“No One Believes That The God Of The Bible Exists Anymore”

James McGrath has a must-read post: “No One Believes That The God Of The Bible Exists Anymore“

No one confronts the representatives of another tradition with a contest to see which one’s deity will send fire from heaven as Elijah did. No Christian blogger claims that those who comment negatively will be struck with blindness for doing so, as apostles did. God is depicted in many parts of the Bible as knocking down city walls, parting seas and so on. Yet no Christian dominionists are likely to march around Washington D.C. and see it fall into their hands.

And it gets better from there.

Must read: Josh Rosenau on Ben Stein

Last night on Countdown I was pleased to see Ben Stein come in second in Worst Person in the World.  (First place would have been better, but no one has a chance when Coultergeist is in the running…she made Rush Limbaugh look sane.)  What earned Stein the nomination was a comment  he made in a TBN interview

[T]he last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you. …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

In response to this comment by Stein, Josh Rosenau has an excellent post: “Holocaust Remembrance Day”.  I always wonder to what extent creationists are aware that the lies they are telling are lies.  Apparently in Stein’s case, he is well aware.

in 2006, he wrote a column discussion Hadamar, a Nazi facility at the center of Expelled. “Nazis,” the Ben Stein of 2006 explained, “believed thoroughly in a vicious corruption of Malthusian economics.” Not only is he right that Malthus is a better historical precedent, but he’s right to call what the Nazis did “a vicious corruption.”

Prayer without action

James McGrath has an excellent post on the issue of the parents who refused to seek medical care for their sick daughter, choosing to rely, instead, on prayer.  The girl slipped into a diabetic coma and died.  The parents have been charged with second degree murder, but people have argued that this was their religious right.  James decided to approach it from a biblical perspective, and after discussing the issue in the context of three passages from the bible, he concludes

This is yet one more example of a “Biblical” Christianity that doesn’t know the Bible. Behold the damage that it does. Dare we go so far to say that those who advocate these ignorant forms of Christianity are complicit in murder?

Critical thinking and creationism

In his review of Expelled, Mike Biedler writes:

You’d think that Expelled‘s deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, both in terms of movie production and presentation of the scientific evidence, would make me angry. Not so much… So what is making me angry? Honestly, it’s the fact that one year ago I would have fallen for Stein’s presentation—hook, line, and sinker. I’m also angry at how easily Christians fall for half-truths and outright lies. I’m angry at how often we Christians check our brains at the door and are perfectly willing to serve as messenger boys for the most outrageous urban legends, folk sciences, doctrines, and just plain idiotic belief systems.

There’s a large segment of American Christianity which sees itself as a persecuted minority threatened by a secular mainstream culture intent on its destruction.*  When you’ve locked yourself in a bunker you are almost obligated to believe that they people inside are on your side.  If you applied critical thinking to the situation you would have to admit that you have locked yourself in a room with people who are actively working to promote lies and deception.  And that realisation is probably far too terrifying.

*There’s an interesting case you can make here that the “new atheists” feed this mentality, that they make the problem worse.  I think that’s a mistaken perception.  The bunker doors have already been locked.  They already see secular society as evangelically atheist.  A book by Dawkins or Hitchens just confirms what these people already “know”.  I think the net effect is trivial.  Of course, I may be wrong – I am going on nothing but a gut feeling, devoid of data.  Just like the critics of the “new atheists”.

Noah’s Ark

The story of Noah’s Ark is one of the more disturbing of the well known stories in the Bible.  The idea of a deity that would wipe out all but eight humans in order to knock back (but not eliminate) evil in the world… It’s a disturbing story on so many levels.  James McGrath takes a look at the question “can Noah’s Ark be Savaged?“  He says

The best way to make sense of the story is to show how it, like all the Biblical literature, reflects the development of human thinking about God that has led us to where we are today, rather than as static proclamations of things one ought to believe about God.

People tend to focus on the “good” part of the story – the promise not to do it again, the covenant with Noah.  But that requires you to set aside the depiction of God as an abusive parent, an Andrea Yates, as James suggests.

(You should also read his previous post “God’s Wife“.)

Religion and atheism

While it’s easy to criticise religion as irrational and a vehicle for intolerance, that doesn’t change the fact that there is real value to organised religion.  Mike Haubrich got at one value that people put in religion – the idea of “purchasing” immortality.  But religion also has more tangible value.  A few months ago our pastor, Amy, preached a sermon on “Being Christian as if God didn’t exist”.  She asked the question “what would you do differently?”  The answer was “not an awful lot”.  The value of church as community isn’t dependent on the existence or non-existence of a supernatural being.  The value of service to your (local and global) community exists regardless of whether a supernatural being exits.

Chad Orzel of Uncertainty Principle hits the nail on the head

Trying to get rid of religion by telling believers that their beliefs are stupid is like trying to get rid of fraternities by telling frat boys that the whole enterprise is silly. The smarter ones will shrug and say “Yeah, so?” or invent endless arguments as to why they’re not silly. The less-smart ones will bristle and bluster and tell you to fuck off, and draw into a seige mentality that will make it almost impossible to effect any kind of useful change.

He also gets at a weakness of the atheist movement – that it doesn’t replace the social benefits of religion.

This is the element that I think is missing from the whole atheist project online. Religion exists in large part because it fills a social need for believers, and attacking the silly and objectionable beliefs directly isn’t going to change things. What you need to do is to encourage or create new communities that fill the same social needs without the objectionable beliefs. If you do that, you’ll provide an outlet for people who aren’t entirely happy with their current church, but who don’t see any alternative that provides similar community benefits.

Jeremiah Wright and the Prophet Jeremiah

Henry Neufeld has an interesting post comparing Jeremiah Wright with the Prophet Jeremiah.

The role of a prophet is to speak truth to power.   Devilstower at dKos also looks at Wright’s words in the context of the words of Jesus.

Manufactured crises

Pastor Dan writes

The fact is, America has postponed a necessary conversation on race for at least forty years. Jeremiah Wright makes white (and not a few black) people uncomfortable because he reminds them that America is not as morally pure as it would like to imagine itself as being. Nor is it as post-racial. Injustice, however ameliorated, is still daily a part of many lives. Until we are willing to face that truth, we can never truly leave the ghosts of our racial past behind. White Americans don’t like to hear that, and I don’t blame them.

Obama on Wright

Statements by the pastor of Barack Obama’s church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have ignited a bit of a firestorm, especially at TPM. It really didn’t strike me as comparable with McCain’s endorsements from Hagee and Parsley – McCain, after all, sought and welcomed the endorsements from that pair. Obama, on the other hand, is a member of the church that Wright pastors. After all – a church is a community, not (generally) a band of followers of one charismatic individual.

Writing at HuffPo today, Obama addressed the Wright issue. He begins with an outright rejection of Wright’s statements

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Some people have said that by remaining members of the church, they are somehow endorsing Wright. Obama writes

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.

The key question here is “what is a church?” While it varies from denomination to denomination and from church to church, by an large a church is a community, not a group of devotees of a charismatic preacher. Of course, this is a continuum – most televangelists are the opposite – the preacher is the focus, and often, the church is treated as if it were private property. But this isn’t the case in most denominations – whether the church is connectional (and all property is owned by the broader denomination) or congregational (where the church owns its own property and chooses to associate with the broader denomination), the church is the functional unit. The church employs the pastor…sometimes the local church actually hires and fires the pastor, sometimes it is the denomination that does so. A good pastor can attract and hold crowds. And sometimes, when a pastor leaves, a portion of the congregation goes with him or her.

The United Church of Christ is congregational, so Trinity UCC actually employed Wright. And Wright was pastor there for a long time – his Wikipedia article says that he was pastor for 36 years. It goes without saying that he was an important part of shaping that congregation. And from what Obama says, Wright probably played a significant role in his decision to join and remain in the church

I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.

But a church is a community, it’s a family. It’s far more than a single individual. Obama’s decision to remain a member of his church is in no way comparable to McCain’s decision to seek out the endorsement of bigots.

Whale philosophers

What do whale philosophers think when the ponder the question of why the intelligent designer gave them lungs in a water world?