Author: Neil Godfrey

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2008-04-24

How Faith undermines Logic: why logic will not rescue one from a cult, or persuade a fundamentalist

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Religion and Atheism
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This passage from Deborah Bennett’s “Logic Made Easy“, and drawing conclusions from scholarly studies, hit me between the eyes when I read it just recently:

Subjects have difficulty applying rules of logic when counterexamples in the subject’s experience are unavailable or difficult to recall and when the logical task fails to cue individuals to search for counter-examples. (p.105)

This is why it means nothing to, say, a Moonie if one attempting to pull them back out of that “cult” tries to force them to change their minds by presenting them with the plain-as-day evidence of dubious character of their leader; or why one will generally waste one’s time by pointing out the clear evidence for evolution or the fallibility of a biblical text.

The Moonie or fundamentalist is being completely rational within their own lights. The difference is that they are unable to see the counter-examples to their belief system even when they are right beneath their noses. (I know. I used to be this way myself, and often reflect on why I remained in such a thought-system for so long.)

And the reason they are unable to see what is staring them in the face is that their faith system instructs them to exercise total thought-control. The same technique used in cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT):

[Cast] down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Their faith can only be sustained by the techniques of cognitive behaviour therapy. Counter-examples and falsifying evidence simply does not exist, or there would be no faith to begin with. Anything presented as falsifying evidence is conceptualized as a weapon of Satan designed to deceive and in his war against them. The contrary evidence is simply rejected as a tool of Satan to destroy them.

CBT will prompt the believer to reject the contrary evidence immediately. This can be done either by literally dismissing it as false, or more subtly by ingeniously if sometimes fatuously “discovering” reasons to “prove” the invalidity or irrelevance of whatever falsifies their belief. The sham behind these arguments is readily apparent to anyone who notices that only the less informed or fellow-believers buy them. But to those of faith, that simply proves that they alone are right and the whole world lies in darkness.

But they are being logical. Such members can be and often are very smart. They can be studying for higher degrees and doctorates in the most respected institutions. They can even repeat and write all the evidence and argument required to be awarded their letters. But they may not believe much of it. Or they may use some of their “worldly education” in ways it was never intended and would not sustain scrutiny by scholarly peers.

But no matter how logical one may be, that rigid and valid mental process will simply fail to properly inform if faith is lurking to rob them of the ability to even see falsifying evidence right before their eyes for what it really — and so obviously — is.

In other words, faith undermines one’s ability to apply rules of logic — as Bennett, above, observes. Falsifying evidence simply will not exist and must therefore be exposed as falsely presuming to falsify: so goes the (CBT) thought process of faith.

And ironically this is also why it can be the most intelligent, the most mentally agile, who will remain strongest in their faith! One should expect them to have the greater ability to find rationalizations to “falsify” what is otherwise obvious to anyone led by genuine scientific enquiry instead of faith.

2008-04-23

No longer to call myself “an atheist”; with some Grayling snippets

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ethics & Human Nature, Religion and Atheism
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I’ve decided to no longer call myself an atheist, but a naturalist. A. C. Grayling convinced me to do this without much trouble in his little book “Against All Gods”

As it happens, no atheist should call himself or herself one. The term already sells a pass to theists, because it invites debate on their ground. A more appropriate term is ‘naturalist’, denoting one who takes it that the universe is a natural realm, governed by nature’s laws. This properly implies that there is nothing supernatural in the universe – no fairies or goblins, angels, demons, gods or goddesses. Such might as well call themselves ‘a-fairyists’ or ‘a-goblin­ists’ as ‘atheists’; it would be every bit as meaningful or meaningless to do so. (Most people, though, forget that belief in fairies was widespread until the begin­ning of the twentieth century; the Church fought a long hard battle against this competitor superstition, and won, largely because – you guessed it – of the infant and primary church schools founded in the second half of the nineteenth century.)

By the same token, therefore, people with theistic beliefs should be called supernaturalists . . . . (p.28 )

Simple. So I’ve decided not to discriminate against those who believe in garden gnomes or leprechauns and revert to the catch-all “naturalist”. And those who confuse this with naturist might have more to think about than others.

The “Tu-Quoque/You too!” fallacy: Atheism is not a faith

The point of Grayling essay is to rebut the common fallacious claim that “atheism is itself a faith position”.

I’ve responded to this charge numerous times myself on various forums, and I suspect many of those who don’t want to think otherwise will simply ignore the obvious rebuttals to this charge:

People who do not believe in supernatural entities do not have a ‘faith’ in ‘the non-existence of X’ (where X is ‘fairies’ or ‘goblins’ or ‘gods’); what they have is a reliance on reason and observation, and a concomitant preparedness to accept the judgement of both on the principles and theories which premise their actions. The views they take about things are proportional to the evidence supporting them, and are always subject to change in the light of new or better evidence. ‘Faith’ – specifically and precisely: the commitment to a belief in the absence of evidence supporting that belief, or even (to the greater merit of the believer) in the very teeth of evidence contrary to that belief – is a far different thing. (p.34)

Faith, on the other hand, is belief in the absence of, even contrary to, the evidence. Grayling does not say it, but I can see no place for faith to intrude into scholarship that plies itself to understanding the literature and historical origins of any religion.

The sad part is that some fundamentalist Christian “scholars” pretend to agree with this statement, but their escape hatch is to insist that it is “dishonest hyper-scepticism” to go beyond a superficial face-value acceptance of selected (not all) texts. They fail miserably to see that true scholarship means submitting even their favourite texts to verification. They really demand that we have faith in the surface reading of their canonical texts and only submit noncanonical texts to scholarly scrutiny.

Religious faith is surely something that belongs to the privacy of one’s home or circle of fellow-believers. There is nothing publicly noble about anyone believing in a proposition contrary to the evidence. Even many Christians accept this when they twinge with some embarrassment over their fellow-travellers who allow their loved ones to die “in faith” in preference to seeking medical care; and most Moslems feel ashamed at their fellow-faithful who blow themselves up with innocents “in faith”.

I’d rather they felt no embarrassment or shame, but only constructive anger. Embarrassment and shame are emotions that admit that they belong to the same general mind-set, the same broad club, to begin with.

Forget asking who should win: cancel the game instead

But the argument is not about “which faith is true” and “which faith is false”. It is about the irrationality of faith to begin with:

Even some on my own side of the argument here make the mistake of thinking that the dispute about supernaturalistic beliefs is whether they are true or false. Epistemology teaches us that the key point is about rationality. If a person gets wet every time he is in the rain without an umbrella, yet persists in hoping that the next time he is umbrella-less in the rain he will stay dry, then he is seriously irrational. To believe in the existence of (say) a benevolent and omnipotent deity in the face of childhood cancers and mass deaths in tsunamis and earthquakes, is exactly the same kind of serious irrationality. The best one could think is that if there is a deity (itself an overwhelmingly irra­tional proposition for a million other reasons), it is not benevolent. That’s a chilling thought; and as it happens, a quick look around the world and history would encourage the reply ‘the latter’ if someone asked, ‘if there is a deity, does the evidence suggest that it is benevolent or malevolent. (p.37)

2008-04-19

Why did no-one edit gospel gaffes about the Second Coming?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament, Religion and Atheism
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When prophecies of the end fail those who placed their hopes in them commonly attempt to explain and understand differently what they once expected to happen. When Christ failed to return to earth between March 1843 and March 1844, the schedule was re-written as April 1844. When that passed, it was revised again to October that year. After Christ failed to show up the third time, other groups insisted the date was right but they had misunderstood the event it marked: Seventh Day Adventists reinterpreted the event to a heavenly venue, unseen here below; Bahais claimed the advent happened in the form of Bab beginning his public teaching in Iran at that time. But many disappointed Millerites, not least Miller himself, turned their backs on specific event-based steps in a timetable and opted for the more general “Be ready; we don’t know when; he could come any time; we believe it will be in our life-time, but if not . . . .”

The question

Our earliest gospels are clear that Jesus promised an event of cosmic import in which he would “be seen” on earth again within the lifetime of his own generation. Thus in Matthew 24 we read:

Now as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately . . . And Jesus answered and said to them . . .

Therefore when you see the Abomination of Desolation, spoken by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place . . . then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been seen since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be . . . Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his elect . . .

Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled. . . . Therefore you . . . be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour when you do not expect him.

Today popular understandings and many fundamentalist teachings find various ways to “see” subtle nuances in the text to enable them to apply Jesus’ promise to today’s generation. They cannot change the text, so they must find ways to read the text to remove its meaning from its original context and make it relevant to subsequent generations. The problem they face when they do this is that they can only hope to find tentative re-readings and subtleties in the hope of convincing themselves.

But the earliest transmitters of our gospels faced no such quandary. Even if the original authors did write within the life-times of Jesus’ generation, and had fully expected Jesus to swoop down visibly from heaven and bring fiery judgment to the entire world in their own time, those custodians of their narratives who soon followed them and succeeded that generation were living with the proof that such a prophecy had failed. Why is there no evidence that they attempted to re-write or re-interpret the literal import of the prophecy?

It took a long time after the gospels were first written before they achieved a sacred enough status to forbid copyists from re-writing or revising any awkward bits in them. When “Matthew” re-wrote “Mark”, for example, the opening account of John the Baptist was ruffled with a few extra lines to find a way for both John and Jesus to apologize to readers for letting the superior be baptized by the inferior:

Compare Mark 1:9

It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

with Matthew 3:12-15

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John . . . to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent him, saying, ‘I have need to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me?’ But Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he allowed him.

But even within the one gospel we find evidence in the different manuscripts of attempts by various editors to re-write passages that were not congenial to someone’s theology, doctrinal tastes or were thought to be simply inaccurate:

  • Thus in Mark 10:19 some copyists simply dropped the “Do not defraud” command from Jesus’ citation from the Ten Commandments, presumably because it is not one of the Ten. The authors of Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels likewise changed Mark’s original.
  • Not all scribes liked the text of Mark that claimed Jesus was a carpenter (Mark 6:3) so some changed it to read that he was thought to be the son of a carpenter. The church father Origen indicates that he did not know the passage familiar to most of us declaring that Jesus was a carpenter.
  • Similar variation in the texts surrounds the problematic circuitous itinerary of Jesus in Mark 7:31.

Most famously, we have among the manuscripts 4 different endings of the Gospel of Mark:

  1. And they went out quickly and fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus)
  2. And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. (Bobiensis . . . )
  3. Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping. And when they heard that He was alive, and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. And after that, He appeared in a different form to two of them, while they were walking along on their way to the country. And they went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either. And afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table; and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. “And these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it shall not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed. (Many manuscripts underpinning the Textus Receptus)
  4. And they excused themselves, saying, “This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits [or: does not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God]. Therefore reveal thy righteousness now” — thus they spoke to Christ. And Christ replied to them, “The term of years of Satan’s power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was delivered over to death, that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness which is in heaven. (Washingtonianus)

So there is little doubt that the early texts of the gospels were not, well, engraved in stone by the finger of God. Early generations found it permissible to re-touch them here and there for perceived inaccuracies, embarrassments, theological disagreements.

There was a time when there was time to likewise edit the prophecy of Jesus to make it less necessary to tax the interpretive ingenuities of subsequent generations.

Yet throughout the synoptic gospels and their textual variants the prophecy that Jesus is to be seen coming in judgment within the life-time of his original disciples does appear to be engraved in stone. There is no evidence of embarrassment attached to it during its transmission even after the first generation had passed away. (The Gospel of John’s complete omission of it is not evidence of embarrassment over its failure, as discussed below.)

The answer

They answer is, I believe, not novel, but not popular either. Yet the question raised above adds weight to its certainty.

The authors of the synoptics understood that they were adapting metaphors from their Jewish sources to an historical event that did happen within the lifespan of the generation of Jesus. There was no embarrassment over prophetic failure. They were writing in apocalyptic language about an historically apocalyptic event — the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its Temple. That is, the end of the old Jewish kingdom that had once been God’s, leaving the followers of Christ free to feel they had been vindicated as the new kingdom of God.

The apocalyptic signs Jesus’ disciples are told to expect are the same as used by earlier prophets to describe the historical fall of Babylon to invading armies:

The burden against Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw. . . . For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its going forth, and the moon will not cause its light to shine . . . . And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, . . . will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. (Isa. 13:1, 10, 19)

The author was writing from a time when Babylon was lying in ruins and describing in typical Jewish apocalyptic metaphors the fall and end of that great city-state and kingdom.

The same author describes the fall of other nations before imperial invasion in similar apocalyptic metaphors:

And the mountains shall be melted with their blood. All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as a leaf falls from the vine . . . (Isa. 34:3-4)

Another author uses the same metaphors to announce a historical judgment on Egypt:

Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him . . . When I put out your light, I will cover the heavens and make its stars dark: I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. . . . (Ezek. 32:2, 7)

Joel describes an earlier military conquest of Israel in the same language:

The heavens tremble, the sun and moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness. (Joel 2:10).

This is the Day of the Lord, when God is said to stand in Jerusalem itself:

For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness. The Lord will also roar from Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem . . . (Joel 3:14-15).

The image is metaphorical. The author does not visualize God literally standing on earth, or his voice being literally heard.

The author of Isaiah 52 also spoke of a generation, his own, seeing God at the time of the restoration of Israel (God’s “Servant” nation) under the Persians:

The Lord has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations (Isa. 52:10)

The appearance of God is apocalyptic, not literal, imagery.

David likewise wrote that he saw God descend to earth to rescue him out of threatening waters. No-one takes his poetry literally:

Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook . . . He bowed the heavens also and came down with darkness under his feet. He rode upon a cherub, and flew; and he was seen upon the wings of wind. . . . He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. . . . (2 Samuel 22: 8, 10-11, 17).

The prophecy put into the mouth of Jesus by the gospel authors described the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its Temple. This was the end of a world for most Jews at that time. A traumatic life-changing experience can result in an individual feeling as if his entire known world has vanished, as if he no longer has ground to walk on, or the sky above that he had known all his life to cover him. That, at least, is how I know I felt some years ago when passing through such a trauma. Apocalyptic language seemed to be the most apt way to describe the experience. It was real, if not literal, enough, to me. No doubt seeing ones world, one’s nation, proud capital city, the monumental centre and foundation of one’s faith, all crumble and be destroyed in blood by invading armies, brings apocalyptic imagery and interpretations most readily to mind.

Jesus was seen returning in judgment upon the city that had crucified him and persecuted his followers. He was seen coming down to that city in the Roman armies just as surely as God had been seen coming down in historical acts of vengeance by earlier prophets, including David.

The Gospel of John’s omission of the prophecy

It is significant, furthermore, to note that among early Christians, when the canonical gospels were still being written, it is clear that this prophecy of the cosmic second coming of Christ represented an alternative eschatological belief.

If we accept the arguments of those scholars that the author of the Gospel of John knew the Gospel of Mark, then we find that this author chose to deliberately omits the prophecy altogether. If he did not know the synoptics, then he knew many of the “traditions” that found their way into the synoptics, yet not this end-time prophecy of Jesus. Either way, there can be little doubt that he would have found such a prophecy pointless because he disagreed with its fundamental doctrinal assumptions. Rather than judgment coming upon the world and the gathering of the saints all happening in a future cosmic event, these things befell the world from the moment Jesus was crucified:

Now is the judgment of the world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself. (John 12:31-32)

Whether or not this author knew Mark, he holds to a theology that renders Mark’s prophecy of end times redundant. It is not a bed-rock of Christian faith like the crucifixion is, however that be interpreted, but an optional extra. You are free to wear it if it fits. If the authors of the synoptic gospels saw the replacement of the earthly Jerusalem by the spiritual kingdom of God as fulfilled in 70 c.e., John saw its complete fulfilment 40 years earlier.

The irony

It is ironical that many Christians who read Jesus’ prophecy of his “second coming” literally also stress the importance of understanding Jewish as opposed to Greek or gentile thought when interpreting the Bible, yet fail to do so themselves in this instance.

2008-04-18

Charles Darwin’s complete works now online

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Evolution, Science
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The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online

Includes Darwin’s private papers, field notebooks, handwritten manuscripts, complete publications, including first editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of the Species (includes the first draft of his theory from 1842).

Also includes memos of his religious views, cartoons and caricatures, family photographs, reviews of his books, newspaper clippings, handwritten domestic notes, views on experimentation on animals.

In all, about 90,000 images comprising 20,000 items. That is, just about everything available anywhere.

Israel’s God of War — against both Arab and (secular) Jew

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Politics & Society, Religion and Atheism
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The ultra-orthodox religionists (the Haredim/Charedim) of Israel now make up 10% of the population and are a critical support for the Olmert government.

For the Haredim the very existence of Israel cannot be justified without God and the Abrahamic promises in the Bible, which require the expulsion of the Palestinians from all that they believe God has given them. Haredi/Charedi prayers even call for the destruction of the secular state of Israel. Today these Haredim are a minority, “only” 10% of the population. But they make no secret of how they would enforce changes on Israel if ever they feel the muscle to do so.

They are the direct counterpart of Moslem extremists. Haredim claim to follow the Halachi [link downloads a 400 KB PDF file] rules as forever binding. The Halachi gives licence to kill secular Jews, to show no kindness to them. It also relegates women to being the property of their fathers and husbands, and forbids them to testify in legal proceedings. In another ironic twist in the minds no doubt for some western observers, some Jewish Haredi/Charedi women in Israel today are volunteering to wear the hijab. This is just one of their practices that actually demonstrates their claim to be reliving a past tradition that may never have existed: where there are doubts about interpretation of Halachi directives, they will err on the side of over-doing them.

Harmless nuts? A passing fad?

A Jewish site dedicated to “Enlightenment, education and freedom from religion”, Daat Emet, publishes online the reasons they believe non religious Jews and others should not dismiss the ultra-orthodox as harmless cranks.

There have always been religious extremists among orthodox Jews, and back in the 1960’s we were reading of sects who were apparently plotting the destruction of the Moslem Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of sacrifices. It appears that Jewish extremism is currently finding a growing support base within Israel itself.

Background Briefing (on Australia’s ABC Radio National) put together a well researched (though perhaps hastily edited) program on these ultra-orthodox Jews who are already having a serious impact on Israeli politics, not to mention the lives of other Jews and Arabs who come within their orbit. It is titled Israel: selling out secularism? From their site one can download the podcast of the program, listen to live-streaming, or read the transcript.

Background Briefing lists the following bibliography — of all readily accessible online articles — discussing more academically the background to the growth of the Haredi in Israel. I’ve read most of them, and recommend them to anyone wanting to seriously understand the social and psychological background to the rise of this social and political group today, and to explore some of the details of the fluctuations of their political strength over the past decade.

Iannaccone and Berman’s article (listed first) argues that safety lies in religious pluralism. Danger follows where States attempt to suppress certain militant religious movements. The United States is, perhaps paradoxically, held up as a model. Maybe so. The future is impossible to know. But thank the Enlightenment for the secularists, the educators, the peace activists in the meantime.

Title: ‘Religious Extremism, the good, the bad and the deadly’ in Public Choice 2006
Author: Laurence R. Iannaccone and Eli Berman
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/rex.pdf

Title: ‘Haredi Violence in Contemporary Israeli Society’ in Jew and Violence, Image, Ideologies, Realities
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredi-Violence.pdf

Title: Sect, subsidy and Sacrifice: An economist’s view of ultra-orthodox Jews
Author: Eli Berman
Publisher: Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000
URL: http://econ.ucsd.edu/~elib/sns.pdf

Title: ‘Rupture and Reconstruction: The transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy’ in Tradition 1994
Author: Haym Soloveitchik
URL: http://www.lookstein.org/links/orthodoxy.htm

Title: ‘The Haredim and Israeli Society’ in Whither Israel – The Domestic Challenges
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1993
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Ultra-Orthodox.pdf

Title: ‘The State of Israel as a theological dilemma’ in The Israeli State and Society, Boundaries and Frontiers
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1989
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Theological-Dilemma.pdf

Title: ‘Haredim confront the modern city’ in Studies in Contemporary Jewry II
Author: Menachem Friedman
Publisher: Indiana University Press 1986
URL: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/so/Haredim-Modern_City.pdf

Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates

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by Neil Godfrey

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Manifest Destiny?

12/04/08
By Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom
Copied with permission from the Israeli peace activist site Gush Shalom (my links no longer default to new windows!)

NEXT MONTH, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some 40 million dollars have been allocated to this aim.

But the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy. Continue reading “Israel’s birthday and God’s gift from the Nile to the Euphrates”

2008-04-14

Information Clearing House

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by Neil Godfrey

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Information Clearing House is about the best collation I know of both major and alternative media articles about topics related to world issues in which Western powers have major impact, and therefore in which general populations within those western powers have some potential to influence policy. If you wonder what the news is behind the general gumpf you see repeated on Fox, CNN, BBC, et al ad nauseum, do click and scroll down the link Information Clearing House to see what I mean.

For more, see What and Who is Information Clearing House.

But the reason for posting about this here on Vridar is because . . . . . Continue reading “Information Clearing House”

2008-04-10

The GOOD legacy of the fundamentalist and cultic life: 12

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by Neil Godfrey

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12: Healthy Skepticism

Concluding my notes from Marlene Winell’s (Leaving the Fold) encouraging list of some of the good one can take away from the fundamentalist or cultic experience, mingled with my own thoughts . . . . earlier posts under the Winell and Fundamentalism tags.

Hoo boy! When I finally broke free of the faith-based thinking of religion I naively expected to enter a world of sensible healthy sceptical citizens. I had, after all, seen myself as apart from “the world” because of my faith, so on leaving my faith as a wiser sceptic and aspiring to be a healthily critical thinker, I assumed to some extent that I was about to become a part of the smart crowd. They had clearly demonstrated their smarts by not being fooled into any of the fairy tale nonsense I had been a part of for so long.

Nope. Fooled again. It had to slowly dawn on me that healthy scepticism was not the default position of most people in relation to most public issues. This was another slow disillusionment. I did not want to be a light in a dark place anymore. I wanted to be normal. But knowledge and experience necessarily bring with them some level of responsibility. I was startled to see that so many of the dark things I had experienced in the cult were taken as the norm, although in less intense degrees or with less damaging immediate impact in most cases, in society at large. Power struggles and willingness to destroy others for the sake of maintaining or enhancing one’s own position or world-view are pretty much regular hammer blows one hears and that batten wayward planks to hold societies together. After some years of tasting the worst of authoritarian ways in a cult one can smell authoritarian and dogmatic systems as easily as a cat smells a rat across a room. No matter if those systems be political, religious, philosophical, social, whatever.

Having been “burned” by your former indoctrination, you are now more likely to be on guard against rigid belief systems generally. You are now more aware of the dangers when you hear some pronouncement of “truth” that implies omniscience, restricts perception, and eliminates alternatives. (p.110)

Beliefs are or can be a form of “selfish gene” — what Richard Dawkins calls “memes”. They can be the tools of shutting down thoughts and imposing power over others. Or they can be simply armour-plated shells one dons out of fear of all that is “out there”. Whatever, they narrow one’s range of permissible questions and licensed answers. Foreign thoughts and and unexplored experiences are their victims.

I personally sometimes like to quip: Answers bind; Questions liberate. Though I do not mean that in a nihilistic sense. Answers are necessary, but equally necessary is an awareness of their inevitable tentativeness.

With healthy skepticism, you can now be more open, flexible, and fair. These qualities are greatly needed in a world full of bigotry and arrogance. (p.110)

I still vividly recall the strange frustration I felt when discussing my questioning processes with others still embedded in some level of faith. They could understand my questioning my church. That was good, they thought. At first I said that though I would question religious doctrines, I would never question the Bible. They seemed to think that was commendable too. But later I asked why not continue to question the so-called foundation of my religion too, and some I spoke to could understand and accept my questioning even the Bible. After that, the next step was to question God, too, of course. Now that’s where almost everyone baulked. Questioning a dubious cult was good, but one must not take questioning itself too far. It must only be applied to demolish “the right targets”.

So it looked to me like the propensity to question was God’s gift if one was questioning a given heresy. But that same propensity was a tool of Satan if it went much farther! Maybe questioning, healthy scepticism, is the only tool that enhances the dignity and true progress of humanity.

The irony is that narrow fundamentalist or cultic belief systems encourage questioning of all general social values and systems. They have to, since these systems are claiming to be the only valid alternatives to the world as it is. All it takes is for enough experiences to finally trigger release valves in one’s head to turn that questioning back on the religious belief system itself. That’s not so easy to initiate, but that’s another story. The important thing here is that for those who do manage it, they are bequeathed a powerful legacy that they can use in many positive ways for their own and others’ benefits.

Marlene concludes, probably looking back on all these good legacies and more:

The strengths that you retain from your experiences with religion are very significant. In spite of the confusion, sadness, and discouragement you may be feeling, you have a breadth and depth of being that others do not have. You are likely to have important values, positive personality traits, and a spiritual capacity. You can now challenge yourself to use these strengths to help overcome your difficulties. (pp.110-111)

I’d prefer to speak of emotional and mental maturity in place of “spiritual capacity”, but I guess that’s merely a question of semantics.

The GOOD legacy of a fundamentalist and cultic life: 11

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by Neil Godfrey

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Continuing from Leaving the Fold Marlene Winell’s encouraging list of some of the good one can take away from the fundamentalist or cultic experience, mingled with my own thoughts . . . . (See also her newly established Recovery from Religion website.) — earlier posts under the Winell and Fundamentalism categories linked here.

11: Community Experience

To quote this section from Winell (p.110) Continue reading “The GOOD legacy of a fundamentalist and cultic life: 11”

The GOOD legacy of a fundamentalist and cultic life: 10

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by Neil Godfrey

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Continuing from Leaving the Fold Marlene Winell’s encouraging list of some of the good one can take away from the fundamentalist or cultic experience, mingled with my own thoughts . . . . (See also her newly established Recovery from Religion website.) — earlier posts under the Winell and Fundamentalism categories linked here.

10: SKILLS

Religious groups often provide opportunities for both training and experience in: Continue reading “The GOOD legacy of a fundamentalist and cultic life: 10”

Some reasons to question the authorship of Galatians

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by Neil Godfrey

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Herman Detering in The Falsified Paul [link downloads a 2 MB PDF file] lists a series of brief points to alert readers to “some questions and problems which could give a moment’s pause even for those who until now have never doubted the authenticity of all the Pauline writings.” (p.54) I have singled out those that apply (though not exclusively) to the letter to Galatians, generally taken as indisputably by Paul.

Reason 1: The introductory description of the author Continue reading “Some reasons to question the authorship of Galatians”

Human rights in China

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by Neil Godfrey

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The Tibetan separatist movement is a red herring (post 1, post 2). Human rights issues in China deserve a far more comprehensive and incisive response from westerners.

For a more comprehensive picture see the 2007 Amnesty International Report on China for details of abuses:

  • against human rights defenders
  • against journalists and internet users
  • against rural migrants
  • against women
  • against spiritual and religious groups
  • use of death penalty against 68 offences, including non-violent ones
  • use of torture, arbitrary detention and unfair trials

not forgetting specific abuses and applications of the above in relation to:

  • Uighurs
  • Tibetans
  • North Korean refugees
  • refusal to apply the UN Refugee Convention to Hong Kong

Supporting, or failing to distinguish, separatist movements that are contrary to international law is doing a disservice to the thousands whose lives are destroyed and ruined throughout China through human rights abuses.

2008-04-09

What is happening in Tibet (2)

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by Neil Godfrey

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Related post now added at Tibet protests . . . hope for Diego Garcians. . .?

Update from my previous post on this topic. See also Human Rights in China.

Update 1: The ugly reality (Ahmed Quraishi)

Pakistani foreign affairs commentator Ahmed Quraishi has argues that the Tibetan issue has been orchestrated by Washington to isolate China, especially in respect to Iran and oil-rich African nations. An article of his in Global Politician, Pakistan Beware, They Are Cornering China, makes some observations worth further exploration and debate. They partly support my own interpretations of what I have observed in news film footage over the last several weeks, that the evidence points to the real issue being racial conflict and the manipulation of this by external and/or sectional political interests:

. . . the ugly reality of what . . . . separatists have done during the Tibet riots. They burned five young waitresses alive in a restaurant. They snatched a young Chinese boy from his father, put him on the ground and then stomped on his chest and abdomen. An ethnic Tibetan doctor who tried to save the Chinese boy’s life was beaten by Dalai Lama’s insurgents. The Tibetan doctor is hospitalized in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The kid couldn’t make it. How about the infant who was burned alive in her parents’ apartment set on fire by the separatists? . . . .

And please don’t believe the U.S. propaganda depicting the riots as some kind of a Tibetan backlash against Chinese oppression. Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, is far ahead in modernization than India’s biggest northern cities across the border. This is the place where China spent a staggering U.S. $ 4.1 billion just to build the world’s highest rail track, a luxury service stretching 1,142km from Beijing to Lhasa. It’s part of an elaborate Chinese vision to ‘open up’ the country’s sparsely populated western regions and make them key to China’s growth in the 21st century.

The western focus now is to push the Chinese government to make one wrong move so that Washington and other ‘allied’ governments could drag Beijing into a costly confrontation. . . .

Update 2: Mythical images (Michael Parenti)

A lengthy article by Michael Parenti, Friendly Feudalism: — The Tibet Myth, examines the various political strains of Buddhism throughout Asia, pointing out that contrary to popular western images, not all Buddhists currently are or have been peaceful. Robert Pape’s Dying to Win documents Buddhists among other non-Islamic individuals being among the earliest and more numerous incidents of horrific violence among some sections of Buddhists.

Update 3: Democrats or feudal slave-owners? (Gary Wilson)

Gary Wilson looks at the history of the 1959 Tibetan uprising in Tibet and the March 10 commemoration of the CIA’s 1959 ‘uprising’. He argues that far from being a popular uprising it was more comparable to the Bay of Pigs fiasco where outside powers attempted to restore feudal rulers and slave owners who would back the right side in the Cold War.

Update 4: The financial and political backers of The International Campaign for Tibet (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich)

Iranian-American Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich in The Tibet Card writes that the International Campaign for Tibet

receives grants from the National Endowment for Democracy – a State Department operation which engages non-suspecting NGOs to openly do what the CIA did/does.

Soraya adds

Neoconservative queen, Jean Kilpatrick was pushing The Committee of 100 for Tibet with artists such as Richard Gere as unsuspecting fronts.

and not to completely overlook a few other little goodies on the side . . .

Tibet has the world’s largest reserve of uranium, and in addition to gold and copper, large quantities of oil and gas were discovered in Qiangtang Basin in western China’s remote Tibet area. A friendly Dalai Lama would help reimburse the CIA subsidies, and much more.

Soraya’s main argument, however, is that the funding and political support for these protests are aimed at isolating China in particular from Iran.

With names like the National Endowment for Democracy and Jean Kilpatrick associated with the current protests over Tibet, anyone with any nous should surely think twice and ask for hard evidence of any claims and assertions being made by all sides before leaping in to the fray.

Yes the Chinese government is responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses that ought to be challenged. But we are not helping that cause by siding with the programs backed by the National Endowment for Democracy.

More on National Endowment for Democracy:

Trojan Horse (Blum)

Loose cannon (Conry/Cato)

Paying to make enemies (Paul)

Wikipedia

2008-04-05

The post 70 construction of Jesus’ tomb

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by Neil Godfrey

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The earliest narrative involving the tomb of Jesus constructs that tomb from images and scenarios that suggest the author was looking back on the 70 c.e. destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Firstly, in none of the writings of Paul, generally dated well before 70 c.e., is there any mention of a tomb of Jesus. Even when Paul is attempting to advance his most persuasive arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, he does not even hint at any knowledge of a tomb, empty or otherwise.

Secondly, Crossan et al have pointed out that the hard realities of ancient crucifixions make the most likely historical scenario one where Jesus’ body was left to scavenging animals once (if) removed from the cross. (The character Joseph of Arimathea is a literary invention to ease the pain of this reality and/or develop another prophetic fulfilment scene.) This historical fact about crucifixions and the crude methods of Roman “justice” in relation to perceived troublemakers in Palestine make sense of Paul’s silence over a tomb.

The image of the destroyed Temple

The first narrative of the tomb burial of Jesus is in Mark’s gospel. The metaphor that comes to the author’s mind as he writes is one that reminds him of the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. Isaiah, when speaking of an earlier destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, compared the Temple to a tomb hewn out of a rock:

Go . . . to Shebna who is over the house and say, . . . You have hewn a sepulchre here, as he who hews a sepulchre on high, who carves a tomb for himself in a rock . . . (Isaiah 22:15-16)

So Mark wrote:

And he [Joseph of Arimathea] laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock . . . (Mark 15:46)

The words for “hewn” in both the Greek Old Testament passage of Isaiah and Mark’s Gospel are variants of “latomenw”, and the same words for rock and tomb are also used. Given that the author of Mark’s gospel liberally constructs his entire Passion Narrative from allusions to OT passages, so the correspondence between Isaiah and Mark here is not likely to be coincidence.

The gospel author, it should further be noted, had this tomb scene in mind when he wrote his earlier narrative of the paralytic being lowered by 4 friends through the roof of the house to be healed by Jesus (Mark 2:1-12). There the place where Jesus was staying could not be accessed through the normal entrance because of the enormous crowd, and entry had to be gained by digging out the roof. Similarly with Jesus’ burial, the normal entrance to this place that had been dug out of the rock was blocked by a massive bolder. In both cases the one placed in this place rose up and miraculously walked through the main doorway.

So the gospel’s reference to the tomb being “hewn out of rock” is not an incidental aside, but an integral part of the image in the author’s mind.

And the origin of this image is its metaphorical use to describe the destroyed Temple of Jerusalem.

This was the origin of the earliest narrative image of the tomb of Jesus.

The image of Joshua’s captives in the cave

A few commentators have also suspected that the idea of the rock tomb for Jesus derived from the account in Joshua of the king of Jerusalem (with others) being “buried” in a cave, or at least sealed in the cave by rocks at its mouth, and then subsequently emerging alive from that cave, and being hung to die on a tree until sunset (Joshua 10:16-27).

Farrer raised the possibility that the author of Mark may have been drawing on the theology of Paul in order to make the link between these scenes in the Book of Joshua and the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Before explaining that possible connection, it is worth recalling the tropes of dramatic reversals found throughout Mark’s gospel. One of these is the way the author portrays the crucifixion of Jesus in terms of a reverse Roman Triumphal march. Schmidt’s detailed argument for this can be read here. (One little detail not included by Schmidt is the description of Simon of Cyrene coming in out of the country. A third century c.e. Roman novel by Heliodorus speaks of those carrying the weapons used to make the sacrifice typically being brought in from and wearing the dress typical of the countryside.)

With the author’s penchant for ironic reversal with the way he plays on the Roman triumph to depict Jesus’ ironic victory on the cross, the possibility of a Pauline theological interpretation of the Joshua narrative comes more sharply into focus.

Colossians 2:14-15 (Colossians being one of the debated letters as to Pauline provenance) proclaims Jesus as making a public humiliating spectacle of spiritual enemies, of himself nailing them to the cross. Jesus’ crucifixion is seen as not a passive event but as an ironic action by Jesus crucifying all that stands against the people of God.

Given this theological understanding of the death of Jesus, it is less difficult to imagine an author reading a book of the namesake of Jesus (Joshua being the Hebrew, Jesus the Greek) conquering resoundingly the land of Canaan, tearing down city walls, enslaving or slaughtering the native population.

In Joshua 10 when Joshua/Jesus takes on the King of Jerusalem and his allies, there is a great sign in heaven (the sun stands still for a whole day). Similarly when Jesus is on the cross, there is a great sign in the heavens when darkness descends over the land for 3 hours at midday. (It is a miracle, not an eclipse, because it happens at the time of the full moon — the Passover.) Joshua/Jesus then orders the “burial” of his enemy king in the cave which is sealed with boulders, and then releases him, but only to hang him till sunset on a tree. Paul wrote in Galatians 3:13 that Jesus was hanged on the tree. And in Colossians we read that in doing so Jesus was hanging the things that were against the godly on that tree.

But why would an author even think of a book about a military conqueror of Canaan in the first place, if that is indeed what he did, when constructing his story of the death and resurrection of Jesus?

The Book of Joshua follows the death of Moses. The Moses cult had suddenly ended with the invasion of Palestine by the Romans and their destruction of the Temple in 70 c.e. Mark 13 looks towards Jesus (Joshua) coming in clouds to usher in a new Kingdom in place of the old. The apocalyptic imagery used there is the same as we read in the Old Testament when it speaks of God descending and destroying cities and armies. Was the Roman invasion seen by some as an act of God or Jesus, coming on clouds with thunder etc, to destroy his old kingdom and declare its replacement with a new spiritual kingdom?

Destroy this temple . . .

Mark declares that those who accused Jesus were false witnesses when they charged Jesus with challenging others to destroy the temple to see if he would rebuild it in 3 days. But the gospel of John holds that Jesus said just that. The reason Mark claimed that this charge was false needs to be seen in the context of the other sayings of Jesus in his gospel and in the way they were falsely interpreted by the disciples. Mark’s gospel mocks the understanding of those hearers of Jesus who could not distinguish the spiritual meaning from the physical images. The disciples are criticized for not understanding the miracle of the loaves was not about bread supplies. Similarly, the reason that the witnesses were making false testimony in regards to Jesus’ saying about the temple, was that they wrongly took his image literally, and not figuratively about his body.

But what is significant about this “false testimony” is that it appears to be yet one more image that can be added to the constellation of images used by the author to relate Jesus’ death and burial to war, conquest, Roman Triumphal marches and the destruction of the Temple.

Finally, it should be further noted that Mark’s gospel is clear that Jesus will be seen again by those in his generation when he comes in his power to judge Jerusalem (Mark 13:26; 14:62). The imagery, as commented above, is the same as that found in the Prophets and Psalms for God’s coming down to destroy kingdoms and cities and peoples. He is seen in the bloody judgment of his rod, his axe, his spear, . . . . that is, the armies he uses to do his work (c.f. Isaiah 10:15).

Post 70 c.e. construction of the tomb narrative

None of the above of course “proves” that the tomb story originated after the fall of Jerusalem. But the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple does undeniably provide a most plausible backdrop for the development of the story. Indeed, the whole gospel story itself fits such a time. The era of Moses as traditionally known was ended, or at least under severe challenge and questioning in the wake of the 70 c.e. destruction. How natural to turn to images that spoke of a resurrection, a transformation, a new start with a new Israel, from the ruins of the old! Out of the invasions of Rome could be fantasized transforming and hopeful images of another invasion by Joshua; after the end of Moses hope could be found in Joshua; and out of the ruins of the old Temple could rise a new Israel, a new people of God, led by Joshua/Jesus rising out of that metaphoric tomb.