S is for Second Coming

The evidence for Jesus’ First Coming from unimpeachable, non-Christian sources is scanty. It is so scanty that it is quite possible that Jesus—i.e. a significant Jewish prophet from the time of the Emperor Tiberius—never really existed in the flesh. The best non-Christian source for Jewish history during the supposed time of Jesus of Nazareth is a Jewish general named Flavius Josephus. (When the Jews were defeated, he joined the Romans and changed his name.) His failure to even mention Jesus of Nazareth—despite mentioning some other prophets with the name Jesus (i.e., Joshua) at the exact same time—stunned early Christians. That’s why they “interpolated” a passage into Josephus’ book, The History of the Jews that corrects his account of these troubled times. The practice of “correcting” texts to (or, as George Orwell later put it:“bringing them up to date”) was quite common in antiquity. So the Christian scholars who inserted a few pages on the amazing doings of Jesus of Nazareth into Josephus’ history were not doing so maliciously. But the very fact that this “pious interpolation” (as modern scholars invariably describe it) was necessary at all strongly suggests that if Jesus of Nazareth really existed in the flesh, he was a very minor figure whose activities were easily overlooked.

From this we might well conclude that Jesus’ First Coming was irrelevant. What’s truly important, and very interesting, is how this minor figure was blown up into a Giant God who said and did all sorts of memorable things and became the epicenter of a cult that grew to embrace millions and later billions of adherents. And for this, we must first credit (or blame) Saul of Tarsus better known as Saint Paul. It was he who took the message of Jesus (whom he never met) “on the road” to Greece. It was he who, in defiance of Jesus own brother, spread the Word to non-Jews and even permitted uncircumcised men to join “The Way” as the new religion styled itself. (It adopted “Christian” from outsiders who used this derisive name to call attention to the “cultish” nature of the new religion.)

So, if the Second Coming parallels the first, it will take place “below the radar” and Jesus will disappear once more without leaving a trace. No doubt his followers will then come up with all sorts of stories of what he said and did and how miraculous it all was. And, once again, he will predict that end of the world is at hand and the last days are near. And again there will be those who believe even though they have “not seen” and again there will be skeptics whose lack of faith prevents them from seeing what is obvious to all the true believers.

And, if history is our guide, this will produce a new religion arising reinvigorated from the ashes of the old—consider Mormonism if you will.

R is for Religion

Religion frequently provides grounds for people to fight over, but if religion didn’t exist they would probably fight over something else. But would they fight as tenaciously? Religion seems to act as a catalyst for UltraViolence. When angry people believe God is on their side, and that their enemies are the enemies of God, atrocities seem to follow. Instances of this are so commonplace throughout human history there is no need to recite them here.

Overall, has religion done more harm than good? This question is impossible to answer because most of the good, and most of the harm, are like the submerged portion of an iceberg. What goes on inside other people’s heads and hearts is about as invisible as something can get. Even when people tell you how much something matters to them, or troubles them, or brings them peace of mind, you can’t be sure that their testimony is true. This has nothing to do with any conscious desire to deceive themselves or others. Often people will say what they think others want to hear, or, what is expected under the circumstances—or what they expect to hear from themselves.

So we have to deal with reports from reporters whose accuracy is impossible to assess. In a recent poll, 82% of the American people reported that God was “very important” in their lives. The figure for Western Europeans was about half as high. From this it seems indisputable that religion matters much less to contemporary Europeans than it does to Americans. Now, if only there were some way of discovering how happy Europeans are compared to Americans. But even if Europeans, on average, say they are happier—or less happy—than Americans, their happiness (or lack thereof) may have nothing to do with religion. They might be happier because many things American worry about such as educating their kids, paying their medical bills, and paying for nursing home care when they grow old, are not major sources of anxiety in Western Europe.

What would be interesting to know is the extent to which Western European institutions, culture, law, etc. are different because Europeans are less religious. It seems to me that the European rejection of the death penalty suggests that their society may be morally superior to ours. Their murder rate is also much lower. The extremes of wealth and poverty in Europe are also far less pronounced than in the United States. And Europeans have also done much more to deal with the growing danger of global warming. And most European nations also give a much higher percentage of their wealth to poor countries than do Americans. It seems to me that they come out ahead in many important areas of life. But even if they aren’t ahead, and are instead tied with the USA, that would surely suggest that our greater religiosity does not make our society superior.

Q is for Queer

Even people who’ve never read the Bible know Sodom and Gomorrah were two  ancient towns that God zapped for doing some very naughty things. The word “sodomy” has come to refer to any sexual act that cannot lead to pregnancy—especially “queer” sexual acts involving people of the same sex.

What the Bible says happened way back when in downtown Sodom is very unusual. It seems that Lot, a well-known townie, was playing host to a pair of  angels who were in Sodom for a visit. These angels must have been extremely good-looking because all the local male sex maniacs (described as “all the people” in Genesis—which makes a habit of  ignoring women and children whenever it can) surrounded Lot’s house and made a big commotion demanding the angels come outside for some hot action. (Wanting to “know” them in Bible-speak.)

This was so embarrassing and so deeply offensive to Lot that he decided to offer up his two virginal daughters to the queer rioters, hoping they would accept them as substitutes for the angels. But those filthy degenerates didn’t want young girls. They wanted the real thing—gorgeous male angels. They turned Lot’s offer down flat. Keep your virgins! Send out the angels! We want angels!

Needless to say, both angels were  male—female angels never appear in the Bible—so what we have here is an overt, highly-public, in-your-face clamor for homosexual activity. History’s first recorded Gay Riot.

The scene in Lot’s front yard convinced God that He was on the right track when He seriously considered zapping Sodom and Gomorrah a bit earlier. God had promised Abraham that He would spare Sodom if ten innocent people could be found in the entire town. But Sodom came up short. (One presumes women and children didn’t count, otherwise making it to ten would have been very easy.) When the angels did their investigation, they discovered that Lot and his family were the only decent folks living in Sodom. The entire family were ordered to leave town, pronto. But, despite God’s explicit warning not to look back, Lot’s wife stole a quick, nostalgic glance back at Sodom and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt. That’ll show you to trifle with God, you mere nameless woman!

Then God destroyed Sodom and nearby Gomorrah which was equally wicked.

This raises some peculiar questions:

(1) At one point, defending Lot, the angels strike some of the nearest perverts blind. Oddly, this seems not to have had any deterrent effect, since the others kept up their raucous demands. Why not simply blind the whole gang? Or, why didn’t the angels simply step outside and beat the shit out of the queers? Are angels sissies? Or are they simply agents provocateur?

(2) Is Lot so obtuse that he can’t figure out that the people out front are a gang of homosexuals who want men not women? How can Lot be this clueless about the gay lifestyle? Remember, everyone in Old Sodom except his own family is as queer as a three-dollar bill. Proportionately more gays than Cherry Grove in high summer, and Lot doesn’t know what the guys out front are after? He has to be a low grade moron!

(3) Why would Lot offer his sweet, young, virginal daughters, to a gang of sex maniacs out in the street, regardless of their sexual orientation. Has Lot lost his mind? Or did his horny daughters volunteer to go outside and participate in an orgy? And if they didn’t, why is Lot so eager to offer them up? Does he plan to ogle the action from his front window? Why don’t the angels intervene to save the girls? Or are they just passive hunks of male beefcake dangling from God’s hook to entice the local pervs?

(4) Why does God always go in for excessive overkill? Surely, besides all the male sex maniacs, Sodom and Gomorrah must have had some decent womenfolk and lots of innocent children. But all of them get zapped too! What did they do to deserve this fate? This is much worse than guilt by association—it’s guilt by proximity. What’s known as “collateral damage” by the bully boys in the Pentagon.

(5) Finally, consider the case of the nameless Mrs. Lot: Her day was already ruined when God decides she needs one more calamity to even the score. First, these other-worldly beautiful angels drop in unexpectedly. Second, there’s a Gay Sex Riot out on the front lawn while she’s trying to fix dinner. Third, to cool off the rioters, her wacko husband offers up their daughters for a street orgy. Fourth, the whole family has to leave town in a hurry without so much as saying good-bye to the neighbors or packing up their stuff. Then, after all this, Mrs. Lot takes one itsy-bitsy peek over her shoulder, for which she’s turned into a pillar of salt. One suspects this is not a reversible condition. Tough luck lady! Now the idiotic Lot may very well deserve to lose his wife as a punishment. But what about the poor daughters—they need their mother to protect them from their nitwit father. The proof: The next thing the girls do is get their Old Man drunk and taking turns having sex with him. And he manages to get both of them pregnant on the first try! Nothing like a little Divinely Assisted Incest to carry on the family name. One wonders what Mrs. Lot would have said. Maybe that explains why she had to be pillarized.

(6) Why doesn’t God simply zap the queer sex maniacs surrounding the house? Or, at the very least, order his angels to go out front and beat the crap out of them? Either action would have ended the entire incident. All the innocent women and children of Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared. Furthermore, Lot would not have made a complete fool of himself. Nor would he have lost his wife. He might not have been tricked into engaging in incest either. If you’re God, and you’re going to intervene eventually, why not do so in a timely and effective manner so as to do the least possible harm? Unlike us mortals, God is supposed to be able to see around the next corner. He had to have known from the get-go Very Bad Stuff was going to happen that day in Sodom.

(7) Clearly, the Sodom and Gomorrah story is crudely contrived. In it God—a fictional character in a Very Old Book—zaps two towns, thus making a very strong and unforgettable statement against male homosexuality. Or, at the very least, against sex between men and male angels. The men who wrote the Bible obviously believed that homosexuality was an extremely depraved choice—an abomination, if you will. But, even if homosexuality is a choice, do those who exercise this choice deserve the death penalty? Aren’t sexually transmitted diseases, social ostracism and being called “queer” sufficient punishment?

(8) And finally, what about Gomorrah—the guilt-by-proximity town? What went on there? Just more garden variety sodomy or something really unspeakable—something that even the authors of the Bible hesitated to mention. Maybe it was sex with critters. We know it couldn’t have been father-daughter incest—under the right circumstances, God thinks that’s okay.

P is for Prudence

Many religious people think they are the only ones who live by a system of ethics. They do God’s Bidding and they follow His Commandments. If they do a good job of it, they’ll end up in Heaven. If they go too far astray, they expect to be punished severely in the Hereafter.

What about people who have no God to guide them, no hope for Heaven, and no fear of Divine Retribution? How do they know what to do? What punishment do they fear? Why should they do the right thing if there’s “nothing in it” for them? I’ve even heard Christians say: “Boy I wish I were an atheist, I could do whatever I wanted and there’d be no worry about going to Hell.” In response to which I would like to have initiated a dialogue that might have gone like this:

ME: So the main reason you don’t do all sorts of antisocial things is because God is watching and you’re afraid of getting zapped?

HIM: That’s a pretty damned good reason isn’t it?

ME: I suppose it is, but does that make you an ethical person? You’ve admitted that the only reason you’re not committing crimes is fear of getting caught.

HIM: Hey, there’d be a lot more criminals if there weren’t any jails.

ME: I’m sure. But are people who do the right thing simply to get a reward—and Heaven is the biggest reward imaginable—really and truly ethical? If the main factor you consider is What’s in it for me? are you thinking or behaving ethically?

HIM: I’m not thinking only about me, I’m thinking about other people too. That’s what’s meant by “Christian” ethics. Doing unto others.

ME: Yes, but you said earlier that you wished you were an atheist because then then you could do “whatever you wanted” there being no danger of hell.

HIM: Okay, I see your point but what makes you atheists behave? Why aren’t you all in jail?

ME: From what I’ve read the percentage of people in jail who say they are atheists is even smaller than the percentage in the population at large—and that’s about 5%. But to answer your question: You want to know what keeps me from committing all sorts of crimes?

HIM: That and other forms of unethical behavior.

ME: Those of us who have no fear of God have something equally powerful to keep us in line. The desire to do the right thing for its own sake. As Mark Twain, put it: “Always do right; this will impress some people and astonish the rest.”

HIM: So you do the right thing to earn the respect and admiration of other people.

ME: Some of the time. But most of the time no one is looking. Doing the right thing isn’t any harder then than it is when the whole world is watching. Knowing the right thing can sometimes be difficult. But once you know what it is, it’s pretty hard not to do it. To do something you sincerely believe to be wrong puts you in a bad way with yourself and that’s a very big burden to live with. You live within self-imposed limits.

HIM: Wasn’t it Dostoevsky who said “If there is no God then everything is permitted?” What about that? What’s to stop you from going beyond your own “self-imposed” limits?

ME: Nothing except my own conscience. I have great respect for Dostoevsky but he got it backwards. He should have said: “If there is a God, then ethics are impossible.”

HIM: Now you’ve lost me.

ME: If there is a God—like the Christian God Dostoevsky believed in—One who lays down rules for us to follow, we have only two choices . . .

HIM: Yeah, to follow them or not follow them.

ME: Exactly. If you follow them, you’re trying to impress God so he’ll let you into heaven. Your behavior isn’t ethical, it’s prudent. You’re doing what is in your self-interest. You’re trying to get into heaven and to avoid hell. That’s a prudent decision.

HIM: And if I don’t follow the rules?

ME: Then you’re behaving very imprudently because you might be sent to hell—or to purgatory if you’re a Catholic. In either event, your decision to do the right thing is always made with one eye on the Big Scoreboard in the Sky. And the score-keeper is an omniscient God who cannot be fooled.

HIM: So, if I follow your argument, I can’t look at the Big Scoreboard if I want to be truly ethical.

ME: You have to forget there is a scoreboard and do the right thing for its own sake. No rewards. No punishments. Just right and wrong. And prudence has absolutely nothing to do with it.

O is for Omnipotent

Forget about Omniscience, try to imagine that you could be Omnipotent for just one week. For seven consecutive days you could do One Big Thing per day to make the world a better place. 

Here’s what I would do.

SUNDAY: On the first day, I’d change the way things taste. All the things that are healthful and nutritious would taste good and all the things that are unhealthy and harmful would taste bad.

MONDAY: On the second day, I’d get rid of all addictions. Everyone would instantly become  addiction proof. The word would lose its meaning and disappear from the dictionary.

TUESDAY: On the third day, I’d take away the thrill some people seem to get from killing living things and turn it into disgust.

WEDNESDAY: On the fourth day, I’d make it possible for a woman to end a pregnancy just by wishing very hard that it just would go away.

THURSDAY: On the fifth day, I’d take away the urge parents have to force their children to be just like them, or to become what they always wanted to be.

FRIDAY: On the sixth day, I’d let old people die when and how they want—just by wishing hard for it—instead of having to wait for death.

SATURDAY: On the seventh day, I wouldn’t rest, instead I’d take away the feeling of absolute certainty that many people have about things that cannot be demonstrated or proved conclusively.

What would you do?

N is for Noah’s Ark

Superficially, the story of Noah’s Ark appears to be a simple tale of virtue rewarded—with lots of animals thrown in to provide an aura of plausibility. (If the animals had not been taken aboard the Ark how else could their survival be explained?) But once the story of Noah’s Ark is examined more closely, it turns out to be yet another  mass murder by God. But before turning to that grim aspect of the tale, let’s first consider the animals.

According to the Book of Genesis, the six-hundred-year-old Noah and his family, consisting of his ancient wife and their three sons—all one hundred years old—and their wives, rounded up a mating pair of every animal species on earth. This was necessary because the whole earth was about to be covered with water to such a depth that no animals (except fish, ducks, alligators and the like) could survive. This would mean that all but the highest mountain peaks would be submerged. Otherwise, the great flood, which was supposed to sweep away the the entire human population of the earth (save only the virtuous Noah and his seven family members) would fail to achieve its purpose since a handful evil people inhabiting high mountains in places like Peru might have survived.

This already places the entire flood story well beyond the bounds of physical possibility. There is simply not enough water on the planet to flood all the land to a depth of several kilometers. But, one supposes that God, who had already created the entire universe effortlessly, could make some extra water for the flood then remove it afterward. But if this great cataclysm actually happened wouldn’t it have left some strong physical evidence behind? Where is it?

If Noah and his helpers had tried to round up a mating pair of every non-aquatic species on earth they would have had to travel to faraway places like China, Australia, Tasmania and the Americas in order to capture pairs of Pandas, Kangaroos, Koala Bears, Tasmanian Devils, Jaguars and Wolverines. Since we know all of these species survived the flood, how did Noah’s helpers get to such faraway places as Michigan and Queensland to collect mating pairs? And how did they get them back to their home base in the Middle East? How many years would this have taken? (The Bible says it was all done during Noah’s six-hundredth year; so the answer is less than one.)

Once all the species on the earth—there are about 5400 mammals—had been gathered up, where did they put them while the Ark was under construction? How were they fed? And how big must the Ark have been to hold them all? It had to have to been many times larger than the the Bible says. It had to have been big enough to hold far more cages than the largest zoos on earth today, since many species would need to be caged to prevent their devouring others. And what about the food to feed all these animals for several months? Where did it come from? Where was it stored? And how could old Noah and his small band of seven relatives have kept the cages clean and the animals fed aboard the Ark during this extended period? Imagine the smell inside the Ark!

Finally, let’s consider the human aspect of the great flood. God concluded that all the people on earth except for Noah and his children and their wives were unfit to live. Think of what this means: It means that not only all those evil adults but also all their innocent children, including infants, would be drowned. Bad as the adults may have been, what justice—much less mercy—is there in killing all of their children? Or might this be history’s earliest example of what is nowadays called “collateral damage?” Or perhaps God in his infinite wisdom knows that some families are inherently and irretrievably evil? (But isn’t free will supposed to be one of God’s gifts to mankind? And don’t good kids sometimes come from bad families?) What we have here is a yet another case of “guilt by association.” One would think that an Omniscient God could rise to a somewhat higher standard of justice.

If Noah and his helpers had enough time to rescue hyenas, rats, flies and cockroaches surely they could have saved and adopted a few of the infants. And why did they save the mosquitos? Surely the world would much better off without them.

But why should God bother with sending a flood at all? Why not simply zap all the bad people and leave the animals alone. What did Noah and his family do to deserve having to round up thousands of breeding pairs of wild animals then spend weeks with them on a stinking ark?

N is for Nine-Eleven

Where was God on September 11, 2001? The answers of the Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are on record; God let it happen to punish America for it sins: These sins being abortion, homosexuality and pornography—the current laundry list of real or imagined societal ills perturbing the American Right. But who was killed at the WTC, at the Pentagon, and on the airplane that crashed in Western Pennsylvania on that dreadful day? Were the victims disproportionally gay? Were there abortion providers among them on their way to a convention perhaps? What about pornographers? Gay couples? Secular Humanists?

From what the New York Times has reported, the victims were mainly responsible, middle class, conventionally religious, productive people with jobs and families. Many of them—the New York City Firefighters and the airline passengers over Pennsylvania in particular—can rightly be called heroes. And so God punished them for their righteousness? Or were they simply unlucky to be on one of those planes or to be working that shift on that day?

Assuming God exists, it seems doubtful that He, She, It (or They) intends some message for us in what happened on September 11th. The peculiar agenda of the American Right was not fulfilled in the slightest. Falwell and Robertson believe that God removed His protection from America on September 11th. That must mean that He (they see him as a fellow male, of course) had been effectively thwarting suicidal hijackers, and others who would do large scale harm to Americans,  prior to that day. The God of Falwell and Robertson allows us to kill each other in fairly large numbers on a daily basis with hand guns and automobiles but events of this mundane nature don’t rise to level of theological speculation. He doesn’t seem to have done much to stop abortions either although those claiming to be his agents have committed murder in  futile attempts to do so. One wonders why thunderbolts and tornadoes don’t strike abortion clinics or X-rated movie studios far more often than, say, churches.

But the larger question is this: Is the world a moral order? Or, to be more precise, is it a Divine Order? Do Allah, God, YHWH, Vishnu, Zeus and/or some other Gods or Goddesses intervene in human affairs? Or do they just watch from the sidelines? Or do they simply not exist outside the minds of believers?

According to the media there has been a sharp increase in religiosity since the 9/11 disaster. Religious Americans, we are told, always turn to God in times of distress. God Bless America has replaced Take Me Out To The Ball Game at our baseball stadiums. What sense does this make? Is this turning to God in a crisis a call for help or a search for an explanation? Or is it a way of reassuring God—in the face of such a massive Divine Failure—that His People still believe in Him?

Events like September 11th strongly suggest that Divine Intervention is not in the cards. If there are any Gods, they seem to hang back and let the game of life go on. They receive adulation and prayers but they don’t ever seem to do anything.

Nevertheless, believers continue to assert that God does intervene. Soon after a trailer park is devastated by a tornado, survivors will assert in front of the TV cameras that God spared them and then they thank Him for it. But they never seem to wonder why God didn’t use his Omnipotent Power to divert the tornado away from their town entirely. Perhaps He wasn’t paying sufficient attention.

In recent days there has been much repetition of the old “No atheists in foxholes” slander. Atheists, heretics and unbelievers have fought and died in all of our wars. They are at least 5% of the population, probably more. Whether they waver or not in the face of imminent death is irrelevant. Surely some of them were among the dead on September 11th. Think About It: If no unbelievers died on that terrible day that might suggest Divine Intervention in their favor! Now you might ask: Why would the Gods intervene on behalf of those who don’t believe in them? Quickly, I can think of two possibilities: (1) They might have a sense of humor. (2) They might respect those who live moral lives without fearing them.

Suppose those suicidal terrorists had not believed they had assurances from Allah Himself that they were about to enter Paradise. Would they have gone through with  it? Can you imagine a gang of agnostics doing what they did?