papa) and he ruled from a ‘mithraeum’ on the Vatican Hill in Rome. A prominent iconographic feature of Mithraism was a large key, needed to unlock the celestial gates through which souls of the deceased were believed to pass. It would appear that the ‘keys of the Kingdom’ held by the popes as successors to ‘St. Peter’ derive from Mithra, not from a Palestinian messiah. The Mithric priests wore miters, special headdresses from which the Christian bishop’s hat was derived. (The Latin name for this Phrygian/Persian hat was mitra – which also was an acceptable Latin spelling for Mithra!) The Mithraists consumed a sacred meal (Myazda) which was completely analogous to the Catholic eucharistic service…. Like the Christians, they celebrated the atoning death of a savior who was resurrected on a Sunday. A major center of Mithraic philosophy was Tarsus – St. Paul’s hometown – in what is now southeast Turkey.”
Zindler goes on to explain that both Mithraism and Christianity are heavily dependent on the ancient Near East’s astrological understanding of the universe. It’s a tad complicated, but here it is in a nutshell:
In 128 BCE the Greek astronomer Hipparchus discovered the precession of the equinoxes. That is to say, the apparent position of the sun in the sky changes over time with respect to the background provided by the fixed stars and constellations. Hipparchus discovered that the sun’s position on the vernal equinox – the first day of spring – had shifted from the constellation of Taurus to the constellation of Aries. Some people thought only a god could have moved the sun in this way. What god? Mithras – the Persian deity associated with the sacrifice of a bull (Taurus).
By the time Hipparchus had made his discovery, however, the sun was almost out of Aries as well. This new movement would come to be symbolized by the sacrifice of a lamb. The constellation that the sun appeared to be entering was Pisces – symbolized by fish. Apparently it’s no coincidence that Jesus named twelve disciples (one for every sign of the zodiac), that he would come to be associated with the lamb sacrifice, and that one of the first symbols of early Christians was the fish. (It might also be no coincidence that it was the ancient Hebrews’s creation of a golden calf that pissed off Moses.)
Lest you think all this is merely the ravings of one lone atheist, consider these passages from Peter Occhiogrosso’s The Joy of Sects: A Spirited Guide to the World’s Religious Traditions
“One group of scholars has associated this figure [Mithras] with that of Perseus – who represents the northern constellation named after him – and hypothesize that the cult arose in response to newly developed information that the reign of Taurus as the constellation of the spring equinox had been replaced by that of Pisces. (In our own day, the news that Pisces itself was soon to be replaced in the spring equinox by Aquarius was enough to give rise to a hit Broadway musical centered around the so-called Age of Aquarius)….
“As paganism waned, Mithraism became Christianity’s strongest competitor. The church formally suppressed it in the 4th century, but not before seeming to appropriate certain of its observances and symbols…. Sunday had always been the holy day of the Mithraists, who also celebrated December 25 as the birthday of the sun, in reassurance that the days began to grow longer following the winter solstice” (pp. 307-308).
It’s worth noting at this point that Perseus was allegedly the son of Zeus and a human female whom Zeus allegedly impregnated without harm to her virginity.
Chas. S. Clifton’s Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics
“Before his religion spread into the Roman world in the first century B.C., Mithras had been worshiped throughout the Persian Empire, where he represented a savior-king…. A Persian prophecy placed him as reigning last in a series of 7,000-year periods (each symbolized by one of the seven visible planets), followed by an apocalypse and renewal of the world…. Not surprisingly, this prophecy became blended with early Christians’ views of the Second Coming of Christ” (p. 96).
At times, Christians seem to have openly accepted the basic ideas of astrology and attempted to reconcile them with their religious beliefs despite the attempts of the Church to stamp out competing mystical sources of knowledge. According to the Britannica’s article on astrology, “In the interpretation of Bardesanes, a Syrian Christian scholar (154-222)… the motions of the stars govern only the elemental world, leaving the soul free to choose between good and evil…. In still other interpretations – e.g., that of the Christian Priscillianists (followers of Priscilla, a Spanish ascetic of the 4th century…) – the stars merely make manifest the will of God to those trained in astrological symbolism.”
Gallup polls taken in 1990 and 1996 indicate that 25% of Americans believe in astrology. A 1997 Yankelovich poll indicates that 37% of Americans believe in astrology to some degree. Two almanacs tell me that about 85% of Americans claim to be Christian. If these numbers are even approximately accurate, it would seem that millions of Christians continue to believe in astrology today despite its condemnation by the Vatican and other Christian authorities.
Could this be an indication that once one abandons evidence and logic and starts believing in ridiculous things there’s simply no end to the number of ridiculous things one will believe in? I wonder….
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http://www.anatheist.net