OpenDiary.com blogger “California Christian” posted an article on slavery in the Bible and then left me the following comments. These are my short responses to those comments.

Now, as for slavery, the crux of the article was not that the Bible condems slavery, it was that certain kinds of slavery are permitted. For instance, it was preferable to take a pagan nation into slavery rather than have them killed (because killing them would be an automatic ticket to Hell). Also, slavery back then was different than it is now, and people in slavery were usually there willingly (to pay off a debt, etc). [California Christian]

We agree that the Bible does not condemn slavery outright. That is a good starting point. Most people would agree today that slavery in any form is immoral. This begs the following question: If our sense of morality with respect to this issue is more acceptable than God’s position in the Bible, then in what sense can one say that God is not only a morally superior being but the source of morality? If the Bible is the only legitimate and objective source of morality, how is it that we have managed to move beyond it?

These questions aside, California Christian attempts to argue that the kind of slavery allowed for in the Bible is at the very least a tolerable kind of slavery. These pagan nations might, perhaps, disagree. Why is the only choice between enslaving or killing pagan nations?  What is going on here? California Christian then goes on to assert that people in slavery were “usually” there willingly - were the pagan nations taken into slavery there willingly?

What is obvious to me is that the Bible, and hence, the God of the Bible, treats the nation and people of Israel differently than it treats other nations and peoples. For instance, Jewish law states quite explicitly that owning foreign slaves (or non-Jewish slaves) is permissible (and presumably desirable) but that owning fellow Jews as slaves is not allowed (emphasis added):

Leviticus 25:44-46 (NRSV)

As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves. You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property. These you may treat as slaves, but as for your fellow Israelites, no one shall rule over the other with harshness.

The only instances in which a Jew may be taken into slavery by another Jew is as a means to pay off debt. But even in this case, Jewish law restricts the term of slavery to 6 years: 

Exodus 21:1-7 (NRSV) 
These are the ordinances that you shall set before them: When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone. But if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person,” then his master shall bring him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.

The restriction is removed only if the slave requests to serve his master for life. (Thanks to “Conversational Atheist” for references to these verses).

It seems to me that what we are dealing with here is a national or tribal deity who protects the interests of His chosen people but couldn’t give a damn about outsiders. These passages basically refute California Christian’s central claim that slavery was different and therefore more tolerable back then. Slavery was only different for fellow Hebrews - it doesn’t appear to be much different at all for non-Hebrews, i.e., non Yahweh worshippers. 

This goes along with what “Conversational Atheist” states in this article on the subject: God has a problem with people owning Jews as slaves (see Exodus), but God does not have a problem with Jews owning slaves, provided that they were not Jewish.

However, California Christian goes on:

As he states in the article, the Bible says that anyone caught selling another into slavery was to be put to death. Joseph in the book of Genesis was sold into slavery, which was wrong, and God used it for the good of Joseph, earning him favor in the eyes of the pharoah. And Joseph eventually ended up forgiving his family. [California Christian]

Let’s look at that verse in question:

“He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.” (Exodus 21:16)

This is clearly a stipulation against kidnapping in particular, not a general rule against selling others into slavery. After all, in Leviticus, the law clearly states that you may acquire slaves from other countries or from foreigners living among you. At the very least is okay to buy slaves and  make them your own property. Just prior to this passage, Exodus 21:7, describes rules and provisions associated with selling your own daughter into slavery (note: this practice is not condemned). So, clearly, the conclusion drawn from this single passage by California Christian is quite erroneous. Additionally, it is not clear, at least to me, whether this passage refers to kidnapping other Jews or just kidnapping other people in general.

So, where does this leave us? No matter how hard California Christian or others try, there simply is no way to morally justify these provisions. People today would be outraged if Jews in Israel took Pakistanis, for instance, as slaves. Yet this is the kind of behavior that is explicitly sanctioned within the pages of the Bible. It is clear to me that these pages represent the ancient and, now at least, misguided moral practices of an Iron age civilzation looking to codify their questionable behavior in terms of religious authority.

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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Good morning, class! And welcome to another session of Monday School. Whether you’re a long-time student or a new transfer, I hope you’ll find that this course lives up to its billing as “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense You Learned Yesterday!” Let’s all open our minds to atheism and begin, shall we?

The Old Testament’s account of how the ancient Hebrews went from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land with the help of Moses is one of its most famous and important. Yet many, many problems render it difficult to accept as true.

Consider:

1) The Bible is our only source for the stories associated with Moses. 

They are inherently suspect as one-sided accounts written long after the fact by people with a vested interest in them. “[T]here is no record outside the Bible of Israelites in Egypt, of their enslavement, and of their escape. In particular, none of the events in Exodus are to be found anywhere in the Egyptian records uncovered by modern archaeologists.” - Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testaments, p. 125-126.

2) The Bible’s story of Moses is less than unique. 

“The few details which the Bible gives about the personal life of Moses represent him as the typical hero of national legend, who comes into the world and departs from it in an aura of mystery. He is exposed in infancy beside a river and rescued by a princess, and at the close of his career he disappears on a hilltop. His ‘call’ is authenticated by three miraculous signs, and he is equipped with a wonder-working rod which divides a sea or lake, makes the bitter waters sweet, and produces a stream from a rock. These traits are abundantly paralleled elsewhere in folk literature.” -Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament, Theodor H. Gaster, p. 224.

3) The Bible dates the stories of Moses to a time when they almost certainly could not have occurred. 

“One theory takes literally the statement in 1 Kings 6:1 that the Exodus from Egypt occurred 480 years prior to the time Solomon began building the Temple in Jerusalem. This occurred in the fourth year of his reign, about 960 BCE; therefore, the Exodus would date about 1440 BCE. This conclusion, however, is at variance with most of the biblical and archaeological evidence.” - The Encyclopedia Britannica, “Moses”

4) A Sloppy God 

As in the Bible’s stories about Creation, Adam and Eve, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel, God is once again depicted as using very sloppy means to solve problems He could have fixed in much better ways - or simply prevented from arising in the first place. In this case, His main problem is getting the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt. How did God ever allow this problem to arise in the first place? How could He ever have allowed His “Chosen People” to fall so low? It seems that if they deserved to be enslaved, they never should have been “chosen” by an all-knowing, all-powerful God to begin with. If they didn’t deserve to be enslaved, it seems that an all-good God wouldn’t have allowed it to occur.

5) A Tardy God 

Having allowed His “Chosen People” to become enslaved, why did God allow them to live in slavery for over 400 years before coming to their rescue? If the Bible is to be believed, whole generations of Hebrews were born into slavery, lived lives as slaves, and died as slaves through no fault of their own. Such evil is impossible to reconcile with the existence of an all-good God. Calling the victims of this slavery God’s “Chosen People” sharpens the absurdity of this the way salt sharpens the pain of a wound. How much better to have been a “God forsaken” Egyptian during those 400 years!

6) An Unneeded God? 

By the time God did decide to come to the aid of the Hebrews, the Bible says that the Egyptian Pharaoh thought those Hebrews to be more numerous and mightier than his own people (Exodus 1:9). If that was in fact the case, why did they need God’s help at all to leave Egypt?

7) A God Who Himself Needs Help? 

Once God has decided to help the Hebrews, He chooses Moses as His agent. Why did He choose anyone? Why didn’t He just magically whisk the Hebrews out of Egypt through a simple act of will? Why does a supposedly omnipotent being keep having to choose people like Adam and Noah and Moses to help Him achieve His purposes?

8) Moses: God’s Immoral Choice 

Having decided to choose anyone as His agent, how could an all-good God have chosen Moses - a murderer? (See Exodus 2:12.) God had earlier told Noah “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Genesis 9:6). Yet He not only fails to apply this rule of His to Moses after Moses slays an Egyptian, He actually rewards Moses with a leadership position.

9) Moses: God’s Unqualified Choice 

How could God choose Moses for that leadership position when Moses was a poor public speaker? (See Exodus 4:10.) Why does He tell Moses to trust in Him - the maker of all mouths - to make things right, then “solve” the problem by telling Moses to get Aaron to serve as his spokesman? Once again, an allegedly perfect God uses a less efficient means when it was in His power to use a perfect one; that is to say, He could have given Moses himself spellbinding eloquence. As it is, Aaron’s presence seems more like a fortunate happenstance which was attributed to God by later writers interested in furthering their theology than a genuine case of divine intervention which wouldn’t have needed such a sloppy middleman to achieve God’s goals.

10) God’s Strange Respect For Immoral Human Authority 

Having chosen Moses as His agent, why does God order Moses to get Pharaoh’s permission for the Hebrews to leave? Why didn’t He just tell Moses to revolt and lead the Hebrews away? As with Paul’s later exhortations for slaves to obey their masters and all citizens to obey their leaders, the Bible here displays a bizarre respect for authority even when that authority is clearly immoral.

*

That’s all for this week’s class. Next time: A detailed analysis of the race between God and the Hebrews to be the first to strain our gullibility past the breaking point.

Extra Credit Homework Assignment: Write a short report on which act of Moses most offends your moral sense and why.

Go to Part 2

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But I have a fundamental problem with creationists, and religious people in general. I’m from Québec, which, for the record, is the largest province of Canada, and the territory with the lowest church attendance ratings in North America by a significant margin. I couldn’t say I’ve always been an atheist, but I’ve never been a theist, and I would say I was never really agnostic, either. I was originally going to write a whole entry on the subject of my atheism being normal, so to speak. Most people here are nonpracticing, and many would be called atheists or agnostics, though many are so by convention; it became, in the last couple decades, normal over here to be a nonbeliever or a very discrete believer. If you want to look into the history of the matter, feel free to, but it’s not my specialty, so I’ll spare you that.

The point is this: I’m seventeen, and I’m an atheist. My identification to atheism and the degree of research I’ve done on the matter is probably seen as unusual, but my atheism in itself is a surprise to no one here. I haven’t had to fight for it. All my friends and most, if not all, of my teachers, are also atheists or agnostic. I haven’t ever had to fight for it, and so long as I live here, I don’t think I will have to. However, I identify strongly to those atheists, usually Americans, or people having spent much time in the United States (which I’ll use interchangeably with America, by the way. I would have been opposed with using America to mean the U.S.A. if it were on the rise, but by now it’s an accepted part of the English language, at least spoken.) who have had and still had to fight for their worldview. Many people in Québec would be content to call out the majority of Christians responsible for this obligation to fight as backwards conservative idiots. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the religious right in the U.S. is near-entirely responsible for the horrible reputation the whole country tends to enjoy over here. The thing is that I’ve grown up with the Internet, and learned English very early, and so I eventually got to know lots of people online. This is how I first learned that creationists were anything more or other than a minority of oddballs who congregated occasionally and were generally laughed at.

Sparing you the exact story of how I came to be an atheist, (it’s far less interesting than most stories on this site, anyway) I considered myself an atheist by that point already, though I didn’t really identify to any kind of movement; I wouldn’t have called myself an atheist, but I was definitely beyond agnosticism. I must have been about twelve or thirteen, so, about five years ago (which makes me feel really damn young, by the way) or so. Realising that people, what you might call a majority, even, were calling for something that seemed so patently false (and turned out to be patently false, or at best toroughly unjustified, any way I could look at it and research it), was really what made me identify to the label of atheist.

Even by that point, though, when the subject came up, which it never did in “real life”, I was generally content to state my strong opinions and support for separation of church and state, and leave it at that. What I think really made me into what American news headlines would love to call a “new atheist”, would be a religious debate that sprang up in the General Discussion section of a forum on which most of my online friends were and still are. We were all about fourteen or fifteen, some a few years older, so it really wasn’t such a good, straight debate. Being a population of nerds, though, atheists/agnostics/ outnumbered Christians, at least in the small part of the forum’s population that took part in the debate. (and this was a predominantly American forum, by a large margin, if that’s consolation to anyone here.) And, again, sparing a long story, we “won”. That is, you can’t really unequivocally win in that kind of a debate, but it became obvious that the other side didn’t make sense.

There were a few other debates on the same forum in recent times, and they were similar, except we’d all grown rather older and so they were much more like real debates. The results, though, were strikingly similar. So, now you know the recent history of my atheism, and how I never had and still don’t have to fight for it in any way, metaphorical or not. The real question is this: what, then, do I have against Creationists that touches me personally and drives me to fight for it by choice? This is an actual question that I was asking myself until recently; I met all kinds of creationists. I loathed some, who ensured that any logical conversation with them was toroughly impossible, but I didn’t mind a minority of them, who were, for the most part, logical and sensible human beings I could relate to on many levels. What is it that, in both of those vastly different archetypes and any in between, drives me to argue with them to the bitter end, usually long after they’ve given up? (except for the very extreme of the former archetype, who will not give up from an apparent ignorance that there exists anything to give up to other than Christianity)

I think I found an answer from my most recent series of argument with a creationist. The person in question is a girl my age from English Canada and, after some relatively fruitless debating, seems to have mellowed a bit and definitely appears to be the most cooperative creationist I’ve met that I would still call by that name, at least as far as I remember. It started with a religious debate on the same forum previously mentioned, but she turned out to try much harder at proper debating than most others did. Eventually we took it to MSN, since the debate didn’t really involve anyone but us anymore.

The first time we argued on MSN was fairly standard stuff. I could mention everything I didn’t like, her tendency to type four words at a time and interrupt me and such, but really, it was what you’d expect, she didn’t really budge. At some point, though, she linked to Kirk Durston’s articles (Google him if you would. I wasn’t aware until recently that he had just as horrible a reputation as he does. Can’t find the place she linked to anymore, but there are several blog entries from scientists who have debated him or witnessed his debates) saying that it had somehow “completely demolished” any chance of evolution being a reasonable position to her. It took me about three hours to read the paper she was pointing to (which was meant for laypeople, although the only argument he had that was not logically unsound was undecipherable to most laypeople, and was, apparently, factually wrong anyway.) and come up with a list of objections, with explanations as to why, which I’ll spare you. Durston also had written another layperson’s paper on the subject of “Christianity, killing, and Atheism” which commited exactly the fallacy you would expect: selecting only a few historical events where Christian authorities had specifically sanctioned or demanded a massacre, while accounting all deaths of the modern communist regimes to atheism, regardless of the actual cause of those regimes, which weren’t actually founded on atheism in any meaningful way. She also mentioned C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, so I provided links to more complete criticisms of the book than I could provide. (I really don’t think there’s any part of Lewis’ apologetic credibility left for me to remove, anyway, honestly.)

Now that I read the last paragraph, I realise I sound a bit high-and-mighty and such. That’s not how I want to come across. I think most people who’ve argued with creationists can agree, the part about destroying creationism isn’t very difficult if you just do a bit of research. It’s the creationists themselves that are difficult.

So, my rebuttals were sent by e-mail, from school. A couple days later, we start arguing again and, though she never says so quite straight, she seems to conceed that her previous arguments were wrong. She makes no direct mention of them (not using arguments I just refuted is probably worth extra points in itself) and is now saying that creationism doesn’t imply the absence of evolution, which is true, and she’s generally much more willing to discuss, and the discussion turns to the existence of God and creationism in general, not opposed to evolution. So, I make my general case for atheism, that there is, for all intents and purposes, no God, and no evidence of one that isn’t wildly subjective, and that under those conditions, postulating an omnipotent being is the unreasonable thing. Again, things were going much better at this point and it actually felt like a conversation that wasn’t being had in vain. Then we turn to the First Cause argument. I’d already explained to her why it was faulty, but she reused the exact same excuse for God’s “uncausedness” as she did the previous time, (scratch those previously-mentioned brownie points, I guess) that God was “supernatural”, and that therefore not subject to the same rules of nature. I’d already told her that this was a synonym, not an explanation; “supernatural” is the adjective we give to things which break laws of nature, not a justification for the laws being broken. I tried something different from the first time, though. I explained that, in theory, it was possible that things simply always existed, or that the Big Bang was an event that led to the Universe being as it is now, that it may not have been a cause of the Universe’s existence, but simply an event in it. I still agreed to the First Cause for the sake of argument, in an attempt to show her how it didn’t work. When I asked why it was that God could always have been there, but the Universe could not. She said something about God being supernatural, again. Repeat two or three times, with somewhat different scenarios from me and not-quite-identical answers from her. Then I tried a full explanation of why it didn’t work, instead of an analogy.

Then I think she got what I meant, and then she told me, quickly and not impolitely, that even if I did prove her wrong (my wording is ambiguous here. I’m not sure exactly what her words were again, but she didn’t clearly imply I’d actually proved her wrong. I can’t find the right way to put it.) it wouldn’t change her belief. And then she quickly changed the subject to casual talk. And because we’d been arguing for an hour and I had to go soon, anyway, I didn’t object. And when it was over and done, and I was thinking the whole thing over, I figured what it was that made me want to argue, that touched me personally even though I was free of the prejudice that many atheists face.

Yeah, this is where I actually get to the real, final point of this entry. That’s why it’s filed under Testimony.

It’s this wall that came up at the last second. This will, not directly acknowledged but definitely present, to stop all meaningful exchange of ideas, this will to not take into account the consequences of facts they can’t ignore. Not all of them draw the line at the same point; some will draw the line and refuse any kind of meaningful discourse as soon as you question the unquestioning devotion to “their” God. Others are willing to go further. I think that was the furthest I’ve seen, and that’s why I noticed. At first she drew the line early, and simply didn’t listen. Then, I have no idea why, but she listened, and behaved more like she would if we’d been talking about anything else. And then that wall came back. I think it’s that metaphorical wall that drives me to argue, not just because it’s frustrating (and it is) but because it’s… I’m not sure how far I can push it here, but I’m going to go with “potentially unhealthy”. And that’s putting it mildly, because that was a mild case. She wasn’t and is not stupid. But to unconsciously draw a line where one stops thinking, to put it bluntly, is something I can’t stand.

If people did not break those walls of presupposed faith, as they occasionally do, then there would have been no Alfred Kinsey, no Charles Darwin, to use the obvious example. No Karl Marx, no Emile Durkheim, and I question whether there would have been an Albert Einstein. There would have been no Ferdinand Magellan, no Giordano Bruno, no Thomas Jefferson. Name them. I tried to be original, and name at least a couple that people might not expect or know of, but there are more than one can count.

Maybe it’s because of where I live, because if those walls had not been broken, there would have been no Jean Lesage, no René Lévesque, and more generally because my province, which I see much like a country, though I don’t consider myself separatist, would still be the corrupt mess it once was, with the government-hired, church-funded “security” at voting booths threatning to break your legs if you don’t vote Union Nationale.

No, I don’t think religion intends to reinstate that kind of thing. Maybe it does, I don’t think so. But it remains that, without people to break down that wall, whether it’s theirs or someone else’s, and erase that line drawn by dogmatism, things would not have changed here, and they would not have changed elsewhere. And I contend that, if people did not occasionally break down that wall, most people on this site would not be here. The reason I don’t have to fight for my rights, don’t have anyone trying to strip me of them, or telling me that I already have been stripped of some of them, is because people broke down that wall. And that wall, that unconscious line that dogma draws in a person, at which point they stop thinking properly, is my problem with creationism in particular, for its anti-science roots, and my problem with religion at large, to whatever extent it applies. Breaking barriers is a tired metaphor, but I think at least this time, it’s the best there is.

I hope you found my story was worthwhile. Hopefully the text wasn’t too clunky and blockish for most people. I don’t call for religion to be outlawed or forcefully removed. I call for it to be questioned, through and through. That should be enough. It has been enough. If it isn’t, we’ll see then.

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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Gee, sometimes a lesson is just so fascinating, Monday School ends up lasting right through Wednesday! Hope no one minds too much….

Here are 5 more ways that science and logic invalidate the Bible:

14) Talking Animals 

Genesis 3:1-5 says that a serpent spoke to Eve. Numbers 22:28-30 says that Balaam’s ass spoke to him. The Song of Solomon 2:12 says that turtles have voices. Science tells us that animals can’t and don’t speak. The Bible’s accounts of the serpent and the ass are further undermined by the fact that neither Eve nor Balaam react with surprise when these animals speak. These accounts simply lack psychological credibility - but do closely resemble fables (like Aesop’s) which no one believes to be literally true.

15) Mythical Animals 

The Bible repeatedly refers to mythical animals as if they actually exist. Jeremiah 8:17 and Isaiah 11:8 refer to cockatrices (snakes with a deadly glance which allegedly hatch from a cock’s egg). Deuteronomy 33:17, Psalms 22:21 and 29:6, and Job 39:9-10 refer to unicorns. Numbers 21:6 refers to fiery serpents. Isaiah 30:6 refers to flying serpents. Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14 refer to satyrs. Science dismisses all these creatures as wild imaginings on a par with those of other ancient religions and mythologies.

16) Those Amazing Fetuses 

Genesis 25:22 says that the twins Jacob and Esau fought with each other while still in the womb. Luke 1:44 claims that a fetus can hear, understand, and react intelligently to human speech. Science tells us that fetuses lack the ability to do these things.

17) Impossible Solar Activity 

Joshua 10:13 says that the sun stood still for hours. 2 Kings 20:11 says that the sun actually went backwards 10 degrees on the sundial one day. Sciences says “No way!” for multiple reasons. Historians agree, since somehow these incredible performances of the sun utterly escaped the notice of virtually everyone on Earth. The Chinese, for instance, were recording eclipses thousands of years ago, yet the Bible would have us believe that they weren’t paying attention when the sun stood still or went backwards.

18) Inexplicable Darkness 

Mark 15:33 says that “And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole of the land until the ninth hour.” Science can provide no logical explanation for such darkness. Nobody seems to have noted this darkness except for the writer of Mark 15:33.

19) Samson 

Judges 16 tells us that a man can derive great strength from the hair on his head. Science tells us that a man’s strength is determined by his genes, his health, his diet, and his willingness to exercise and/or take steroids.

20) Jonah 

The Bible’s Book of Jonah says that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish and that he lived in the belly of the fish for three days. Science knows of no fish that can swallow a man whole. Jesus says that it was a whale in Matthew 12:40, but marine biologists say that the throat of such creatures would have trouble accommodating a grapefruit. How a man might actually live within the oxygen-deprived belly of a fish for three whole days staggers the imagination.

21) Matters Of The Flesh 

1 Corinthians 15:39 says, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.” Modern biologists would disagree since the physical similarities between humans and animals far outweigh the differences. Evolutionists say that humans, animals, fish, and birds share common ancestors and are related to each other. Humans and chimps share about 99% of their genetic material. If the Bible was right, we couldn’t transplant a baboon’s liver into a human; we couldn’t transplant the heart valves of pigs into humans; it would be pointless to test drugs on lab animals; and there wouldn’t be so many diseases common to both animals and people.

22) Cosmic Divisions 

1 Corinthians 15:40-41 says that heavenly bodies are different than the Earth, that the sun differs significantly from other stars, and that the stars differ significantly from each other. One of the landmark achievements of science was the discovery that heavenly bodies are in fact made of the same elements as are found on Earth, and that they obey the same laws of physics. Modern astronomers assure us that our sun is nothing special in the vast scheme of things. The stars can be grouped into a relatively few types. Quasars, pulsars, and black holes seem to be much more special - but the Bible is utterly silent about them.

23) Dead Men Walking 

The Bible, of course, claims that Jesus rose from the dead. It also says that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Matthew 27:52-53 says that when Jesus died, “graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.” Science says that dead is dead. A brain deprived of oxygen for more than 7 minutes suffers irreparable damage. Corpses decay. If anybody has ever seen the corpses of the saints walking around Jerusalem, the only person who thought to write it down was the author of Matthew 27 - years after the fact.

24) A Highly Suggestive Silence 

Besides all the things the Bible says which science disagrees with, there are all the things science has taught us that the Bible oddly has nothing to say about at all. It doesn’t mention bacteria, viruses, extinction, the dinosaurs, Neanderthal man, the ice ages, fossils, continental drift, genetics, atoms, the solar system, galaxies, Earth’s bombardment by space debris (some of which has produced far more disastrous effects than any flood), the New World, the Orient, India, mathematics, the purpose of body organs, the basic facts of human reproduction, the biochemical causes of madness, electricity, radio waves, or the hundreds of other things scientific investigation has revealed to us over the course of the last 2000 years. Many if not all of these things are impossible to reconcile with the Bible’s Creation story and/or the worldview of its authors. If the Bible was really inspired by God, how could it be so silent about so many important and fundamental things? If the Bible wasn’t in fact written by uninspired humans who lived in ignorance in one small part of the ancient world, why does it so thoroughly reflect the severe limitations and flaws of such humans?

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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Continuing now to examine the many ways science and the Bible conflict:

3) Giants 

Genesis 6:4 says that giants once lived on Earth. There is no evidence to support this claim. In fact, there are basic laws of physics and of physiology which prevent humans from reaching gigantic proportions.

4) Human Longevity 

The Bible says that ancient people lived to be hundreds of years old. (Methuselah allegedly lived 969 years.) The evidence suggests that ancient people were lucky to make it to 50. There is also good reason to believe that life span is biologically determined for each species, and that the life span for humans is fixed at between 85 and 95 years. Genesis 6:3, however, quotes God as saying that men shall live 120 years.

5) The Flood 

The Bible says that Noah’s Flood covered the entire Earth about 2400 B.C. Archeologists who have excavated Jericho, however, have found it continuously occupied back to 8000 B.C. without interruption or evidence of any flood. No evidence of such a flood, in fact, has ever been found in Israel. Apart from the annual flooding associated with the Nile, no flood is mentioned in the records of ancient Egypt, either.

6) The Rainbow

A) Genesis 9:11-17 says that the rainbow was the result of a special act of creation, circa 2401 B.C. Science says that it results from light being refracted by water droplets and has existed for as long as there has been light and rain.

B) Genesis also says that the rainbow serves as a reminder or mnemonic device for God - that He set the rainbow in the sky so that He would remember His promise never again to kill off all flesh with a flood. Logic tells us that an all-knowing being like God does not need reminders.

C) Logically speaking, the significance of God’s promise is elusive, given that floods still occur which kill some flesh, and He reserves the right to kill all flesh off by other means.

Bottom line: It is far more sensible to believe that the Bible’s story of the rainbow was concocted by ancient, ignorant people in an attempt to explain a natural phenomenon they couldn’t understand than that an all-knowing, all-good God would act this way.

7) The Tower of Babel

A) Genesis 11:6-9 says that the multitude of human languages appeared suddenly after God grew fearful of what humanity could accomplish with its common language when it started building a tower to heaven. Modern linguists believe that human language arose quite naturally in many places and times, and has evolved over time.

B) Logic tells us that a common human language couldn’t pose any kind of threat to an all-powerful being.

C) Elementary science tells us that God’s heaven isn’t a place that can be reached by a tower. No such place has ever been detected.

D) From an engineering standpoint, God’s heaven couldn’t have been reached by an ancient tower even if it had existed just beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Buildings as tall as modern skyscrapers weren’t possible until the invention of iron and steel framing in the 19th century. The tallest man-made structure ever built on Earth is less than a third of a mile high. The Earth’s atmosphere extends to a height of approximately 120 miles. Humans without special breathing apparatus lose consciousness at a height of less than 6 miles.

8) God Fails Biology 101

A) Leviticus 11:5-6 says that hares chew their cud. Nope.

B) Leviticus 11:13-19 indicates that the bat is a bird. Nope.

C) Leviticus 11:20 says that some fowl have four feet. Nope.

D) Leviticus 11:22-23 says that some insects have four legs. Science defines an insect as having six legs. Nothing like an insect with four legs has ever been discovered.

9) No Visible Means Of Support 

1 Samuel 2:8 says that the Earth rests on pillars - a rather common idea in antiquity. Science, of course, says that the Earth rests on nothing at all.

10) Did You Feel The Earth Move? 

1 Chronicles 16:30 indicates that the Earth doesn’t move - a common idea until Copernicus (c. 1500 A.D.). Science tells us that the Earth quakes, rotates, wobbles, orbits the sun, moves along with one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, and moves with that galaxy as it travels through the universe.

11) A Flat Earth? 

Isaiah 11:12 and Revelation 7:1 say that the Earth has four corners. Job 37:3 refers to the ends or edges of the Earth. Matthew 4:8 and Luke 4:5 says that Jesus could see all the kingdoms of the Earth from the top of a tall mountain. Today, of course, we know that the Earth is a sphere that has neither edges nor corners and that all lands cannot be seen from a single point no matter how high up we go.

12) The Mustard Seed 

Matthew 13:31-32 says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, yet grows into a tree. Botanists know of many seeds that are smaller. No tree exists in the mustard family.

13) Dead Seeds Germinate? 

John 12:24 quotes Jesus as saying that unless a seed of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it cannot give birth to a new plant. Today we know that no seed that dies can sprout. Jesus seems to have been deceived by appearances, or to have misspoke - neither of which traits are compatible with divinity.

Continued…

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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Welcome back to Monday School! “The Fast-Acting Antidote For Any Mind Poisons They May Have Fed You Yesterday!”

Many people seem to believe that there is no conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the Bible. Many say that science and the Bible either reveal a common truth, or deal with truths that do not overlap. 

I disagree with both these sets of people. I believe an objective examination of the evidence reveals many sharp disagreements between the findings of science and many of the specific truth claims of the Bible. 

Consider: 

1) Miracles 

The Bible claims many miracles have occurred. That is to say, the Bible claims that God and His agents have repeatedly intervened in human affairs in ways which defy the known laws of physics. Creation was a miracle. The Flood was a miracle. The plagues sent to Egypt were miracles. The parting of the Red Sea was a miracle. The ancient Hebrews won wars with the help of miracles. Mary’s conception of Jesus was a miracle, his birth was heralded by miracles, he performed miracles, his resurrection was a miracle, his followers allegedly can perform miracles, his return will be another miracle. Miracles by their very nature are contrary to science and logic. Science and logic depend upon natural laws operating predictably and always, everywhere. Miracles - by definition - constitute a violation of natural law. To say that something is a miracle is to say that in a certain place, at a certain time, the laws of logic and science were violated. By their very nature, miracles are beyond the reach of rationality. 

Taking it one step further: Science and logic say that when two explanations explain a set of facts equally well, the simpler explanation is to be preferred. If facts and forces we know exist can explain an event, there is no need to hypothesize unknown facts and forces. 

The Bible presents us with mere words on paper. Those words claim that countless miracles have occurred. One explanation for these claims is that these miracles somehow actually occurred. Other explanations include that the people who wrote about or allegedly witnessed these miracles were hallucinating, mistaken about what they saw, or lying. Science and logic demand that we believe these latter explanations before we believe the former. After all, we know that people hallucinate, make poor witnesses, and lie. We have no reason to believe that the laws of physics can be violated.

But the Bible actually expects us to believe these miracles occurred instead. And its authors apparently expect us to believe they occurred without offering us anyevidence. They don’t understand that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - not blind faith. In this they are profoundly anti-science and illogical.

Finally, even if we grant that the miracles of the Bible did occur, that is no reason to grant that they prove what the Bible or its followers claim they do. Once one denies the connection between reality and science/logic, all bets are off. Reality becomes chaotic - not necessarily God-directed. The Bible itself seems to understand this when it says that Pharaoh’s own magicians performed miracles (Deut. 13:1-3), and again when it says that false Christs shall arise and perform miracles of their own (Matt. 24:23-24 and Mark 13:21-22). If miracles can have an ungodly cause, they cannot be used to prove God. In effect - according to the very Bible which claims their existence - miracles are irrelevant and pointless.

2) Creation 

The Bible story of Creation contradicts modern science in many, many ways. Among them: 

A) Figures given by the Bible allow one to calculate that the universe was created approximately 6000 years ago. Science calculates the age of the universe to be between 10 billion and 20 billions years. (Many stars exist which are so far away that it has taken far longer than 6000 years for their light to reach us.) 

B) The Bible says everything was created in 6 days. Science says that things have been continuously created (and destroyed) for billions of years.

C) The Bible says that things were created in their present form and have not significantly changed since their creation. Science says that both living and non-living things have evolved, changing their forms many times over the eons, and often spinning off whole new forms. 

D) The Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day. Since a day is defined as the time between sunrises (or between sunrise and sunset), there is no logical basis on which to distinguish the first three days. Similarly, there is no basis for saying that there was a morning and an evening on each of these first three days of creation as the Bible says there was.

E) The Bible says that the Earth was created before the sun. Science says that the sun came before the Earth.

F) The Bible says that vegetation was created on the third day and the sun on the fourth. Science says that the sun came into existence long before vegetation.

G) The Bible says that vegetation was created on the third day and that life arose in the sea on the fifth day. Science says that life existed in the sea long before it existed on land.

H) The Bible says that fish and birds were both created on the fifth day. Science says that fish appeared long before birds did. 

I) The Bible says that creeping reptiles were formed on the sixth day - one day after the birds. Science says that birds appeared after such reptiles and most likely evolved from them.

J) Genesis 1:30 says that all animals were created as plant-eaters. Where then did the carnivores come from? (Note: Exodus 20:11 says that everything was created in the first six days.)

K) The Bible says that water was one of the first things God created and that it existed before the sun and stars. Science says that oxygen - one of the basic chemical components of water - didn’t exist for possibly a billion years after the Big Bang and was made (like most elements) within stars.

L) The Bible says that God separated Earth’s land from its seas on the third day. Science says that it took about 250,000,000 years after the formation of the Earth for the Earth to cool enough for water to exist on it in liquid form.

Continued…

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On Tuesday night I saw a local Imam (Muslim congregational leader) give a short presentation on the basic doctrines and beliefs of Islam followed by a question and answer session. 

Among the questions he addressed a few involved issues of morality. For example, the Qu’ran does not condemn slavery and in the Sahih al-Bukhari Mohammad marries a 6 year old girl. The Imam gave the following explanation: Basically, you have to take into account the historical context of the time and the fact that slavery was generally practiced and considered okay, while marrying off girls at young ages was acceptable.

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Okay. I certainly do not dispute that. However, the Qu’ran is supposed to be the absolute perfect word of God and Mohammad a moral exemplar (after all, he was in direct communication with God). A cultural contextual explanation makes sense if one considers religions, including Islam, as being man made. After all, the people who helped create and shape the religion cannot be expected to absolutely escape the context of their time. If this is the case, then one should expect the morality of the Qu’ran and other holy books to be relative to their time and place. No big revelation there.

However, the perfect Creator of the Universe is not bound by such constraints. All that it would have taken was a single line in the Qu’ran that stated unambiguously that “Slavery is wrong.” Period. Muslims of the day would have had no choice but to submit to this commandment (presumably, the all powerful and all wise Creator of the Universe could have at least requested at a far earlier date in human history that people cannot own slaves). As a friend of mine at the meeting said to me, the Imam seems to be saying that God only legislates certain moral principles when it is socially expedient.

What about Mohammad marrying a six year old and consumating his marriage when the girl was nine? By all standards today, that is immoral. Marrying a pre-pubescent girl was probably even pushing it in that day. Mohammad was, supposedly, God’s final prophet. Even if God did not explicitly order this marriage He certainly permitted it, thereby implicitly sanctioning it. Again, why would the all powerful and all wise  creator of the universe give in to social pressures or even embrace social practices that even our humble selves today can clearly recognize as morally repungent? It is too absurd to even consider.

The question of the opression of women in certain Muslim countries was also raised. The Imam gave a similar answer. He said that this behavior is part of that particular culture and does not come from Islam iteself.

Right! But why is it a part of that particular culture? Isn’t Islam itself an integral part of that particular culture? Why don’t I hear these people justifying their brutal oppression of women as “cultural” rather than explicitly religious? These ideas do not come from a vague notion of ‘culture’ they come from their particular interpretation of Islam and they have no qualms with saying as much.

That’s about as much as I can take for now.

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The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Hey, it’s Monday! Time once again for (yes - you guessed it!) Monday School! “The Cure For All Those Anti-Intellectual Viruses You Picked Up In Church Yesterday!”

YES! Exactly like a square peg and a round hole can be reconciled! You just need a big enough hammer and the will to use it.

Don’t have a hammer on you? Dedicated to rational reconciliation which doesn’t do violence to the mind? Then I’m afraid you’ve got at least two major problems: 1) Science and the Bible use two very different methods to understand the world; 2) Science and the Bible repeatedly describe that world in very different ways.

Both of these problems are HUGE, and the basic conflicts they describe seem not to allow for any reconciliation despite what a lot of people seem to think.

This week, let’s focus just on problem #1 and the many ways the scientific method differs from the ways of the Bible.

Consider:

1) Science doubts everything.

The Bible asserts that there are some things that we simply must not doubt (such as the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus).

2) Science and the logic which underpins it assert that nothing should be believed without adequate proof.

The Bible indicates that we ought to believe what it says without proof. (See Mark 8:12 and John 20:29 for two examples.) Bible believers try to shift the burden of proof onto those who would challenge the Bible’s claims. They fail to realize that if every belief and claim were to be accepted as true until it is proved false, an awful lot of nonsense would have to be believed - much of it contradictory and dangerous. There would be no easy way to resolve the innumerable problems which would arise, and much time would be wasted in the attempt.

3) Scientists observe.

They collect evidence. Hypotheses are drawn and tested. Tentative conclusions are made, submitted for peer review, debated, then tested and re-tested. Knowledge evolves. The Bible, in contrast, sets forth dogma. When that dogma conflicts with logic and observation, w