Thanks for your responses to the last Wavering, via comments, e-mails, face-to-face, and IM. They were mostly interesting, but even the redundant and useless responses taught me something.
Unfortunately, this post is mostly pointless. It basically demonstrates a point that almost all Christians and non-Christians alike accept. But I already typed it up, so might as well post it.
All right, then, another well-known story: Noah’s Ark.
The story: God grew displeased with human sin, and decided to flood the earth. However, Noah was counted as righteous, and God had him build an ark. He and his immediate family, along with anyone else who would listen (zero) would be saved, along with the animals, either 2 or 7 of each. Noah didn’t have to gather any; the animals were sent by God. The world was flooded, the waters receded, and everyone got out. (The language of the text seems to indicate a worldwide deluge, not just an area.)
Think about one of the animals we know today: penguins. Penguins require a cold climate, and would have to not only somehow swim the distance from Antarctica to Africa, but survive hot climates to get to Noah. Even assuming God teleported them, they would still have had to survive in the ark almost a year. The story does work if God used his power to keep them alive, say, by creating some sort of refrigerated area on the ark (and it would be foolish to expect the Bible to have this kind of detail).
As a side point, some will ask about the dinosaurs, although one could say dinosaur young were sent, or that dinosaurs had already died out. The most common belief for a Biblical literalist is that after the flood, the earth and its climate had changed irrevocably, and the dinosaurs died out thereafter.
Not to mention there mightn’t have been enough food for such a large creature immediately after the flood. Which brings up this point: since there were very few animals left (mostly sets of two), how could any carnivore cope in the immediate post-flood era?
The point of this is that the story of Noah is only reasonable if one accepts an all-powerful (or very powerful) God in the first place. This requires some degree of faith: both Christians and non-Christians would agree with this.
It’s not much of an insight, really, and does nothing to verify or disprove the Bible by itself. The next installment will be much more poignant and uncomfortable.
As an aside, whenever you see art depicting Noah’s Ark with animals, have you noticed there’s almost always giraffes? Lions and elephants are a close second. This kinda makes sense, since Noah lived in or near Africa. But then again, Noah is always white…
June 14th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under Religion
(Jesus is the one on the right.)
So maybe it’s not such a big deal that whites draw Jesus as white even though he was from the Middle East. However:
- We have enough knowledge to try to create a more plausible image of Jesus, and don’t bother to do it.
- That’s because “White Jesus” is a symptom of people wanting to cast Jesus in their own image, rather than the other way around. (It’s not limited to Caucausians, but that’s the culture I live in.)
June 13th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under Religion, Sports
Maybe God isn’t so harsh after all.
According to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG), when you give to the church, you get. You get a new car. A better job. Riches:
But while many Pentecostal churches preach that God will bless those who make sacrifices — both financial and spiritual, few are as explicit as UCKG, which teaches poverty is unnecessary, and holds special “campaigns” to pray for specific “goals”, like a new car, house or even swimming pool.
They’ve got a point. Jesus must have meant that “blessed are the poor” stuff for those other Christians.
They aren’t afraid to take a page out of the Church of Scientology’s playbook if it means advancing the Word of God:
It has sued several media organizations for publishing what it says are false allegations and warned Reuters it was not afraid to use legal action to correct a “negative story”. When this reporter jotted down a few notes during a UCKG service an usher demanded to see them, and threatened arrest when he was refused.
I was kinda hoping for a Prius rather than a Navara, but beggars can’t be choosers. So to speak. Jesus isn’t going to let me be a beggar.
Reuters: Jesus wants you to drive 4×4, says S.African church
June 13th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under Religion, Snake Oil
Meet Shoba. Shoba is 20 year old devadasi–a slave to some goddess of fertility. As you might guess, a large part of her service involves being some sort of “sanctified” prostitute (note: India made this practice illegal about 50 years ago)
What’s extra twisted is that it’s the devadasi’s parents who give her up when she’s young. For all practical purposes, she’s been bound to service for life with no say in the matter. No one will be willing to marry her, and she won’t have a decent way to make a living. Not only that, any money she earns goes straight to the parents.
Her mother’s response? “Someone had to continue the tradition. It had to be my daughters. Because Shoba earns so much money she has been able to build us a house, and she bought these fields. So what’s the big deal?”
I don’t know, maybe it’s that you’re living comfortably off your daughter’s hopeless, miserable life? Most people would consider that a big deal.
BBC: Slaves to the goddess of fertility
June 12th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under In the News, Religion, Weaksauce Losers
A few points to clarify before moving on with this “Wavering” series (the name works well enough):
1. If it seems like I’m “attacking” Christianity, that’s because I am. My natural bias is towards Christianity, since it’s been part of my life so long. There’s much less of a reason to try to find information to support what I’d prefer to be true as compared to trying to find the weaknesses what what I believe and see if it holds up.
2. I’m not trying to look “scholarly” or “intelligent”, although that may be a side effect. I want to be right. If Christianity is a reasonable viewpoint, I want to know that. If Christianity is a superstition, I will abandon it.
3. One principle that I will follow goes something like this: if there are multiple explanations for an event, the explanations that fit the data are more likely to be true than ones that try to explain inconvenient data away. It was put more elegantly by the original source, which was, ironically, a creationist website. (For future reference, I’ll call this the Data Conveniency Principle, although probably someone already has a better name for it!)
4. Ideas, contributions, responses not only welcome, but desired.
Let’s start at the beginning:
Creation account: Even most non-Christians are familiar with this one, where God created the Earth and its habitants in six days. Furthermore, based on the geneology presented in the Bible, the age of the Earth would be measured in thousands or tens of thousands of years. There’s some ambiguity because ancient genealogies did not necessarily cover every single person in the line, but it would be difficult to get even 100,000 years.
The scientific community believes the Earth to be 5 billion years old, and early humans to be 1-3 million years old.
Clearly, someone’s wrong.
As awful as this will sound to some of you, I’m going with the scientists on this one. (Note to random visitors: mostly friends and family read this, and it’s 75-80% Christian.)
Remember that the point of this exercise is to determine how viable the Bible is, from the standpoint of the Bible may or may not be true. If it’s “Here are the measurements that we’ve taken, how we did it, and we can reproduce it for you” versus “Here’s revealed truth from thousands of years ago, but you have to take it on faith”, I’m going with the first.
Some Christians have proposed that the six days actually represent eons of time to put the Bible in line with science. This rubs up against our recently christened Data Conveniency Principle. Furthermore, the language of the passage seems to clearly indicate six literal days (”the evening and the morning were the first day”).
It could be argued that the creation passage was written to demonstrate God’s power, and not to provide an exact account of Earth’s origins. However, the language seems more like a history, and other Biblical characters who reference it seem to take it as a literal account.
I’ve also heard a few say there is a conspiracy in the scientific community to discredit the Bible. This is paranoia.
That’s all for now; I’m losing my train of thought. Touching the subject evolution proper is redundant.
June 10th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under Religion
Several weeks ago, I asked why you believe (or don’t believe) the Bible as truth, the Word of God. I appreciate all the responses, and it was nice to hear a couple things that I did not expect.
The question was not merely out of curiosity or of idleness. Probably the best way to put this is that I owe myself a serious look as to the veracity of Christianity.
For 20+ years of my life, I’ve been more or less been constantly exposed to an environment where Christianity has been taught and assumed true. Of course, doubts would crop up from time to time, but they passed relatively quickly, and I would not take a serious look into them.
Now is the time to do so.
My instinct and fear is that their will be some objection to Christianity, and its defense will boil down to two things:
- “The Word of God supercedes the words of men.”: this is no defense at all* and could be used by multiple religions
- “You must have (or be granted) faith to believe.”: wholly unsatisfying, and again could be used by many religions
If I were to consider this issue alone, I’d probably conclude that there is some sort of God/gods/higher beings, but are either unaware of our existence, do not care whether or not we know they exist, or do not want us to know who they are. Fortunately, there are plenty of people (including y’all!) to gather thoughts from, as my knowledge and intelligence are insufficient for a certain answer.
More this weekend.
*If one accepts the Bible as true, it makes perfect sense. If one does not believe the Bible, it has no meaning.
June 7th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under Religion
The Hitchens brothers disagree on everything. Here’s Peter responding to Christopher’s book “God is not Great”. If you haven’t read any of their stuff, you’re missing out on some fascinating reading.
Billy Donovan backs out of an NBA coaching job to return to the University of Florida. Reports say he was worried the NBA would characterize him as a Munster.
Sometimes the most amazing stuff gets news coverage. Like this movement for Vermont to secede from the US. It’s a small group of people with an unrealistic goal, but nonetheless it clogs headlines. Yes, I’m living in a glass house, so sue me.
Don’t double-park in Greece: an off-duty officer (allegedly) shot a man who parked illegally when going to buy breakfast.
The Chinese are very resourceful. They’re famous for pirating DVD’s and music, but selling fake drugs is going a bit far. (My Chinese friends start to walk away for negatively stereotyping them in 3, 2, 1…)
June 4th, 2007
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Posted by Donnie
Filed under In the News, Religion, Sports
Pretend you’re an aspiring leader for a religious organization. You’re 19 years old, young and energetic, and eager to prove your worth. Which of these activities would not fall on your list of things to do?
- Study the scriptures
- Learn from older, experienced leaders
- Burn your infant daughter in a microwave*
The hero of the story, Joshua Mauldin, decided on the third course of action (it’s not clear whether he bothered with the first two). I suppose an advantage to this route is that spending 5 to 99 years in prison will toughen him up for the real world.
So what’s the mother say about this? “Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw him as a threat.” She even set up a MySpace page called “Joshua Mauldin is not a Monster” (either MySpace took it down, or I couldn’t find it. MySpace has horrible search capabilities). Undoubtedly, Satan’s next step was attacking Maudlin just before communion, making him spike the wine or grape juice with psilocybin. I’m sure the congregation would have been sympathetic.
She also “described [his] weaknesses as an undisclosed mental disability, and that her efforts to get help for him have failed.” Any church that’s looking for a preacher who’s stupid and/or crazy, look no further.
(By the way, the baby survived, but did need hospitalization.)
Houston Chronicle: Mom blames Satan for burning baby in microwave
*If the baby’s an infidel, this may be acceptable for aspiring Al-Qaeda members.
May 27th, 2007
1 comment
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Burning Agony, In the News, Religion, Weaksauce Losers
