A couple of weeks ago, just
for giggles, I decided to tweet Shirley Phelps-Roper from the
Westboro Baptist Church, telling her about my book, linking to my
blog and asking for a retweet
Strangely enough, I've not yet received a response.
Today, I tweeted a similar request to the Pope. I sent two tweets, one in German and one in English. *
I wonder if, unlike that Phelps-Roper woman, the Bishop of Rome; the Vicar of Christ on Earth; the Holder of the Keys of Saint Peter, will do the right thing. We'll see...
*EDIT
After some advice from a friend, I have sent another tweet in Latin.
One of the most pernicious and
objectionable things about the concept of religion is its tendency to
creep into the education system. When my son was five years old, he
came home from school one day and announced that God had made the
world in six days!
It is still the law in the United
Kingdom that some form of religious instruction be present in the
school curriculum, and whilst I have no real objection to a
comparative and historical study of religion in schools, I would have
thought that a five-year-old could manage quite well without it until
he or she is older. Of course, there is an argument to be made that
the kind of religion taught in British primary schools only serves to
inoculate children against religious belief in later life. For my
son, however, I would prefer that the inoculation be forgone, and the
balance of time yielded to extra reading, writing and arithmetic.
In any case, the issues at stake are
much wider than that of primary education. It would appear that, left
unchecked, faith would eventually make its way in to secondary school
science classrooms as well. It hardly needs to be said that there is
no room for faith in the field of scientific inquiry; there can be no
greater affront to science, and the scientific method, than the
acceptance of unsubstantiated dogma on the grounds of faith. You do
not hear people talk about their faith in the theory of evolution
say, or in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. One
either accepts the evidence or one does not; faith has nothing to do
with it. So it should be with the teaching of science.
When faith does rear its ugly head in
the scientific arena the results are invariably disastrous. Take for
example the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. This movement appears
to be most prevalent in America, although the idea is gradually
creeping into Europe as well. Using the teleological argument,
proponents of ID argue that the complexity of the biological world,
as well the wider cosmos, imply some kind of creator or intelligent
designer. Of course the arguments are couched in more 'scientific
language', with words such as God, creator and faith judiciously left
out. This is because the main bone of contention in the ID community
seems to be that their theory is not represented in American school
science classes. The inclusion of words like God or faith in the ID
literature would preclude the theory at the outset from being taught
in schools, because to do so would be an infraction of the
constitutional 'wall of separation' between church and state, an
eminently sensible idea which unlike in the United Kingdom, exists in
the United States.
In order to get around this
constitutional obstacle, the Intelligent Design ‘theory’, as it
is publicly presented, makes no claims to the identity of the
designer and proponents are fond of pointing out that he/she/they
could in fact have been some kind of ultra-intelligent alien.
However, it would appear that the majority of ID proponents are in
fact religious believers, and it is a safe bet that behind closed
church doors the Intelligent Designer is positively identified as the
supernatural Judeo-Christian God.
The inadequacies ID theory are really
laid bare when it is stacked up against real science. Mainstream
science begins with observation which, through experiment,
can be used to describe a model. As evidence is
gathered, a hypothesis can be suggested to explain the model.
Any hypothesis must make predictions which can be tested
by further observation and experiment, during which time the
hypothesis can be modified or abandoned in favour of another one.
Only once a hypothesis has survived rigorous testing may it be used
to formulate a scientific theory, but even then it must,
unlike a mathematical proof, be open to falsification should
any conflicting evidence come to light. ID on the other hand begins,
and ends, with a hypothesis, with its proponents merely interpreting
the evidence to fit their conjecture. This has meant that whenever it
has been tested in court, the ruling has been that ID is not science.
Indeed, one of the chief criticisms directed towards the ID camp is
the distinct dearth of peer reviewed papers emanating from it. In its
efforts to ‘debunk’ the neo-Darwinian paradigm of evolution by
purely natural selection, ID does not appear to undertake any
science of its own. The game plan appears to be to cast doubt on a
well established and rigorously tested scientific theory and then to
replace it with, at best, unimaginative guesswork, or at worst,
pseudoscientific garbage.
Intelligent Design can best be thought
of as a contemporary manifestation of the Creation Science movements
of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, the only real
difference between them is that proponents of Creation Science make
no secret about who the Intelligent Designer is. ID is therefore,
merely a denomination of Creationism, and so words like Creationist
and Creationism can justifiably be used to reference both
groups—something that I intend to do from now on.
Evolution by purely natural selection
and Creationism are not just at odds with one another, they are
wholly incompatible; the findings of evolutionary biology threaten
the perceived ‘truth’ of the teachings of bible. However, when
one listens to the Creationists one gets a very different impression.
It is as though they think they have uncovered overwhelming
inconsistencies in current scientific dogma, inconsistencies that are
an affront to science, and must be countered with ‘real’ science.
The picture painted is that of avenging heroes that have, against all
the odds, reopened the debate on the origins of life on earth. In the
real world though, the sole motivation of the Creationist movements
appears to be not genuine scientific inquiry at all, but rather the
desperate reaction of those who know that they are in a weak
position.
Let me expand upon this a little. The
book of Genesis states quite clearly that God made all the creatures
of the earth, creatures that would bring forth only after their kind,
and then as a separate enterprise he created humanity in his own
image. Imagine instead that Genesis 1:20-31 said something like this:
And God planted the seed of life
upon the earth. Then, God said “From this tiny
seed may life be set in motion, undirected by me, across the face of
the earth”. And so it was that the seed brought
forth a menagerie of creatures, each generation, to a tiny degree,
different from the one before. Each minuscule difference being
utilised by life itself, according to its ability to survive. Then, when life had achieved a form
that most represented God’s image, God said unto it, “Thou art my
most important creation and thou shalt be called man and woman. “Listen up; I’ve got a few
ground rules for you”
I would like to bet that if that is
what the bible had said, the Creationist movements would never have
got started. There would be no need for them. When Charles Darwin put
forward his exciting discoveries in 1859, far from being attacked as
a heretic he would have been hailed as some kind of saint; a hero of
the faithful. The theory of evolution would have been seen as
scientific proof of the veracity of Genesis and Christianity in
general.
Of course, you may think that I am
being a little frivolous here, but the serious point to be made is
that if Genesis had been written differently, then what are now
perceived to be ‘errors’ or ‘lies’ or 'gaps' in evolutionary
theory would be overlooked, perhaps even ‘covered up’ by the very
people who attempt to 'expose' them today. Ironically though, their
beliefs about the way of the world would not be based on anything
even approaching science; stubborn faith in a few words of
ancient scripture would be more than sufficient to convince them.
I have just watched a video of a debate between creationist Eric Hovind and atheist Bernie Dehler. Now that my blood has stopped bubbling and I have managed to unlock my clenched jaw, I find myself unable to refrain from unloading some of my frustration into this post.
I have listened to/watched more than my fair share of creationist debates and lectures in my time, many of them involving that proven liar and thief, Kent Hovind, who just happens to be the father Eric, the creationist in this video. However, I can't remember a time when I have been so ticked off as a result.
Eric Hovind is every bit as arrogant and ignorant as his father, but he manages to be even more irritating, if such a thing is possible. You'll have to watch the video for yourself to get a feel for what I mean, but I don't recommend it. I lost count of how many times Eric displayed his total lack of understanding of science, philosophy, logic or morality. Indeed, virtually every argument he made did violence to those terms. Like his dad, Eric never really shut up and let the other guy talk - he just steamrollered all over him, spouting nonsensical drivel to the delight of a baying crowd - and he used the perennial debaters trick of evading difficult questions by asking one of his own.
Although the whole debate was a torturous tangle of stupid, there were two hoofing great fallacious arguments that stood out for me:
First, whenever Mr Dehler said anything, Eric always asked "could you be wrong about everything you just said?"
In the spirit of intellectual honesty, his opponant was obliged to answer "Yes". "Well," came the gleeful reply, "that means that you admit that you don't know anything". Hovind's 'logic' is that if you 'know' something that later turns out to be wrong, you didn't know it in the first place - you only believed it.
So, if you admit that you might not be right about anything, you are admitting that all of your thoughts are merely beliefs and that you have no knowledge. The problem with this is that it wipes out all of science, and unless one aspires to be as arrogant as a creationist, it wipes out all forms of knowledge on any subject. And this, by the way, applies to Hovind's claims to knowledge as well - he's just too shit stupid to realise it.
Second, there was another particular piece of 'argumentation' that Hovind used throughout the debate, that it is so inane, so wrong-headed, so bat-shit crazy, that it stands out, in a strong field, as the most stupid thing that either of the Hovind boys has ever said. It is this:
"If you don't know everything, you can't know anything."
Yup, you read that right - If you don't know everything, you can't know anything....
....unless...
...unless you know someone who knows everything.
Or, to put it another way, there is can be no knowledge without God.
Brilliant! Genius! Change one syllable and the whole delicate epigram just falls apart. Here is how the conversation should have gone as soon as Hovind made this staggeringly moronic statement:
Dehler: But wait, Mr Hovind, I have a question for you. Do you think you are God?
Hovind: Of course not.
Dehler: But you just said that you know everything.
Hovind: No I didn't.
Dehler: Er, yes. Yes you did. Think about (if you can). You claim to know God.
Hovind: Uh Huh
Dehler: But 'knowing God' is 'knowing something' right?
Hovind: Erm
Dehler: So if you claim to know God, you are claiming to know something and so, by your argument, you must be claiming to know everything...
Hovind: Well I...
Dehler: ...and if you are claiming to know everything...
Hovind: Hold on a minute now...
Dehler: ...then you are claiming to be God. QED. At what is more...
Hovind: Whoa there...
Dehler: ...you are in fact claiming that in order to know God, you have to be God.
Hovind: That's not what I meant.
Dehler: I'm sure it isn't, but that it what you said......and another thing...since you claim to know everything, and since I know you, I can, by your own arguments, safely say that I know you are a glans.
Sadly, Dehler was too nice a chap to go down this route, but Eric did get his comeuppance in the Q&A when an 11 year-old called him on the very point I've just made, and he was forced to bluster and patronise and condescend his way out of it. I'd like to say that this delicious moment made the rest of the video worth the watch. But it didn't. Ho hum.
I'm not sure how many of you have bought my book. I have noticed spikes in blog traffic following Google+ posts and retweets, and corresponding spikes in sales following the spikes in blog traffic, so it is safe to assume that a few of you have bought it. How many of you have read it, or what you think of it unfortunately remains a mystery.
If you are reading this and have already read the book, I would humbly urge you to give me a review on Amazon or Lulu or both. They really do help...well the good ones do at any rate. Having said that, I would welcome any feedback, good or bad. I have been plugging away at self promotion for a while now, but I am still not completely sure it is worth my while continuing. A review or two, or even a comment here on this blog, would help me to decide.
The
message of the book of Revelation is that before lost souls are
deposited into hell forever, the world is to be judged. The popular
phrase ‘Judgement Day’, however, would appear to be a misnomer
because, if the book of Revelation is anything to go by, the period
of judgement will extend over at least a thousand years (Revelation
20) - a period of great tribulation and suffering known as ‘The End
Times’ or ‘The Last Days’.
Interestingly,
mainstream Christianity is very hesitant to name a date for these End
Times, although a large number of Christians, perhaps even the
majority when looked at globally, believe that it will occur within
their lifetime. Of course, there are countless examples of individual
amateur prophets, parading around with placards proclaiming that “the
end of the world is nigh”, but there are various denominations who
peddle this view on a much larger scale. For instance, the Jehovah's
Witnesses have, on a number of occasions, argued, or at least
implied, that a specific year would mark the end of the world.
Needless to say, their track record in this area is not all that it
could be. Nevertheless, the Jehovah's Witnesses still hang on to the
idea that we are at least living in the “Last Days”, such having
begun in October 1914. This conviction is based on a rather
convoluted reading of scripture, from both Testaments, together with
some arbitrary number juggling, in order to arrive at this specific
date.
Please
now join me on a journey into the weird and wonderful world of
Christian eschatology:
In
the Gospel of Luke (21:24) Jesus says that Jerusalem will be
‘trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be
fulfilled.’ Furthermore, Luke (1:32) and the Old Testament book of
Ezekiel (21:27) make it clear that the times of the Gentiles will be
fulfilled when Jesus becomes King. This trampling of the Gentiles,
argue the Jehovah’s Witnesses, began when Jerusalem was conquered
by the Babylonians in 607 BCE, and its end will signify the return
of Jesus and the end of the world.
So, this trampling is crucial it would seem.
We know when it began, but how long will it last?
The
book of Daniel (Chapter 4) details a prophetic dream, that King
Nebuchadnezzar has, involving a tree being cut down and “seven
times”, or in some translations “seven periods of time”,
passing over it. Daniel interprets this dream, explaining that the
tree is representative of Nebuchadnezzar himself. Turning back to
Ezekiel (Chapters 17 and 31), Jehovah’s Witnesses interpret the
scripture to mean that trees can be considered as representing
rulership. Therefore, they say, the cutting down of a tree can be
seen as an interruption of rulership, or a trampling of one.
So the trampling will last for seven periods
of time. But how long is a ‘period of time’? How long is a piece
of string?
Chapter
12 of the book of Revelation, verse 6, tells the story of a woman
fleeing into the wilderness, and being protected by God from a
dragon, for 1,260 days. Verse 14, however, describes the same period
as “a time, and times, and half a time”. Jehovah's Witnesses
evidently take this to mean that “time” means “one period of
time” and “times” means “two periods of time”, because
they argue that, based on this passage, 1,260 days equals three and
a half periods of time! This means that a period of time is equal to
360 days (or roughly one year), and so seven periods of time must
therefore be equal to 2,520 days (or roughly seven years). But, the
argument goes, this cannot be the whole story, because seven years
is not long enough—obviously the trampling of God's rulership did
not stop in 600 BCE—Daniel's prophecy must be talking of a much
longer period of time than seven years. (Note that this is not the
obvious conclusion to draw here but let’s go along with it for
now.)
In
order to square this circle, the Jehovah’s Witnesses return to the
Old Testament and the books of Numbers and Ezekiel. In Numbers 14:34
we find God punishing the Israelites for 40 days; one day for each
year of faithlessness. In Ezekiel 4:4-6 we find the “son of man”
commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days and on his right for
40 days, in order to bear the sins of Israel and Judah respectively;
again, one day for each year of sin. These scriptural titbits
apparently prove that “one day” can also mean “one year”.
Therefore, 2,520 days can be taken as meaning 2,520 years!
Finally,
this in turn means that seven periods of time beginning in 607 BCE
would come to a close circa 1914! Phew, got there in the end! By
this reasoning, if you can call it that, Jesus Christ was appointed
as King in 1914 CE, marking the beginning of the “Last Days”.
Hardly
a QED is it? Believe it or not though, the plot thickens...
From
these “calculations” various Jehovah's Witness tracts produced
over the years have gone out of their way to imply a specific year
for the end of the world, revising the date as each prediction fails.
The most recent of these 'predictions' implied 1975 as the year to
watch out for, and since then they seem to have stopped making
predictions (and who can blame them?) Their forecast of the beginning
of ‘The Last Days’ however, remains in their literature
presumably because it corresponds quite nicely with the onset of the
First World War, hence the specific claim of October 1914.
According
to the Gospels (e.g. Matthew 24:7, Mark 13:8, Luke 21:10), Jesus said
that he would return only after the world had witnessed times of
international warfare, famine, earthquakes and plagues. The First
World War was obviously unlike anything that had gone before in terms
of scale and the Second World War surpassed even that. Accordingly,
these conflicts are seen as fulfilment of prophecy, and the plight of
starving Ethiopians and events such as the Indonesian tsunami in 2004
can only have served to cynically fortify that position. That is
certainly the impression that I get whenever Jehovah's witnesses call
at my house and ask me if I am worried about the state of the world
by referencing the big news story of the week and then tying it to
Matthew 24:7.
This
ghoulish evangelism is just a tad too close to schadenfreude
for my tastes, but the “1914 theory” also has a number of more
common sense objections, both scriptural and secular. For a start,
most historians agree that Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 587 rather
than 607 BCE. Furthermore, there is no indication in the book of
Daniel that his prophetic dream about the reign of Nebuchadnezzar had
any wider implications that would necessitate a second fulfilment of
the prophecy. Finally, regarding the theory that a day can also means
a year, we could just as easily take a different passage from
scripture, perhaps one from 2 Peter 3—‘that one day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’—and
use the above 'reasoning' to argue that the end of the world will
begin circa 2,500,000 CE!
So,
witnesses to the Jehovah incident, it might be time for a rethink...
…and
while your at it, you might want to re-evaluate a few other things.
Read my book for some suggestions.
Jesus
Christ was seen by many to be something of a rascal and even a threat
to the political powers at the time by spreading sedition and
insurrection. He was forever criticizing the religious leaders of the
day, calling them hypocrites and cheats, and likening them to 'wicked
farmers'. By gaining a large following he threatened their position.
He forgave people’s sins, performed healings on the Sabbath,
desecrated the Temple and claimed to be the Messiah. There was
nothing else for it; he had to go. Jesus was arrested by Roman
soldiers on the orders of a Jewish high priest, charged with
blasphemy, sentenced to death and subsequently crucified. Pretty open
and shut. Yet Christians claim that through this ‘sacrifice’,
Jesus somehow atoned for the sins of humanity.
The
first thing that springs to mind is that there are two main premises
here. On the one hand you have Jesus the trouble maker, the enemy of
the state, executed on charges of blasphemy. On the other hand you
have Jesus the Messiah, Saviour of all humanity, who gave up his life
so that we might be saved. These two ideas are at odds with one
another. That is to say, according to scripture, it does not appear
that Jesus was giving his life at all; rather he was having it taken
away. Far from ‘offering himself as a sacrifice’ (Hebrews 9:14),
I cannot see that he had much of a say in the matter. The condemned
man does not usually get to choose whether or not he is executed.
No
choice: no sacrifice.
To
illustrate this, imagine that an unemployed friend of yours breaks
the law and is slapped with a hefty fine. With no income she has no
hope of paying the fine and, even though you might not approve of
what she has done, you feel sorry for her and want to help. You are
in a position to pay the fine but it will considerably hurt you
financially, and you know that it is practically certain that you
will never see that money again. You are faced with a dilemma: keep
your money and your friend goes to jail, or, pay the fine and put
yourself in financial dire straits. You decide to support your friend
and the fine is paid.
Let’s
try another one: Imagine instead that it is you who have committed
the crime and are liable to pay the fine. You are on a small income
and it is decided by the court that your wages be arrested and an
amount taken each month until the fine is paid. As your income is
modest, this result is costly to you, but the court makes a ruling
and that, as they say, is that. This time there is no dilemma: the
court takes your money and the fine is paid.
The
difference between these two situations is obvious. In the first
scenario you could choose to pay the fine but in the second, there
was no such choice: the decision was taken out of your hands. The
first scenario involved a sacrifice, the second did not.
Once
again - No choice: no sacrifice.
Not
surprisingly, apologists often make desperate references to scripture
in order to get out of this doctrinal nightmare. For instance, in the
Gospel of John (10:18), Jesus says of his life: ‘No man taketh it
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it again’. Later on, in 19:11, Jesus tells
Pontius Pilate that he only has power over him because it was issued
‘from above’. The argument being that if Jesus/God had wished it,
he could have avoided death by being spirited away or otherwise
escaping. Therefore, by ‘choosing’ not to intervene or
escape, Jesus/God made the decision to die and so there was a
sacrifice after all.
This
really is a pitiful argument. For one thing it is the ultimate in
‘get out’ clauses, as empty and fallacious as the desperate plea
of “God did it” that we encountered earlier, except in this case
it is rephrased as “God didn’t do it”. Moreover, it is easy to
see quite how inadequate an argument it is, if one applies it to the
real world. Consider the case of a condemned man—not necessarily
the son of God, any condemned man will do. It is always possible, no
matter how secure a prison is, to attempt an escape, and it is also
possible that such an attempt will be successful, no matter how
remote that possibility might be. Are we then to accept that, if the
possibility of escape exists, any condemned man who does not take
advantage of that possibility, but instead ‘chooses’ not to
attempt escape, could be said to have made a sacrifice? I don’t
think so; it doesn’t quite work does it?
The
basic premise of the first three chapters of Genesis is that God
created everything, including Man and Woman in six days, and having
done so he puts them in a garden – the garden of Eden - and gives
them one rule: don’teatthatfruitoverthere. They eat it
anyway, and are duly punished with labour pains, misogyny,
horticultural difficulties, exile and mortality.
Mainstream
Christian doctrine also maintains that as a result of Adam and Eve’s
disobedience in the garden of Eden, a curse was put on the whole
earth; the world we live in is a broken world, a cursed world, cursed
because of sin. This, we are told, is not what God had intended.
Humans are supposed to be living sinlessly in the Garden of Eden for
eternity, communing with God, naming all the animals (Genesis 2:19)
and generally living a blissful life. It is only because of The Fall
that the world has become rotten and corrupt; damaged and corroded;
an unholy shadow of its intended form. (Well, perhaps Christians don’t usually put it quite like that, but you get the general idea). With this in
mind, let us for the moment grant as true the Genesis account of the
Fall and ask some important questions: What if the Fall had never
taken place? What would have happened if the divine plan had actually
worked? What if Adam and Eve had managed to ignore the sneaky snake
and had retained their sinless status?
Well,
presumably, if Adam and Eve had not succumbed to temptation and had
refrained from eating the forbidden fruit, then they would have
remained without sin and the world would not have become broken.
Likewise, any offspring they had would have been born in a state of
sinlessness, just like them. Now, as the bible says, following The
Fall, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, so
presumably, without The Fall Adam and Eve and their progeny would
have been allowed to stay in the Garden of Eden forever. This picture
of humanity living together peacefully and sinlessly in the Garden of
Eden is presumably what it would mean for the world to have remained
unbroken and perfect....
…but
it is not quite as simple as that is it?
The
Fall of humanity cannot be seen as simply the result of failing a
‘one time only’ test. The bible indicates that Adam and Eve did
indeed fail this ‘test’, but what if they had passed? Surely the
test would have had to continue, if for no other reason than to
demonstrate their continued obedience. Remember also that, had they
passed the test, Adam and Eve’s progeny would have been subject to
the same kind of temptation as they were, and perhaps they would have
succumbed where their parents had resisted. Perhaps not, but every
generation that came after Adam and Eve would have been subjects of
the test, and, sooner or later one of them would have succumbed. Then
what? Would the curse have been placed on all of humanity from then
on? A tad unfair don’t you think? Or, perhaps, the curse would only
have been placed on the Fallen and their descendants. In that case we
would have two castes of humans, the sinless caste within the Garden
of Eden, and the sinful without, with the latter group gaining new
members whenever somebody else gave in to temptation.
Obviously,
this isn’t meant to be a serious suggestion of what might have
happened if Adam and Eve had obeyed God, but it does serve to
highlight that the original plan, as intended by God, would have
relied on everyone steering clear of temptation. Given humanity’s
innate curiosity, not to mention the notion of freewill
that we hear so much about, this would seem to be an unlikely
proposition.
In
short, when considering this so-called ‘divine plan’ for
humanity, it is worth remembering that it took only one indiscretion
to compromise, whereas it would have required countless acts of
restraint to succeed. That appears to be monumentally fragile and
disastrously unstable; hardly the work of omnipotence.
