Religion

Lesson 1: They are both religions

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As part of my ongoing quest to learn everything I can, I am now posting the discussion questions, and my answers, to the final paper in lesson 1 of my Young Earth Creationist course. Lesson 1 is titled “They are Both Religions”, and compares the faith required to accept religion to the faith required to accept evolution. That is a little bit of a misrepresentation; they accept micro evolution (which they term, staunchly, adaptation, for fear of the “e” word), so what this course really considers a religion is the idea of abiogenesis (life from non-life, ie: how the first life form came into being).

To that end, below are the discussion questions at the end of lesson one, the answers provided by the course leaders, and my answers to the questions.

Question 1: What are the four basic questions of man? Are they still relevant in our society today? If so, why?

Answer provided by the textbook: The four questions are Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going when I die?
The way we answer these questions is related to our worldviews, which have ramifications in any culture or society.

My answers to the questions:

Who am I? I am a homo sapiens, a primate that is the result of thousands of millions of years of evolution. I am a member of the caucasian race, though I do not believe that the color of my skin in any way reflects my feelings towards other members of homo sapiens. I am the son of farmers, who themselves were the son and daughter of farmers, but I have chosen to break the chain and go into an alternate profession.

Where did I come from? I do not know the origin of life, but I also do not know if the origin of life has any bearing on my personal ethics or morals.

Why am I here? This is a personal statement, and does not reflect the general view of homo sapiens, but my own life goal, the whole reason I feel that I am here, is to bring more happiness into the world than I take out of it. I think it is important to discuss why I feel that way, because the point of this course is to cover why, without God, we have no morals or ethics.

I believe that other people are important. Perhaps they would feel, without God to tell them otherwise, that they are the most important person in the universe, but I do not feel that in any way. I want to help others achieve their goals, I want to help others because that is how we create a legacy and be remembered. I won’t be remembered by history, that is a loftier goal than mine, but I will hopefully be remembered by friends and family as someone who was always welcome.

Where do we go when we die? I believe I will enter an oblivion of blackness. To quote Mark Twain, “I did not exist for millions of years before I was born, and I was not inconvenienced by it in the slightest.” I will follow some 60 billion homo sapiens who went before me, and for the hundreds of billions who will come after. History may not recall my name, but why should it? Why would I be so arrogant as to believe that, because I don’t want to die, I will clearly live forever after I die? That seems like it shows the ego that is too common in the human race.

Are these questions still relevant in our society today?

Certainly, I believe that these questions are still important, aside from the “Where we go when we die,” question. I believe using the excuse of “I am a good person because I don’t want to go to hell”, is both dangerous and terrifying. But understanding your place in the universe helps you understand true humility, and the human race requires more humility.

Question 2: Do you believe that your view of the age of the earth affects your everyday life?

Their answer: If someone holds the evolutionistic worldview, he must live his life according to his own will. If someone holds the worldview of Creationism, God is the final authority, and he must conform to God’s will.

My Answer: I do not believe that the age of the Earth is anything worth fighting over. While I do believe that it is painfully ignorant of science to believe the world is 6,000 years old, I do not believe that those that hold this view are in any way inferior to those that agree with science. Even science does not know the exact age of the Earth, of course, and the number even within the last 60 days was modified. Perhaps this is, again, my feeling of humility at work; I do not know the age of the world or the age of the universe, but I have an idea. I am open to the idea that I could be wrong, and I think this tells you more about me than could possibly be revealed in most other sentences. “I know all of the answers, I have at my hands the true words of the Creator, and the world is 6,000 years old,” speaks to an arrogance of belief that I could never hold.

Question 3: Do you believe evolution is scientific or religious?

Their answer: Evolutionism contradicts fundamental science and is supported only by faith – not by evidence.

My answer: The constant response from the religious opponents of evolution that it is a science of faith is disturbing to me. It both ignores what science is (Science is not defined by “Only things we can see exist”) and ignores the mountains of evidence that show the idea of evolution. YEC science often takes a single case and applies it to all instances; multi-strata petrified trees prove that all of geology is wrong, they will tell you. There is an alternate way that the grand canyon *could* have formed that jives with the Bible, and since we already know geologists are wrong about everything, it is safe to write off their guesses. Carbon 14 has easy error conditions (anything that has been underwater tends to get erroneously dated, and C14 dating has limited date ranges for which it is effective). Because of this, we can also throw out radiometric dating, according to YEC science (They will throw out ALL forms of radiometric dating because of flaws with a single element). Tree ring counting? Ice core dating? We can throw those out because we weren’t there to see the rings/ice layers form, so who knows if they’ve always formed at a rate of one per year?

The reason that YECs believe that evolution is a religion is that they are so quick to throw out an excuse for why it might not work that there is no way that scientists can come up with evidence faster than YECs can ignore it (that sentence felt odd to write). In any case, I certainly believe that evolution is sufficiently supported by evidence.

Challenge Question:

I wasn’t going to include the challenge questions, but I found this question so royally offensive I had to mention it in this post or else I would have felt like I was letting something truly dark walk by me without warning those around me.

The Challenge: Ask an elementary school-age child if he knows where everything in the world came from. If his answer involved the Big Bang, ask him where the original matter came from. If he doesn’t know where this original matter came from, consider sharing the Biblical account with him to explain how everything came into being.

What the actual what.

Ask someone who is 5-10 a question that scientists are still currently working on, that people who have spent some 25 years in school, and some 25 years studying this exact question, and expect this child to have the answer?

This speaks to an intellectual dishonesty that really makes me sad. I honestly just … To tell a 5-10 year old child that, if they don’t have ALL of the answers, that they must accept religion… That…

I am sorry, I think I have to step back, rethink, and start over. I am just so sad that this is considered a valid tactic. I support science taught in the classroom, and I support teaching evolution, but I would never, ever, ever be so morally barren as to walk up to a 6 year old and say “Your God is a lie, now listen to me talk about my atheism at you.”

No. That is horrible. That is evil. That is so… AUGH! I can’t even talk about it. Suffice it to say, I find this tactic deplorable. That is all I can say.

ON TO LESSON TWO, TITLED “HOW OLD IS IT?”

Learning (FOR SCIENCE!)

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So recently an opportunity came up that I could not resist; Udemy (an online learning academy) is offering a 3 hour online course on Creation Science, entitled “Beginnings”. It is hosted by one of my favorite creation speakers, Eric Hovind. The course is actually paid ($20 for the whole course!), which means I am assuming they are actually intending their audience be only people who share their view on things (or maybe they just want money).

In my quest to understand the minds of every human on the planet (I am already at 1 out of 7.x billion! That’s practically halfway there!), I decided to take the course. What is $20.00, compared to the massive trove of knowledge I can take in?!

I won’t share the materials point for point (I respect their desire to make money from this, as they did invest time in making it), but at the end of each lesson (after the exam), they present discussion questions. Well, I am able to look at attendance numbers (that seems odd, but I’ll take it), and I am the second student to sign up.

As there are only two students to sign up, posting my discussion answers to the students only forum (THERE IS A STUDENTS ONLY FORUM!) would feel a little less like a discussion and more like talking to myself. Well, even more than talking to myself than writing to this blog (I am talking to AT LEAST two other people, rather than just one).

To that effect, over the next few days, I’ll be taking these lectures and then making blog posts about the discussion questions posted at the end of each. I am sure sometimes they will be funny, from what I’ve seen many will be philosophical, and I doubt any will be scientific.

I hope you’ll enjoy taking this journey with me. I am learning about non-science, FOR SCIENCE!

The Origins of Life

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I made this a separate post because I think it is a separate topic altogether. I had my own little personal revelation (for all of my intelligence, I am often times very slow to make what seem to be simple conclusions) this morning while writing my other post on evolution; the idea that some people deny evolution wholesale is that it does not currently understand EXACTLY how the first living organism came to be alive. The rest of evolution they accept to a degree, and give it the title Adaptation or Survival of the Fittest, as though those are completely separate topics.

To that end, I am willing to break out evolution into two separate topics; Adaptation being the first, and being the topic I posted about earlier today, and The Origins of Life being the second, which I will discuss in this post. I hope this is to your liking, if you are an opponent of, or undecided about, evolution as an overarching theory.

I will, in openness and fairness, admit that science does not currently know the exact mechanism by which life originated on this planet we have named Earth, and still science has not created life in a lab, meaning we have not synthetically replicated the process as yet.

Alright, now that this is out of the way, let’s talk about the origins of life.

I will be speaking exclusively about the ideas of origins of life proposed by biologists, in this case; alternate origins of life theories, such as I.D., or outright creationism, are at the very least as unlikely as what I will present here, and I will let proponents of these theories tell me why they are correct in their own time (or, as is more likely, I will offer direct rebuttals in later posts).

Let’s first discuss the chances life would have formed. They are infinitesimal, the chances that they would happen being almost so small as to make the occurrence almost laughably unlikely. I will accept this, and it has been used as opposition to the very IDEA that life could spontaneously originate. That being said, what if the chance of life beginning on a planet is 1 in 1 billion. The number of planets estimated varies (I have not looked recently, but with constantly improving techniques for locating planets outside of our solar system, estimates become more refined), but I will choose a number on the EXTREME low end, at 1 trillion. If this estimate is correct, then there would be 1000 planets in the universe with life in them, and that is with life having only a 1 in 1 billion chance of EVER getting started on a planet. That is ignoring the fact that moons could certainly have the conditions required for life. That is ignoring the fact that there could be far more planets than 1 trillion. That is ignoring the fact that, who knows, life may be more common than we think (our own view of the universe is still only comparable to knowing your neighbors in a city of millions of people. You know they’re out there, you just have no idea who they are).

Also worth noting, aside from the fact that even something highly unlikely could definitely happen when observing huge numbers, is that life only had to start once. If each year, there is a 1 in 4 billion chance that life would spontaneously start somewhere (even so much as a single bacteria forming from something that would not be considered alive), there it would still be likely that life would have started on our home planet. The Anthropomorphic Principle states that life had to start on Earth at some point, because we are here observing it. That seems obvious, of course, but it does bear stating; it is the scientific principle that relates “I think, therefore I am.”

Let’s say that Earth is the only planet to ever spawn life (something I think is unlikely, but that is a topic for another day). That means we are one unique planet among 1 trillion (or several trillion. Or a quadrillion.). That something with a very low chance happened among the entirety of the universe doesn’t feel nearly so unlikely.

Now that I’ve gotten the truly boring stuff out of the way, the stuff that doesn’t answer the question as to *how* specifically, we can move on to more speculative science. In this case, we can’t prove it, and all we have is our best guesses. Who knows, perhaps life being created is so unlikely, we will never see it in action! But that doesn’t mean we can’t guess.

Imagine a world with no life, just a bunch of rocks, a giant ocean, things floating and being pressed together. This goes on for a billion years, no life having formed… But in this time, unrelated things are being mashed together, energy from the sun is being absorbed, the atmosphere is changing… Things that, for lack of a better term, stick together better are getting more and more numerous over time; that should make sense. Things that stick together best, over a billion years, keep getting more and more numerous. Then of those things that stuck together, the sub-products stick together. We still don’t have life, but we have more complicated bunches of molecules, floating around in the giant ocean. They keep getting more and more complicated, as parts are knocked off, parts are added, things change and move, and still after more than one billion years we don’t have life.

Then something happens, something mysterious, something we don’t understand yet. A molecule changes to more effectively bind to other molecules. It still isn’t alive, but by some process in nature, it binds to other molecules better. Because of this binding feature, certain molecules in nature become rarer, as they are bound to these complicated molecules, still floating in this giant ocean, still not alive. There is now, for lack of a better word, competition; molecules that bind less well are eventually all ripped apart by the ceaseless march of the waves of the ocean, and the more suited molecules now have to compete for limited resources to bind. They can’t find them easily, but as they can’t truly “die”, as they aren’t alive, the ocean drags them around, changes them more. They change to bind to alternate things.

This process of unlife changing and binding to other unlife continues to untold years, hundreds of millions more, before a molecule, now as complicated as life itself, but still not alive, *moves*. Unsure of how it happened, this one complicated molecule shudders, and moves, and *seeks* to bind to other molecules. It is the very first thing that could be considered close to life, but even moving of its own accord, it still does not eat or breathe or excrete like we would assume life would. But it is close; like a virus may not be considered alive, it still shows signs that might be associated with life.

Well, this molecule that is semi-alive begins to replicate innumerably; as it binds better, it is natural that there are *more* of them. And since they actively move to bind, there are other molecules that form to *escape* this binding. We have now, before even the first true life form, seen the beginnings of the arms race that is survival of the fittest.

Well, now the moving molecule has to adjust its tactics; its “food” is running, so it has to get faster, or learn how to find other food. Maybe it finds a complex molecule that has the elements that make up its food, but configured in an unfriendly way. Eventually, our first semi-life form has created the first digestive tract; it takes a bunch of elements, some it wants and some it doesn’t, separates them out, excretes what it doesn’t need, and keeps what it does.

This replicates, because now it can get what it *wants*, so it makes copies. We now have our very first life form. With the first splitting of the first cell, when our still not-alive molecule was complicated enough to build another like itself based on ingesting molecules that were not like itself, we have the first thing that we would call alive.

I won’t say this guess is scientifically binding, but it is plausible.

Perhaps someday we will create life in a lab, prove that it can be done, prove how it can happen. Until then, biologists are confident that they are closing in on the answer, and because they spend entire lifetimes, because the theory of evolution is hundreds of years old, and because my study is at best casual, I am happy to defer judgment to them. Because people whose life work is proving what I have said above still think it is plausible, what could I say to prove it wrong?

If I buckled down and studied biology very seriously, perhaps I could find a major flaw in my theory, or perhaps I could enhance it, make it fit the evidence better. At this point, though, others are doing that for me, and I await their findings with the avid curiosity one expects of a four year old. Each tantalizing new piece of evidence that points us closer to the origins of life, I pick it up with wide eyes and giddy feelings.

And each piece of evidence that stands against a finding, that makes us rethink everything? That is ok, too, because we are still learning.

Even though I may not like the man, I have to admit this is a great quote applicable to almost all parts of life:

“I have not failed 100 times, I have found 100 ways to not make a light bulb.”

The Mechanism of Wonder (The Greatest Show on Earth)

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It has always confused me, and I am talking back into my high school days when I was really introduced to Biology (it came up earlier, but I don’t know that I really understood it well enough to form an informed opinion), and its cornerstone, evolution, why people find it so hard to believe. I mean, I’ve talked about evolution at some length, even on this blog, but I was just rehashing common talking points with my own personal flair, but I doubt I was converting anyone. I’d like to expand on at least one point here, and see where it takes me.

It doesn’t necessarily require religious dogma to find evolution hard to swallow (though they do like to layer on very heavily the reasons why evolution is a faulty theory, in their eyes), and I do understand that. It is difficult to grasp the idea of small changes over hundreds of millions of years, especially if you grow up around people telling you that the world is much younger, and also that evolution is bogus. I feel bad for children who grow up in areas of even the most affluent first world countries that are told, in the science classroom, that evolution is a “controversial” theory; it is anything but.

One particularly odd argument against evolution is that there is no such thing, there is merely adaptation (which is undeniable; Darwin’s finches adapted before the venerable scientist’s very eyes. Hell, even scientists at Liberty University have seen adaptation at work in bacteria. Also, Liberty University is a leading Liberty University science of bacteria Liberty University.). It is odd to deny the overarching theory when accepting that things adapt to change over time; almost mind boggling, actually.

I think I have to approach adaptation at this point, as I think there is some confusion. First, there is no practical difference between adaptation and evolution, and to deny this is to misunderstand the point. What we see, in our limited scope of study, is the sum total of a process running longer than our minds can possibly conceive of, possibly imagine. “We have never seen a duck become a dog,” and other similarly vacuous arguments, wildly misinterpret the scope of adaptation and evolution. There is no scientist in their right mind that would ever argue that from a duck’s egg would hatch anything but a duck, so let’s forget that line of reasoning altogether.

It was Richard Dawkins who mentioned, far too casually, a point that really revolutionized my own understanding of evolution, and I would like to make that the cornerstone of this small essay. In “The Greatest Show on Earth”, he mentions in passing that evolution is so slow that, looking from generation to generation, each child will look so much like its parents that you won’t even see the difference. It is only when you step back and look over 100,000 generations, or 1,000,000 generations, or more, that you are even to tell the difference between two species to the point that they would even be marked in different columns in a paper by a biologist.

Evolution is so slow that if you were to speed up time and watch it in action, there would only ever be one species, because each animal looks so much like its parents. If you were to look at a picture of the adult form of each child, it would seem like a time lapse photo of a single organism slowly transforming into myriad shapes, sizes, colors, forms, it would grow and lose hair, it would form antlers and drop them, but each iteration so closely resembles its parents that it would, in all of these forms, still seem to be that of a single species.

How is this possible? If that’s the case, how do we have species at all? The answer to that lies both in the advanced stage of evolution (and time) in which we currently find ourselves, and the convenience of the fossil record. I say convenience, and that word will be held against me in a court of debate, but the fossil record has truly made the study of biology not only possible, but wonderful, awe-inspiring. Fossils form only rarely, so we get snapshots. This is not the time lapse photo from above, this is one photo between thousands, and if you look at these snapshots in time, you can clearly see the differences in this species; you can see that one had certain features in its skeleton, certain bone structures, certain horns, tell-tale eye sockets, or any one of a thousand signals that it was different from its cousins, because you only see it as a single piece of a large puzzle rather than a single frame of a long movie.

Let’s give some small examples, then, as I don’t think my above analogy was very clear (though I am struggling to come up with anything better). We go back 15,000 years, when there are only very few species of canine. In this case, our subject will be a pack of wolves that, through careful coaxing and bribery, are more or less domesticated (or at the least captured and bred). These wolf pups are raised, and only the most docile are further bred (for the purposes of this example, I will be using highly accelerated selective breeding). Each shares so much in common with its parents that it is difficult to tell that there are changes at all, but the selective breeding continues. As these wolf cubs are selectively bred for docility, they also gain floppier ears. Other small changes occur over the years, and there are cubs bred (now that they have been domesticated) for different tasks; larger cubs are taken by hunters and bred for aggression and discipline, smarter cubs are taken and bred to think on their feet and assist with rounding up cattle or sheep, smaller cubs, or the most docile cubs, are bred for loyalty and friendliness. Each cub, bred in captivity, down an unbroken line of succession, appeared (for all intents and purposes) to share the traits of its parents so closely that they don’t appear to be a different species.

It is at this point that I would like to present a visual aid to our study of evolution.

Click Here, and you will see a small assortment of dog breeds.

Click Here, and you will see the parent from which ALL (that is, 100%, 1/1, each of, all of, and any of) these breeds came.

This is in less than 15,000 years, mind you. Given the amazing amount of differences we can see cropping up, is it really so hard to see that maybe this and the above link to wolves may have shared an ancestor some time in the past? Given that the primary living diversity we see is about a half a billion years old, we can take 15000 to be about 0.003% of the current age of complex life (it is even less than that, but I am using the simplest math I can because math is hard). I mean, each of the presented species (canine and feline) share a staggering amount of similar traits; the tail to body length ratio is similar, they are both quadrupeds, they share similar coloration, many species of canine and feline share the same triangle shaped ears, they both share similar dental characteristics, their skeletons (when viewed completely free of tissue) are almost identical aside from differences in the skull.

So why is it so hard to believe that canines and felines shared an ancestor in the distant past?

And, if you accept that, what happens when you go further back even than that? Rats are similar but smaller, horses are similar but larger. Well, if you take horses to be similar, now we look at cattle, buffalo, bison, as they share characteristics with horses, such as hooves, body shape, bone structure. Well, now that we have accepted that, let’s go back further. You’ve seen a hairless gerbil, yeah? Imagine that with scales, change the dental work, and we’ve got ourselves a reptile. This isn’t all as easy as I have made it sound, I understand that, but the further you break it down, the easier it is to see the patterns and the relationships inherent in the animal kingdom. You can make a simple chain of “w is similar to x, x is similar to y, and y is similar to z, but w is NOT similar to z… However, I have proven, through a series of events, that w and z are related.”

Cats are similar to dogs, dogs are similar to horses, horses are similar to certain breeds of cattle, and by this short chain, I have shown a relationship between cats and cattle. They may not appear related, but that is the glory of the masterwork that is evolution. And each child of the above could appear so similar to its parent that we would never notice it changing… But what will cats look like in 100,000 years?

Denialism

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For all of my reading, I don’t think I ever spent time looking in depth as to how it is that Christians (primarily in the United States, because CAPITALISM! MURICA!) manage to talk their way out of agreeing that Socialism is a core tenet of the ministry of Jesus. While I was researching my religio-political post last week, I found the answers, but I just passed over them without too much thought.

I argued pro-Socialism, of course, as you may remember if you read the post. While arguing pro-Socialism, however, I barely touched on the counter-argument, and I think that was a little unfair of me. To that end, I thought I would give the other side some time, and (as you should expect of me) I will propose some counter-arguments.

The primary source of the Christian counterpoints will be drawn from http://tifwe.org/resources/does-acts-2-5-teach-socialism/ which is a masterpiece of fallacious argument and outright denial, at least from my own personal reading of it. If you read the article and find you agree with what it has to say, please let me know in the comments section what causes you to agree.

Helpfully, the author has subtitled his article, so I can give an unusually clear response (I tend to meander, a little, and I do not regret it–but some have used this as a criticism, and I can say with honesty that I completely understand their point). On we march!

Section one of the article is as follows:

The early believers did not sell all their possessions. (Emphasis mine)

I think we are getting off on the wrong foot, here. I do not think there has ever been, in all of the history of the world, any government who has called for Socialism that has also called for the entire revocation of personal ownership rights. Even me, a rather staunch proponent of Socialism would never call for such an overstepping of personal bounds. Okay, so early Christians did not practice 100% communal ownership; that sounds like a (weak) counter-argument to Communism, but says nothing against Socialism. In fact, that they would sell any of their possessions to support each other sounds very Socialist by any working, practical definition.

Now let’s move on to a very aggressively worded sentence by our new friend;

But even if we, for the sake of argument, grant that all believers sold all their possessions and redistributed them among the community, does that prove socialism or communism is Biblical? No, there would have to be state-coerced taking of property and forced distribution of it.

I think this goes more to the core of the issue. The core of the issue here is that the Bible doesn’t support Socialism, in the author’s view, as he or she does not want to donate, and it is unfair for anyone to force him or her to do so. Well, I am glad we cleared that up, then. As my counter point, though, let’s say you want to abolish all taxation (as I’ve heard some propose) or reduce taxation (as I’ve heard many propose). In this ideal, Christian world, who pays for the roads? The schools? What happens if you cannot afford to send little Timmy out? What happens if you cannot afford lunches for little Timmy? Do you propose we all resort to a kind of charity-bartering system, where we go and ask our neighbors for help, instead of the Government? And what difference is there, then, between coerced sharing implemented by the Government and your requesting assistance from your neighbors or community? If they give money to you, what if there was someone who had greater need, but lived off of your block? What if none of his neighbors had a charitable spirit? What if he never found you, great giver that you are, and thus was left without help? These are the cases where the Government, with a wider scope and reach of charity, saves lives.

The second point made is that the early Christians’ sharing was totally voluntary. I think I covered this satisfactorily above, but he takes it up a notch by citing Marx’s Communist Manifesto (no matter who is citing this, it is likely to be in a negative light, and this is certainly no exception). He cites no specific quotation, but does summarize it (albeit with a political slant) fairly well; Marx found the idea of private ownership at least part of the overall problem. He then goes on to say, though, “The Bible does not mention the state at all,” therefore no Socialism, duh!

His third point is thus; the form of Socialism was not a permanent practice, but a temporary measure. It was a measure that requested charity for as long as it was needed. Well! I can see how you make that point, it makes perfect sense! Why, we don’t need charity today at all, so I guess you are right; let’s not give. Here, again, he mentions the words “state coercion”, as though they are some sort of talisman that will keep the pinkos at bay! The author goes on to state that we don’t see any recurrence of this type of giving (specifically citing Acts, chapters 2-4) anywhere else in the New Testament, so we don’t need to keep following it. Again, Q.E.D., we don’t need to Socialism (yes, I made it a verb. Fight me.).

Again, he states that socialism requires the complete abolition of private property, as though throwing around a fear-bomb (Socialism is a dirty word!). He goes on “There was a concern for equitable distribution of goods to the poor,” which is why I generally am happy to pay my share to the Government and ask them to deal with the distribution of these funds. I care about my socialistically (I made up a word. Deal with it.) provided services more than you can know. I care about the roads, the educational subsidies, the universal health care; I know I have had to lean on unemployment, and it wasn’t because I was lazy, it was because I was having major difficulty finding a job in my field. I give to these things, because I know that thanks to them I will likely never have to go without food or medical care, and this knowledge, this safety, it is important to me.

Point four is merely stating “The Bible doesn’t say ‘You have to be a socialist,’ and I don’t want to be a socialist, therefore I am not a socialist and the Bible supports me.

I think I’ve covered that point well enough, and I think my paraphrasing of point four covers how I feel, if you have any questions.

Point five, I think, was just thrown in there to remind you that the author holds a PhD. I am afraid that while my grasp of English is generally considered fairly strong, I would never have crafted the following sentence, and that is why this guy is a PhD.

Point five reads thus; Interpreting narrative by didactic passages is a wise principle of hermeneutics. Well there you go, if you weren’t convinced Socialism is wrong so far, I’ll bet your mind just did a total 180, am I right?! He does have the decency to clarify, thankfully, with the following sentences. Basically, it comes down to his idea that you can’t make a universal command out of a limited first century practice. I would tend to agree, but I am afraid that Socialism, while not made a command in the Bible, is a recurring theme of Jesus’ ministry. He does not command it (Jesus made stunningly few statements that would be considered Commandments), though he does in many places make clear that he definitely likes the idea of shared wealth and supporting the poor.

That covers the bases. I think I have made my point, but I would like to level a challenge to the modern believer.

If you are standing before God on Judgment day, and He asks the following: “Why did you preach the rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and universal charity, but stand against those very same ideals when they were practiced by the government of your nation?”

Would you feel comfortable answering with the following?

“Jesus didn’t say I HAD to practice charity, and I didn’t want to give that money, even though it was used to feed the poor, heal the sick and the lame, even though it provided education those who could not learn otherwise, and housing for the homeless, even though these are the exact things Jesus said we should support, he didn’t say we HAD to support them. So I stood against it.”

The Indiscretions of Youth

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As time goes on, I continue to watch and grow and understand more about the world. I hope you will not see this as arrogant; I’d like to believe it is a natural part of the aging process. You’d be hard pressed to find the person who thought they were wiser at the age of 14 than they are at the age of 40. That being said, it is amazing how well this analogy can be applied outside of the simple process of human aging.

The aging of a religion is a very interesting historical study, and I would say one that is far too quickly, far too easily overlooked.

Look back to the birth of Christianity, while the religion fought to find out what it was. There were two major forces within it, each fighting for dominance, easily compared to a child trying to decide what it will be when it grows up, perhaps the two forces could be likened to its favorite aunt or uncle even. The religion, at this young age, was trying to decide who it would best want to emulate. (For a more in depth look at the internal struggle, see my earlier post at the following link: https://blog42.ca/2014/10/10/almost-too-easy/ ) This was not the only internal struggle, either; there were many Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas, Matthew, Luke, Judas, Mary, John, Mark, so many ideas swirling in the head of this child, like any child growing.

As this child grew, it started to learn more of who it was, and who it wanted to be. The Gospels became canon, the battle between James and Paul, which threatened to tear the young group apart entirely, had been resolved. The core ideas became enshrined in Rome, and a Pope had been set at the head, but this child was not a well behaved teenager (as most parents can, I am sure, relate). As the Church entered its teen years (this analogy holds incredibly well if you liken 100 years to 1 year of growth), it began to think it had all of the answers. It knew better than its parents what had to be done to secure its own future. It began to rail against those around it who did not share its own ideas, again as many parents can relate.

Of this conflict, of this anger, and of this feeling of superiority were born two things; the Inquisition, and the Crusades. If we give the birth of the Christian Church as 33AD, give or take a few years, and the formal establishment of The Spanish Inquisition as 1478… Well, just after its 14th birthday (given my 100:1 ratio) was when it began to have ideas that came in direct conflict with those of its parents. The first Crusade, which I would liken to the Church bullying the other kids in the playground (a drastic understatement, if ever there was one) began at just the young age of 11 (1095AD), and the bullying ways continued for hundreds of years.

Perhaps it was just a phase, but the engine of abject *TERROR* (Please note this word, I think it will come up later) that was the Spanish Inquisition ran for almost 400 years, disbanding only in 1838 (and with deaths attributed to it coming even after this date). As the Christian Church entered its maturity, these ideas began to go by the wayside, and there is more (though certainly not universal) tolerance in it. Perhaps, if one permits me to draw another analogy, it is the child of a member of the KKK who has decided that his parents were unjust racists, but who cannot fully get over the indoctrination of his childhood. In any case, Christianity is still (much more mildly) bullying at least one other kid on the playground… And the fight is not fair.

Islam is the younger brother of Christianity (and anyone who argues against this analogy should go and look at some history) born in the 7th century. In fact, it should be having its 14th birthday soon (read: 1400 years since its inception).

In the popular media, both in Canada and the US, in Western Europe and in other nations, the religion of Islam is being criticized for its intolerance, for its anger, for its terrorism. It is being called a religion not of peace, but of war. The intolerance of the world for Islam is strong, and (admittedly) the intolerance of Islam towards the rest of the world is of equal measure; a put-upon teenager will rail against authority, will it not?

But my short history lesson about the Christian Church (and largely headed by the Catholic Church) should show that, at that age, we were not the well behaved child we’d like to believe we were.

So what should we do about it? We should do what any good older sibling would do; we should show them the right way. Certainly, some discipline should be employed, I am not so naive as to think this problem will resolve itself merely by words (certainly, already, it has gone far beyond words, I think you’d agree). But to call Islam a religion merely of war, or calling them warmongering, is to forget what we were like at THAT EXACT SAME AGE. You can argue, if you’d like, that it was just a phase for us, but if you do so I would like to ask why they are denied the ability to have that phase. I am not saying the killings or the terror or the extremism is justified; far from it, but I think we, as the older, more established Church should help them find their way rather than to fight against them.

There are elements in the Muslim world who have lost their way, as there were Christians throughout history who have lost theirs; this is not justification to call for the removal of their beliefs wholesale.

I think it is important, more important than mere words can convey, to quote a certain verse of the Bible as my conclusion:

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Remember what you were like when you were 14, what you did to so many around you, the injustice and the killing of the people of the middle East, and remember that you got over it. Remember that you came out of it understanding that you made a mistake. Give the adherents of the faith of Islam the same chance; I’d say, at the very least, they deserve the same opportunities in life that you had.

Almost Too Easy

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One thing I have mentioned several times in passing, and at least once explicitly, is the words referenced in Galatians 3:13, and those mentioned in Matthew 5:17-19.

Galatians offers freedom, for Christians, from the curse of the Law! And Matthew 5:17-19 commands Christians to follow the law. It is clearly worded, in the plain English translation (and many have made it a personal war to find a less damning translation of the verses in Matthew 5) that offers two completely opposing viewpoints.

I got curious, how do Biblical literalists deal with Matthew 5 specifically?

I searched for comments on Matthew 5, and found the following written at http://www.gci.org/bible/matthew517 :

“To ask again: Did Jesus mean Christians had to keep all the regulations of the Law of Moses, including the “holy time” regulations of the Sabbath, or strict tithing, or the food laws? Consider what that line of reasoning would demand.

Christians would be obligated to keep all the sacrificial, ceremonial and civil laws described in the Law of Moses. They would have to keep every single law mentioned in Genesis through Deuteronomy — and the rest of the Old Testament. The Jews calculated that there were 613 laws in their Holy Scriptures. Christians, then, based on the idea that Jesus was telling his disciples to keep the regulations of the Law and the Prophets, would have to keep all 613 laws.”

To paraphrase: “No, Jesus didn’t mean we should keep the law, because that would be haaaaaarrrrrdddddd.” (Read in the whiniest voice you have available to your brain.)

Bible Gateway (my general choice for researching Bible verses, as it will show you as many parallel translations as you care to read) offers the commentary as read here: https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Matt/Christians-Must-Obey-Gods-Law

It basically says, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus would have had you follow the Law.

How about historical context? Reza Azlan writes that James, the brother of Jesus, son of Mary–and we are talking literal, here– James, the brother of Jesus, was the first leader of the Christian Church, and he said (in no uncertain terms, to the point where he ended up in a fistfight with Saul of Tarsus, who was called Paul (and who styled himself the thirteenth Apostle, and greatest of the apostles)) that to be a follower of his brother, who was the Christ, you must follow, strictly and to the letter, all of the Law as written by the inspiration of God in the Old Testament.

I mentioned the above casually, but it requires some explanation: James, brother of Jesus, got into an actual fistfight with Paul (who wrote well over half of the New Testament of the Bible), on the steps of the Temple in Jerusalem. James, who followed Jesus, and knew Jesus, versus Paul, who professionally killed Christians prior to his own conversion well after the death of Jesus. Which one, in your mind, would have more likely understood the message of Jesus?

Why do you think we follow Paul’s teachings and nearly forget altogether the brother of Jesus? Hell, James is mentioned in history books more often than Jesus was. He was known in Jerusalem as James the Just, he fought for the rights of the poor, he sat on the Temple Council! What happened?

It all comes down to this: People agreed with the comments written by the GCI. Following the law is haaarrrrrddddd. “I don’t care if this was a theology made up that flies in the face of the teachings of both Jesus and James. Following the law is just really, really, really difficult, and Paul says we don’t have to, and I WANT to go to Heaven, as long as it isn’t so haaaaaarrrrrddddd to get there! Who is James? Nobody, that’s who! Time to follow Paul!”

That explains why Galatians 3:13 is far more readily followed than is the tenets of Matthew 5.

It is also worth noting the reason why you have probably never heard of James, the brother of Jesus (or, if you have, why you didn’t know how prominent he was to the early Church). He was martyred by the High Priest at the time (the Jewish High Priest, mind) because the people liked James more than they liked the High Priest, and he was just a big ol’ jelly-belly. He had James killed, and without James telling everyone to ignore Paul and his (to James) false teachings, Paul was left to evangelize almost without contest. Jesus’ cousin replaced James as the leader of the Christian Church of Jerusalem (it would not have been called that at the time, Christian was not yet a word, but for all intents and purposes it paints a clear picture to use these words), but he never managed to gain the following of James the Just.

And that is your history lesson for the day, I suppose?

If Your Very Own Brother Tempt Thee

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Oh glorious day! Oh happy hour! The folks at Creation Today have released a new video after a long time of silence! (http://creationtoday.org/is-islam-really-a-religion-of-peace-season-3-episode-32/)

The video is a very long diatribe against the tenets of Islam (and if you go to their home page, you will find two additional videos extending the diatribe), in which they profess a rare moment of agreement with Bill Maher. That should set your hackles on guard at the best of times; agreeing with Bill Maher on Religion is inviting Satan into your home, the man is a bigot (or, at the very least, a stereotypist). Bill Maher takes all of the worst parts of every religion and draws with broad brushstrokes over the face of all religions.

That is not the point, here. The point here is that they reference Qur’an 4:8, which states that those who lose faith in Islam should be killed. They state “The BIBLE would NEVER condone such a thing! There is NOTHING like that in our Bible, which is a book of love.” ‘Kay, I am sure if I go looking, I will have to dig very deep to find anything that proves you wrong… Wait. What is this? The top answer on Google? Huh.

Deuteronomy chapter 13 reads thus (KJV translation): If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; 8Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Now, forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t you argue that this is a very clear call to kill anyone who turns away from Christianity? Maybe I am just the crazy one here.

There are many verses in the Qur’an that could have been chosen to show a disdain for unbelievers, many of which could be taken either in or out of context to prove the point they were gunning for, but they chose this one. They did not find themselves in a glass house before throwing stones, they dragged Islam around the block until they could FIND a glass house, then smashed the door with stones, cut up their feet walking in, then missed Islam with the stone and brought the house down on both themselves and the poor Islam that they dragged with them.

I was looking for a challenge, but they really didn’t put up much of a fight. Ah well, maybe next time.

The End of Days!

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Lately, several parts of my life have found themselves oddly synchronized. My love of bad movies had me in the theater last night watching Left Behind (An Armageddon drama based on a particular interpretation of the Book of Revelations), while my general day-to-day research landed me on the Orange County Harvest Crusade, a Christian Rally. Their most recent crusade dealt with the end of days, and they spent over an hour talking about interpretations of the Book of Revelations, their reasons for believing in Pre-Tribulation Rapture (more on that later), among other things.

The odd thing about the Harvest Crusade is the devastating specificity they claim in knowledge of the end times. They do not just know that Israel is to be attacked by an alliance of ten countries, they claim to know several members in those countries. They also claim knowledge of military strategy based on the book of Revelations (“Why, in the 1970’s, one Priest who is a member of our Church was speaking to the generals of the Israeli army, and he told them to watch out for Iran. Now, at the time, Iran was an ally of Israel, but then just a short while later the government was overthrown, and Iran turned against Israel. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the generals of the Israeli army placed a phone call back to our Priest just a few days after Iran came out against Israel, asking for military advice!”), but their ideas seem somewhat anecdotal. In any case, to claim detailed knowledge of the end times is a little odd to me, as it was said in Mark and Matthew, No one shall know the day nor the hour, not even the son, or the angels, but only God in Heaven.

That being said, this seems to come into stark contrast with this line (found in not one, not two, but THREE of the Gospels!), “Truly I tell you, there are some here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom!”

Do you want to know how people resolve this line, by the way? This is a theory that is not widely known, and I cannot even think of when I last heard it cited; this is generally a section of the Bible ignored for obvious reasons. Strong Literalists do so like to say that the Bible offers specific prophecies, and has never made an incorrect call. How would you justify this line from Jesus? How could some of those there be alive 2,000 years later?

Now, please know that this theory is not popular, even among Biblical Literalists (though I’d love to hear their justifications, as I am not intimately familiar with them), but it does have adherents in any case. It is the legend of The Wandering Jew. Cited as early as 1228 A.D., and perhaps being even older than that in verbal tradition, there is supposedly (walking the world among us to this day!) a Jew who was present when Jesus stated the above. He was given immortality (whether a blessing or a curse is left to the reader to decide), and will walk the Earth until the second coming. This seems an odd way to validate prophecy, to me (We literally cannot be wrong because the immortal Jew could be here until the sun explodes in a few billion years, and that could be interpreted as God’s wrath, so no matter what, we are right!). Whatever, I can let them have their cake.

Now for more oddly specific readings of the Bible, and more things people fight over, in the silliest ways in the silliest forums. Now, there are three primary timings proposed for The Rapture, very creatively named and defined as pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, and post-tribulation. The runny thing is, again, this gives them enough wiggle room that it would not even be defined as wiggle room. If the end of the world happens without the Rapture, it obviously wasn’t Pre-Trib. If the world recovers from the brink, it obviously wasn’t Mid-Trib. Post-Trib is vague enough that the human race could go extinct and then no one else would be left to tell them they are wrong! Boy, with such devastatingly specific prophecy, it’s no wonder that people cling to the Bible! It practically knows what I am having for lunch!

For those not overly familiar with the Biblical displays of the end times, the Tribulation is the time in which God’s wrath is poured out onto the world, and it will be the seven worst years in all of history to be alive. Wars, famine, plague, suffering, all headed by an Anti-Christ. Why do I say “an” Anti-Christ, instead of “the” Anti-Christ? Well, that comes down to the fact that Anti-Christ is a very vague term applied to many people throughout the Bible and beyond. Really, if you are not a Christian, you are an Anti-Christ. Do you want to know the funny thing? Do you want to know how this Anti-Christ comes to prominence? It will make you sad, I fear, for it is silly.

This Anti-Christ will be defined by his or her ability to bring peace. Before the Tribulation, there is (or may be) a single nation world, and all wars will end. You may not immediately see the problem with this yet, it is ok, it is very hard to without speaking with a ton of people who believe in the book of Revelations.

If the worst time in human history is brought on and presaged by one who brings peace and prosperity during his or her rise to power, then any good, Bible-believing Christian must stand against anyone who preaches these values. And there are certainly those who do; people in my very own family have voiced opinions AGAINST bringing the world together. There are people who stand against world peace, for that is the last sign of good times before the end times. I would even go so far as to say that people who hold to this opinion are the reason that this will never, in all of history, be allowed to come to fruition. I would argue that there are enough people out there that believe peace and world-unity are enough of a devastating sign of the proximity of the end times that they would form their own nation in defense. Well, now we’ve got a two nation world, and don’t need to worry about Armageddon. Problem solved!

Forgive me, but to me this is just silliness, and silliness that is dangerous. Christians may stand against Muslim extremism, but the nearer the world comes to unification, I would argue, the more often we will see Christian extremism. And to say that this is something that would never happen, recall the story of George Tiller, a doctor who was willing to provide abortion services who was murdered by Scott Roeder, a Christian extremist. I do not know how one justifies punishing someone they view as a killer by killing him, but his was the picture of an unwell mind. That being said, it shows certainly and clearly that it is possible, and the more downtrodden a people feel, the more extremists will be born.

I suppose I ought to clarify that; Islam is certainly the fastest growing religion in the world, how can they feel downtrodden (as I would argue they do, and as I would argue is the cause of the rampant extremism among the faithful compared to most other religions today)? Their Holy book teaches that the adherents of the religion are truly the most superior, gifted people in the whole world. It doesn’t matter that they may soon be the dominant religion in the world, even in the west, they do not feel that they are the dominant FORCE in the entire world, as they were promised to be by THE GOD OF ABRAHAM Himself. Anything other than a perfect Muslim caliphate is less than they were promised; this certainly does not mean that all of them are going to be extremists some day; like Christians, there are more who are patient and waiting for their gift from On High than there are who are going to fight to create that very gift themselves. That being said, the worse you feel about your position, the higher the chance that you will birth extremists (to use an analogy, the more cornered a scared dog feels, the more dangerous it is), and being as your goal is nothing short of perfection, even 99% completion feels like a drastically missed target.

Ah, I have deviated again, so let’s get back to the point.

Sam Harris said it best, I think. Christian end times, the tribulation, is characterized by death, war, famine, and destruction on a drastic scale (and they are seeing the signs everywhere, in the earth quakes and tsunamis of the recent years), which led the prolific atheist to write “New York City could explode in a massive mushroom cloud, and there are those who would see a silver lining in it; it would signal to them that the best thing that will ever happen is about to happen.”

To this end, I call on everyone to take a step back, think, and seek peace. Do not even stoop so low as to find a silver lining; there is no monstrous act of death that could signal anything good in this world. If God spoke a word, and all unbelievers were killed, and Jesus Himself came to me and told me I was left alive despite my unbelief, and I should rejoice, I would tell Him (though I know he would have foreseen my response) that it is a horrible thing that has happened this day.

For the happiness and life of a massive number of people to be snuffed out, that is a terrible thing. I would say I am happy to hear of their suffering coming to an end, but in this case, the Bible is clear that they are those accursed who shall suffer for eternity.

No, I stand against death, but even more, far more than standing against death, I stand against suffering. I hope you understand this, reader. I hope I have impressed upon you the difference between death and suffering, and the silliness of the end of the world.

Also, Left Behind was hilariously awful. I wholeheartedly recommend it!

Derivative Creativity

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I have always wondered why the life forms and speciation observed in the modern world is used by YECs (and even your standard, moderate Christians) as indicative of the amazing power and creativity of God. While there are certainly a stunning number of species in the world from certain viewpoints, one would find that they are not very creatively created at all (and, I would argue, the process of evolution explains it far better than God ever could).

How do I mean that? I mean, you could look in your average zoo and see a massive number of creatures and never get them confused with each other! The differences are so numerous, why, you’d have to be mad not to see the creativity inherent in nature!

Ok, there are lots of differences, I will give you that… But do they outnumber the things that most large species (large, in this case, being not rigidly defined; tarantulas stand in stark contrast, but there are few exceptions) have in common with each other? Let’s look at things shared by land dwelling creatures larger than arachnids and insects.

Two eyes? Almost universal.

Two forelimbs, two hind limbs? Almost universal.

Lungs, kidneys, hearts, intestines, livers, blood vessels, bladders, colons, excretory systems? Check, check, check, et cetera.

Sexual organs? Almost universal.

Fingers? Aside from the thumb in a few species, almost universal.

Nervous system? That one IS universal, all things considered.

What about undersea creatures? Well, I will admit to some level of creativity under the sea, but you will find that even there, it is easy to find far more similarities than differences. Hell, comparing whales (mammals) to any given fish will yield a stunning number of similarities.

What point am I trying to make, then? Well, given this information, I would argue that God could be compared to an artist who only knew how to paint 10 shapes, and each work he created after his first is merely those same ten shapes in jumbled up form.

Why do so many skeletons looks so similar (Rib cage? Check. Skull? Check. Hands? Check. Hell, even snakes occasionally have vestigial limbs, though that is uncommon.), and yet get praised for their differences? I would argue (easily, and without reservation) that evolution explains this so simply, and so fully, that it is odd to me that it is not raised more often by non theists when arguing with YECs. Nature is a cold hearted bitch (I apologize for the language) who throws out anything that doesn’t work. She throws it out callously, and is no respecter of persons or species. The reason certain things, certain organs, certain traits, certain behaviours, are so prevalent is that they all originated so long ago that almost all species today carry these traits as a result.

“What do you mean, non theists don’t use this often enough? Every debate devolves (eheheheh) into the non theist saying we all share an ancestor!” Thank you for asking that explanatory question, friend, as I do need to clarify this point!

Saying we all share the same ancestor is not the same thing as bringing into question God’s creativity. I have never seen the debate in which the non theist points out that nearly every species on the planet has a heart and circulatory system, or that the skeleton of species that are nearly completely unrelated look so similar in their parts. You can say “Look at the hand bones on this alligator, and the hand bones on this human! They are practically the same!” That is far too narrow in its scope, friend! Far too narrow, indeed. Looks at the alligator’s two eyes, his front two limbs, his back two limbs, his organs, his brain! Do you think your average layperson can tell the difference between the liver of two different species? Of ten? Of one hundred? Aside from size, they all look so similar! What makes the movies depicting Hannibal Lecter work? They work because those to whom he serves human meat CAN’T TELL THEY ARE EATING PEOPLE! It might as well be pig, or chicken, or cow. Why is that? A stunning lack of creativity on God’s part, or mother nature finding a system that works and replicating it en masse?

Sorry, that cannibalism reference kind of came out of left field. That’s what I get for blogging stream of consciousness style. I do apologize for that, but it is incredibly illustrative (both of my point and of what goes on in my head at times).

Anyway, you are welcome to make your own choice. Is God the most boring artist you don’t know, or is nature just an excellent manager, choosing which parts work best impartially?