How to Quickly Debunk the Horus-Jesus Myth

I remember the first time I heard the story of the Las Vegas vacationer who took a girl back to his hotel room but passed out, only to awake the next morning in a bathtub filled with ice and a kidney missing—the victim of organ harvesters. I had heard it from a co-worker who said it happened to the friend of a shared friend. Since this was before the age of the Internet, there was no Snopes–type web sites to check out such tales. In fact, I hadn't been acquainted with many urban legends up to that point, so in my youth they were more believable.

I should have known better. While the name of our shared friend lent some credence to the tale, it's obvious that the whole this is too sensationalistic and improbable to be true. It's what used to be called a tall tale, a yarn, a cock-and-bull story. Yet, even though I found it fascinating, the legend didn't spread much beyond our conversation. However, now that social media has been implanted into our circulatory systems, we're much more apt to spread such fertilizer in our interactions with others.

The Horus-Jesus Myth: What's the Connection?

Such is the case with the "Jesus is a copy of pagan myths" trope that seems to be gathering steam in many atheist circles. Some of this has to do with the popularity of the YouTube video Zeitgeist, where the first third of the video tries to compare Jesus and several demi-gods worshipped prior to Jesus's birth. Near the beginning, the narrator makes this claim:

Broadly speaking, the story of Horus is as follows: Horus was born on December 25th of the virgin Isis-Meri. His birth was accompanied by a star in the east, which in turn, three kings followed to locate and adorn the new-born savior. At the age of 12, he was a prodigal child teacher, and at the age of 30 he was baptized by a figure known as Anup and thus began his ministry. Horus had 12 disciples he traveled about with, performing miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water. Horus was known by many gestural names such as The Truth, The Light, God's Annointed Son, The Good Shepherd, The Lamb of God, and many others. After being betrayed by Typhon, Horus was crucified, buried for 3 days, and thus, resurrected.

These attributes of Horus, whether original or not, seem to permeate in many cultures of the world, for many other gods are found to have the same general mythological structure.1

Richard Carrier also believes that resurrection stories were "wildly popular among the pagans" and begat a something akin to the standard trope, with the Gospels simply following in this tradition:

Among pagans, genuine sons of god who had to be murdered, buried, and then miraculously resurrected from the dead in order to judge and rule from heaven on high as our divine saviors were actually a common fad of the time, not a shocking novelty at all. Osirus and Romulus were widely worshipped to the tune of such sacred stories demonstrably before the rise of Christianity, and similar stories surrounded other dying-and-rising gods long before such as Zalmoxis, Adonis, and Inanna.2

The Horus-Jesus Myth: Be Critical

Just like the stolen kidney story, the Horus-Jesus connection myth has much of what makes an urban legend appealing: a moral tale that shows how one's gullibility can result in one being taken in with serious consequences, the authoritative yet undefined source, a set of facts that on the surface are seemingly plausible, and the ability to shock others with a sensational revelation. Yet, just like the stolen kidney story, all you need to do is to think a bit and the paper-thin claims of Jesus's stolen resurrection will quickly melt away. Here are five points to consider:

1) Look for Loaded Language

Notice in the Zeitgeist story, all the terms used are ones taken from Christianity. Horus is called a "messiah" and was "baptized." He had "disciples" and a "ministry." All of these terms bias the listener because they are Jewish or Christian concepts. The Egyptians would never use these words to refer to their religious rites. The word messiah had a very specific meaning to the Jews, including being a descendant of David. It wasn't any political figure. Christianity teaches that believers are baptized only once, not simply a pre-religious washing ceremony. By mislabeling other deities with Christian terms, the listener is deluded into believing the similarities are closer than they really are.

2) Ask "Can I read the source of these myths?"

The single easiest way to debunk these supposed parallel accounts of Jesus and Horus are to simply ask for the source text of the myths themselves. Just as the stolen kidney tale can't be verified since it comes from "a friend of a friend," so you'll find that the ancient tales that supposedly parallels the life of Jesus are an extended form of hearsay. In fact, all these claims are usually committing the same sin many atheists claim the Gospels commit: they are more like a game of telephone than real texts.

Interestingly, if anyone actually bothers to look up the source texts, a very different picture arises. For Horus, there's no mention at all of twelve disciples, three king visitations, and death by crucifixion and the three day entombment. In fact, Horus was stung by a scorpion and a magic incantation by the god of wisdom, Thoth, purges the venom from his body. This all happens while Horus was a young child, well before his adulthood and battle for the throne. It's nothing like Jesus's resurrection at all.3

3) Ask "What do you mean by "resurrection?"

There's a significant difference between Jesus's resurrection and what you read in the ancient myths. Osirus, according to a late tradition recorded in the first century AD by the Roman Plutarch, was cut into fourteen pieces by his nemesis Typhon and they were scattered all along the Nile. Osirus's wife Isis was able to gather thirteen of those to reassemble her husband. The tale tells us that unfortunately Osirus's sexual organ was eaten by fish and so Isis assembled another out of gold in order for Osirus to impregnate her with Horus. Osirus, since he will never be a complete being again, now resides as the god of the underworld.4

4) Ask "What do you mean by virgin birth?"

Certainly, given the events above, calling Horus's conception a virgin birth strains the idea to its breaking point. Other fables, such as Zeus impregnating Semele with Dionysus. He had physical relations with her even though she couldn't see him. Zeus took Dionysus as a fetus and sewed him into his thigh and from there Dionysus was born. To say the virgin birth stories should be considered comparable is itself laughable.

5) Ask "Just which calendar were they using in ancient Egypt?"

Lastly, the claims of December 25th are completely erroneous. Many myths don't specify any date at all for the birth of the deities (again, read the originals!) For Horus, Plutarch tells us he was born "about the time of the winter solstice… imperfect and premature."5 Beside the fact that Plutarch mixed many Greek ideas with the Egyptian myths, it is a huge stretch to assume an exact date for Horus's birth. Taking Plutarch's account, the term "about the time of the winter solstice" can be a swing of weeks in either direction. But if the Egyptians wanted to be more precise and attach Horus with the solstice, then his birthday would be the 21/22 of December in the modern calendar, not the 25th. As I've explained before, Jesus's actual birth is not known, and celebrating Christmas on December 25 has nothing to do with the winter solstice whatsoever.

There are other ideas you should have at the ready as well. For more suggestions, see here and here. But it should be evident by now that the supposed evidence of Christianity's plagiarism of earlier myths is itself based on myths and contrivances. Those that offer such views attempt to paint a picture that doesn't exist. Don't let these organ thieves steal your brain. Challenge them to think.

References

1. Zeitgeist: The Movie. Dir. Peter Joseph. YouTube. YouTube, 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvKkR0-d83k
2. Carrier, Richard. "Christianity's Success Was Not Incredible". The End of Christianity, John Loftus, Ed. (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011). 59.
3. Budge, E. A Wallis. " The Legend of the Death of Horus - II.--The Narrative of Isis " Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, Edited with Translations. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1912. 170-196. Print. Online text available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/leg/leg28.htm
4. Budge "The History of Isis and Osiris -Section XVIII." 224-226. Web. http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/leg/leg46.htm
5. Plutarch. Isis and Osiris. Loeb Classical Library ed. Vol. V. N.p.: Loeb, 1936. Bill Thayer's Web Site. University of Chicago, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 9 Feb. 2015. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/D.html.

Questions to Ask Skeptics: What About the Problem of Evil? (video)

One of the more difficult questions many Christians face from skeptics is the question "How can a God exist when I see so much evil in the world?" While this is a challenge to many people, one should realize that the evil we face is more of a problem for the atheist worldview.

In this short video clip, Lenny highlights how rather than disproving God, Christianity provides the most satisfying response to the human struggle with evil and suffering.

Top Five Apologetics Blog Posts for January

2015 kicked off a flurry of posts, and many of the most popular proved to be focusing on the strength of the Bible and its reliability. This is partly in response to an article Newsweek chose to run in its Christmas week edition that set the reliability of the Christian Bible squarely in its sights. The top two articles for the month answered two of those charges.

Rounding out the top five is an article focusing on the reasonableness of believing in miracles, how Jesus handled a logical fallacy and an article I wrote in honor of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Here are the top five apologetics posts for January:

1. Why You Can Be Confident We Have the Original Bible Texts
2. Is the Bible Reliable Since Its Been Translated So Many Times?
3. Miracles Don't Contradict The Laws of Nature
4. Jesus and Logical Fallacies: The False Dilemma
5. Why Would the Press Ignore a Real Life House of House of Horrors?

What Were the Crusades? Busting Some Myths

Just what were the Crusades? In his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, President Obama likened the evil savagery that ISIS has been perpetrating in the name of Islam to Christianity and the Crusades. First, it makes no sense to with a wave of one's rhetorical hand dismiss one evil because of another. In logic, that is known as the tu quoque (Latin for "you too!") fallacy. Yet, there is another problem with the president's comparison: it's based on a very common, very popular, but very wrong misconception about what the Crusades were about and what actually happened historically.

I want to take a moment to play myth-buster and show why the modern assumptions are very much backwards and why the Crusades are not parallel with the ISIS killings we read in the headlines today.

What Were the Crusades? Myth – Christians Unilaterally Attacked Muslim Lands

This seems to be the foundational myth in misunderstanding what were the Crusades. Many believe  that Christians gathered their armies from the various parts of Europe to march into Muslim territory and conquer anyone believing in Islam. Usually, Christians are painted as religious bigots trying to stamp out the unbeliever through warfare and violence. In a supplemental text to the video game "Crusade of Kings, " R. Scott Peoples writes "The soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed—literally—task of slaughtering unbelievers."1 This is a popular picture, but one that's dead wrong.

What Were the Crusades? Reality –Hundreds of Years of Muslim Aggression

Thomas F. Madden summarizes distinguished Crusades expert Dr. Jonathan Riley-Smith and writes, "All the Crusades met the criteria of just wars. They came about in reaction attacks against Christians or their Church."2 The Muslim aggression towards Christians in Christian lands had been recurring over hundreds of years. Muslim invaders had swept across Northern Africa in the seventh century while simultaneously conquering Christian areas in Palestine, up through Russia and southern Italy. For another three hundred years, they attacked Christian southwestern Europe and west Asia.

Scott Thong in his article "Christianity vs Islam – Who Started This Whole Mess?" presents a detailed timeline of all Muslim aggression prior to the Christian response, but I've reproduced a condensed version below:3

• 634 A.D. Muslim invasion of Byzantine Christian Empire and Palestine
• 650 A.D. Muslim invasion of Khazar (Ukraine and Russia), until 737 A.D.
• 652 A.D. Muslims invade and occupy Christian Sicily and Italy, until 1091 A.D.
• 700 A.D. Muslim invasion of Nubia
• 711 A.D. Muslims attack, invade and occupy Christian Spain, Portugal, Andora and Gibraltar, and try to invade France but are soundly trashed in the Battle of Tours, until 975 A.D.
• 846 A.D. Muslim Saracen sacking of Rome
• 1064 A.D. Muslim invasion of West Asia - Turkish Muslims attack, invade and occupy Asia Minor and Syria, until 1308. However, later events cause them to remain under Muslim occupation today.
• 1095 A.D. The First Crusade - First Crusade begins. Campaign is limited to retaking formerly Christian lands.
• Today, all the territory reclaimed from Muslim occupiers during the Crusades has returned to Muslim occupation

What Were the Crusades? Reality - Christians Hoping to Save Their Brethren

Medieval Historian Paul F. Crawford in his article "Four Myths about the Crusades" sums it up by writing:

Far from being unprovoked, then, the crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity's five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades.4

Madden and Riley-Smith agree:

The First Crusade was called in 1095 in response to the recent Turkish conquest of Christian Asia Minor, as well as the much earlier Arab conquest of the Christian-held Holy Land. The second was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Edessa in 1144. The third was called in response to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem and most other Christian lands in the Levant in 1187.

In each case, the faithful went to war to defend Christians, to punish the attackers, and to right terrible wrongs. As Riley-Smith has written elsewhere, crusading was seen as an act of love—specifically the love of God and the love of neighbor. By pushing back Muslim aggression and restoring Eastern Christianity, the Crusaders were—at great peril to themselves—imitating the Good Samaritan.5

So, the comparison the president makes concerning the Crusades and ISIS aggression simply doesn't hold up. ISIS is continuing what Muslims have historically done, with the notable exception that they are seeking to take lands from other Muslims as well. It makes no sense to deflect such barbarism by trying to offer a poor historical comparison. It makes even less sense given the fact that people are dying right now because of ISIS. The threat is immediate and real; pointing to false stereotypes helps no one.

References

1. R. Scott Peoples, Crusade of Kings (Rockville, MD: Wildside, 2009), 7. Web. https://books.google.com/books?id=rdDyOiWYC6AC&lpg=PP1&dq=Crusade%20of%20Kings&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. Madden, Thomas F. "Inventing the Crusades." First Things. First Things, June 2009. Web. 06 Feb. 2015. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/06/inventing-the-crusades.
3. Thong, Scott. "Christianity vs Islam - Who Started This Whole Mess?" Leading Malaysian Neocon. Scott Thong, 22 Apr. 2008. Web. 06 Feb. 2015. http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/christianity-vs-islam-who-started-this-whole-mess/.
4. Crawford, Paul F. "Four Myths About the Crusades." First Principles. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Spring 2011. Web. 06 Feb. 2015. http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1483.
5. Madden, 2009.

Dear Mr. President: Holding to Exclusive Belief is not Arrogant

Is it humble to say that no one should claim to have the truth? I've heard such assertions before. I've had discussions with others about religious beliefs and many of them have responded that to claim any kind of concept of God that excludes other beliefs systems is arrogant. But I think the opposite may actually be true.

As an example, I would like to look at part of the speech Barack Obama made at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. While the president, unlike his predecessors, is the first to not hold any observances for the National Day of Prayer during his presidency, he has attended the prayer breakfast each year. The event is put on by The Fellowship Foundation, an organization that blurs all faiths and is described as "assertively non-doctrinal and non-ecclesiastical."1

It isn't surprising, then, that Obama's remarks would take on a non-committal tone. Yet, he made some statements that go beyond non-commitment. In admonishing the audience to "counteract intolerance," he advised:

I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe. And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt—not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn't speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn't care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.2

Searching For the True Truth

This is the kind of claim that sounds very good until you think about it a little more deeply. First, I agree with the president that God cares for all people. But where did he get such an idea? Certainly, it didn't come from the Eastern faiths like Buddhism or Hinduism. In these, the universe runs according to the law of karma. You must repay debts you acquired in a previous life. Karma is impersonal and always exacting; no one escapes it.

The Bible clearly teaches God cares for everyone. Verses like John 3:16 that read "For God so loved the world" and 2 Peter 3:9 that says the Lord is "not willing that any should perish"( ESV) enforce this point. Yet, the concluding portions of both those verses are very exclusive in nature. God so loved the world that he gave his son and it is whosoever that believes on him is saved. God doesn't want us to perish, but instead come to repentance. These are exclusive claims and you must accept them as true or as false, but you cannot do both.

You cannot pull the Christian teaching of God caring about all people out of the way he demonstrated that care—through Jesus' death—and say that you must then doubt that exclusive tent of the faith. It makes no sense. This is true of ANY faith system. All of them make truth claims about God, about the way the universe works, and about how an individual can find salvation. If you embrace a religion, then you are agreeing that its teachings are true and therefore any teaching that contradicts it is false.

The Arrogant Anthropologist

Here's the thing. Those who claim that all faiths have some form of the truth are themselves making a faith claim they want you to accept as true. Leaving aside the contradictory nature of the various belief systems, the person making the statement is saying that believers in an exclusive faith have been duped, while he himself has come to a higher understanding.

I once saw a television show where an anthropologist came to live with a native tribe in the Amazon rain forest. Still using Stone Age tools and grass huts, he proclaimed glowingly how the tribe was "closer to the earth" and had so much less impact on their natural environment. The show showed that the chieftain would seek to cure children born with deformities or illness by sacrificing a chicken and leaving them exposed to the elements. Some would, of course, die. He then said something like, "We may feel that such acts are cruel. They're not, for the tribe cannot afford to take on the burden of caring for such offspring when they won't be able to help the tribe survive. It could be a death sentence for them. While their value on children may be different from our own, neither is wrong. Both are the way we survive in the tribes in which we're raised."

That's hogwash.

The anthropologist was saying that he is smarter than both the tribesmen in their belief that a chicken could cure their child AND in you, the person of the modern society who engages in your rituals because you were raised in them. The anthropologist is claiming to have some kind of privileged knowledge that stands above both points of view. However, if he were to be bitten by a poisonous snake or contract malaria in the jungle, do you think he would accept the sacrificed chicken as his only treatment? If his daughter were diagnosed with cancer, would he seek out the chieftain or would he look for the best oncologist he could find?

Belief systems make truth claims and truth by its very nature is exclusive. For the president to lecture us to "not be so full of yourself" to think that "somehow we alone are in possession of the truth" is disingenuous. He certainly seems to be very confident that he is right. I wonder how he reconciles that with his own advice.

References

1. Boyer, Peter J. "Frat House for Jesus." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 13 Sept. 2010. Web. 05 Feb. 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/13/frat-house-for-jesus.

2. Nazworth, Napp. "Obama National Prayer Breakfast 2015 Text Transcript and Full Video; 'The Starting Point of Faith Is Some Doubt'" Christian Post. The Christian Post, Inc. 5 Feb. 2015. Web. 05 Feb. 2015. http://www.christianpost.com/news/obama-national-prayer-breakfast-2015-text-transcript-and-full-video-the-starting-point-of-faith-is-some-doubt-133638/pageall.html.

How Would Stephen Fry Answer His Own Challenge to God?

The British actor and comedian Stephen Fry has lit the Internet ablaze. During a taping for the show The Meaning of Life, interviewer Gay Byrne asked the atheist Fry the question that was previously posed to Bertrand Russell: "Suppose it's all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates and you are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?" (You may watch the full clip below.) Fry fired off a very emotional response, beginning with:

I'd say, "Bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you! How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault! It's not right; it's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain." That's what I'd say.1

He goes on to object to God creating the parasites that cause river blindness, detailing the symptoms of some of the more horrific cases. When asked by Byrne "And you think you are going to get in, like that?" Fry responded "No, but I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They are wrong."

Fry's response is not unfamiliar. It is standard New Atheist fare, a recapitulation of Dawkins and others. He has such arrogance in his answer, though, it seems to take even the interviewer's breath away. Fry is confident that God cannot exist because of the horrible natural evil he sees in the world. Or if God does exist, he has a lot of explaining to do to Stephen Fry as well as to those poor bone cancer victims.

The Problem of Evil is Everyone's Problem

While Fry is railing against God, I wonder how he would answer the same charge using his own worldview. How would Fry offer comfort to the mother of a child with bone cancer within his understanding of atheism? Would he tell her, "Well, I'm sorry. Evolution is driven by natural selection of advantageous genetic mutation. Your child has a mutation, but it wasn't an advantageous one for her. She has to die, but that's OK. The more fit will leave more offspring." Given Fry's view, how can he say contracting bone cancer is unjust? It is the process of mutation in practice.2

Is Fry's answer better? If bone cancer is part of the evolutionary process, how can he label its existence wrong? Where does he get this definition of right and wrong from? If he wants no mutations of DNA at all, then he wants humans to evolve no further. Otherwise, things like pain, suffering, and parasites eating out the eyes of African children is just how the world works; right and wrong don't enter into it at all.

Devils and Angels

Interestingly, before this portion of the interview, Fry was commenting on his bipolar disorder. Byrne asks, "You say for all the pain that depression causes you, you wouldn't want rid of it because of the places it takes you, in terms of creative highs." Fry agrees and quotes W.O. Jordan who said, "Don't take away my devils because you'll take away my angels, too." He then tells Byrne how he can lead a high functioning, successful life that is fulfilling even with a mental illness.

So why is it that Fry can see good come from debilitation within his own life and he would resist the removal of the defect of bipolarism and yet he cannot open his mind at all to the possibility that God allows the evil we see in the world for greater purposes? Surely, Fry doesn't know so much that he can say with certainty how a world of free, fallen creatures would behave in a world where they never need to rely upon God for their safety, to ease their pain, or to appeal to a hope for the future.

The Luxury of Atheism for the Affluent

Andy Walton makes the same point concerning Fry and folks like the British Humanist Association. You may remember that Richard Dawkins and the BHA created an advertising campaign declaring "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."3 Walton comments such thinking is "aimed at a small, privileged elite of Western people in the 21st century." He continues:

Stop worrying, says Fry. Forget about God and life after death and finally you'll be free to enjoy life. Well, sorry Stephen, but if you take away God and the hope of a life to come, then the majority of believers you'll be ‘setting free' aren't privileged, Western people who'll be released into a life of self-gratifying loveliness. In fact, they are mostly poor, the majority are women and they are clinging onto their hope and faith for all that they're worth. Think of Christians in Syria, DR Congo or North Korea. Think of the hell on earth some them are experiencing. How dare Stephen Fry tell them that life would be so much better if they gave up on their silly faith.4

I think that's right. It's far too easy to assume the moral high ground and judge God when it suits you, but to provide answers from one's own beliefs, that's tough. If Fry wants to really make a convincing argument against God, he needs to come up with his own answer to the problem of evil, one that's better than the hope offered to those wounded children trough Christ.

References

1. "Stephen Fry." The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne. RTE One. Dublin, Ireland, 01 Feb. 2015. The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. http://www.rte.ie/player/us/show/10370987/.
2. Mayo Clinic Staff. "Bone Cancer - Causes." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic, 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2015. http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/bone-cancer/basics/causes/con-20028192.
3. "Atheist Bus Campaign." British Humanist Association. British Humanist Association, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2015. https://humanism.org.uk/about/atheist-bus-campaign/.
4. Walton, Andy. "Thou Shalt Not Question Stephen Fry." Threads. Andy Walton, 3 Feb. 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. http://www.threadsuk.com/thou-shalt-not-question-stephen-fry/

Taking Advice from an Atheist

I recently ran across an article entitled "How to Persuade a Christian to Become Atheist "on the WikiHow website, offering fifteen steps atheists should follow if they wish to "deconvert" their friends or simply put up a proper argument for their atheism. The article is interesting and a bit controversial given some of the comments in its discussion section. I think some of the points are forced, some are wrong, and some show a bit of bias. Yet there are some pieces of advice here that I actually agree with and would encourage people to follow.

Become an Educated Objector

One of the first pieces of advice the article offers is that atheists seeking to defend their view is to:

Educate yourself. The key to reasoning with someone is to understand their position as well as your own. Read everything you can about atheism, Christian apologetics and religious history. A number of Christians, for example, don't know the origins of their religion outside of a biblical context so having an understanding of the history can be beneficial.1

I think this is actually a good piece of advice. I have too many times run across people who object to my beliefs but hold to a caricature of both Christianity’s history and what the Christian faith teaches. Historic claims such as religion is the cause of most wars, Christianity expanded through violence, Christians in the Middle Ages believed the earth was flat, and the supposed pagan origins of Christmas and Easter can all be dismissed if one were to dig into the historical sources.

Asking people to read about not just atheism but also Christian apologetics and religious history is proper and important. I would add, though, that in order for this task to be effective one shouldn’t limit themselves to atheist authors and what they have said regarding those subjects. Read about Christian apologetics by reading the articles of Christian apologists. Find religious history articles by religious historians. Go to the sources. I have read popular atheists like Carrier, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Peter Boghossian, but I’ve also read sophisticated works by David Hume, Michael Ruse, and others.

Reading from the "horse’s mouth" if you will can cut down on misunderstandings. One can see the argument in its larger context. By educating yourself on the arguments of views contrary to your own, you are in a better position to argue for or against that point. Both Christians and atheists should follow this rule. It’s interesting that in the very next step the article advises, "Learn common arguments leveled by theists and the best rebuttals" yet links to only Wikipedia articles and Internet Infidels responses. Such reading may reinforce one’s view, but you won’t really learn much about the beliefs of others.

Guard Against Bias

In offering steps #4 and #5, I think the author tips his hand a bit. Step #4 reads "Examine your own myths, urban legends, and superstitions and learn why people believe stories backed by anecdotal evidence. Understanding something about belief as it pertains to psychology will better prepare you for the challenges ahead."2 Notice that he or she is attempting to bias the reader into grouping beliefs with "myths, urban legends, and superstitions." But belief isn’t as simple as a psychological response. People will believe things based on facts, too. In fact, most beliefs are not psychological responses but rationally based. Christianity is a belief system that roots itself in history, not psychology.

A better suggestion would be to "Examine your own biases." Since everyone has biases, perhaps recognizing what those are would give you a clearer picture of others’ beliefs and why they can reasonably hold to a certain view. It would also help clear up problems that may arise from step #5: "Read and understand their holy book cover to cover. The Bible contains not only contradictions, but also stories that have historical people, places and events that are still up for debate as to their authenticity. For example, the story of Tyre and how the city was destroyed."3

I’m not certain what kind of debate there is over Tyre being destroyed (it was), but reading the Bible would be a good start. Cover to cover may be ambitious initially. How about reading the New Testament to get a better understanding of Christian theology? The claims of Jesus, the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, the command to pray for those who persecute you all can help the non-believer understand the heart of Christianity and who Jesus really is. But one shouldn’t read with the sole intent of seeking out contradictions. That mindset will lead you to many misunderstandings, not only within the biblical text, but in most historical or literary works.

There are ten mores steps listed in the article; some are short-sighted and others I disagree with. I'm still not sure why #13 advises atheistrs to "stay away from love." Why is love so scary? But those that focus on building relationship and understanding are appropriate if they are taken in an honest spirit. Both Christians and atheists need to see one another as real people and not simply adversaries or opportunities to show off your argument skills. By sincerely seeking to understand the other's position, both sides will go a long way to better interaction, better comprehension, and being better people.

References

1. "How to Persuade a Christian to Become Atheist." WikiHow. WikiHow, n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2015. http://www.wikihow.com/Persuade-a-Christian-to-Become-Atheist.
2. WikiHow, 2015.
3. WikiHow, 2015.
Image courtesy Flicker.com/emdot and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) License.

Was the Bible Changed to Make it Look Like Jesus was Worshiped?

There's a silly claim made by Kurt Eichenwald in his Newsweek article that sounds like it came out of a page fron the Jehovah's Witnesses playbook. Eichenwald claims that our modern Bibles get the word worship wrong in the New Testament. He writes that the Greek word προσκυνέω (proskyneo) is intentionally mistranslated by modern biblical texts. He writes:

Throughout the King James Bible, people "worship" many things. A slave worships his owner, the assembled of Satan worship an angel, and Roman soldiers mocking Jesus worship him. In each of these instances, the word does not mean "praise God's glory" or anything like that; instead, it means to bow or prostrate oneself. But English Bibles adopted later—the New International Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the Living Bible and so on—dropped the word worship when it referenced anyone other than God or Jesus.1

He then claims that the change was intentionally misleading to support a view of Jesus' deity that would otherwise be absent for the scripture. He concludes, "In other words, with a little translational trickery, a fundamental tenet of Christianity—that Jesus is God—was reinforced in the Bible, even in places where it directly contradicts the rest of the verse." 2

Playing Fast and Loose with Language

Eichenwald is wrong on several counts. First, the fact that there is a single Greek word that can have more than one meaning doesn't meant the translators wouldn't be able to know when to translate it worship and when to translate it bow down. That's like saying one cannot tell if someone tells you "Sam is blue today" you couldn't tell if he was referring to his feelings or his color. Context is king and reading the context of the passage will give you the appropriate English word.

Secondly, it simply isn't true that translations like the NASB "dropped the word worship when it referenced anyone other than God or Jesus." In Matthew 4:9, Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms in the world if he would just "fall down and worship" Satan. In Acts 10:25, it reads that "When Peter entered, Cornelius met him, and fell at his feet and worshiped him" and in Revelation 13:15, the people are commanded to worship the image of the beast or be killed.

Similarly, there are people who fall down before Jesus where the word proskyneo is explicitly not translated worship. Matthew 8:2 reads, "And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, ‘Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.'" Matthew 15:25, in the story of the Canaanite woman who sought help for her daughter, reads that she "came and began to bow down before Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me!'" The phrase "began to bow down" shows action and it's thus translated that way, even though the action is directed towards Jesus.

So, Eichenwald's claim that the word is somehow intentionally manipulated to get a result holds no water.

The Jehovah's Witnesses resistance to the word worship

I've had conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses who try to argue a similar point to Eichenwald's. They hold that the word proskyneo shouldn't be translated worship when applied to Jesus. But that argument actually begs the question. We know that the Jehovah's Witnesses would agree that God alone deserves worship. They would agree with us that Jesus even says so in Matthew 4:10 when he rebukes Satan's offer and quotes from "it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'" Even a created angel should not be worshiped. In Revelation 19:10, John was so overwhelmed by the visions that he saw that he "fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God.'"

Here, we can see the context of the word implies worship, even when it is referring to an angel. We also see that in both instances, the command it to worship God alone. Hebrews 1:5- is therefore especially vexing because God the Father commands the angels worship the Son:

For to which of the angels did He ever say, "You are My Son, Today I have begotten You"? And again, "I will be a Father to Him And He shall be a Son to Me"? And when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He says, "And let all the angels of God worship Him."

The word proskyneo is translated in Hebrews 1:6 as worship and it is clear, unlike Eichenwald's claim, that it isn't the word worship that implies Jesus is divine. It is verse 8 where we read, "But of the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, And the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom.'" The Father calls the son God. We have a clear claim to Jesus' deity and a command that every created angel should proskyneo him. Given that context, the word worship is appropriate.

Both Eichenwald and the Jehovah's Witnesses claim that the New Testament translations are biased, yet neither of them offers the proper context for the word worship, acknowledges that the word's two meanings may be differentiates appropriately given the context of the passage, nor recognizes that there are clear texts that make the claim of Jesus's divinity elsewhere in the New Testament. The fact is that John 1:1 to 1:3 explicitly defines Jesus as Creator God. It seems to me that the charge of disingenuity doesn't fall on the translators of our bibles but on Eichenwald and the Jehovah's Witnesses themselves.

References

1. Eichenwald, Kurt. "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." Newsweek 23 Dec. 2014: n. pag. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html
2. Eichenwald, 2014.

Questions to Ask Skeptics: Why Are You So Intolerant? (video)

Those critical of Christianity seem to always have a lot of objections they throw at Christians. They ask question after question, seeing if the believer can answer what they believe are seemingly intractable problems.

Well, the reason-giving game goes both ways. In this short video clip, Lenny offers one of five questions the Christian should ask of the skeptic: Why are you so intolerant? These questions are designed to show how many of the critic's own beliefs can be contradictory and why Christianity makes sense.

/div>

Why You Can Be Confident We Have the Original Bible Texts

Earlier this week, I mentioned the Newsweek cover article entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin" written by Kurt Eichenwald that set the text of the New Testament in its cross-hairs. There, I showed why the translation of the Bible we have today is not like a game of telephone, being translated from a translation from a translation.

But Eichenwald doesn't argue that multiple translations are the only problem in discovering the original text. He also mentions the fact that we don't have the original writings of the New Testament, but "hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times."1 There is a bit of truth to this claim. If the manuscripts from which we are translating the New Testament are themselves corrupt or wrong, then it really doesn't matter how well we have translated the text. We're simply translating an error. Let's examine this critique and see if it holds up.

First, it is true that we don't have the originals, or the first generation copies, or even the second generation. While we don't know just how many times the text was copied prior to the earliest copes we do have (called manuscripts), it is safe to say they are for the most part dozens of times removed from the originals. What makes things seem worse is the earliest pieces we do have are not large portions of text, but small fragments. For example, the earliest gospel portion is the John Rylands fragment (P52) that only contains part of John 18:31-33 on one side and John 18:37-38 on the other. The more complete manuscripts are from hundreds of years later.

Doesn't the fact that we are separated by hundreds of years from the originals to the copies we have cause concern? Actually, not at all. New Testament scholars—both Christians and skeptics—have the greatest confidence that we know just what the original authors wrote. How can this be? I can explain with an example: tracing my family's recipe for spaghetti sauce.

Nonna's Family Sauce

My great grandmother came to the United States from Sicily in 1921. With her, she brought a recipe for spaghetti sauce that her mother had cooked. She in turn taught it to her three daughters, of which my grandmother was one. My grandmother passed that along to her four children, including my mother. She taught it to my wife and my siblings and my wife taught it to my daughter-in-law. The other daughters passed the recipe onto their children who passed it to theirs as well.

Now, suppose the descendants of my Great grandmother all get together at the 200th reunion of her arrival and say, "we want to make the sauce, but we want to make sure that it is the exact sauce she would have tasted in Sicily as a little girl." Would such a feat be impossible? Not really. In order to find the original, all the families would write down their recipe as they now fix it. There would be more than a hundred copies of the recipe, and there would no doubt be variations in the ingredients, amounts, and preparation. However, because we have such a large collection, we can begin to compare them one to another.

We may notice that all the recipes use crushed tomatoes except for 20 which say tomato sauce. We also not the crushed tomatoes show up nearly unanimously in the recipes supplied by the older generations. It is a strong bet that crushed tomatoes is right. Secondly, we notice that one group of recipes call to use twice as much garlic in the sauce. But all of these recipes come from the family of one uncle who liked the strong taste of garlic. Another group tell us to add sugar, but that cousin was known to have a sweet tooth. Some are missing ingredients, others have the preparation steps reversed, and a few add meat. However, because we have so many copies, we can reasonably rebuild the original recipe. Those copies coming from the older generations are less likely to deviate from the original since they have gone through fewer iterations. Overall, though, the receipt they come up with is probably the one my great grandmother was served as a little girl.

Thousands and Thousands of Copies

Those who reconstruct the text of the New Testament do basically the same thing on a larger scale. They have many thousands of manuscript copies, partials, and portions from different places all over the ancient world. New Testament scholar Dr. Daniel Wallace places this in perspective when he writes:

Altogether, we have at least 20,000 handwritten manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and other ancient languages that help us to determine the wording of the original. Almost 6000 of these manuscripts are in Greek alone. And we have more than one million quotations of the New Testament by church fathers. There is absolutely nothing in the Greco-Roman world that comes even remotely close to this wealth of data.2

This is why scholars today have a 99% confidence level that the text of the New Testament we have is what the original authors wrote.

I've only scratched the surface of Eichenwald's article; there are many more claims about the Bible he makes that fail to take modern scholarship into account. These two points, though, should give you confidence that his claims about no one today "has ever read the Bible"3 are unjustified. We do have the books as the New Testament authors wrote them. I would bet a plate of pasta on it.

References

1. Eichenwald, Kurt. "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." Newsweek 23 Dec. 2014: n. pag. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html
2. Daniel B. Wallace. "Predictable Christmas Fare: Newsweek's Tirade against the Bible." Daniel B Wallace. The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, 28 Dec. 2014. Web. 30 Jan. 2015. http://danielbwallace.com/2014/12/28/predictable-christmas-fare-newsweeks-tirade-against-the-bible/.
3.Eichenwald, 2014.

The Cause of the Universe Must Be Intentional

We know the universe began to exist. That fact is agreed upon by the majority of theists and atheists alike. But what else can we know from that fact? By conceding that the universe has a beginning, does that give us proof of the Christian God? Not really, but it gets us closer than you may initially realize.

The first thing one can infer is whatever it is that caused the universe to exist (I will refer to this as the Cause with a capital C) must itself exist prior to the universe and its created parts. This means that the since the Cause created all matter, it must itself not be made of matter. If the Cause is made of matter, then it isn't an explanation of the universe, it is part of the universe. The cause of the universe must be immaterial.

Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that since time is also a part of the created universe, the cause of the universe's existence must be at least initially timeless. It must exist in a state of timelessness prior to any creative act. However, this conclusion adds additional facts to the picture. As I said yesterday, one can define time as a change in states or a succession of events. If there is a before and after, there must be time involved. Therefore, at the creation event time begins because there is a change in states. The Cause was not creating in its timeless state and it now is.

Such a description is fine when one is thinking about time beginning, but it begs a question: what makes the Cause start creating at all? If the Cause (whatever it is) is timeless, then why all of a sudden start creating? Here is where we need to differentiate how different causes work, and it leads to some interesting conclusions.

Two Types of Causes

There are two types of causes that we have observed through all of history. The first are causes that are the result of a certain set of circumstances. The 35th domino in a line of dominoes falling will cause the 36th domino to fall. In the same way, vinegar will cause a cup of baking soda to react and ultimately cause carbon dioxide gas to be released. Similarly, heat will cause fuel and oxygen to ignite into fire. All these causes (the domino, the vinegar, and the heat) create an effect that follows inevitably from the laws of nature. They are what I would call mechanical and they are contingent upon the universe being the way it is. Given the chemical properties of baking soda and vinegar the effect must occur if the causal conditions are met.

But such causes require other things to already be in existence. The 35th domino wouldn't have fallen had the 34th domino not fallen. The force of gravity must exist (lining up dominos in the International Space Station is much harder to do and won't give you the same effect.) Molecules must be able to share electrons in a certain way before the vinegar can react with the baking soda. There is therefore no mechanical cause that can jump start the whole process.

The other type of cause is a personal cause. Personal causes can happen spontaneously. If I have a desire to raise my arm, I simply raise it. There needs to be no preceding event that makes me want to raise my arm. The cause is created in my mind. While some desires or intentions may stem from external stimuli (such as wanting to raise my arm because it is tired, it aches, or I want to answer a question the teacher posed), such a prior cause is not required. I'm not compelled to answer a question the teacher posed, I may simply want to contribute to the discussion. I may simply have a desire to answer and I then intend to answer by causing the effect of putting up my hand.

Desired from Eternity Past

Of the two types of causes we know, which would be better at explaining the cause of the universe? The first one can't do so because it requires something to exist already. Some try to argue about the laws of gravity creating the universe, but such arguments fail to take into account what's required before any law, including gravity, can work. These kinds of causes don't answer the question of beginnings, they simply push it back a step and imagine a universe-making machine. The obvious question is "what made the machine?"

The second kind of cause makes more sense. But intentions and desires don't exist on their own; they are the products of a mind. A mind is not a physical thing, like a brain. It is fundamentally different and because thoughts, intentions, and desires are themselves immaterial, they can be present in an immaterial mind.

So, we have a Cause that is immaterial, timeless, and shows desire to create. That means the cause is personal; it has a mind. You may at this point say, "But wait! How can a timeless mind have a desire? If there is a change in the Cause where a desire is created, that means such a Cause is not timeless." This is true. However, it isn't necessary that a desire come into being. Some intentions or desires can always be there. Think about the desire to survive, for example. All humans have it, even if they never have to exercise it. The desire for life exists since birth, but only when we are threatened do we act upon it.

It is reasonable, then, to have a timeless, immaterial, personal Cause for the universe that desired to create (and create us) from the eternal past. While that doesn't specifically argue for the Christian God, it comes pretty close and excludes a whole lot of other contenders.

Image courtesy Jessica Mullen and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) License.

Is God Existing Before Time Illogical?

Yesterday, I had a short online conversation with someone about the existence of God. Specifically, we discussed what could be reasonably inferred from the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The argument is simple:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its existence.

The challenge came when my interlocutor questioned how the cause of the universe (whatever that may be) can be timeless itself. He asked, "Wouldn't a cause require time?" I think this is a fair question and one that needs unpacking a bit. The concept of time and God's relation to it is pretty misunderstood by most people, but with a little explaining, I think we can gain a little clarity.

How to Define Time

Has anyone ever asked you to define time? Think about how you would answer that question. Can you come up with a definition that doesn't include the word time in it? Defining time using its units of measure (hours, minutes, seconds, etc.) doesn't really help since their definitions include "a unit of time." So, how does one define time?

Basically, time may be defined as the succession of moments. That sounds a little obtuse, but it means whenever there is a change, time has passed. If a point A things are one way and then at point B things are different (no matter how slight) time has elapsed. Basically, if there is a before and an after, you will have time. For our universe, molecules are always in motion so time is always moving forward.

Modern science agrees that with the creation of matter, time was also created. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity demonstrated that time and space are linked.1 While time passes more quickly or slowly based on one's speed and mass, everything in our universe and the universe itself experiences some kind of passage of time.

The Before and After of Creating the Universe

Given all that, it raises the question of how God could have created the universe before there was any time. To ask, "What's before that, before time?" strikes one as nonsensical. There can't be a before time since time itself deals with before and after. Yet, the argument for God's existence above makes the deduction that God created the universe. That means God existed prior to the universe's creation; but wouldn't that also imply there was a time before time? The answer is not in the way you're thinking. This is where our use of language can get us into trouble, so I want to be careful in my explanation.

God's existence does precede the creation of the universe in some sense. God must exist to do the creating. Prior to time, it would be technically wrong to say that God existed before creation, but that God existed beyond creation. Philosophers will speak of God existing logically prior to the universe, not temporally prior. The best way for me to illustrate the distinction is by illustration, one I heard William Lane Craig use.2 Think of a bowling ball resting on a pillow on a bed. The ball makes an impression on that pillow; the pillow has a rounded dent in it. Yet, it doesn't have to be the case that the ball was at some point not making the impression on the pillow. Imagine now that the ball had been resting on the pillow from eternity past; the dent will still be there. The ball is the cause of the dent, but that doesn't necessitate the ball needing to exist prior to the dent. Similarly, a truss can be the cause of one's roof not falling down even if the truss and the roof were built simultaneously.

Because we can have a cause that doesn't have to exist chronologically prior to its effect (of holding up the roof or making the dent in the pillow), we speak of the cause being prior to the effect only in the logical sense. The ball must be there or the dent never forms. Thus the ball is logically prior to the dent, but not chronologically prior. When we apply this to God, we can say that God existed in a timeless state prior to creation. It was only Him and since God does not change, then there is no before or after and time doesn't exist. At the very moment God chooses to create, time becomes a reality. From that instant on, events have a before and after and they exist in time.

References

1. "The Relativity of Space and Time." Einstein Online. Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, n.d. Web. 28 Jan. 2015. http://www.einstein-online.info/elementary/specialRT/relativity_space_time.
2. Craig, William Lane. "God and Time." ReasonableFaith.org. Reasonable Faith, 2 Dec. 2007. Web. 28 Jan. 2015. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/god-and-time.
Image courtesy Andrew Shiva [CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons.

An Atheist's Bait and Switch on Morality

In the 1988 comedy Coming to America, Eddie Murphy plays an African prince who seeks a wife by trying to blend in with the "regular people" of New York. One way he attempts this is by taking a job at a hamburger shop named McDowell's. Part of the joke is that McDowell's advertises with some familiar golden arches and red and white color schemes, hoping to capture an unsuspecting customer desiring a Big Mac. In the film, owner Cleo McDowell explains: "Look...me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's...I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds."

In the real world, McDowell's wouldn't stand a chance in a court of law. They've intentionally mislead customers to think their experience is going to be one thing, when it is in fact a cheap imitation. That's the feeling I had this morning reading the latest article by Michael Shermer in today's paper. Entitled "The influence of science and reason on moral progress," Shermer claims that we are "living in the most moral period in our history" and then makes a bold assertion:

To what should we attribute this moral progress? Understandably, most people point to religion as the primary driver, given its long association with all matters moral. But the evidence shows that most of the moral development of the last several centuries has been the result of secular forces, and that the most important of these are reason and science, which emerged from the Enlightenment.1

Substituting a Cheap Imitation of Natural Law

The article has a huge number of problems, like trying to classify the writings of Immanuel Kant, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson as exercises in empirical science. He writes, "Enlightenment natural philosophers (we would call them scientists today) such as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson and Immanuel Kant placed supreme value on reason, scientific inquiry, human natural rights, equality and freedom of thought and expression."2 Actually, no one calls them scientists. One doesn't study Kant or Locke in Life Science class. Go to any college or university and you will find analysis of their works in the philosophy department. Shermer is astoundingly wrong here.

In reading the article, Shermer is dead set on substituting the real arguments made by men like Locke and Jefferson with his own cheap imitation.  He takes the phrase "natural philosophers" and "natural law" and equivocates on what the word "natural" means. He portrays it to mean "only dealing with nature," that is the material world. But such an assumption is like substituting a tofu patty for 100% pure beef. The Natural Law that Locke appeals to is based on the created order. Locke states:

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.3

Appealing to God for Equality

One can easily see that Locke is using the term "naturally" to talk not of biology or material aspects of human beings, but of the right of each person to be free. Locke says that this state of nature derives from the Natural Law or law of nature. He goes on to specify the source for that law:

In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him (Section 8)…

that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, … and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind (Section 11)…

I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that selflove will make men partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men (Section 13). 4

So, in arguing that government has authority to punish evil men, Locke appeals to God and his created order. That is, the natural state of man means God created him with freedom, but also the warrant to protect himself from others. Since men tend to play favorites, the Government must judge all men impartially, and again the government is given this authority by God (ref Romans 13:1-7).

Of course, Shermer doesn't have to be a Lockean scholar to understand this. All he needed to do was read the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson clearly spells it out in the words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." That's a pretty fair summation of Locke and the word Creator is right in the middle of it.

Part of Shermer's problem is he sees everything through his scientism/materialist worldview. He forces the word nature to mean something that Kant, Locke, and Jefferson didn't intend it to mean. He hasn't simply "left off the seeds," he's changed the entire main course. Shermer's morality is a bait and switch that no nutritional value whatsoever.

References

1. Shermer, Michael. "The Influence of Science and Reason on Moral Progress." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 27 Jan. 2015. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shermer-bending-moral-arc-20150127-story.html.
2. Shermer, 2015.
3. Locke, John. "Chapter II. Of the State of Nature." The Second Treatise of Civil Government. N.p.: Public Domain, 1690. Constitution Society. Constitution.org. Web. 27 Jan. 2015. http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr02.txt.
4. Locke, 1690.

Is the Bible Reliable Since Its Been Translated So Many Times?

When Google's translation page first came out, some friends and I would have a little fun translating the web page of our employer from English into another language like French or Japanese. We would then copy that text and paste it back into the Google translator and let the computer try to recreate the English. The final result was awkward and would produce pretty comical phrasing, with words implying something completely different from the original message.

The reason we attempted such silliness is to try and intentionally confuse the translating robot. We knew that churning out a translation of a translation would force mistakes to be multiplied, a realization that takes no scholarship at all. Yet, this is the way many people assume the scholars responsible for our modern bibles have worked. Yesterday, a gentleman at my church said he had been in a conversation with a Muslim who said, "Your Bible has been translated so many times challenged by a Muslim on the validity of the Bible as it compared to the Qur'an." This isn't an uncommon claim and many atheists and non-believers have tried to make the same point.

Take the Newsweek cover story published just two days before Christmas entitled "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." The article, which seems to take as its goal the undermining of biblical authority, is rife with inaccurate assumptions and misunderstandings about how biblical scholarship works. Interestingly, its very first criticism is at the problem of multiple translations. Author Kurt Eichenwald, under the heading "Playing Telephone with the Word of God," writes:

No television preacher has ever read the Bible. Neither has any evangelical politician. Neither has the pope. Neither have I. And neither have you. At best, we've all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.1

That's the thinking that many people have. yet this perception is so incredibly wrong it takes my breath away. But Christians seem to not know how to respond to such accusations, as the question posed to the man at church shows.

Counting Up the Number of Translations to You

The first thing I emphasize when tackling the objection that we are somehow insulated from the real meaning of the Bible because of so many translation is to simply ask, "how many times do you think the Bible version you have has been translated from its original languages?" People are feign to guess, imagining perhaps ten, dozens, or more. The reality is that every modern Bible translation has been translated exactly once from the original Greek and Hebrew. Once. That's all. There is no "translation of translations of translations." Biblical scholars work directly from the Hebrew and Greek texts to create the English versions we have today. Eichenwald could have seen that if he had bothered to look at the prefaces to any Bible. Here's what the Translation Committee for Crossway, which publishes the English Standard Version states:

"each word and phrase in the ESV has been carefully weighed against the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, to ensure the fullest accuracy and clarity and to avoid under-translating or overlooking any nuance of the original text."2

Here's what the Lockman Foundation, who created the New American Standard Bible says:

The New American Standard Bible has been produced with the conviction that the words of Scripture, as originally penned in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, were inspired by God… At NO point did the translators attempt to interpret Scripture through translation. Instead, the NASB translation team adhered to the principles of literal translation. This is the most exacting and demanding method of translation, requiring a word-for-word translation that is both accurate and readable. This method follows the word and sentence patterns of the original authors in order to enable the reader to study Scripture in its most literal format and to experience the individual personalities of those who penned the original manuscripts.3

Here's what the NIV translation committee explained:

In 1965, a cross-denominational gathering of evangelical scholars met near Chicago and agreed to start work on the New International Version. Instead of just updating an existing translation like the KJV, they chose to start from scratch, using the very best manuscripts available in the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the Bible.4

And just to show that this translation approach is not something that only began recently, here's what the translators wrote in the preface to the original 1611 King James Version:

That out of the Originall sacred tongues, together with comparing of the labours, both in our owne and other forreigne Languages, of many worthy men who went before us, there should be one more exact Translation of the holy Scriptures into the English tongue; your MAJESTIE did never desist, to urge and to excite those to whom it was commended, that the worke might be hastened, and that the businesse might be expedited in so decent a maner, as a matter of such importance might justly require (emphasis added).5

Note that the translators state that they look at the originals and then look at other translations (the "many worthy men who went before us," such as Tyndale) to be better informed on their own word choice. Consulting existing translations is actually a benefit, as it adds more counselors to the translation efforts, not fewer. Yet, each and every translation begins and is compared against the original languages to ensure accuracy and compatibility. Your Bible, no matter which translation you choose, has been translated only one time, and straight from the original languages to English.

References

1. Eichenwald, Kurt. "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." Newsweek 23 Dec. 2014: n. pag. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html
2. The Translation Oversight Committee. "Preface to the English Standard Version." About ESVBibleorg. Crossway, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://about.esvbible.org/about/preface/.
3. The Lockman Foundation. "Overview of the New American Standard Bible." The Lockman Foundation. The Lockman Foundation, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.lockman.org/nasb/index.php.
4. "The NIV Story." Biblica. Biblica, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.biblica.com/en-us/the-niv-bible/niv-story/.
5."King James Version Original Preface." DailyBible.com. BibleNetUSA, 2006. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. http://www.kjvbibles.com/kjpreface.htm.

Darwinism's Fatal Flaw (podcast)

The idea that complex life arose through nothing but natural means is a hallmark of modern evolutionary theory. But what if we discovered a problem with Darwinism that was so fundamental, all of science wouldn't work? In this podcast series, Lenny highlights a new argument that shows why evolutionary naturalism is a non-starter.

• Darwinism's Fatal Flaw (Part 1)
• Darwinism's Fatal Flaw (Part 2)
• Darwinism's Fatal Flaw (Part 3)
• Darwinism's Fatal Flaw (Part 4)

C.S. Lewis on "Being Born That Way"

Much is made to day of the way people define themselves, their gender, or their sexual orientation because of their feelings. They feel they are a person trapped in the wrong body or they feel an attraction to the same sex. I don't doubt that these feelings are real; it is only the person himself that can confirm or deny such predispositions. However, just because one has a predisposition doesn't mean that the predisposition is correct or that it should be pursued.

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis makes the same point. In speaking of the desires and mental pulls we face (Lewis uses the word "Instinct" with a capital I), he makes a great point that no person follows every desire that strikes him. That would lead to barbarism. We weigh our desires, using reason, logic, and our moral compass to guide us.

This is why while the kleptomaniac may have an overwhelming urge to steal, we don't respond by saying, “Oh, you were born that way!” and throw open the department store doors to let them have their fill. We know that stealing is wrong and we as a society tell the kleptomaniac that while his feelings are real and he may even have been born that way, he needs to seek help for his improper desire. Lewis writes:

Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people’. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own cause and deciding it in its own favour would be rather simple-minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing the preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.1

Lewis is right. College men are coming under immense scrutiny right now if they act upon their sexual appetites. The whole “Yes means yes” law implies that a person can overcome strong natural urges to engage in sexual activity. Yet we are told by some of the same advocates that abstinence programs will never work and those with a predisposition to homosexuality should express themselves because of what they feel. How is that consistent?

References

1. Lewis, C. S. "The Abolition of Man." The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. 710. Print.
Image courtesy Noel Hildalgo and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

What's a Christian to Think of the Killing in American Sniper?

The film American Sniper, which dramatizes the career of Chris Kyle, one of the deadliest snipers in U.S. military history, has smashed box office records. The movie is said to be well made and scenes like the one featured in the trailer highlight some of the impossible decisions snipers face.

However, given the nature of what a sniper's job description is, some Christians are wondering if it is appropriate to see the movie or how we as followers of Jesus should view such a position. One person was sincerely seeking an answer, noting the sixth commandment of "Thou shalt not kill," but also the larger teaching within Christianity of not taking vengeance into our own hands but allowing God to repay.

I haven't yet seen American Sniper, nor read the biography, so I cannot comment on the specific situations it portrays. However, I can comment on the general question of Christianity and the use of force, even in war situations.

The laws of the Old Testament can be a little confusing because some of them are applicable to individuals while others apply to a governing authority. It is important to remember that the Ten Commandments were give as a guideline for individuals to follow. Thus, the commandment not to kill in Exodus 20:13 loses a bit in certain English translations. The Hebrew word ratsach implies killing without proper justification. The command may be translated "thou shalt not murder" just as fairly; which is exactly how both the NASB and the ESV render it. It doesn't exclude things like capital punishment as the Levitical law calls for capital punishment in certain situations, including the concept of a kinsman redeemer to avenge a murder of a relative.

Another situation where this wouldn't apply is killing another in self-defense or to protect the life of a third party. Think of the 2012 San Antonio Theater incident where off duty officer Lisa Castellano shot a gunman who had entered the theater and began shooting randomly, injuring one patron. One would expect Castellano to protect others because of the fact that she was armed. In fact, if an attacker was threatening to kill a stranger and you were armed, it would be your moral obligation to shoot an attacker and stop him or her from killing an innocent victim.

Snipers and Just War Doctrine

Some may say the imminent harm of a shooter justifies deadly force, but a sniper hiding on a rooftop hundreds of yards away is different. I don't think it is. In the case of war, we have an extension of the attacker and the innocent victim. The sniper's job is simple; hew is to protect his fellow troops. If they would be threatened by a terrorist or enemy combatant, they are obligated to remove that person as a threat against their comrades. The difficulty comes, as the clip above shows, in recognizing who is a combatant and who isn't.

The role of the sniper is a small part of a much bigger discussion on Christians' involvement in the act of war. While some believe that Christians should be pacifists, the Bible doesn't teach this. Certainly God called Israel to fight on his behalf many times in the Old Testament. Even in the New Testament (Romans 13), Paul tells us that God gives the sword to the government for protection and punishing the wrongdoer. When one country threatens the population of another, it is like a man who threatens your family. Even third parties like the United States may be justified in stepping in to ensure that justice prevails. Of course, this power of the sword can be misused by evil men, but that makes it even more important that nations who care about justice step in to ensure abuse doesn't run amok.

In the history of Christianity, there has been a lot written about the concept of a Just War. Christian thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas thought carefully about both what justifies engaging in war and what it means to wage war in a just manner. These can be summarized as:

1. Obey all international laws on weapons prohibition.
2. Discrimination and Non-Combatant Immunity. That is soldiers are only entitled to use their (weapons to target those who are engaged in harm.
3. Proportionality. Soldiers may only use force proportional to the end they seek.
4. Benevolent quarantine for prisoners of war (POWs).
5. No Means Mala in Se. Soldiers may not use weapons or methods which are "evil in themselves," such as mass rape campaigns; genocide or ethnic cleansing; using poison or treachery (like disguising soldiers to look like the Red Cross); forcing captured soldiers to fight against their own side; and using weapons whose effects cannot be controlled, like biological agents.
6. No reprisals. A reprisal is when country A violates these precepts in a war with country B. Country B then retaliates with its own violation of the rules.1

If a sniper follows these basic principles, he is engaging in proper wartime activities. Much of the problem our troops face today is that many enemies do not follow a Just War doctrine. They target civilians, they enlist the help of civilians, and they disguise themselves as non-combatants in order to achieve their own ends.

For more on Christians and war, see this article on the Come Reason web site: http://www.comereason.org/religion-and-war.asp

References

1. Orend, Brian. "War." Stanford University. Stanford University, 04 Feb. 2000. Web. 22 Jan. 2015. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2.2.

Image courtesy MOD (Ministry of Defence) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons