Infidels: Feedback : 2000 : May-June

From the Editor: Greetings humans!  You may have noticed that in mid-June of this year we radically changed the way feedback gets done.  Instead of a laborious editing process, we now use a live-action message board, with fewer rules and quicker response time (see the new feedback).  However, this left a backlog of three and a half months.  To catch up to speed and retire the old system, only very basic editing was done of these intervening months.

The reason for this is that their world belief system depends totally on the 'Word of God' being just literally that. This was pointed out to me by a missionary who recently engaged me in online debate as part of an apologetics course he was completing: -" If the premises are true, the conclusion is also true. The Bible clearly declares itself to be the Word of God. It also informs us that God cannot err. The conclusion, then, is inevitable. The Bible cannot err. If the Bible erred in anything it affirms, then God would be mistaken. But God cannot make mistakes – God cannot do anything that is against His own nature (i.e., God cannot hate, deny Himself, etc.)". I commented " I begin to see why inerrantists cling so tenaciously to their patently false statement that the bible is error free." To which my inerrantist friend replied " Yes, as an inerrantists, I do cling tenaciously that God is free of error and mistakes (not “blindly,” but with great evidence that this is so, as I have tried to present in our dialogue)."

This experience of a friendly debate (full version available if anyone is interested- we covered a lot of ground) convinced me that inerrantists are not susceptible to logical argumentation and scientific evidence when it comes to certain core issues, namely the infallibility of the bible. That is why the creationists will not give ground, their whole world view depends on believing a set of blatant counterfactuals.

That said I am everlastingly grateful that Jay Lowder has published the Jury is in and numerous other refutations of the inerrantist position, and enjoy Carrier's massively scholarly yet entertaining pieces, as well as the fun of reading Farrell Till going three rounds to a KO with another bibliolater, tho' they never admit defeat for the reason stated above. By publishing these essays and refutations you enable free thinkers to arm themselves against the ever present temptation to succumb to unreason. But Edelin is still basically right IMO and so is Lowder.

Edward Tuddenham <ted@a1fungi.freeserve.co.uk>
London, UK - Thursday, June 08, 2000 at 07:17:31 (MDT)

Omikrom Seti <omikrom_seti@gnt.net>
FWB, Fl USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 21:23:20 (MDT)

The Negative Confession
Hail, Usekh-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin.
Hail, Hept-khet, who comest forth from Kher-aha, I have not committed robbery with violence.
Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from Khemenu, I have not stolen.
Hail, Am-khaibit, who comest forth from Qernet, I have not slain men and women.
Hail, Neha-her, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not stolen grain.
Hail, Ruruti, who comest forth from heaven, I have not purloined offerings.
Hail, Arfi-em-khet, who comest forth from Suat, I have not stolen the property of God.
Hail, Neba, who comest and goest, I have not uttered lies.
Hail, Set-qesu, who comest forth from Hensu, I have not carried away food.
Hail, Utu-nesert, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have not uttered curses.
Hail, Qerrti, who comest forth from Amentet, I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men.
Hail, Her-f-ha-f, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have made none to weep.
Hail, Basti, who comest forth from Bast, I have not eaten the heart.
Hail, Ta-retiu, who comest forth from the night, I have not attacked any man.
Hail, Unem-snef, who comest forth from the execution chamber, I am not a man of deceit.
Hail, Unem-besek, who comest forth from Mabit, I have not stolen cultivated land.
Hail, Neb-Maat, who comest forth from Maati, I have not been an eavesdropper.
Hail, Tenemiu, who comest forth from Bast, I have not slandered [no man].
Hail, Sertiu, who comest forth from Anu, I have not been angry without just cause.
Hail, Tutu, who comest forth from Ati (the Busirite Nome), I have not debauched the wife of any man.
Hail, Uamenti, who comest forth from the Khebt chamber, I have not debauched the wife of [any] man.
Hail, Maa-antuf, who comest forth from Per-Menu, I have not polluted myself.
Hail, Her-uru, who comest forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none.
Hail, Khemiu, who comest forth from Kaui, I have not transgressed [the law].
Hail, Shet-kheru, who comest forth from Urit, I have not been wroth.
Hail, Nekhenu, who comest forth from Heqat, I have not shut my ears to the words of truth.
Hail, Kenemti, who comest forth from Kenmet, I have not blasphemed.
Hail, An-hetep-f, who comest forth from Sau, I am not a man of violence.
Hail, Sera-kheru, who comest forth from Unaset, I have not been a stirrer up of strife.
Hail, Neb-heru, who comest forth from Netchfet, I have not acted with undue haste.
Hail, Sekhriu, who comest forth from Uten, I have not pried into matters.
Hail, Neb-abui, who comest forth from Sauti, I have not multiplied my words in speaking.
Hail, Nefer-Tem, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have wronged none, I have done no evil.
Hail, Tem-Sepu, who comest forth from Tetu, I have not worked witchcraft against the king.
Hail, Ari-em-ab-f, who comest forth from Tebu, I have never stopped [the flow of] water.
Hail, Ahi, who comest forth from Nu, I have never raised my voice.
Hail, Uatch-rekhit, who comest forth from Sau, I have not cursed God.
Hail, Neheb-ka, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not acted with arrogance.
Hail, Neheb-nefert, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not stolen the bread of the gods.
Hail, Tcheser-tep, who comest forth from the shrine, I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the Spirits of the dead.
Hail, An-af, who comest forth from Maati, I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city.
Hail, Hetch-abhu, who comest forth from Ta-she (the Fayyum), I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god.

I agree with your point wholeheartedly though, love you site!

charlie himmelberger <chimmel@fast.net >
allentown, pa USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 18:03:00 (MDT)

Richard Carrier responds:

Amen! Thank you for this thoughtful letter. I would only correct one misperception: it isn't exactly true that
atheists "don't believe in anything other than themselves." To the contrary, atheists typically believe in a very
complex natural world which must be obeyed in order to be mastered, and in a human race, one that must
cooperate and endeavor as a species to solve its own problems through creativity, industry, and dilligence.
These realities necessarily create boundaries and require standards of behavior that all atheists recognize and
both accept and are often very concerned to study and learn.

What if a very large group of people (i.e., a nazzi one, or a Marxist one) should decide that since there is no God and certainly no eternal punishment for one's actions it might as well master this "complex natural world" in any way that suits its purposes, even if it means the extinction, imprisonment, and torture of all who disagree with it? How would an atheistic, humanistic, or freethinking group reason with such a group, if it wished to master the world in a different way?

I am under the impression that there are a good number of atheists who think that Marxism is wrong. I would like to know what such people would SAY to convince me that it is indeed wrong if their way of thinking is the correct way to think. For if I were in their shoes I would see absolutely nothing wrong with Marxism. Nor would I see anything wrong with anything at all. The reason being that since I don't believe in eternal retribution it wouldn't make a difference whether or not one ethical act was better than another or that God did indeed exist to say so. Furthermore, I would insist that might is right and that the one with the most might is the most right. I would also insist that the only reason that I would think that one act is better than another is because of pressure from others to think so.

Bob Overall <itsme@homefreeweb.com>
Ajax, on Canada - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 17:07:06 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

Marxism fails to achieve its aims--as history demonstrates, and as does a good amount of scientific research in sociology and economics.  Moreover, Marxism makes illogical claims of method (such as that the future course of history can be known for certain).  In response to your initial question: a group that begins killing and torturing for its own silly aims is not the sort of group that negotiates or listens to persuasion.  Instead, since they have forsaken reason and decided to live by the limitless use of force, we have to take up arms and use force in turn against them.  That's exactly how we handled things in WWII.  And should they merely "threaten" to act this way, we would have to prepare to take up arms against them and watch them with hawklike suspicion, just as we treat present Islamic terrorists.  Quite frankly, this is a no brainer.

John Daugherty <johntd@wolfenet.com>
Bellevue, WA USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 12:26:54 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

To my recollection, the Bible never mentions killing in self defense--the only "apparently" authorized killing is that ordered by God directly (the genocide of the Canaanites for example) or execution of offenders against God's law (such as executing a man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath--yes, that's in the Bible).  As for what the Bible actually says in the sixth commandment, there is no distinction made between "killing" and "murder" in the Hebrew vocabulary, so I translated the word just as it reads.  The theologians can fight each other over what "killing" means .  I don't really care--the Bible is bunk.

MrCarrier, The ten comandments you made light of are GOD'S not MOSES,does not sound to me that you care for them . SAD

Bob Hedges <bobhedges/burlington/contr/ibm@ibmus>
burlington, vt USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 12:24:53 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

I do not care for any ethical code that mentions slavery in passing as an acceptable practice or that outlaws freedom of thought or religion, or contains not even a single prescription to do good deeds.  Though I agree with prohibitions against theft, etc., there are much better ways to summarize an ethical way of life, and Solon's way is just one of them, and his is not even the best.  Thus, if the laws of Moses really come from God (and that is just an item of religious faith--not an historically likely fact), God is one of the most primitive-minded poor thinkers in the universe.  I certainly hope that if there is a God he could come up with something better and more enlightening than that.  Talk about SAD!

First let me congratulate you on the quality of the information and also on the position that you have taken. I am with you 100%.

On the subject of Yaweh ordered massacres .. I would argue that it is wrong for God to ask people to punish other people for sin. It is the kind of dirty work that He should and can do Himself. And has in many occasions.

Imagin if a parent were to ask his children to punish (beat) one another whenever one has done "evil". I can just imagin what these children would be like when left to themselves, each believing to have their parents' authority to judge and punish as they see fit. The crusades are certainly an example of this type of nonesense.

It is interesting to see that parents all over the world and across cultures have generally avoided doing this to their children. If parents have this common sense approach to educating children it seems that God doesn't.

Joe Perluzzo <perl@cae.ca>
Montreal, Canada - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 11:02:31 (MDT)

I refer ro your site often because of the detailed, necessary information on it, and praise you to everyone I meet. Your book reviews are fabulous and I often print them out and give them to xian acquaintances who lend me books to convert me. When I saw the reviews for A Shattered Visage and The Case for Christ, I was so happy - I had just recently been given those books by a neighbor. I read them and returned them with the print outs of your reviews. Thank you for putting into words what I am thinking.

Keep up the good work!!

Jennifer Smith <jungefrau@aol.com>
mission viejo, ca USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 10:43:24 (MDT)

In Solon's commandment "honor the gods", does not relate to today's plethora of gods but it would relate to the ancient Greek "GODS".

j pinder <jerome.pinder@ca.pwcglobal.com>
toronto, on Canada - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 09:01:02 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

Not true.  Read Herodotus, Plutarch, or any Greek author: they commonly respected all gods of all nations.  They generally had no concept of "other people's god's" being any less real or sacred or "other people's rites" being any less worthy.  Though they had no problem criticising all religions, including their own, and exceptions can be found to every rule, Solon was representing the ideal, which certainly was not ethnocentric and hostile or ignorant of other cultural faiths.  Hostile exclusion of other gods was an idea invented by the Hebrews and adopted by the Christians.  Indeed, the pagans even tendered respect to unknown gods (as even the New Testament reveals in a speech attributed to Paul in Acts), and they tended more often than not to regard all the various gods as different manifestations and different ways of honoring the same few gods, or even the same one god.  Pagan society was extremely tolerant and inclusive--you really had to piss them off to get on their bad side (like the Christians did by not returning the favor of mutual respect for the gods of others).

Thanks
Carlos Zacarias < czacaria@dirona.com.mx>
Santa Catarina, NL Mexico - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 07:37:18 (MDT)

9. Honor the gods.

How can you honor gods that you don't believe in? There may be gods who you think despicable. Finally, how can a convinced atheist honor the gods when that person thinks the whole idea of godhood is ridiculous?

Ernie Sparks <erniesparks@hotmail.com>
Portland, OR USA - Wednesday, June 07, 2000 at 00:16:54 (MDT)
 

Richard Carrier Responds:

Did you even read my essay?  I actually answer these questions at several points.  Briefly, I admit, but then I wasn't writing a novel.

In reply to: http://www.infidels.org/secular_web/feature/1999/edelen03.html

I find it very hard to believe that more people are leaving the Christian faith than coming into it. However, it may be so. But lack of faith, and scientific ignorance does not invalidate the truth. For instance, if everyone around me is color-blind, and I can plainly see that a flower is pink, but my associates continue telling me that it is not, they have not proven that the flower is not pink. They have only argued against me because they cannot see the colors. I believe many athiests and non-Christians to be the same. You have no "real" evidence to contradict my conviction that there is a real, aawesome God who sent His divine human son to die for the sins of the world. And you have no proof that the story of Eden is false, or the flood, or the great exodus from Egypt. All you have is speculation, and speculation is all that you claim Christians to have. However, if one will look close enough, the historical accuracy of the Bible has been proven in thousands of cases. Why would such an accurate book harbor so many supposed false-hoods. There was a flood, and there was an exodus, and Jesus the Christ did die and rise again. Archeaology has proven the Old Testament time and time again, and simple common sense proves the NT. The NT was written only forty years after the life of Jesus. If any of it had been blatantly false, someone who knew Jesus would have spoken up. The NT writers could not get away with mere stories.

The best evidence right now for the Bible's truth is known everywhere. NASA found out a few months ago, as it was counting the earth's history in seconds and minutes and hours... that it was missing more that one day's worth of hours. The only explaination for this mystery is found in a Bible story of the time God made the sun move backwards. Now, if that awesome event that happened much longer ago than Jesus' life is true, and the facts of it in the Bible have not been changed, then I do not see the logic in believing that people would rather change the history of Jesus, one man who most people think wasn't divine anyway, than the history of God. Also, did you know they found chariots at the bottom of the sea? (Exodus) If people would listen to science, and listen to history, and listen to nature, even, everyone would know God. And if you know God, you know His Son. Other than the NASA thing, the best proof I have for God and His son is all of my answered prayers and the feeling I get when I talk to Him. Anyway, if I am wrong about this supernatural Christ, I lose nothing. I am leading a good life full of joy and love. It is fulfilling. However, if you are wrong about God, you lose everything. Because even life on earth is empty without Him.

melissa <this_chic_chick@hotmail.com>
USA - Monday, June 05, 2000 at 17:43:04 (MDT)

Internet Infidels Response:

No it isn't.

The selection of the gospels was a totally arbitrary undertaking. The only people who have a problem with them are those still trying to validate them. This is not possible due to the nature of the bible itself. When it was compiled by the council of Nicodemus they had three main goals for the bible. It was required to bring political unity to the "church", it had to be palatable to the rest of the empire, and it needed to divide the jews who were rebelling in the occupied lands. Follow those guidelines, eradicate by any means possible any conflicting works. Use the Roman Army to convince people of their errors in not accepting the new and improved word of god and voila a new religion is born. The only real problem was that the jews didn't buy it.

Derek then shoots himself in the foot by bringing up the ancient mythologies. This only serves to show the "borrowed" state of the materials used to form the bible.

The bottom line is the bible is obviously part forged, part plagiarized, unreliable, and blasphemous. Then you look at the fact that it the compilers were totally denounced by their contemporaries and needed the Roman Army to prove GOD's word. Any one of which knocks it out of contention to be GOD's word.

Modern scholarship has already shown the bible to be a little less than "authentic".
So whether or not the four gospels match up with the associated pagan imagery is more a question of so what?
As for that humble silence it was more likely the polite refraining from laughter.

Mike Suarez < mike@shango.com>
Los Angeles, CA USA - Sunday, June 04, 2000 at 12:34:04 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

Your comments are less a criticism of my thesis than a diatribe reflecting your own value judgment about church tactics from several centuries after the Gospels were written. As you would know if you indulged in a serious study of the history of Christian literature, the four canonical Gospels had become popular accounts of JesusÕ life among Christians long before such official conclaves as the Council of Nicea, to which you seem to refer.

Of course, the animal symbols referred to in my article had a pagan history predating their use in the Hebrew scriptures. So did language itself. If God laid the groundwork for revelation by providing language in which it could be communicated, he obviously could do the same for imagery which might be useful.

What is ÒobviousÓ about the Bible, specifically about the Gospels, is that different writers separated by time, distance and other circumstances were involved. So how is it that such a composite work reflects the kind of integral, overarching pattern documented in my article? ÒSo what?Ó is a poor substitute for a coherent explanation other than divine inspiration.

Then what happened? Did you really get kicked clear off? I didn't know before that AOL is run by religious ignoramouses. Do you know what the terms and conditions are? Maybe I can find out on Keyword. What an eye opoener! I didn't realize how insidious stuff this stuff is. These people actually think that they are commandede to KILL us, That's Christion LOVE.

Wesley Johnson <w9zxx#aol.com>
Wichita, KS USA - Sunday, June 04, 2000 at 07:45:37 (MDT)

Rebecca Lamey < susanna@vicon.net>
Huntingdon, PA USA - Saturday, June 03, 2000 at 14:49:32 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

My article never says that the Gospels were written Òcompletely independent of each otherÓ in the sense that there is no literary relationship between them such as by borrowing. What it does say is that no one (no one sufficiently informed concerning the Gospels, that is) can believe that they are the result of a collaboration. In other words, the authors cannot have met over beers and decided among themselves to create a pattern coinciding with the animal faces described by Ezekiel. I believe that even biblical scholars who happen to be atheist or agnostic would find such a suggestion ludicrous.

That a "perfect, omnicient, omnipotent" god would need to send a son, messiah, or messenger to save humankind from what...himself(?) is patently absurd. That he would send only one messenger to a small area of the earth initially to minister to and "save" a small group of people who were insular by choice further compounds the absurdity.

The scholarliness of this and works dealing with other aspects of faith (e.g., a book written a few years ago by a rabbi which purports to reconcile the aforementioned god with the concept of free will) are brilliant, but futile attempts to adjust the equation to fit the desired answer.

Dennis Horvitz <dhorvitz@yahoo.com>
New York, NY USA - Saturday, June 03, 2000 at 00:00:10 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

Whether Ezekiel or any other part of the scriptures is a ÒmythÓ in the sense of being a childish fantasy, which is obviously the meaning you intend, must be judged on the basis of whether it has the limitations of a childish fantasy. The point of my article is to show that an intricate alignment exists between the Gospels, the spiritual-ethnic divisions of mankind described in the New Testament and symbolism from Ezekiel along with many other books in the Hebrew Bible. This alignment has no plausible naturalistic explanation. Instead of refuting that premise, you simply tell us that the spiritual message of the Gospels makes no sense to you and you donÕt like it. OK. The General Theory of Relativity makes little sense to me in terms of my everyday experience, but does that prove that Einstein was wrong?

1. He makes no mention of the fact that there were many gospels besides the four that appear in the Bible, and that these four were selected out of many by the church leaders who put the book together. Given that they were obviously familiar with Ezekial's four faces, who is to say that they did not use this as their criteria for picking the four? And who is to say that any the rejected gospels could not fit the system just as well?

2. The symbols of the tribes of which he speaks could have been based on the four faces.
These two flaws arise from the pseudo-logic stating that if two unrelated bible contents have a similarity, then that similarity could not occur without divine intervention. What is ignored is the fact that the author of the newer text could have deliberately based his writings on the older one. It is the same with so-called prophecy fulfillments. The writer could have been familiar with the prophecy and simply written his own "fulfillment."

Finally, the author assumes that coincidences are impossible, when in fact they happen all the time. Using his same line of reasoning, it could not possibly be a coincidence that Christianity is very similar to the other religions that preceded and surrounded it.

Please write a response to this article.

Rebecca Lamey <susanna@vicon.net>
Huntingdon, PA USA - Friday, June 02, 2000 at 21:25:11 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

Your first point says that I make no mention of other Gospels. In fact the very first paragraph of my article says, ÒAs historians are quick to observe, other Gospel versions besides the familiar ones were available to early believers...Ó

To say that the Gospels were not the only accounts about Jesus circulating in the first two centuries is not the same as suggesting that there was an endless array of such works, written from every possible perspective, ready and waiting for someone to sift and manipulate to create the pattern my article identifies. The historical evidence we have indicates that the four canonical Gospels were the leading treatments of JesusÕ life long before there was a church sufficiently organized to tailor a body of writings to its institutional whims.

As my article documents, the opinion of influential bishops such as Irenaeus and later Augustine was that the Gospels did in some way reflect the faces of Ezekiel, but judging by their statements these authorities had no idea that the ethnic coloring of the Gospels was the key to the face assignments. Instead, they proposed other, for the most part inaccurate assignments on subjective grounds, such as the impression that a lion is ÒroaringÓ in the opening verses of Mark. How could leading bishops have been oblivious to a sweeping plot being carried out by their own church with respect to the Gospels, a plot which spanned languages, cultures and continents? If you find that theory believable, then religious people are not the only ones who accept the supremely improbable for the sake of their world view.

The symbols of the tribes of Israel can hardly have been rigged to coincide with the NT Gospels, since we know books such as Genesis, Deuteronomy and Ezekiel date to well before the time of Jesus. Fragments of these books, including some containing the animal references in question, are found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Further, the text of these books has since ancient times been preserved by Jewish religious authorities who, as must be obvious, have never had an interest in altering them to conform to Christian beliefs. Find a recognized scholar of the Hebrew Bible who believes these books were doctored to harmonize with the Gospels and IÕll eat my hat for dinner and my belt and shoes for dessert.

Coincidence is indeed the only allowable explanation besides inspiration, and coincidences do sometimes occur between literature and history. But this is a remarkably complex coincidence. If you are a gambler you may score a few lucky hands at the Black Jack table at CaesarÕs Palace. But if by the end of the night you are up on the house dealer by thousands of dollars, youÕll be questioned by casino operators disinclined to accept coincidence as an explanation.

I will concede that the King James English word "Nazarene" does not appear in the Old Testament. However, there is just one problem with this line of reasoning. The Old Testament (better the Jewish Tenach) was not wriiten in King James English. It was written in Hebrew, by Jewish men to Jewish readers.

The problem with you atheists is that you are not intellectualy curious enough. Does it not make sense that if you are going to base your entire world view on the meaning or definition of one word, then it behooves you to dig into the meaning of that word as much as possible? Wouldn't you exercise even the slightest academic investigation into the meaning of the word in its original language and culture before pouncing on a conclusion?

It is well known by conservative scholars and the testimony of the early Church fathers, such as Jerome, that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. Matthew was a Levite. So, it is assumed he was very familiar with the Tenach. The word Matthew would have recorded for "Nazarene" is the Hebrew word (nun-tsedek-resh) transliterated as as "Netzer". The word means two things in Hebrew and the Hebrew language frequently uses a play on words, or puns, that were well understood by Jewish readers. The word (nun-tsedek-resh) literally means "a shoot out of a dry stump". Figuratively it means "new life out of something that appears dead". This is a title of of the Jewish Messiah from the Old Testament, specifically the Book of Isaiah. The Authorized Version of Isaiah even capitalizes the word because it is used as a proper noun referencing a specific person. It refers to the fact that Messiah would be of David's bloodline, but more importantly, the Messiah would come into the world at a time when David's blood line appeared dead and gone. Hence, the new shoot out of a dry stump. Indeed, Christ came into this world as a son of David nearly 500 years after the last of David's descendants sat on a throne. By all outward appearances, David's bloodline appeared dead.

The word (nun-tsedek-resh) also means a resident of the City of Nazareth. To prove this point, Jews even today refer to Christians as "Notzrim", which is from the same Hebrew root word, (nun-tsedek-resh), because the leader of the Christians was from from Nazareth. So, when Matthew refers to Jesus of Nazareth as a (nun-tsedek-resh), the Hebrew sense of the word has nothing to do with the City of Nazareth. Matthew is referring to Isaiah's title of the Messiah. Unknown to them, the unbelieving Jews of First Century Israel conferred this very title from Isaiah upon Jesus of Nazareth by calling him a (nun-tsedek-resh). What makes this all the more provocative is that the Tenach was codified into the Septuagint before the City of Nazareth ever existed.

In summary, there never was a problem in the Bible with the word "Nazarene". The problem is with English-speaking, Western dullards of the 21st Century that try to impose their cultural bias on an ancient, Near Eastern, Semitic text. I beleive my cat has more intellectual curiosity than some of you, otherwise you could have figured this out for yourselves.

So, what are you really trying to promote with your website? Is it truth, or your own narrow-mindedness?

If you can refute these points, then do so. Otherwise, be intellectually honest and change your position.

Robert E. Bainbridge <bbmw@fmtc.com>
Payette, ID USA - Friday, June 02, 2000 at 15:10:42 (MDT)

On the other hand, I thought you were remiss for not mentioning the high regard in which the Bible regards slavery. "As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among strangers who sojurn with you".

How in the world could God have allowed the "Right" thinking South to lose to the "Wrong" thinking north?
Wesley R. Johnson <w9zxx@aol.com>
Wichita, KS USA - Friday, June 02, 2000 at 10:03:47 (MDT)

I feel your logic is faulty. It is like saying that errors in a history of Abraham Lincoln are proof that Abraham Lincoln did not exist. Errors in the history of the civil war (of which I am sure there are many as history is always written by the winners) means the civil war never took place.Your argument is based on the statement of Jimmy Swaggart that the basic tenant of Christianity is that the scriptures are inerrant. This is not necessarily true.I am sure that you will find many Christians and more Jews that are more than willing to admit that the scriptures are not innerrant. Early Christians believed in Jesus before there were any inerrant "Christian Scriptures." Jews believed in their God (or at least a people called the Habiru...Hebrew...did) before there were any "inerrant" Jewish Scriptures. I feel your argument fails because it is an argument based on a statement that you have accepted as fact when it is not even accepted as fact by many if not most of the people you are arguing against (i.e Christians.) I think only fundamentalists would hold to this strict view of scripture and last time I looked, despite their efforts to make the world believe otherwise, they (fundies) are still a small,while very loud (even obnoxious) minority.

AL Vincent <AVPuglisi@aol.com>
Albq, NM USA - Thursday, June 01, 2000 at 19:49:01 (MDT)

After having missed reading the columns for so many years, I am thrilled to have found them on the Internet. The "Redefining God" one that I've just read really struck a cord with me, as I am a practicing Wiccan who's ALWAYS known about the Goddess! Like Mr. Edelen, I too rejoice in the awareness and enlightenment that is slowly spreading over this country. Education is always the antidote to fear.

I well remember the fuss that some of Mr. Edelen's columns used to engender in the "letters to the editor" section. As a writer who occasionally writes some inflammatory stuff myself, all I can say is "atta boy, Bill! Keep it up!"

Morgan Ravenwood < morgan313@hotmail.com>
Lake Havasu City, AZ USA - Thursday, June 01, 2000 at 15:04:35 (MDT)

Please give examples of some of the changes and mistakes the translators have made in working on the Bible. Please also include some of the views to which they changed the text. Thank you.

Bob Copplestone <copple@worldpath.net>
USA - Thursday, June 01, 2000 at 08:31:17 (MDT)

God bless you.
Burney Floyd < Tenrub@webtv.net>
Charotte, NC USA - Thursday, June 01, 2000 at 00:50:50 (MDT)

Thanks,
jimmy miller <jamtat@mailandnews.com >
milwaukee, wi USA - Wednesday, May 31, 2000 at 22:43:27 (MDT)
 

Richard Carrier Responds:

Please cite specific examples.  It is impossible to respond to accusations that refer to no particular person or action, nor even to any particular kind of statement or argument.

To the issue of faith in general, read A Fish Did Not Write This Essay and Do Religious Life and Critical Thought Need Each Other?

Cole Sanders <basehead2000@yahoo.com>
Roswell, GA USA - Wednesday, May 31, 2000 at 21:52:59 (MDT)

I think that they should have the 10 commandments in their classrooms so they know what they are, but if they have them in their books or get taught them, then I don't think it really matters. That is just my opinion.

Jessica <jess55552187>
Redwood, CA USA - Wednesday, May 31, 2000 at 21:44:49 (MDT)

Simple answer: Job is a book of poetry, and the passage in question is a rhetorical passage. It is not intended as a scientific declaration. One might just as well declare the Naval Almanac to be full of errors and contradictions because it says that the sun rises and sets, and even assigns times for it to occur. We, the enlightened scientific citizens of the 20th century, know that the so-called setting of the sun is an optical illusion.

There are also seemingly mis-matched numerical descriptions and mathematical formulae. Not surprising, in a book not intended to teach mathematics. Even less surprising when one considers the haphazard methodology of the mathematics of that day. Try to perform long division using Hebrew characters, I dare you!

Stylistic differences? You, yourself, point out the number of authors. Come now, one can't have one's cake and eat it too.

And finally, the geneology of Christ: Many persons of that day were known by multiple names. Simon Bar-Jona is also called Peter, son of John, and later Cephas. Further, during the four hundred silent years, certain changes of pronounciation evolved. Isaiah, from the OT, is refered to as Isaias and even Esaias in the NT. Persons named Judah were likely to be called Judas. Etc.

L Robison < Scribe@writestuff.iwarp.com>
Carmel, CA USA - Wednesday, May 31, 2000 at 05:17:13 (MDT)

What do I think? NO to every question, and who is ANYBODY to present such a questionnaire to our judges ANYWHERE? That is absolutely nervy, and the man should be ashamed of himself.

Merilyn Brunner <miladymib@aol.com>
Concord, CA USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 21:29:30 (MDT)

This is the funniest short story I ever read. Too bad such ignorant dudes (Robertson et. al.) had to be exposed to make it so funny, but then, if the shoe fits wear it.

Wesley R. Johnson < w9zxx@email.com>
Wichita, KS USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 21:21:45 (MDT)

Mr. Barefoot makes a geat blunder in insisting on a supernatural explanation for the correlation of the four cannonized gospels, Ezekiel and the surmizing of his wife of the four corners/walls of revelation as "Jesus along with disciples from the three ethnic/spiritual classes of mankind, that is, Jew, Samaritan and Gentile". There are many other expanations, including the fact that since we DO NOT HAVE reliable copies of the second century gospels, they are suspected of all sorts of interpolations (later additions and deletions). If someone wanted to make this all fit, it would only be another example of the 'pius fraud' phenomena so prevelent in the early church.

Having once attended a very 'mystery-oriented' Pentecostal bible school in Missouri, I find his approach to be along the same lines of many sermons I heard then, and, like Mr. Barefoot, I was then very enthralled with them. Unfortunately, the desire for confirmation overrules critical thinking in the true believer. These kinds of arguments make believers feel like they are privy to something wonderful and fantastic. I simpathize with the desire, but this stuff is no kind of 'proof' for a critical thinker, especially one that has heard this kind of stuff before.

Frankly, I was suprised to see it here on the Secular Web.

Steven N. Smith <snsmith@flash.net>
Albuquerque, NM USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 14:23:54 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

The Gospels are Òsuspected of all sorts of interpolations (later additions and deletions)Ó by whom, other than people such as yourself who have no better way to defend their position? There is a science called textual criticism which marshals evidence for or against the integrity of ancient texts. True, there are disputed texts which may be interpolations, but nothing in textual study suggests that these comprise more than a tiny percentage of the material in the Gospels. On the other hand, the Òethnic coloringÓ I describe in my article has to do not simply with a few specific texts, but with the way the books are structured and details of style which permeate them. Space is insufficient here as it was in my original article to go in to great depth on these characteristics, but anyone who wishes may email me or simply do their own study of the Gospels out of the voluminous scholarly literature on the subject.

Beyond this uninformed Òconspiracy theory,Ó you offer only mockery and condescension which evades the issue at hand.

“But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the Lord, of anything that he has, whether of man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the Lord. No one devoted, who is to be utterly destroyed from among men, shall be ransomed; he shall be put to death.”

This sure sounds like human sacrifice to me. Some people have argued that the devotional act was merely a vow made to God prior to battle - “Give us victory, and we'll destroy everything within the city.” In this way, they were giving up their right to take possession of material goods from a conquered city - including human slaves, since every person was killed in order to fulfill the devotion. However, even if such a practice could be said to fall outside of the bounds of any definition of human sacrifice, I still don't find this explanation to be satisfactory. Verse 28 seems very clear:

“But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the Lord, of anything that he has, whether of man or beast, or of his inherited field...”

These words indicate an individual's possessions (“of anything that he has”), things that someone already owns, rather than the goods and prisoners which might be captured during some impending conquest. Verse 28 plainly says that Jewish men owned animals, land, and human slaves. Clearly, all of these were worthy devotional items, which could be given away as a sign of a man's devotion to the Lord. And a human slave, if devoted, was apparently killed:

"No one devoted, who is to be utterly destroyed from among men, shall be ransomed; he shall be put to death.”

If you feel that I am somehow mistaken in my interpretation of these verses, I would welcome your constructive criticism. But it sure sounds like human sacrifice to me.

Kit Gentry <wykamoi@aloha.net>
USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 13:40:08 (MDT)

Jacob Whitewater <JWhitewater@winter.com >
Greenville, SC USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 12:57:22 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

The fact that you have to grossly exaggerate the truth to defend your position simply demonstrates its bankruptcy.  How many women who have abortions really suffer "nightmares," much less "terror"?  How is a fetus ever "magnanimous"?  And how is the first commandment to be defended by secular reasoning?

The bottom line is that murder requires there to be someone to murder.  Cells do not a person make.  Read our recent debate on the issue.

If I understand correctly, the practice of having no god has become the "religion" of your organization. You are using the constitutional separation of church and state to argue that Christians should have fewer rights than non-Christians. My belief is that Christians should have the same rights to know about the backgrounds and beliefs of political candidates as your organization does. We have the same rights to promote candidates that share our viewpoints as you do. I am outraged that you think otherwise. It comforts me though to know that, ultimately, Christians will prevail.

Terry Jones <Terry.Jones@mail.sprint.com>
Knoxville, TN USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 12:51:24 (MDT)

The reason for the three faces corresponding to the three divisions of humanity is linked to the fact that the gospel is sent out to "all nations". No race of mankind is to be denied the gospel. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature". Their occurence alongside a human face, which the author already says corresponds to Jesus is self explanatory - it speaks of the coming of Jesus. The fact that this human is joined to the others but at the same time distinct from them, shows the nature of Jesus, or rather the two natures. He had a human nature and a divine nature; in His human He was joined to humanity, but in His divinity He was distinct.

I think inspiration is the only word for it.

Finlay Campbell <finlaycampbell@yahoo.co.uk>
Glasgow, Scot UK - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 11:14:31 (MDT)

"To Christian believers the symbolism of the four faces is no less impressive for being explicable supernaturally, but from a secular perspective the mystery lingers.  The contemporary view of the Gospels as projections of late first-century church beliefs onto a historically remote Jesus of Nazareth cannot account for it. Why would the three animal faces seen by Ezekiel happen to correspond with the scriptural divisions of mankind, and why would they occur alongside a human face which is joined to them and at the same time distinct from them? Further, why would the four Gospels of the New Testament canon, which no one can believe resulted from a collaboration among their authors, precisely reflect these four figures? Since modern scholarship has little room for the word "inspiration" in its vocabulary, perhaps in confronting the phenomenon of the four faces the most that can be expected of it is honest acknowledgment followed by that which is rare in any academic discipline: humble silence."

Though indeed it very likely is not original to Irenaeus, since the Holy Four were selected by Justin, and his pupil Tatian, and their influence on Theophilus and Irenaeus is almost certain. In other words, this mystical view of the Gospels may have in fact inspired Justin's selection of these Gospels over others, and since we have no texts from a prior date, and few quotations of a prior date, Justin's own hand could well have toyed with the texts to force them to fit his mystical "tessaria." For all we know, someone even prior to Justin could well have done this, and this in turn secured Justin's excessive reverence for these four texts, or Justin's reverence for them taken by Tatian as license to justify this reverence by inventing a mystical basis for it. We know so little, since so little information survives, that any of these scenarios or others could well be true. Thus, this mystical tie-in among the Gospels, which you aim to demonstrate, as well as anything proves early Christian willingness to tamper with texts to their own designs.

Richard C. Carrier < rcarrier@infidels.org>
New York, NY USA - Tuesday, May 30, 2000 at 10:47:55 (MDT)

Darek Barefoot responds:

Believe it or not, rational curiosity and humility are not mutually exclusive, although both occasionally are in short supply.

The fact that each of the four canonical Gospels can be justified as filling some need in the early church, appealing to some interest or other, is beside the point. We could find such a rationalization for any Gospel which might have been included but was not, and we could postulate reasons why three Gospels was the ideal number for church usage, or two or five or only one for that matter, if that is what the canon contained. Speculations of that kind can never explain why EzekielÕs vision, in light of many other texts establishing its likely symbolism, would have in the first place anticipated those needs and created a template into which the Gospels happened to fall with such precision.

Why any one of the Gospels was written the way it was may not be relevant here, but I canÕt let the subject pass without noting how tricky such speculation is in any case. It may seem logical that a Gospel had to be written from a Jewish perspective, as was Matthew, and another, Mark, with a Roman Gentile flavor instead. But manuscript and historical evidence is overwhelming that Matthew was more popular with the Gentile churches of the second and third centuries than was Mark. This is true even though Matthew reflects a high view of the Mosaic Law, whose circumcision requirement and dietary restrictions were offensive to Gentiles of the period. At the same time, the ÒJewishnessÓ of Matthew is relative, since in telling the story of a Jewish Messiah living and dying in Jewish society, all four of the Gospels are in a fundamental sense Jewish documents. It has become fashionable in recent years to emphasize this ÒJewishnessÓ in the case of JohnÕs Gospel, but John contains Hellenistic elements lacking in Matthew, leaving Matthew more purely Hebrew in its outlook.

You theorize that the Gospel of Luke as we have it was altered by Marcion to favor Samaritans at the expense of Jews, and that Irenaeus exploited this alteration to make the Gospels fit the pattern from Ezekiel. There are so many implausibilities in this suggestion that it is difficult to know which one to start with. First of all, the same patristic sources which inform us about Marcion, including Irenaeus himself, roundly condemn him for his theology, his tampering with New Testament documents and his formal break with church orthodoxy. It is hardly likely that the same bishops with whom Marcion was in open conflict would adopt his mutilated version of Luke as their own.

Marcion was a Docetist who rejected the infancy narrative of Luke and excised it from his own version of the Gospel, a change which obviously is not reflected in the canonical version. In addition, Marcion hated the Hebrew Bible and sought to remove references to it from his own Òcanon.Ó However, a string of allusions to the Old Testament history of Samaria (1 Kings 12 through 2 Kings 17) present in LukeÕs Gospel but not in the others is a key piece of corroborative evidence as to its Samaritan character. These include 2 Kgs. 2:15/Lk. 1:17; 1 Kgs. 17:1-9/Lk. 4:25-26; 2 Kgs. 5:1-14/Lk. 4:27; 2 Kgs. 2:1, 9/Lk. 9:51; 2 Kgs. 1:9-16/Lk. 9:54 (cf. 12:49); 1 Kgs. 19:19-21/Lk. 9:61-62; 2 Kgs. 4:29b/Lk. 10:4b; 1 Kgs.18:43-44/Lk.14:54; 1 Kgs.17:10-13/Lk. 17:7-8; 2 Kgs. 6:17-20/Lk.24:15-16, 31. Not only does the first of these allusions occur within the infancy narrative which Marcion rejected, the very idea of sampling the Hebrew Bible in this way runs directly counter to what we know of MarcionÕs theology.

Neither Marcion or anyone else in the middle of the second century could have made major alterations to a Gospel already in circulation and expected the doctored text to supplant the original version. The late Kurt Aland, one of the giants of scientific biblical text criticism, referred to this phenomenon as the ÒtenacityÓ of textual types (see Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 1989). Even in later centuries, when specifically Christian scriptoria (scribal centers) were established and the churchÕs structure was more organized, textual additions which had both wide popular support and official church sanction, such as the pericope of the adulteress in John and the ÒlongÓ ending of Mark, could not be inserted without leaving a wide trail of text variants in their wake. An attempt to rewrite the Gospel of Luke, even with influential backing, would have scattered the continuing text tradition spectacularly. Instead, the percentage of the Lucan text subject to variants is significantly less than that of Mark and John and only slightly greater than that of Matthew.

It is too big a job for me here to justify the entire field of textual criticism. Text critics go about reconstructing biblical documents from manuscripts much as paleontologists reconstruct prehistoric animal species from fossil bones. In either case, the more a person knows about the discipline the more respect he has for the objectivity of its methods and the reliability of its consensus opinions. Text critics do need enough manuscripts of a certain age just as paleontologists need a certain quantity of fossils. In that regard, we are fortunate that the manuscript evidence for the Gospels is rich beyond comparison with ancient nonbiblical documents, the equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits. I donÕt believe that a single authority in text criticism anywhere in the world would agree that we have too little information to know as a practical matter whether Luke was fraudulently reworked by Marcion, Tatian or other second century conspirators, even though we have few manuscript materials dating to their lifetimes.

TatianÕs Diatessaron, a conflation of the four canonical Gospels from the late second century, was not written to split a single Gospel of Jesus into four parts, but to do just the opposite, that is, to solve a perceived problem arising from the popularity of four different accounts of JesusÕ life by integrating them into one. The Muratorian Canon, a list of Christian writings contemporaneous with the Diatessaron, proves that the four Gospels had for some time been viewed as equally authoritative.

Finally, it ought to be stressed that so far as we know no church father saw a connection between the ethnic associations of the Synoptic Gospels and the animal faces from the first chapter of Ezekiel. Irenaeus, and following him certain other fathers, had what amounts to a hunch that the four Gospels corresponded to the four faces of Ezekiel and Revelation. But they consistently got most of the assignments wrong. Because priestly rites and sacrifice are somewhat emphasized in Luke, they associated it correctly with the sacrificial animal, the bull. Here is the one coincidence, or partial coincidence, that we can identify, and it does nothing to explain the overall mystery.

Are you asking us to believe that after pulling off the most far-reaching and subtly complex literary fraud in history, and uncannily covering over every trace of it, the person or persons responsible then forgot to call attention to the apparent prophecyÑwhich presumably was the reason for the scheme in the first place? IÕm sure those readers who share your opinion of the Bible are relieved to learn that you have in reserve other naturalistic ÒscenariosÓ to explain the mystery of the four faces, because your conspiracy theory is embarrassingly inadequate.

Like most fanatical closed minded christians, Pat Robertson is an ass. Straight to the point eh?

Tim Hail < tcbd@gte.net>
Brownwood, Tx USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 18:07:47 (MDT)

A more basic issue, in my judgement, is whether there is a fundamental need for myths or, as I prefer to call them, fictions. Can society exist without them? For example, a basic fiction of American belief is that all men are created equal. We know this is not true. We may then refine it to mean that all men are equal before the law. However, we know this is not true either when we observe the different penalties for the rich and the poor. Can a society exist without its fictions? If not, what does this mean for the rationalist?

Robert Newhard <rdnewhard@aol.com>
Murrieta, CA USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 16:56:19 (MDT)

Very interesting article! They sure don't teach this stuff, true church history, in sunday school! Keep up the good work.

zerbechen <zerbechen@hotmail.com>
midway, co USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 14:40:02 (MDT)

I just want to thank you for publishing this article. I have printed it and can share it with some people who are important to me. I got goosebumps reading it AND I feel exactly the way he does about life. Thank you once again.

Merilyn Brunner <miladymib@aol.com>
Concord, CA USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 13:36:11 (MDT)

This is what we need more of. We need to get these ideas across to a larger segment of the public. I don't know how to do that, but all the stuff we see on and in the media is very pro-deity. We need some publicity for what you said here and for what others say to counter the almost constant public evocation of God.

Thank you,

Merilyn Brunner < miladymib@aol.com>
Concord, CA USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 13:06:23 (MDT)

I must have missed your writing during the past thirty years, I'm sorry! This just proves my conviction that while churches are supposed to be the spiritual leaders of the "flock," they are instead the followers. Churches change when the people force the issue. What, then, is their purpose? During the revolutionary period of our country, Thomas Paine (I think it was him) asked, "What does a King do?" I ask today, "What do churches do?" [that people cannot do for themselves?]

Thank you,
Merilyn Brunner <miladymib@aol.com >
Concord, CA USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 12:51:18 (MDT)

Oh how RIGHT you are Mr. Edelen. Like most, I knew that it wouldn't be a pleasent time if Mr. Bush is elected but I didn't realize that if he does, it will be a horror story.

The little favors awarded to the rich and slights to the poor by Mr. Reagan would be as a little prick with a safety pin compared to a dagger straight through the heart we'll suffer if Mr. Bush is elected.

If Mr. Bush dosen't want aetheists to be considered citizens, then what does he want to do with us. Let us live here as aliens? Make us go to another Country?

Create a special unworthy catagory for us?

Letys all wake up NOW. Stakes are high and time is short.

If he gets elected it will make the depression, the prohibition gang days, the Nixon/Reagan days look like childs play. Stakes are high and time is short. Let's all sound the alarm now.

Wesley R. Johnson <w9zxx@aol.com>
Wichita, KS USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 06:46:51 (MDT)

Wesley R. Johnson <w9zxx@aol.com >
Wichita, KS USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 05:55:17 (MDT)

Mr. Midling said Adam and Eve were punished for their 'sexual misbehavior' and that Jesus sent some afflicted sheep to their death? I wonder where he got this nonsense? (it was pigs if I remember my bible training).

Susan Craig <susancraig@flash.net>
Baytown, TX USA - Monday, May 29, 2000 at 05:07:53 (MDT)

Tom Stoudt < tmstoudt@enter.net>
Whitehall, PA USA - Sunday, May 28, 2000 at 09:38:03 (MDT)

Michael Martin responds:

This term refers to developing a synoptic view of the world and drawing normative implications from this. See Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy by Paul Kurtz.

Your story is an incredible, sad commentary. How sad it is when one fails to realize that when they hunt with a pre-detrmined agenda, they always realize their pre-determined result. In your story on Dr Dobson, you had an opportunity to discover that flowers really do grow in the Focus on the Family Garden. Instead, you only came up with dirt. Next time, if you leave your bias at home and get your nose out of the dirt, you will be able to see those beautiful flowers. The pride of pre-determination causes blindness to all who are infected by it.

It is a shame that you failed to recognize the axe that Mr Moegerle has to grind with Dr Dobson. Although you believe that Mr Moegerle's book and interview have provided the much needed credibility to your story, his "axe" is deceptive and your story has fallen by its usage. Unfortunately, it would require your sight to see that Mr Moegerle became resentful, critical and unhealthy. These were the necessary ingredients for his questionable book which provides the very evidence of his lack of emotional health and credibility. Mr Moegerle is clearly guilty of profiting from inappropriate endeavors, not Dr Dobson. Millions speak highly of Dr Dobson and countless others who oppose his views would still confirm their respect for him and the work of Focus of the Family. One might ask why you did not include any of their comments in your story. Regretfully, the answer to this question is obvious.

Your description (and Mr Moegerles) of the cult like embracing of Dr Dobson is a sham. All great men and woman have to deal with those who adore them. Some thrive on it and others would change this if they could. Dr Dobson does not want anyone to worship the ground he walks on. I firmly believe that Dr Dobson only wants his staff and the rest of the world to worship God.

May God heal you of your infection so you can recognize Dr Dobson's incredible, personal integrity and the positive difference his work has made. More importantly, I pray that God would heal your severe case of pre-determination so you would no longer be able to infect others.

Andy Boston <trustinhim@earthlink.net >
Winnetka, CA USA - Sunday, May 28, 2000 at 03:44:52 (MDT)

1) The contradictory 'nothing is eternal' is self-contradictory (by reductio argument).
if nothing is eternal then every thing is temporal.
if every thing is temporal then every thing had a beginning.
if every thing had a beginning then being would have come from non-being.
since 'being from non-being' violates the law of identity this is impossible.
Therefore 'nothing is eternal' is impossible and 'some is eternal' must be true.

Jason Walsh <jasonw@gateway.net>
scottsdale, az USA - Saturday, May 27, 2000 at 21:43:48 (MDT)
 

Richard Carrier Responds:

I don't follow how "being from non being" violates the law of identity--this statement is not an identity, but a statement of origin, otherwise known as a "genetic proposition."  All genetic propositions are empirical and therefore can never be self-contradictory--they must be capable of being either true or false.  As a result, your argument does not work.

While it is disconcerting to see such obvious baiting of those running for public office, let's don't over-react to the situation. I'm sure candidates get questioned by other groups about other non-religious issues also. One would hope that these candidates would have the sense to realize the gravity of their position relative to the Constitution and the codes of law in this country to realize that they are under no obligation to answer such queries in the first place. Indeed, to do so might compromise any semblance of judicial objectivity they can present in their respective courts. This is especially true of judges in a position to rule on Constitutional matters, either at the Federal or the State level

Bottom line: The Christian Coalition can ask for anything they like--that doesn't mean they will get it, and hopefully they won't.

Mike Wagner < mjw10250@tir.com>
USA - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 22:00:12 (MDT)

Me < leatherank@aol.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 17:09:56 (MDT)

May, 1999, you said : "I share an affinity with your views John. However, philosophers have loved to debate things that seem totally irrelevant to the uninitiated since Thales and the Presocratics. We will no doubt argue for another 2,500 years!"

...But YOU will not be a part of that "we." I can guarantee you that. Truth unfolds as it will, apart from you, apart from me, and you may find out tomorrow what truth is when you step off the curb. . . or eay that "just one more" slice of cheesecake. In view of that, it might be worth your while to take up "Pascal's Challenge." Certainly wouldn't hurt in this life and may even save you in the next. . . if there is one.

Charles Glendinning <cglendin@aft.org>
Washington, DC USA - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 15:14:38 (MDT)

Greetings.

At first I must admit that I am speaking from a Christian perspective; please do not be offended by what I am about to say. Simply regard it as food for thought.

My first point is this: why bother studying the Bible if all you intend to do is refute it. If you choose not to believe in Jesus, which is your choice and I respect it, why not simply read the Bible as an ancient work of western literature and appreciate as such? Whenever anyone reads Shakespeare, Plato or Dante they never set out to rebuke what they write; they simply read the works for aesthetic purposes. Why you set out to destroy Christian spirituality is beyond me. It boggles the mind.

Secondly, I consider it obligatory to say that even your perspective is based on faith, and your studies are done with considerable bias. Everyone has a bias; there is no such thing as a "neutral" mind. Furthermore, neither of us can travel back in time and show to our scholastic opponent that they are wrong. Numerous studies are done on the Bible and information is updated on at least a monthly basis. Neither of us can claim without a shadow of a doubt that our interpretation of the Bible is correct; we simply put faith in our exegeses. I cannot prove that there is a God, but you cannot prove that there isn't.

In closing, I would like to say again that I have no intention of offending anyone, and I hope that you at least meditate on what I've just said. Many modern belief systems are based on faith, whether we believe it or not, and cannot be empirically proven. I would like to think that you are already aware of this.

Thank you.

Jonas Thomsen <thomsen@hotmail.com>
Oakville, ON Canada - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 10:21:45 (MDT)

Don Morgan responds:

When I fbegan my current, on-going study of the Bible some 28 years ago, I was a strong Christian. In the beginning, my intent was not to refute the Bible but to uphold it and to learn from it. I became so involved in Bible study (and Bible studies)--and so familiar with what the Bible said--that I could not help but notice its many problems, problems which led to a study of the underpinnings of Christian doctrine. In the end, I rejected the Bible as untrustworthy and Christian doctrine as without underpinning that would justify my continued belief. (And please keep in mind that my bias was that of a strong Christian when I began my current studies.)

The claims made for and about the Bible preclude considering it as merely a work of literature. Given those claims, it is a fact that those claims can be proved to be incorrect. In my opinion, I have a responsibility to do so.

While it is true that you cannot prove that there is a god and I cannot prove there isn't, it is a generally accepted principle that it is up to he who alleges to prove--not up to he who alleges nothing to prove nothing. In the absence of proof of his existence, there is no good reason to believe in the existence of the God of Christianity

While there may be an element of faith in beliefs based on science, for example, it doesn't take faith to believe in the existence of gravity, molecules, electromagnetic waves, etc. These are demonstrable. The existence of the God of Christianity is not. It should be kept in mind that there are no bounds to what can be believed on the basis of faith. For that reason, faith is an unreliable path to knowledge.

The name Melchizedec means "Just" in Hebrew and Jesus Christ's real name is Joshua (pronounced Yeshua) which means "God is my Salvation". Although their names are different, I have found some notable comparisons between Melchizedec and Jesus Christ, first both were considered High Priests of God, second comparison is that neither was from the tribe of Levi which makes the priesthood even more significant, and Melchizedec was not even a Hebrew instead he was an Amorite (who were descendants of Ham's son Canaan), which clearly shows that Monotheism did not begin with the Hebrews. The third comparison is that both were black skinned with Hamatic features (i.e. woolly hair etc). There are some 230 shrines in Europe which depict Christ as a black man, in fact this was the accepted image of Christ since the first century. Pope Pius even issued a stamp which showed Christ as a black man, however during the 15th century race became an issue to the Europeans and Pope Alexander ordered the painting of a European Christ, which depicted him as white instead of black in order to draw more Europeans into Christianity, this still remains as a little known fact.

Steven <stevenc32@aol.com>
USA - Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 16:16:47 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

I am skeptical of everything you say here, and have to ask for your sources.  To my knowledge, all earliest depictions of Jesus are of a classic Greco-Roman philosopher or boy sheppherd (and no images or physical descriptions appear at all until the 2nd century), and in every case where color can be ascertained, he is no less white than the rest of the Mediterranean population, with curly hair (not woolly).  Care to explain?

Why do fundamentalist Christians always have to take a stand in politics? There is always some Jerry Falwell-type group trying to legalize prayer in schools, or illegalize abortion. Why can't they just mind their own buisness? How is one person smoking weed going to affect them directly. Moreover, doesn't their own religion preach acceptance? Did not Jesus Christ himself say: "Let he among you who has no sin cast the first stone", and "Judge not lest ye be judged"? How can a Democracy work when a dogmatic minority asserts power that they don't have. I just believe that in general, people should stop shielding themselves with the Bible, and start arming themselves with reason.

Andy Barrett <iacfreak@hotmail.com>
Columbus, OH USA - Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 11:41:38 (MDT)

Why then would God choose not to reveal himself if he can do anything? It's actually quite a simple answer, he loves us. If you love someone you want them to love you back right?  Of course, but not because they have to, because they choose to.  If God revealed himself in all of his glory we would have no choice but to love him. By only revealing himself in small ways he draws us and even woos us to him. We become fascinated by who he is and our hearts long to know more. That is of course if you believe in love.

It appears that you have attempted to analyze the Bible and its contents from every possible angle except one, from your heart. You view man as a purely intellectual being; I would have to disagree with this theory. I feel emotions just as you; love, hate, anger, jealousy, pain, rejection, joy, sadness, loneliness, these are all part of who we are. You cannot separate man from these things, if you do he is not man. Where do these emotions come from? Did they just appear out of gases also? I find that theory unlikely to be true. Everyone has personal values that they live by; did we just make these values up? If there were no God why would we care about morals, why would man ever have formed values if they served no purpose?

The scientific community basis truth on what we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Is that all that makes a man? Do we not feel with emotions, or are we just robots. We have feelings of love for people in our lives, whether it is a spouse, parent, friend, or a child. Can you measure the feeling of love that you have on a scientific scale? No, it is not possible from a scientific standpoint to prove by some formula that the love you feel inside actually exists. Although, you still feel that love and are aware that it exists. In light of this, is it not also possible that the emotions that we feel, even though we cannot prove they exist, could come from a God whom we also could not scientifically prove exists?

There has been much criticism of the Bible and its contents which I would also like to address. It would be far to time consuming for me to go through every single detail of the scripture in this document. That would require writing a book, a task that could be addressed at a later date. From the nonbelievers that I have encountered, one of the main questions I run into is, why does the scripture seem to contradict itself. Why would a God of love say “thou shall not kill” and then kill thousands of people to secure the promise land for Israel? This question has plagued me for quite some time and caused me much grief within myself. I finally found peace within when I realized that all of those who where killed had chosen to deny God and turn away from him. The Israelites would have been killed by all of those nations if the Lord had not fought on their behalf, not because Isreal was better, but because they chose to follow the Lord. The God of the Old Testament appears to be harsh and unforgiving. This is totally opposite of who God really is. If you read on further you begin to see a picture of a God whose heart is grieved, because man continuously chooses to walk away from Gods love to seek after Gods and idols that they could see and touch. The closer I study the scripture the clearer the picture becomes of a father whose heart is breaking for his children, who refuse to listen to his warnings and must pay the price for their choices.

Probably the most controversial topic is that of Jesus Christ. (Or Yeshua which is his original Hebrew name) Did God really come to earth in the form of a man and live a completely perfect life only to be murdered for the all the sins of the world? More importantly, did he really rise again three days after his death? Most historians will agree that Jesus actually did exist and that his life can be verified by other sources outside of scripture. The hardest pill to swallow however is the resurrection. This single event has created a controversy that has shaken the world and changed the course of history forever. Believing in the resurrection is what separates a Christian from all others. The question remains, how can you possibly prove from a scientific standpoint that it actually occurred? I don't believe you can or ever will. That is the way the God designed it to be.

He wants us to dare to believe in the unbelievable, and to let our hearts step out in faith into the unknown. We are given an opportunity to enter into another world that goes beyond our five senses, to a place where time does not exist and our restless heart will finally be at peace. After reading this you will probably go back through and look for some way to dispute and criticize everything that I have said. That is to be expected. I would like to challenge you to take a moment to humor me. Let go of all that you have been taught to know as truth and open your heart and mind. If you don't believe that God is real, ask him to reveal himself to you. Sometime when you're all alone, away from all the noise of everyone else's ideas and opinions, talk to God. If you don't believe that he is real, tell him why you feel that way. It could be as simple as: “God I don't believe in you because I can't see you, how do I know that you are real? Will you show yourself to me?” I know this sounds silly, but you might be surprised by what you find. There was a time in my life when I did this and I have never been the same since. In the end it is up to you, everyone must choose their own path. The question is, where does the path that you have chosen lead to?

Chad Meadows <cmeadows@netsales.com>
Overland Park, KS USA - Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 11:30:02 (MDT)

Richard Carrier Responds:

All questions regarding what actually exists are intellectual questions, which can only be answered effectively through investigation of evidence and application of logic.  Every other method is far more error-prone and cannot be trusted.  Emotions are important, but they only tell you how you feel, not what exists apart from your feelings.  Emotions are reactions to physical states of your body and to mental states established by sensory and imaginary perceptions.  As such, they only tell you how you are reacting to what you already know (or believe you know).  They do not add any further knowledge apart from that.  See Do Religious Life and Critical Thought Need Each Other?

You should not be surprised that we have such things: emotions predate reason.  All higher animals experience and exhibit emotions.  They evolved as a means for a brain to perceive patterns of physiological and mental condition and create the most advantageous reactions: fear causes one to flee from danger, anger causes one to fight for survival, joy (and its associate, love) causes one to keep seeking or protecting the causes of joy (and this usually relates to things that improve one's knowledge or skill or social support or in other ways improve one's ability to survive), and so on.  Nothing about us "just appeared" from anywhere, much less from gases, but has been built up over billions of years by complicated processes.  But though that process has killed off most of those with disadvantageous traits, our enlightenment is relatively recent, and we still retain many traits that we would be better off without.  Jealousy, for instance, is practical for an organism that only wants to preserve its genetic line by keeping others away from its mate, but this is hardly an enlightened goal in life, and though now we know that, we are still stuck with the primitive, pre-rational emotion, and it has caused all kinds of havoc.  Other emotions, however, we have adapted well to our new world of awareness, such as love (see Of Love, Brunettes, and Biology).

Values are a different thing.  They are what we have developed a long-term desire for, through habit or choice (well-reasoned or not).  Though emotions tell us things about our values and try to tell us how our values relate to what we believe are the facts of a given case, like all forms of perception value-driven emotions are imperfect and prone to illusions and errors, especially errors of omission, and distortions from having too limited a point of view.  More importantly, apart from pure accident, their accuracy is never greater than the accuracy of the facts they are reacting to.  This means that if we have not engaged all the powers and skills of reason to make sure we have our facts straight, our emotions will frequently give us the wrong information.  Even more importantly, if we have simply absorbed our values from our surroundings--blindly emulating our peers and following the rewards and punishments of fallible human parents and other authority figures--or chosen them by employing sloppy and fallacious reasoning or incorrect facts, then our values will themselves be incorrect, almost certainly self-defeating, and the emotions they generate will in turn be wrong for us.  As for the purpose moral values in particular serve, see Does the Christian Theism Advocated by J.P. Moreland Provide a Better Reason to be Moral than Secular Humanism?

You are quite wrong that the scientific community basis truth only on what we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Rather,  scientists recognize that these (plus a few others, like balance) are the only senses that tell us things about the world outside of us.  Scientists still examine and use and call true or false emotions and other similar senses, as is obvious from the whole field of psychology, and to some extent also in the fields of anthropology, sociology, and economics, etc.  But they treat these as what they are: indicators of a person's internal states.  Emotions provide data on what a person feels, not on any fact apart from that person that cannot be identified by other senses.  As it happens, psychologists can and have measured things like love, on scientific scales--and the inevitable ambiguity of such measurements does not make them any less scientific than the predictions of meteorologists.  And it is in fact possible to prove, as one would prove any empirical fact, whether someone really is feeling love (we do this all the time: examining their behavior and seeing if it is consistent with a person in love, rather than someone who is pretending, etc.).  As for ourselves, we sense love directly, and thus do not need science to tell us we do.

As you can see, there is no need, nor any rationale, for proposing that emotions come from an invisible and silent god.  We know where emotions are generated in the brain, and what chemicals the brain uses to produce them, and how those emotions can be lost by destroying those sections of the brain or interfering with those chemicals.  We can identify similar and more primitive structures in many animals, with the same results.  Finally, the logic of emotions, as examined across the history of higher animals, perfectly fits the theory of evolution by natural selection.  We thus know generally how emotions arise and why, and there is no god in the picture.  Indeed, the god theory fails to explain things like why we experience self-destructive emotions like jealousy, or why our emotions are frequently in error, and does not easily explain why physical damage or interference in the brain can affect emotions in predictable ways, or why animals feel emotions.

Now, I am appalled that you "find peace within" when you "realized that all of those who where killed had chosen to deny God and turn away from him."  Since when does that justify murder?  Why does that make God any nicer a person?  There is no excuse: apart from genuine self-defense, deliberately taking the life of another against their will is a crime, and always will be.  Will you feel peace within when someone executes the mass murder of Buddhists simply because they have "chosen to deny God and turn away from him"?  You cannot defend God on this score, and it is frightening that anyone would even try.  Your hopeless excuse even fails to explain why innocent children and livestock were included in the genocidal slaughters ordered by God, why God commanded the Israelites on occasion to keep the women alive to enslave and have sex with them, or why someone who did something as innocuous as picking up sticks on the Sabbath was killed at God's order.  There is no defending it.  This is not a holy book, but a boastful record of a barbaric people invoking God as their excuse for perpetrating the most disgusting crimes against humanity.

Since emotion cannot tell us anything about what exists apart from us, and since the Bible is clearly not inspired by any truly enlightened and compassionate being, much less a god, your methods will not get you to the truth.  I'm willing to bet that no god has ever sat down and talked to you straight, in plain English, like any friend or kind and wise teacher would.  But since this is what any friend of kind and wise teacher would do, it follows, by the infallible necessity of logic, that God, even if he exists, is neither your friend nor a kind and wise teacher.  I have even tried what you ask, to no avail.  Indeed, God has had an open invitation to pop in and say "Hi!" for ten years now, and still he is a no-show.  That is not the behavior of someone who loves me.  My wife loves me, but she has the decency to tell me so herself.  She has the decency to explain to me carefully what I have done wrong, or informed me of things I didn't know but needed to know.  When I need advice, she gives it straight, in plain English, holding nothing back that I need to know.  That is the behavior of a person who is in love.  Your god does not qualify, for he does none of these things.

Your attempt to invent an excuse for God's silence is neither original nor even remotely logical.  Following your bizarre logic, I did not choose to love my wife, but was forced to, because she made the dire mistake of speaking to me honestly and plainly.  Explain to me how that makes even one iota of sense.  Even knowing all the facts of the universe would not make us slaves.  To the contrary, it would make our choices more informed, and more truly reflective of what we really want.  Any compassionate being wants people to make good choices and therefore to have all the information they need--accurate and clear information--so they can in fact make good choices.  No compassionate being would ever want people to have less information, more ambiguous information, less accurate information.  That contradicts all moral decency.  Moreover, it is simply false that by giving us more evidence we would have less freedom, or that God would have less reason to be comforted by our choice to love him--if, in fact, we even did, for it is not certain that we would, and I certainly would not, if the Old Testament were true.  Again, using your ill-logic, my wife, wanting my love, ought never to have shown herself to me or ever spoken straight to me, and that in following such an illogical pattern of behavior I would come to love her more, or that my love for her would somehow become more valuable.  It should be obvious how this is not only false, but is exactly opposite the truth.  Worse, you even use this ridiculous logic to justify murder: because God deliberately withheld information from the Canaanites, so that they made a bad decision, he was justified in slaughtering every last one of them, men, women, children, and even animals.  I fear the day when any man or woman in power starts thinking like that.  Why, then, do you even try to employ such an excuse for God?

After fifteen years of hearing arguments like these, I honestly must conclude that people who make such absurd arguments are so desperate to deny the fact that they are wrong, so desperate to cling to something that makes them feel good--on the ignorant presumption that they could not be just as happy with other beliefs--that they will resort to any tactic to convince themelves they are right.  Many believers, like yourself, try to deny the truth by inverting all sense and reason, as you have clearly done several times above.  Indeed, you even think that you can "experience" peace in a place where time does not exist, yet I wonder how you can experience anything with no time in which to experience it!  That this wanton use of irrational excuses is the only way you can justify yourselves only proves that you have no ground to stand on--because your belief is not logical, you pretend logic isn't important, or use patently illogical arguments and pretend they make sense; because your belief has no evidence to justify it, you pretend evidence isn't important, or appeal to facts that do not prove your point at all (such as appealing to emotions as evidence of something apart from how you feel).  I sincerely hope you will escape this imprisoning mindset, find respite from the fear of venturing out into new ideas, and come to realize that the real truth, that there is no god, is not so frightening as you think, and is in fact liberating, and very effective at focussing your attention on what really matters: the human race, and what you do with yourself in the brief purse of time you are so fortunate to have.

An interesting paper. It is a pitty that there is no opportunity for interaction with the author though.

The first cause arguement is not self defeating. Newton's laws relate to the physical world only. They don't even relate to human emotion let alone what might be called "spiritual". Therefore, God need not have a cause but all physical motion does. Imagine all of the matter of the universe being warped out of a vacuum like sub-atomic particles do. It would not happen without an energy field or something like that. It may be a big black spider but whatever it is it was not physical - at least that is waht all our experiments with physical stuff tell us, an in the absence of better evidence we must go with that. God mustn't be stereotyped. If He is a big black spider, then so be it. If He wants nothing to do with us, there's nothing we can do to change that. If He has a standard or if He desires a response, then no amount of intellectual evasion will suffice. They're all big "ifs" but they do exist.

Secondly, the world was sited as being less than desirable for human habitation. The writer seems to think that a world without risk, or challenge would be better than the one we have. He would prefer a purposeless world if only he could be safe from insects. I, on the other hand, cannot imagine a better world, except for the damage we industrialised human have done to it. Nothing without risk is any fun.

There are three types of people in the world: those who seek and have found truth, those who are seeking and have not yet found truth and those who neither seek nor find. (paraphrase of Pascal) Seek, just in case absolute truth really does exist.

Please publish these comments. Thank you.

Brent Leggett < brent@idl.net.au>
Newcastle, Australia - Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 04:36:30 (MDT)

My best friend is atheist and is constantly making points about how science has an explanation for every thing. Alot of her points are good. She once told me that when she became atheist, she felt freer, like she wasn't tied down anymore. I resect her choice but personally I like to believe there is something higher then man watching us and taking care of us. I guess I'd just like to say thank you because after reading this page I think I understand where she's coming from a little better.

Emily <Sanrio513@aol.com>
Albany, NY USA - Wednesday, May 24, 2000 at 17:20:05 (MDT)

Hello fellow Freethinkers:

Christopher Jones <c2jones@bellsouth.net>
Tamarac (Ft, Laud.), FL USA - Wednesday, May 24, 2000 at 15:53:26 (MDT)

Lots of good healthy stuff for me to get my teeth into, keep up the good and excellent work. My respects go out to you.
ps, please could you keep me informed.

Desmondond Calliste <desmondcalliste@yahoo.com>
London, UK - Wednesday, May 24, 2000 at 10:41:27 (MDT)

My hearty condolences! If you spend one minute to just think - What if Christianity is the Truth? - You would have inherited eternal life. The Bible is a Living Book. It can defend itself against whatsoever accusation you through at it. Here you are trashing it and if you had read it, you will know that God has predicted that this would take place.

Jude 1:10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

God for this purpose has prepared two kingdoms - one for those who receive His calling, and walk towards Him - another for those who deny Him. When we belief in Him and walk towards Him, we move towards Paradise. And if we deny Him and honor Him not, we walk from Him and will fall into Hell.

You can deny all you want. But the time will come when you will stand before Him on Judgement day. Everything you said will be brought to remembrance and you must give an account. Tremble and be afraid. What you gain by writing this vain words denying something you can't see. It is hidden from you because your name is not written in heaven.

2 Corinthians 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

2 Corinthians 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Again my condolences on your death of your soul! Repent ! or Eternal fire of Hell awaits you.

Mariappan Eddiah <maripaen.eddiah@mailcity.com>
Seremban, NS` Malaysia - Wednesday, May 24, 2000 at 07:57:35 (MDT)
 

Richard Carrier Responds:

Threats are the hallmark of a wicked creed.

Taner Edis has brought home many of the same doubts I had concerning my Atheism. I feel troubled that I cannot in any sense accept most Religious "Dogmas". A "born again" friend of mine years ago was expounding irrational beliefs about the Bible that I was forced to read it for "her sake". We are still friends, she still troubled with superstition, I am now Epicurean with an ability to truly admire the "Great" freethinkers from before Epicurus and Democritus, through Voltaire, Spinoza and on. Above all towers Thomas Paine, the epitome of all Humanist. He is just now being vindicated from the viciousness those "Organized for Profit" religions. Your site as I have seen is in the same vein. I congratulate your endeavors and will be reading more in the future.

Thanks
Dave Swedberg < swedy@prtel.com>
Fergus Falls, MN USA - Monday, May 22, 2000 at 07:44:17 (MDT)

I had no idea that this questionnaire existed until I saw your article. Personally, this type of litmus testing horrifies me. Don't these people have any idea what our history is? So much of our heritage resulted from combined religious and political power and abuse of same, yet these folks clearly want to be sure that political/judicial power is wielded by followers of their religions/cults. These questions are clearly out of the bounds of truly American behavior, not to mention decency. Judiciary seats should be filled by people with ability to reason and excellent knowledge of the law, not stooges of the left or right. I would hope that any candidates for judicial seats not only refuse to answer this monstrosity, but also actively condemn it as the totalitarian tool that it is.

Bob Fandrich <ustwo99999@aol.com>
USA - Monday, May 22, 2000 at 05:17:21 (MDT)

Ronald deSousa, a philosophy professor at the U of Toronto, has claimed (in his essay titled Love as Theater) that the most desperate religious belief and the deepest art are motivated by the same thing. The difference is that religion is deceptive, and art is merely illusory. In other words, we are supposed to beleive the propositions espoused by religion, but we are not expected to beleive that a play, for example, is anything but a simulation. The important similarity is that both religion and art appeal to our sensual and emotional responses. That appeal is one of the things that concerns me the most about religion - that my children could be blindsided by these powerful appeals to emotion, regardless of how rational and reasonable they might be.

Perhaps including art or creative activity to our athiestic education can provide our children with an alternate route to express and get comfortable with powerful emotional responses. I would be interested to hear from anyone with any thoughts in this area - like I said, I've got two boys and they're growing up fast!

Wendy < WeninLB@aol.com>
Long Beach, CA USA - Monday, May 22, 2000 at 00:43:41 (MDT)

It is apparent to me that you have not done your homework especially one the article which states that there is fallacy due to God's ordination and displeasure at the actions of Jehu in IIkings 10, then in Hosea 1:4. Quite simply the answer is the reason that Ahab was destroyed was for Baal worship and when Jehu assumed the throne his statement found in verse 18 of chapter ten explains it. Verse 18 And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them, Ahab served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much. God judges idolatry whether it be by a Jew, Gentile or former ordained minister of God. Notice in Hosea God called Jehu, Jezreel because of the similarity of their acts. Jehovah even would avenge Jezreel because Jehu did not right that which he was sent to do, which was turn Israel back to God. Therefore the judgment of Jezreel was also placed on Jehu's house. Due to the fact that Jehu not only continued the sin but built upon it and increased. The simplicity of this is astound, and reveals your prodding inability to find valid inaccuracy. Remember, this was not God's choice but was Jehu's, every action has its results, whether rewards or punishments. May Jehovah-nissi help you.

Mr. Melton <Mecmelton@juno.com>
USA - Sunday, May 21, 2000 at 15:46:23 (MDT)

After some extensive research over many years, I have some answers for Mr. Robertson's cronies.

Specific questions included:

Do God's Laws or Natural Laws have a high [sic] authority than laws enacted
by the United States Congress or the Idaho Legislature?

Of course Natural Law has a "higher" authority than man-made laws. Is the esteemed idiot who wrote this questionaire going to defy the Law of Gravity?

Do you agree that the United States Constitution is Christian-based?

Only a complete moron would think that the Constitution is Christian-based. The man who wrote the Declaration of Independence was a Deist, not a Christian, and 9/10ths of the men on the Constitutional Committee were as well. Actually, look up the Treaty of Tripoli. Signed by President John Adams (drafted under President George Washington), it states unequivocally "as the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion..."

Does hell exist as described in the Bible?

Of course not!! Hell is only for frightening children. REAL hell is right here, just ask any survivor of the Holocaust.

Do you believe in the fact that God created all the heavens, earth,
creatures, plants and man?

No. I'm not that gullible.

Do you believe that God inspired the writing of the United States
Constitution?

That would require a beli