Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: doing good

BoM Lesson 16 (King Benjamin 2)

24 April 2016 / / Comments Off on BoM Lesson 16 (King Benjamin 2)

“Ye Shall Be Called the Children of Christ”

Mosiah 4 – 6

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show how the vagueness of commandments sets us up to fail, and to become neurotic.

Reading

King Benjamin’s speech (from our last lesson) has had its intended effect. People feel horrible, like they’re less than the dust of the earth. To compensate, God blesses them with skill at shouting in unison.

Mosiah 4:1 And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them.
4:2 And they had viewed themselves in their own carnal state, even less than the dust of the earth. And they all cried aloud with one voice, saying: O have mercy, and apply the atoning blood of Christ that we may receive forgiveness of our sins, and our hearts may be purified; for we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who created heaven and earth, and all things; who shall come down among the children of men
4:3 And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words the Spirit of the Lord came upon them, and they were filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come, according to the words which king Benjamin had spoken unto them.

Shout stuff, get forgiven for sins. What a great meeting.

They shout stuff in unison again, a bit later.

Mosiah 5:1 And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had thus spoken to his people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them.
5:2 And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.

That’s amazing! They all shouted the same thing, thought about it a bit, realised they all hadn’t shouted it quite right, and then all shouted a slightly differently-worded version of the same idea. If Synchronised Shouting were an Olympic sport, I’d give them a perfect 10.

You have to wonder if there was like one guy who wasn’t really feeling it, but shouted the same thing as everybody else, just because he didn’t want to rock the boat.

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Main ideas for this lesson

Should we believe in a god?

Benjamin gives some strange advice.

Mosiah 4:9 Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

Why should we believe this? Like a lot of things in the Book of Mormon, it sounded like a good idea before we had any better ideas.

Let’s take this one by one:

  • Believe in God; believe that he is,

That’s not something I’m prepared to believe until I get adequate evidence. I don’t exactly know what that would be, but God does, and he’s not showing it to me. I must therefore conclude that God doesn’t really care if I believe in him or not.

  • and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth;

As far as we know, everything in our universe has come about by natural means. There’s no need to postulate a magical being.

I still love this apocryphal story about Laplace:

“While speaking with L…… I congratulated him on a work which he had just published and asked him how the name of God, which appeared endlessly in the works of Lagrange, didn’t occur even once in his. He replied that he had no need of that hypothesis.”

  • believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth;

All wisdom and all power? He can’t even help to solve his church’s own problems. It seems to keep stepping in its own ordure on a weekly basis.

  • believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.

God doesn’t seem to comprehend things that people do. In recent years, people using science have performed amazing feats that go far beyond anything the biblical god is rumoured to have done, including healing diseases, eradicating parasites, growing food to feed millions, causing the blind to see, and maybe someday restoring limbs — an area God steadfastly refuses to touch.

Benjamin is wrong on every count. There’s no need to believe in any gods — either that they exist or that they’re worth worshipping. I would never worship such an incompetent nuisance as the biblical god.

Helping the poor

Now here’s something good in the Book of Mormon.

Mosiah 4:16 And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.
4:17 Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just —
4:18 But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

From experience, I’ve found that this part of the class is always a challenge in conservative areas!

Ask: If you’re in a real Gospel Doctrine class, does anyone start back-tracking on this by focusing on the conditions under which you should give, or tying one’s giving to the “deservingness” of the poor person? Do they start talking about how it might be “harmful” to give a homeless person money?
How do they take it when you point out that King Benjamin offered no such conditions?

Your answers in comments?

The Unwritten Order

Benjamin says that there are so many sins, that it’s not possible to number them.

Mosiah 4:29 And finally, I cannot tell you all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them.
4:30 But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.

If God has that many ways that we can offend him, then maybe he should chill out! That would be better than turning us all into stressballs, relentlessly monitoring ourselves.

Without being told what the list of sins is, knowledge will be incomplete, and implantation will be uneven. Which brings me to a story about leadership roulette.

I was lucky to have some fairly liberal bishops in my small college town. But the neighbouring ward that shared our building had a bishop who (I was told) was very much against birth control, and counselled ward members thusly. And why wouldn’t he? It was church doctrine for years.

Until the late twentieth century, Mormon apostles and presidents consistently taught that birth control was wicked and sinful.

Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, writing in Mormon Doctrine: “Those who practice birth control are running counter to the foreordained plan of the almighty. They are in rebellion against God and are guilty of gross wickedness.”

Apostle and future President Joseph Fielding Smith, writing in Doctrines of Salvation: “Birth control is wickedness. The abuse of this holy covenant has been the primary cause for the downfall of nations. When the sacred vows of marriage are broken and the real purpose of marriage abused, as we find it so prevalent in the world today, then destruction is inevitable.” (Emphasis in original.)

The LDS Church could resolve all this trouble by releasing a list of sins. “Here are all the things you’re not supposed to do.” It would certainly make for interesting reading! It’s the kind of thing that a prophet could do, if they had one. And you have to admit it’s kind of important to know what not to do, with our salvation depending on it and all. But instead the list is kept vague.

This is wrong. As a parent and as a teacher, one thing I’ve learned is the importance of conveying expectations clearly. Otherwise, how are people going to do what you want? If there are rules that God expects us to follow, they need to be written down.

Interestingly, this pattern of not conveying expectations clearly has continued into our day. Consider this talk by Boyd Packer in 1996: The Unwritten Order of Things

The things I am going to tell you are not explained in our handbooks or manuals either. Even if they were, most of you don’t have handbooks—not the Melchizedek Priesthood or Relief Society handbooks and the others—because they are given only to the leaders. I will be speaking about what I call the “unwritten order of things.” My lesson might be entitled “The Ordinary Things about the Church Which Every Member Should Know.” Although they are very ordinary things, they are, nevertheless, very important!

(And then he lists a lot of bullshit things that are stupid.)

Ask: How is one supposed to become aware of “unwritten rules”?
Answer: The process of learning seems to rely less on understanding a known body of regulations and more on noticing the behaviour of the group. In other words, knowing the rules is a less of a spiritual process, and more of a cultural one.

Ask: Who is privileged by an “unwritten order of things”?
Answer: This kind of system privileges

  • those who have been raised in the cultural milieu of Mormonism
  • those who have a lot of experience in the church
  • and importantly, those who are already good at navigating within a culture that Mormonism is closely tied to: the White middle-class culture. Being good at that definitely gives someone a leg up when it comes to Mormon culture. Everyone else has to rely on their ability to assimilate.

Notice also in Packer’s speech a reference to the Church Handbook of Instructions. It contains the rules that affect members, but is explicitly not available to them. It has been leaked, though, and links can be found here.

Watch yourselves

Maybe there’s one insight we can pull from this speech, though:

But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds

Let’s acknowledge the creepy panopticon connotations.

Even so, after you’ve embraced rationality and skepticism, all is not done. You have to keep challenging your own received wisdom, and (when you can) go back through all the stuff you still believe. Some baloney might have snuck in. It can be facts you thought you knew, or it can be attitudes and opinions you hold.

Continuing to play is a real challenge. But it is enlightening. How many times have I slapped myself on the forehead and said, “You mean that wasn’t true either?” And then felt glad that I no longer had to believe that wrong thing. But it takes the ability to stay skeptical. Keep the instinct.

Additional lesson ideas

Taking names

Why does King Benjamin take the names of members?

Mosiah 6:1 And now, king Benjamin thought it was expedient, after having finished speaking to the people, that he should take the names of all those who had entered into a covenant with God to keep his commandments.

From the LDS manual:

• King Benjamin saw that all his people (except those who were too young) had entered into the covenant to obey God’s commandments (Mosiah 6:1–2). Why was it important to record their names?

The church has a creepy focus on tracking people down. This isn’t so much a problem for me, but many people have had the experience of having unwanted people call around.

The church has ways of finding you. Here are some of their techniques, from their own website. (Credit.)

To find members, visit the last known address:

Talk with neighbors, a building supervisor, manager, or owner, if known or available.
Contact other family currently living at the member’s last known address.
Contact the new individual or family living there.
Contact neighbors adjacent to the member’s last known address.

Facebook is the most effective way to find someone. There may be many entries but you can sometimes narrow it down by their friend list i.e. known family members or friends. Be certain to try searching by the member’s email address as well. If you don’t have their email address, try finding it by using their address on Melissadata.com below.

CrimCheck offers over 1,000 state, county, city and federal (court) web sites where you can search free public records. Most search services are free.

In many states you can check voter registration records online. This method tends to be THE BEST way to find members.

A really, really good thing to have is online property tax records. They vary a lot on what you can do with them. Some even let you enter the VIN for a car and it will show you the progression of owners. This can be used to find a relative since cars are often sold to family members.

It goes on and on. Are they looking for the one lost sheep? Or is it the dreaded tentacles of Divine Providence?

FrederickOpper-DestructiveMonster-Puck-1884Feb13-v14n362p377-small-650px

Worse still, it’s not clear whether formally resigning ends the pursuit.

Left-hand prejudice

The Book of Mormon is consistent with the Bible… in that it insults left-handed people.

Mosiah 5:9 And it shall come to pass that whosoever doeth this shall be found at the right hand of God, for he shall know the name by which he is called; for he shall be called by the name of Christ.
5:10 And now it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall not take upon him the name of Christ must be called by some other name; therefore, he findeth himself on the left hand of God.

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BoM Lesson 6 (Free to choose)

7 February 2016 / / Comments Off on BoM Lesson 6 (Free to choose)

“Free to Choose Liberty and Eternal Life”

2 Nephi 1–2

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To encourage readers to use agency

Reading

This reading is an exploration into Lehi’s discourse on agency. Agency — the ability to think and act — is a complex topic… that gets completely subverted by Lehi and the lesson manual. And that makes sense for the LDS Church.

It wants people who will work tirelessly… in ways that benefit the organisation.

It declares obedience “the first law of heaven”, but still wants you to be an agent… as long as you only use your agency to obey.

It wants you to investigate the truthfulness of the Church… as long as you decide that it’s true.

As my uncle Richard used to say in the BYU religion classes he taught, “God gave us agency to see if we’d give it right back.” Which is terribly Mormon, isn’t it?

And that’s why the centrepiece of the lesson — and its title — is a very one-sided view of agency.

2 Nephi 2:27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

Got that? You can choose

  • liberty and eternal life, or
  • captivity and death.

Wow, when you put it that way, that really makes the choice clear! It’s almost like you’re asking me to choose between cake, or death.

Whoops, there’s a flag down on the play.

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Yep, it’s a false dichotomy. The church would love to paint itself as the bringer of life and liberty — so that leaving the church is death — but in reality there are a lot of other choices. Life outside the church can be messy sometimes; choosing your own course can be messy sometimes. But it can also be good, moral, and fulfilling.

This is news to many of us who grew up in the church. We told each other over and over again that we didn’t know what we’d do without the church; we’d probably be in jail or dead. Many of us weren’t free. We were indoctrinated as children.

We were carefully led from program to program, from age bracket to age bracket, from Primary to Young Men/Women’s. Then to a mission — too many of us were getting away, so they lowered the age limit to prevent that first year of uni. Then we were encouraged to get married young, to someone we scarcely knew.

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That’s because married people with kids are easy to control.

There we went, from bubble to bubble, from investment to investment, until the years of indoctrination had taken effect.

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I want to say: They wanted to make us miserable like they were. But maybe that’s unfair. Were they unhappy? Some were. Some thought the church was just great. That was the thing: the church didn’t care if we were miserable or not, as long as we stayed in.

So are you free in the church? Yes, you’re free, but it’s the kind of free where you’re in the temple for the first time. There’s a bit where they tell you that if you want to go, you’re free to go without taking on all the promises and covenants. But they don’t tell you what the they are. There you are, ready to make an eternal commitment, but you don’t know what it is yet. The transparency and informed consent are severely lacking.

Thankfully, more and more of us are breaking free and learning to use our own agency for real.

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There’s another idea introduced in this reading.

2 Nephi 1:20 And he hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; but inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.

Ask: What kind of parent abandons their children if they are disobedient?
Answer: A parent with conditional love.

Main ideas for this lesson

Empty continent

The Book of Mormon has a major problem, which I call “The Incredible Vanishing Lehites”. Lehi and his family are supposed to have come to the New World, proliferated to truly exponential levels, and built a huge civilisaton. Surely a group of this size would have left some evidence of their existence, either from archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, genetics, or any other way. Yet we never find anything.

The apologists’ answer is that the Lehite group was quickly subsumed into a large local population… that Nephi never mentions.

The reason Nephi never mentions running into anyone else is that the Book of Mormon holds that no one else was there on the continent. We’ll be coming back to this idea a few times during our study, but here’s the first indication.

2 Nephi 1:6 Wherefore, I, Lehi, prophesy according to the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord.
1:7 Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever.
1:8 And behold, it is wisdom that this land should be kept as yet from the knowledge of other nations; for behold, many nations would overrun the land, that there would be no place for an inheritance.
1:9 Wherefore, I, Lehi, have obtained a promise, that inasmuch as those whom the Lord God shall bring out of the land of Jerusalem shall keep his commandments, they shall prosper upon the face of this land; and they shall be kept from all other nations, that they may possess this land unto themselves. And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land, and there shall be none to molest them, nor to take away the land of their inheritance; and they shall dwell safely forever.

This passage says:

  • No one would come into the land unless God brought them
  • Knowledge of the land was being withheld from others
  • If people from Jerusalem who moved there were good, they’d prosper
  • These people (from Jerusalem) would have the land all to themselves.

That’s really kind of it, isn’t it? No one else was there.

There may be some wiggle-room in the wording, language being what it is. I don’t think any passage in the Book of Mormon (or anywhere else) is so airtight that someone couldn’t wedge in a semantic crowbar and open a crack of ambiguity. But I think this passage makes it clear that whoever wrote the Book of Mormon wrote the American continent as a wilderness. I don’t think anyone could make the opposite case — that the place had a pre-existing population — because the Book of Mormon just never says anything to that effect.

Again, this is a huge problem for the Book of Mormon because there’s just no trace of these people.

Opposition in all things

Lehi offers this tidbit of wisdom:

2 Nephi 2:11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Well, I guess that makes sense, kind of. Salty and sweet and all that.

But that’s not the intersting bit. What’s interesting is how the author ties it into a discussion about the existence of God.

2 Nephi 2:10 And because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God; wherefore, they stand in the presence of him to be judged of him according to the truth and holiness which is in him. Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement —
2:11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
2:12 Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.
2:13 And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

I just want to focus on this last verse, because it’s a really terrible justification for theism.

Wherefore, the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement —

God has to punish people in order for justice to happen? Why did God have to create people if he knew in advance that he was going to punish them for eternity? That’s not just.

And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin.

I do say there’s no sin, if by “sin” you mean “actions that God doesn’t like”. God doesn’t exist, and sin is a made-up concept.

sin-comes-from-the-bible

If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness.

Wrong again! Many people do good actions, without believing in sin.

And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.

Lehi’s really getting into ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’. Arrr.

And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God.

God can’t exist without misery or punishment. Got it.

And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

Whoops! That might have been valid in the 1830s, but now we have a much better idea of how our universe was formed. No god was involved in the making of this video.

People tell me science and religion are compatible, but this scripture tells me the opposite. As Jerry Coyne points out in his book Faith Versus Fact,

Science and religion… are competitors in the business of finding out what is true about our universe. In this goal, religion has failed miserably, for its tools for discerning “truth” are useless. These ideas are incompatible in the same way, and in the same sense, that rationality is incompatible with irrationality. (p. xvi)

Adam

Lehi continues:

2 Nephi 2:22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
2:23 And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
2:24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.
2:25 Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.
2:26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.

I’ve mentioned before that I like to debate evangelists. When I ask them why God had to get his son killed to forgive us, you know what thy do? They invariably take it back to Adam and Eve. And there’s a reason why they do this. Without a literal Adam and Eve, the gospel story falls apart.

So I tell them: There was never an Adam or Eve. They are fictional characters.

  • And if there was no Adam or Eve, there was no Fall.
  • And if there was no Fall, there is no sin.
  • And if there is no sin, then there is no redemption necessary.
  • And if there is no redemption necessary, there is no need for a saviour.

Sorry, Jesus.

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Additional lesson ideas

Hamlet plagiarism?

People sometimes say that this verse…

2 Nephi 1:14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth.

…looks a lot like Hamlet.

“That undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1)

It’s a well-known quote, which I suppose the author of the Book of Mormon would have been familiar with. But it’s also the kind of turn of phrase that a writer might indulge in.

Do I think this rises to the level of plagiarism? Nnnah. But it does tell me that the Book of Mormon is a remix, and whoever wrote it had a lot of modern influences going on undr the hood.

I’m rating this one as “not a very serious criticism”. Change my view in comments!

NT Lesson 36 (Romans)

11 October 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 36 (Romans)

“Beloved of God, Called to Be Saints”

Romans

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain why Christianity is incoherent and damaging to one’s ability to act.
To encourage readers to concerns themselves with what is real, rather than appearances.

Reading

I’ve acquired a new hobby: debating street evangelists!

And no, not like this:

I’ve decided that every time I see one, I’m going to engage (if I have the time, of course). I’ve talked to all sorts of Christians, but mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses — they’ve set up a display in the city district. The exact denomination doesn’t matter; I haven’t found that much difference between them.

The discussions tend to take a predictable rhythm:

  • I ask why Jesus was necessary, and why God couldn’t just forgive everybody
  • They explain that Adam didn’t obey God, so God decided to kill him and everybody
  • You can’t do anything to remedy this situation yourself
  • Killing Jesus was the solution that God decided to use to fix the situation
  • We need to obey God so he doesn’t kill us in the run-up to his son’s return

It should be easy at this point to conclude that God is a raging psychopath who should be locked up, but for some reason they’re just not capable of making that jump. Maybe I’m just not explaining it well enough. I don’t know.

So when I saw this lesson, I got kind of excited because it contains some of these elements that religious folks are trying to explain to me. Here it is — Paul lays the groundwork for this emerging religion.

Main ideas for this lesson

Unbelievers are evil

Like all conspiracy theorists, Paul really hates people who don’t believe his way. And so does God — he’s going to unleash the wrath annnnnnytime soon.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
1:19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; that they are without excuse:
1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
1:23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

I don’t know what Paul’s talking about. I do think I’m pretty smart, but I’ve never changed the glory of God into a bird. Maybe Paul thought that was becoming a problem at some point.

Romans 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

He’s going off on lesbians? That’s a first. Even in the Old Testament, they killed gay guys, but they never said a word about lesbians. It’s like there’s been some tacit agreement throughout the ages — dudes with dudes: ick; but girls on girls: kinda hot. There’s never been anyone in the Bible homophobic enough to have a go at lesbians, but now there is, and it’s Paul.

Behold the face of evil.

Romans 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

What the fuck is “the natural use of the woman”?

Romans 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
1:29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
1:30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
1:31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:

Oh, Paul. It’s just impossible for him to stop slandering unbelievers.

Ask: When you stopped believing, did you become any of the following:

  • filled with all unrighteousness?
  • an inventor of evil things?
  • full of murder?
  • gay?

Or did you stay pretty much as you were, but just believed fewer stupid things and started drinking coffee?

What a slanderous litany to tack onto non-believers. For shame, Paul. If he’d stopped and looked around, he’d find that unbelievers live normal ethical lives. This has been found experimentally.

Religion Doesn’t Make People More Moral, Study Finds

Wisneski and his fellow researchers found that religious and nonreligious people commit similar numbers of moral acts. The same was found to be true for people on both ends of the political spectrum. And regardless of their political or religious leanings, participants were all found to be more likely to report committing, or being the target of, a moral act rather than an immoral act. They were also much more likely to report having heard about immoral acts rather than moral acts.

However, there were some differences in how people in different groups responded emotionally to so-called “moral phenomena,” Wisneski said. For example, religious people reported experiencing more intense self-conscious emotions — such as guilt, embarrassment, and disgust — after committing an immoral act than did nonreligious people. Religious people also reported experiencing a greater sense of pride and gratefulness after committing moral deeds than their nonreligious counterparts.

Everyone is bad.

Having established that non-believers are the worst, Paul now walks it back a bit, and explains how it’s not just the unbelievers. Actually, everyone is evil.

Romans 3:10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
3:11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
3:12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
3:13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
3:14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
3:15 Their feet are swift to shed blood:
3:16 Destruction and misery are in their ways:
3:17 And the way of peace have they not known:
3:18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.
3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
…
3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

Ask: Why does Paul need to teach that nobody is righteous? Why does he have to make unbelief sound so comically terrible?
Answer: In sales, you have to sell the disease before you can sell the cure. Essentially, Paul is selling the disease.

Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.7:20 Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

You know, I actually get this passage. I sometimes feel frustrated with the mismatch between what I want to do and what I do. Shoot, anyone gets this who’s ever had a lot of work to do, and ended up watching YouTube videos instead.

Let’s be honest: we all have imperfections and flaws, things we’d rather have done differently and values we fail to follow through on. That’s part of the human condition. But Paul is playing on this to drum up sales, and even worse than that, offering Jesus as an easy fix. How dishonest. What an evasion of our responsibility for self-improvement. Harping on someone’s brokenness doesn’t help to build a self-reliant person. What’s needed is action, not just belief.

It’s because of Adam

So how did we get to be in this sinful situation?

In a word, Adam.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
5:15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
5:16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
5:17 For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
5:19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

One guy did something, another guy undid something — so what? Where are we in all of this? We’re just pawns in some cosmic game. If you believe in Christianity, you must believe that we have a “sinful” tendency we can’t prevent, caused by a guy whose actions we’re not responsible for, and the remedy is some other guy whose help we didn’t ask for.

And it’s a creepy remedy too.

Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Christianity really is a death cult, isn’t it?

Faith, not works

One of the most confusing and contradictory things about Christianity that I ever tried to get my head around was the role of faith and the role of works. For a long time, I thought I wasn’t smart enough or studying carefully enough. Now I realise that it wasn’t me; it’s Christianity. It’s incoherent. I’ve run across so many people who think it’s crystal-clear (in the direction of their doctrine, of course), but it’s just a mess. Thank goodness I don’t have to think about that stuff anymore.

Here’s a scripture that people used to throw at me as an LDS missionary. It quickly became my least favourite scripture.

Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

And then I would have to construct a complicated Mormon apologetic (big shoutout to the book of James) to explain why we actually need to do all the stupid time-wasting things Mormons do. It’s really hard to criticise a religion from the standpoint of another religion!

Of course, now that I’m coming from the standpoint of no religion, it’s easy. I just say: Paul, what rubbish you talk.

Paul really changed the game, you know. By changing the currency from “what you do” to “what you believe”, he constructed this situation:

  • God punishes even good people for unbelief.
  • No one can be saved by anything they do.
  • We’re all helpless.
  • Only this external being can rescue us.

This is a setup.

Mr Deity, as always, has spotted the problems with punishing people for misbelief.

And not only does Paul make “what you say” a criterion for belief, he also includes “what you say”. Anything but “what you do”.

I saw the effects of this a few times on the misson. One good Born-Again™ Christian man told me that he was forbidden to help (for example) someone move house.

“You don’t mean that you’re not allowed,” I said. “You just mean that it won’t save you.”

“No,” he corrected me. “We’re not supposed to do it. Unless the pastor gives the okay. Because that would be works.”

I was incredulous, but looking back I have to admit that he was taking Paul’s ideology to its natural conclusion.

And when what you think and say trumps what you do, you have the beginnings of a religion that’s very concerned with appearances — especially when it’s a small conversion-focused religion concerned about its image.

These verses hint at Paul’s concern with the semblances of things.

Romans 14:14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
14:15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
…
14:20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
14:21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

In other words, if there’s some food that’s considered to be unclean, Paul says it’s no big deal, go ahead and eat it — UNLESS someone else sees you eating it, gets the wrong idea, and refuses to join the church or something.

The phrase my father (and, I gather, everyone else’s father) used to say was: Avoid even the appearance of evil. You should have heard the ear-bashing I got when I brought home some candy cigarettes. (And he was right; those things are evil.) But my LDS friend’s dad — a bishop — was even more concerned about appearances. He’d chastise my friend if he had the end of a white pen near his mouth while he was writing!

And it’s this concern with appearances that lends Mormonism its puritanical flair. How much better it would be if they could see things as they are, and not be so concerned with appearances.

I think this may tie into Christians’ ability to deny science and reason, as well. If how things seem is important — well, you can control how things seem to you. Things can seem any which way with faith. That’s easy. It’s not as easy to control facts.

Not ashamed

I hope I’ve made the case that Christianity is nonsensical and wrong — even if I’m not able to make that case to the street evangelists I talk to. It’s a form of belief that is silly and damaging. It is so foolish that people ought to feel foolish for believing it. And yet there they stand, day after day, in the pedestrian malls of my city and many others, trying to promote what every normal person knows is a fairy story. What an embarrassing thing to do! How do they not feel completely stupid?

Paul has the answer in Romans.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

He’s teaching people to say “I am not ashamed”, as a way of countering the embarrassment they doubtless feel. It is nice to know that this was an issue even in the primitive church, and it gives us some idea about how the early Christians were regarded among their more sophisticated peers.

But here’s the rub: If you teach that we are helpless before a god who created us, and you want to worship this monster, and you want to do it by believing things that are manifestly untrue, then you should be ashamed. End of story. You need to do better.

Additional lesson ideas

Christianity’s weird relationship with Jews

Paul dropped a few other things into Romans. Looking back on our lessons, we can see a real tension between John — who’s always bashing on about the “fear of the Jews” — and Paul, who talks smack about their unbelief, but also talks about how they’ll absorb Christianity one day.

Romans 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
11:27 For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
11:28 As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father’s sakes.

Maybe Paul’s view was influenced by his double nature as a Christian Jew. But verses like this have laid the groundwork for a very strange alliance between Christian evangelicals (who are longing for Jews to return to Israel so the end can come) and conservative Jews (who are willing to look past the Christians’ conversion efforts if it means they have hawkish allies on Israel).

Check out this edition of “All In” with Chris Hayes to get a view of how this relationship is working out.

Or for a long read, try “On the Road to Armageddon“.

Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible’s prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America’s 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel’s best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.

Christianity’s weird relationship with secular government

Should Christians obey the law, or not? We’ve seen some high-profile cases lately where Christians have claimed that their belief trumps the law — and they can cite Peter in their defence.

Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

But now here’s Paul, claiming that secular authority should always be obeyed.

Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
13:2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
13:3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

So what is it? Is Peter wrong, or Paul?

I think this is another case where the Bible is doctrinally incoherent. This allows Christians to play both sides of the fence, and pick and choose the rules they want to obey.

Overcome evil with good

Let’s finish with some good advice.

Romans 12:20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
12:21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

A bit passive-aggressive there, Paul. “Let’s be nice to them; that’ll really piss ’em off!” But I’m not going to tell Paul off for it. Around here, we care about what you do.

NT Lesson 30 (Respecter of Persons)

16 August 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 30 (Respecter of Persons)

“God Is No Respecter of Persons”

Acts 10–14; 15:1–35

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that the god of the Bible is unjust, and encourage readers to do better than God does.

Reading

Even as a believer, I was noticing doctrinal shifts in the Mormon Church. The 1978 change on race and the priesthood was the biggest example — that was an earthquake — but I’m thinking of the little shifts and tremors.

Like the idea that Blacks were neutral in the War in Heaven. This idea was taught to me in church, and the idea even popped up in LDS fiction of the time. Well, there was no way of proving it wrong, but it was distasteful, and that was reason enough for it to get shifted.

I found the 1990 changes to the Temple Endowment — well, quite welcome, actually! The miming of throat-slitting and disemboweling was really creepy. But why would the ceremony need to change? I could think of nothing but: The penalties were too weird and off-putting. Well, wouldn’t God have known that to start with?

Even as a believer, doctrinal creep bugged me. I made a sour joke once: “What’s the difference between true and false Mormon doctrine? About 40 years!”

Of course, Mormonism is well-equipped to shift its doctrines. The idea of “continuing revelation” means that the president can change what Mormon doctrine is. It doesn’t work that way, though — church leaders generally avoid revealing or clarifying anything. Instead, changes are brought about by an anonymous committee working out of the Newsroom. In the modern church, “continuing revelation” usually means that the church is continually (but gradually) revealing unsavoury details about its past to its members.

And herein lies the problem: if old doctrines were weird, unpalatable, or — in the case of race and the Priesthood, just plain racist and unjust — and they need to be changed, then the church should say that the old ways were wrong, and that they’ll try to do better.

Instead, according to the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual, the issue of race and the Priesthood is taken as evidence of God’s justice. Because he stopped being racist.

If any class members remember the day the revelation was announced, invite them to describe how they felt when they learned of it.
• Who made the priesthood available to all worthy male members of the Church? (The Lord.) How did the Lord make his will known to the Church? (He revealed it to the prophet, who then announced it to the Church members.) How did this revelation affect the Church?
Explain that this revelation is an example of how the Lord continues to direct
his Church through revelation. This lesson discusses a similar revelation that was given to the members of the Church shortly after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Better question: Who was it that prevented the priesthood from being available to all worthy male members of the Church in the first place?

It’s hugely ironic that this example of discrimination is taken by Latter-day Saints as a sign of how great God is.

Brother Jake has explained how this is totally not racist.

Anyhow, the lesson starts with a racist doctrine, as a way of tying it into an even more racist doctrine: only allowing Jews to have the gospel. Which apparently Jehovah was okay with at first. It seems that God has had some consciousness-raising experiences over the years.

I’m noticing some shifting in the pews, which means I’ve been monologuing for too long. Let’s get to the lesson.

Main ideas for this lesson

Background

At this point in our story, many Christians thought that only ex-Jews should be Christians.

Ask: Where would they have gotten that idea?
Answer: From Jesus, who never intended that his message should go to anyone but the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel’.

Restricting your target audience is the worst idea for a business, and it must have been clear to someone (probably Peter) that tribal religions (like Judaism) were going nowhere, and that universalising religions were the way to go. So Peter got a vision.

Acts 10:9 On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:
10:10 And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,
10:11 And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:
10:12 Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.
10:13 And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.
10:14 But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.
10:15 And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

The early church members must have been pleased to find that circumcision was no longer necessary.

Acts 15:5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
15:6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.
15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, …
15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

And that’s how Christianity managed to distinguish itself from other Jewish sects. (But they’re still Jews.)

Ask: What kind of Jew are you?

If you really want to take the broad view, have a look at this Evolutionary Tree of Religion. Can you spot your religion, or former religion?

God is a respecter of persons

Peter, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, says this:

Acts 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

Ask: What does this phrase mean?
Answer: It is usually taken to mean that God treats everyone the same.

I don’t think anything can be clearer than the fact that God does not treat everyone the same. Paul, in his speech to the Athenians, said:

Acts 17:26 And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That means that God has chosen where and when everyone will live, and that means that God has elevated some to lives of prosperity, peace, and plenty, and consigned others to lives of disease, poverty, and misery. How unequal!

From Sam Harris’ debate with William Lane Craig:

“Nine million children die every year before they reach the age of five. Picture an Asian tsunami of the sort we saw in 2004 that killed a quarter of a million people—one of those every 10 days, killing children only under five: that’s twenty-four thousand children a day, a thousand an hour, seventeen or so a minute. That means before I get to the end of this sentence, some few children very likely will have died in terror and agony.
“Think of the parents of these children. Think of the fact that most of these men and women believe in God and are praying at this moment for their children to be spared, and their prayers will not be answered. But according to Dr. Craig, this is all part of god’s plan.
“Any god who would allow children by the millions to suffer and die in this way and their parents to grieve in this way, either can do nothing to help them or doesn’t care to. He is therefore either impotent or evil. And worse than that, on Dr. Craig’s view, most of these people, many of these people certainly, will be going to hell because they’re praying to the wrong god. Just think about that: through no fault of their own, they were born into the wrong culture, where they got the wrong theology, and they missed the revelation. There are 1.2 billion people in India at this moment; most of them are Hindus, most of them therefore polytheists. In Dr. Craig’s universe, no matter how good these people are, they are doomed. If you are praying to the monkey God Hanuman, you are doomed—you’ll be tortured in hell for eternity. Now is there the slightest evidence for this? No. It just says so in Mark 9 and Matthew 13 and Revelation 14.
“So God created the cultural isolation of the Hindus; he engineered the circumstance of their deaths in ignorance of revelation, and then he created the penalty for this ignorance, which is an eternity of conscious torment in fire.
…
“And please notice the double standard that people like Dr. Craig use to exonerate god from all this evil. We’re told that God is loving and kind and just and intrinsically good. But when someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we are told that god is mysterious. Who can understand god’s will? Yet this merely human understanding of God’s will is precisely what believers use to establish his goodness in the first place. If something good happens to a Christian—he feels some bliss while praying, or he sees some positive change his life—we’re told that God is good. But when children by the tens of thousands are torn from their parents’ arms and drowned, we are told god is mysterious.”

Fortunately, the crushing poverty under which many people live getting better. Here’s a chart showing that fewer and fewer of us are living in abject poverty.

Ask: If you’re doing okay financially, are you sharing with others who have much less? There are lots of good secular organisations that are working to eradicate poverty and disease. By donating to them, you can help to do what God has failed to do for millennia of human history.

My favourites are Oxfam, MSF, water.org, and the Smith Family. Put yours in comments.

Additional lesson ideas

How church policy and practices are made

From the Gospel Doctrine manual:

• How do the events described in Acts 15:6–31 demonstrate the pattern by which decisions about Church policy and practices are made?
a. Church leaders meet to consider the matter (verse 6).
b. They discuss the matter thoroughly (verses 7–21).
c. They make a decision in accordance with the Lord’s will (verses 19–21).
d. The Holy Ghost confirms that the decision is correct (verse 28).
e. The decision is announced to the Saints for sustaining (verses 22–31).

I see a different pattern at work.

a. The morality of the world improves, or an unpleasant tidbit from church history emerges.
b. The Church feels pressure to change.
c. Church leaders resist the pressure, because that’s not how the church works!
d. The issue starts to affect the bottom line, as members leave.
e. President Newsroom releases an uncredited, unannounced essay on lds.org in the middle of the night.
f. Apologists, PR flacks, and surrogates defend the church
g. Church leaders say nothing to clarify church doctrine, so that everyone can keep believing what they like.

All right, it’s a lovely day, and some of you are looking longingly out the window, so let’s dismiss. I’ll see you next week.

NT Lesson 14 (The Good Samaritan)

19 April 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 14 (The Good Samaritan)

“Who Is My Neighbour?”

Matthew 18; Luke 10

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that indoctrination, ostracism, and magical cursings are not good ways to treat people.

Reading

The purpose for this lesson, according to the LDS lesson manual, is:

To help class members humble themselves, forgive others, and show charity for one another.

That’s all very well, but it’s only a part of the story. Believers like to cherry-pick the good bits of the Bible, and that gives people the impression that it’s all nice and good, with love, puppy dogs, and rainbows for everyone. And while there’s lots of good stuff in these two chapters about forgiveness and service, there are also some really bad examples of how to treat people. So this lesson’s here for some balance.

Main ideas for this lesson

Little children

Jesus teaches that you have to be like a child to get into heaven.

Matthew 18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
18:2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Ask: Why would it be beneficial to a religious leader that his followers be like children?

Children are great. They have a playfulness, an openness to experience, and in lots of ways a lack of bias that’s quite enviable. They haven’t yet taken on political or social baggage that makes it hard for us adults to change our minds sometimes. There’s a lot to recommend about having a childlike outlook.

Children are also not great at critical thinking. With their scarcity of real-world experience, they believe everything you tell them, which works to the advantage of religious leaders. This is why religions focus on the indoctrination of children, before they’re able to challenge dogma.

Ask: Is there a positive function for the uncritical acceptance that children are prone to?
Answer: Richard Dawkins thinks so. In this video, he points out that children usually benefit when they uncritically accept information from parents and carers.

He likens it to the navigation system of a moth. When the only light source is the moon, moths are able to navigate smoothly. But artificial light sidetracks their systems and makes them fly in crazy loops around streetlights.

By the same token, there’s a positive function to children believing what adults say. But when those adults are affected by religion, the bad is accepted along with the good, and the religion spreads. It’s a case of something bad hijacking something good.

Partial transcript if you can’t watch video:

These moths are not committing suicide. They’re doing a piece of behaviour which would be sensible for all the millions of years that were there when the only lights you ever saw at night were celestial objects at optical infinity. Now I think that that’s what religion is like. I think that religion is a byproduct of probably several psychological predispositions which in themselves have Darwinian survival value, but which have consequences parallel to the consequence of the moth flying to the candle flames — have consequences which probably don’t have survival value. But just as the moth doesn’t know that the candle flame is not at infinity but is close by, so those of us who have these psychological predispositions which would have been a good thing in our ancestral past — may still be a good thing — the consequence of leading to religious behavior which may not be a good thing doesn’t occur to us. I mean, the kind of thing I’m thinking about is a tendency to obey authority in a child. It’s probably a good thing for child to obey its parents — to believe its parents, indeed — when its parents tell it things about the world, because the child is too young to know a lot of important things about the world, and would die if it ignored its parents’ beliefs; its parents advice. So good advice like “Don’t jump in the fire” has survival value. But the child brain, just like the moth brain, has no way of distinguishing the good advice like “Don’t jump in the fire” from the stupid advice like “Sacrifice a mongoose’s kidneys at the time of the full moon, or the crops will fail.” So I suspect that religion may be a complicated set of byproducts of psychological predispositions, each one of which itself has an advantage, but the religious byproduct is either neutral or — well, we don’t even need to say whether it has an advantage, it doesn’t matter; the Darwinian explanation is sufficient if we postulate that the original psychological predispositions had Darwinian survival value.

Again, religion poisons everything.

While I’m talking about moths, has everyone seen Norm MacDonald’s moth joke?

Another take on this topic: Think of your role models. Who are the people you look up to?

As for me, I look up to smart people. My heroes are the people who are doing science. These are people who have worked to understand the world, and to build their intellectual character so as to have humility and avoid bias and self-deception. Those are the people I want to be like.

Ask: What intellectual climate is a group trying to encourage if its role models are the most cognitively immature and intellectually docile people in all of humankind?
What benefit would that be to such a group’s leaders?

Early Christians must have noticed that, just as in the church today, the people they were attracting weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. And so they wrote a rationale into the Bible.

Luke 10:21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.

Yeah, they knew.

Hell, with fire, again

Jesus repeats his advice to cut off your hands and feet, and put out your eyes.

Matthew 18:8 Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
18:9 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

This is the third time Jesus has mentioned hell, with actual fire. We’re going to cover Hell in more detail in lesson 17.

For now, though, let’s talk about an extra angle on this scripture from the Joseph Smith Translation.

Ostracism

From the LDS Gospel Doctrine manual:

Discuss Matthew 18:8–9 and Mark 9:43–48 (see also Matthew 5:29–30).

JST Matthew 18:9 And a man’s hand is his friend, and his foot, also; and a man’s eye, are they of his own household.

What do these verses mean? (See Matthew 18:9, footnote 9a, which indicates that the Joseph Smith Translation identifies these offending elements as people who lead us astray. It is better to end our association with people than to allow them to lead us into sin. See also Joseph Smith Translation, Mark 9:40–48.)

Mormons, by and large, do not ostracise family members, and that’s a good thing. At least, they don’t do it officially. (I note, however, that I never see my old Mormon friends anymore. Maybe we never had much in common, besides church.)

This scripture, however, encourages people to disconnect from their unbelieving friends. Christianity, like a lot of ideologies, makes it difficult for believers to interact with non-believers. Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about this, which centres on a video from the Atheist Experience, in which Jeff and Matt discuss the divisive tendency of Christianity.

Partial transcript:

People who actually understand what love is; people who actually understand what morality is; people who actually understand reality; it is almost unbearable to watch the people that you love be so absolutely duped into a divisive, hateful religion that they think is not divisive; they think it’s inclusive, and they think it’s positive.
…
The division is entirely one-sided. I didn’t end relationships when I became an atheist. Christians ended those relationships, and it was because their particular religion cannot tolerate.

Divorce

Jesus again condemns divorce — advice which many Christians happily dismiss, and good for them.

From the manual, again:

Explain that Matthew 19:1–12 describes a situation in which the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking him about the lawfulness of divorce (see also Mark 10:1–12).

Explain that in ancient Israel, a man could put away, or divorce, his wife for insignificant reasons. Jesus taught that in a perfect world, such as the celestial kingdom, divorce does not exist. Because the earth is not yet perfect, divorce is allowed but should not happen except for the most serious reasons. Matthew 19:9 indicates that a man who put away his wife for a frivolous reason was still married to her in the eyes of God, and he thus committed adultery if he married another woman. (See James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, 3rd ed. [1916], 473–75, 484; see also Bruce R. McConkie, The Mortal Messiah, 4 vols. [1979–81], 2:138–39.)

I just want to add that when someone disapproves of something, it’s very common for them to claim that people do it for frivolous reasons.

  • Divorce: They get married, and figure that if it doesn’t work out, they’ll just get divorced and try someone else!
  • Abortion: Why, it’s just a form of birth control for some people!
  • Leaving the church: They were offended and wanted to sin. Something something milk strippings.

This way of thinking sees people trivialising the life choices of other people when those choices don’t accord with theirs. I don’t know anyone who takes any of these decisions lightly — in most cases, it’s one of the most difficult and well-thought-through choices in that person’s life — but for someone with this view, it makes it difficult for them to understand why anyone would make that choice. Or should I say “sin that sin”. So much for empathy.

Dusting off feet

Jesus tells missionaries to dust off their feel if people don’t believe them, as a kind of curse.

Luke 10:10 But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say,
10:11 Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.
10:12 But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.

This has led to some pretty wild stories about modern foot-dusting. Here’s one about Samuel Smith, brother of Joseph Smith.

“Samuel was sick at heart, for this was the 5th time he had been turned out of doors that day. He left the house and traveled a short distance and washed his feet in a small brook, as a testimony against [the tavern owner who had rejected him]. He then proceeded five miles further on his journey, and seeing an apple tree a short distance from the road, he concluded to pass the night under it; and here he lay all night upon the cold, damp ground. In the morning, he arose from his comfortless bed, and observing a small cottage at no great distance, he drew near, hoping to get a little refreshment…. He…proceeded to Bloomington, which was 8 miles further.
“Here he stopped at the house of John P. Greene, who was a Methodist preacher and was at that time about starting on a preaching mission. He, like the others, did not wish to make a purchase of what he considered at that time to be a nonsensical fable; however, he said that he would take a subscription paper, and if he found anyone on his route who was disposed to purchase, he would take his name, and in two weeks Samuel might call again and he would let him know what the prospect was of selling. After making this arrangement, Samuel left one of his books with him, and returned home. At the time appointed, Samuel started again for the Reverend John P. Greene’s, in order to learn the success which this gentleman had met with in finding sale for the Book of Mormon. This time, Mr. Smith and myself accompanied him, and it was our intention to have passed near the tavern where Samuel was so abusively treated a fortnight previous, but just before we came to the house, a sign of smallpox intercepted us. We turned aside, and meeting a citizen of the place, we inquired of him, to what extent this disease prevailed. He answered that the tavern keeper and two of his family had died with it not long since, but he did not know that anyone else had caught the disease, and that it was brought into the neighborhood by a traveler who stopped at the tavern overnight” (Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith, pp.225-226)

Yep — he dusted off his feet, and gave someone smallpox. Because that’s how smallpox works. Kind of a dick move, isn’t it?

This scripture stands as a bit of a contrast to the previous chapter, where Jesus refuses to curse some Samaritans.

Luke 9:51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,
9:52 And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.
9:53 And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
9:54 And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?9:55 But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.9:56 For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

Consistency wasn’t Jesus’s big thing.

On my mission, foot-dusting-off was the subject of some discussion. Some missionaries were like, “Well, the scripture tells us to do it,” and other elders were like, “OMG, don’t do it, you’ll kill someone and destroy entire cities.” Never did it occur to me that I was worshipping and serving an abusive asshole.

The silly things we used to think.

Satan falling from heaven

A throw-away quote from Jesus gives us one of the world’s great pick-up lines.

Luke 10:17 And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name.
10:18 And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

The good Samaritan

We’re getting to the end of this lesson, and we’ve seen so much bad behaviour so far. Let’s hear a good story.

Luke 10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
10:26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
10:27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
10:28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
10:29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
10:30 And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
10:31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
10:32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
10:33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
10:34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
10:35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
10:36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
10:37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

It’s great to do good where you see it — and it’s sometimes hard to recognise such a situation in the moment. In a famous study, psychologists found that our willingness to help was more a function of the situation, and not our personality.

We are all too quick to apply dispositional labels on people for their actions or lack of actions, while ignoring the situational factors that are so influential in behavior. We need to stop and think before being too hard on ourselves or on others for actions and behaviors.

Even so, one does get the impression that Jesus didn’t find Samaritans entirely positive.

If I could give some secular homework for this lesson, maybe it would be to look for opportunities to help. Some causes present themselves to us online, while others appear in real life. Maybe taking time to notice them would help us to step up and make a difference. Let’s all take a cue from the slogan of the Sunday Assembly, and “help often”.

See what you can do by next week.

NT Lesson 12 (Walking on water)

28 March 2015 / / 1 Comment

“I Am the Bread of Life”

John 5–6; Mark 6:30–44; Matthew 14:22–33

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To remind readers that regular people have used science to help humanity more than Jesus ever did with his comparative paltry conjuring tricks.

Reading

At this point in our story, Jesus has a pretty good thing going on. Not only has he taken over John the Baptist’s franchise, he’s managed to convince people that he can do miracles — conjuring tricks, really — turning water into wine, faith healings, and so on. This prophet gig is pretty sweet!

But, as with every con artist who believes their own hype, overreach was inevitable. And this week, Jesus has his “bigger than the Beatles” moment.

Here are the high points of this lesson:

  • Faith healing at the pool of Bethesda
  • Loaves and fishes
  • Walking on water
  • Many are offended by his “Bread of Life” speech

Main ideas for this lesson

Pool of Bethesda

We start with Jesus healing a man at the site of a pool with some… shall we say… unusual visitors.

John 5:2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
5:3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

Imagine. Angels are popping in, popping out, dipping their toes in the water, and giving it magical healing properties.

What I think is cute about this story is how John just totally buys into the angel angle, and reports it straightforwardly, without blinking an eye. Of course angels are real, says John, and that’s what heals people. Duh.

John 5:5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.
5:6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?
5:7 The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
5:8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
5:9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.

Poor guy, waiting for 38 years. God knows that he wanted to be healed, but I’m sorry, guy. The rules say that God won’t heal you unless you actually touch the water first. Rules are rules.

Well, not everyone believes in angels, and that’s the story behind this scripture. It would appear that the translators of the KJV worked from texts that had the angel story, but there were earlier texts that they didn’t have access to, and these texts don’t include the angel story in verses 3 and 4.

Defenders of the decision to omit John 5:3b-4 consider the verses to be later interpolations or glosses, dating no earlier than about AD 500, and not to be found in the original manuscript as whispered by God into the ears of his human secretaries. Defenders of the KJV, on the other hand, get very cross indeed when even one jot or tittle of the Word is messed with.

There are some Bible fans who acknowledge that some scribe slipped in the angel story (hey, thought the scribe, it had to be an angel; there’s no other explanation), but it’s not a big deal to them. But the issue here is: with all these additions, deletions, discrepancies, and interpolations, how can we see the Bible as an accurate record of what happened? And if we can’t, then why should we place any credibility in Christianity?

By the way, Jesus didn’t just heal the guy and leave him; he came around once more to threaten him.

John 5:14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

Because physically infirmities come from sin, donchaknow.

Loaves and fishes

Here’s the story of Jesus miraculously feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes.

John 6:5 When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?
6:6 And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.
6:7 Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.
6:8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, saith unto him,
6:9 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many?
6:10 And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
6:11 And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.
6:12 When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.
6:13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.

Jesus (allegedly) fed thousands of people a couple of times, which was very nice for them. But Norman Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution, saved millions of people from starvation.

Link text: If you don’t know who Norman Borlaug is, He was a man who saved over a billion people worldwide from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.

But there’s more to Borlaug’s story. Unlike Jesus, Borlaug was a proponent of social justice.

Unlike Jesus / Jehovah, he had the will and the ability to ensure that people didn’t go hungry. Borlaug did what God wouldn’t.

Walking on water

In a display of divinity, Jesus reportedly walked on water. Let’s pick it up from Matthew.

Matthew 14:24 But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary.
14:25 And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.
14:26 And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.
14:27 But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.
14:28 And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
14:29 And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
14:30 But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
14:32 And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

I’m not trying to say that this miracle can be done by just anyone:

Nigerian Pastor Tries To Walk On Water Like Jesus, Then Drowns In Front Of His Congregation
Walking on water is not easy. Not too many people have the ability. Let’s see, there’s Jesus, and well, that’s about it. Unfortunately for one pastor on the West Coast of Africa, his attempt to become the second man to make this impossible feat a reality cost him his life.
Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation that he was capable of reenacting the very miracles of Jesus Christ. He decided to make it clear through way of demonstration on Gabon’s beach in the capital city of Libreville.
Referencing Matthew 14:22-33, Kabele said that he received a revelation which told him that with enough faith he could achieve what Jesus was able to.
According to an eyewitness, Kabele took his congregation out to the beach. He told them that he would cross the Kombo estuary by foot, which is normally a 20 minute boat ride.
Sadly by the second step into the water Kabele found himself completely submerged. He never returned.
This is not the first incident of this nature in Africa. At Ibadon zoo in south-west Nigeria, a self-proclaimed Prophet claimed to be able to do what the Daniel of the bible did by walking into a den full of lions.

But this feat has been duplicated.

And as you’d expect, it was a very clever trick.

There are also non-Newtonian fluids that you can walk on, in this case a very thick mixture of corn starch and water.

I’ll just leave this here.

What can I say? Fictional characters can do some amazing things.

Let’s give science the final word on the topic.

Eating flesh and drinking blood

Finally the breaking point comes. Jesus says that you need to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be saved.

John 6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
6:54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
6:55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
6:56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

Wait, isn’t drinking blood against the Old Testament?

And no wonder people would be put off — it’s a rather nauseating doctrine.

Not only that; it’s also a bit plagiarised. Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of a deity figure predates Christianity, in particular the worship of Dionysus in a rite practised by the Maenad.

The rite climaxed in a performance of frenzied feats of strength and madness, such as uprooting trees, tearing a bull (the symbol of Dionysus) apart with their bare hands, an act called sparagmos, and eating its flesh raw, an act called omophagia. This latter rite was a sacrament akin to communion in which the participants assumed the strength and character of the god by symbolically eating the raw flesh and drinking the blood of his symbolic incarnation. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus.

Everything’s a reboot.

“To whom shall we go?”

It’s tough when a speech bombs. Jesus loses a lot of followers. It’s his Howard Dean moment.

John 6:66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.
6:67 Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
6:68 Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

As a believer, I often thought of this scripture. “Who else would I follow if I didn’t follow Jesus?” It seemed absurd to stop being a Mormon; what else would I be? Who else would I follow?

What I didn’t realise was that when Jesus seemed like the only game in town, it was because I didn’t know there were better games. Life offers more choices than just choosing whom to follow.

This is why, for me, leaving the church was so freeing. Having decided that almost everyone in my life had been mostly wrong about everything — and thank goodness — I realised I’d have to do some thinking for myself, and determine what my life was going to be about. But this time, I’d have to use some reason, logic, and evidence so I’d be maybe a little harder to fool this time. No more gurus, no more mystics, and if someone wanted to say they were an expert on something, they were going to have to have their credentials in order. It’s an approach that’s made all the difference in my life.

Additional lesson ideas

Anti-semitism in John

We’re going to see this a few times, but it’s worth pointing out that John has a blame-the-Jews agenda. The Gospel of John is arguably the most antisemitic book in the New Testament. Here’s just a taste.

John 5:16 And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.

More of that later — with a view to the consequences.

NT Lesson 8 (Sermon on the Mount 1)

22 February 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 8 (Sermon on the Mount 1)

The Sermon on the Mount: “A More Excellent Way”

Matthew 5

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that some of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are terrible, and that it allows believers to selectively jettison inconvenient doctrine from the Old Testament

Reading

This time, we’re starting on the Sermon on the Mount

Matthew 5:1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

which was actually taught on a plain.

Luke 6:17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain

Seriously, were any of these Bible writers actually there? Oh, wait; no, they weren’t. This was probably written 30 or 40 years after Jesus would have died. As mentioned in this Thinking Atheist podcast, it was written originally in Greek — not Aramaic, the language Jesus would have spoken — which points to a later writing date.

Main ideas for this lesson

Some of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount are terrible

People just love the Sermon on the Mount because many of its teachings are nice. They’re all about the lerv. A closer reading shows that many of these teachings are nonsense, and a real supernatural being could do a lot better.

The Sermon on the Mount has been thoroughly fisked a number of times, and here are some of my faves.

You should definitely check them out. But here are a few of my ideas.

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
5:4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5:5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Well, those are just lovely. One problem: while being meek works out great for those in power, it doesn’t do much to help to help you out of a bad situation. Does a belief that God will sort everything out comfort you, or just put you back to sleep? Frank Zappa suggests that helping each other out would be a better way to turn things around.

Frank Zappa- The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing… by WarGodIII
Lyrics

Light

Here’s another one:

Matthew 5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

In my upbringing, this meant: Everyone knows you’re a Mormon, and they’re watching you. Don’t let your behaviour reflect badly on the Church.

This has a number of effects: It controls your behaviour, serving as a kind of panopticon where you’re always being observed. It also gives you the idea that how you feel about what you’re doing is less important than how others feel about what you’re doing. And that means that you can’t really trust your own moral instincts, because it’s always someone else evaluating your behaviour. You have to imagine what morality looks like to some external observer, guess what they expect, and then do that. It’s like giving someone an moral-sense-ectomy, so that you can replace it with whatever you want.

It’s one tiny scripture, but the church does this in lots of ways, and the effect is cumulative.

Let your light shine?

When you do good things, you’re supposed to let them be seen.

Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Oh, wait; no, you’re not. Very next chapter:

Matthew 6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

It’s very difficult to know how publicly righteous you’re supposed to be.

Is the Old Testament still valid?

How many times have you had a discussion with a believer about the barbarity of the Bible, and they say, “But that’s the Old Testament!”?

Well, in this section, Jesus sets out the relationship between his teachings and those of the Old Testament.

Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

This sounds to me like the kind of thing that would have been written way later, once the early Christians were trying to allay criticism that they were getting away from their Jewish base.

Anyway: So what’s the deal? Is the OT still in force? The OT certainly says so; in numerous places it says it was intended to last as a perpetual statute forever.

Lev. 23: 14 …it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
Num. 19:21 And it shall be a perpetual statute unto them…

And Jesus says as much: Things things won’t be done away “till heaven and earth pass”.

But Christians argue that the OT has been superseded. In the words of the Jehovah’s Witness guy that came to my house yesterday, Jehovah gave us the Ten Commandments in the OT, and the Two Commandments (love God, love your neighbour) in the New. Sort of a version update. This seems to be what they mean by Jesus ‘fulfilling’ the law. (Which is confusing, because “heaven and earth” haven’t passed away yet, and here it is fulfilled already. Oh, well.)

If that’s the case, and the OT has been deprecated, then why do Christians still cherry-pick laws from it that they like?

As mentioned in this lesson, some Christians like to cite the homophobic scriptures in Leviticus, but ignore the shellfish prohibition in the very same book.

A fact lampooned in “Prop 8: The Musical”. Remember that?

While there are mountains of explanations from Christians trying to sort this out, the fact remains: The relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament is confusing, and this confusion allows Christians to play it both ways. They can pull anything they want from the Old Testament that suits their purpose because Bible, but they can selectively disavow chapters and chapters full of stuff they find unpalatable. This should, however, cast some doubt on just how much they “believe” the Bible.

And what’s often forgotten in this discussion is that (for Mormons and Trinitarians) Jesus is Jehovah. Why wouldn’t he be okay with what he commanded earlier? It makes no sense in terms of a coherent narrative from an unchanging god, but it makes loads of sense in terms of human cultural evolution, which Christianity is a prime example of.

Thinking is not doing

Jesus gives a teaching from the School of Emotional Repression:

Matthew 5:21 Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Being angry is nowhere near as serious as killing someone. This teaching is ridiculous.

Note also that atheists are called ‘fools’ in the OT. Man, Jesus sure could use some help from a modern Christian to get himself sorted out!

Adultery in your heart

Matthew 5:27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:
5:28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Seriously, Jesus? Impulse control is a fine thing, but this crosses the line into thoughtcrime. In my youth, I wasted a lot of effort trying to stop naughty thoughts from crossing my mind, and feeling bad when I couldn’t. As an adult, I enjoy my sense of eroticism at baseline levels. We are sexual beings, and while we put it on background for much of our day-to-day lives, trying to deny this aspect of our personality is damaging, and makes us act like sexually repressed weirdos. What a terrible lack of perspective to equate sexual desire with unconstrained rutting.

There’s more. If thinking about sex is equated with doing it — if there’s no line between the two, then it eradicates the line between normal stuff people do (like hugging, smooching, etc) and things that are truly messed up (like sexual assault). Have a read of this treatment of the toxic purity culture of American Christianity (as it pertains to the notorious Duggar family), and how it makes inappropriate sexual behaviour not only possible, but likely.

The huge problem with this teaching is that it does not distinguish between having thoughts and desires, and acting on them in an inappropriate way. To the young person, just developing (one hopes) critical thinking skills, this can and does lead to problems in making decisions. After all, if one has already fallen into sexual sin in the realm of thought, why not at least get some satisfaction for the trouble. All the guilt and shame is already there, so why not try to at least get a little gratification.

Needless to say, this worldview is not very good at addressing the issue of consent. Since all sexual sin is the same…, then the difference between lusting and sexually assaulting someone is blurred.

More extreme beliefs follow.

Matthew 5:29 And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
5:30 And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

It’s off with the hands and eyes for a lot of you.

(Funny that it mentions the right hand specifically, by the way.)

Just one more thing from this bit: this is the first time we’ve seen where Jesus mentions ‘hell’. He’ll have more to say about this — including actual fire! — but let’s make a note of this and move on.

Divorce

And now we’re to one of Jesus’ teachings that Christians happily ignore: his teachings on divorce.

Matthew 5:31 It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
5:32 But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

And thank goodness they ignore it! Yes, divorce can be unfortunate and disruptive, but it can also give you your life back.

People tell me that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. I always respond: Fifty percent of marriages should end in divorce. All my life in church, people treated divorce like the worst thing in the world. That and apostasy. Then I found that they were wrong about both those things. And everything else.

A bit of context, though: Divorce is good, except where it leads to poverty for women, which, in a patriarchal society where men have all the power and money, is very likely. So let’s take that into account. But this is an argument against patriarchy, not divorce.

The other good thing about Christians ignoring Jesus’ teachings on divorce is that Christians can learn to ignore the bullshit in their Bible. And that’s a good thing, if only they were aware that’s what they’re doing.

On the other hand, I sometimes wish modern Christians weren’t so selective.

Additional lesson ideas

Luke’s additions

Boy, did Luke have a different take on this sermon!

Luke 6:20 And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.
6:21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
6:22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
6:23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
6:24 But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.
6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.

Message: if you’re a wealthy, well-fed laughing person, you’re hosed in the afterlife.

Love your enemies

Well, we’ve been tough on the Sermon on the Mount/Plain today. But there are some good bits, and here’s one.

Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

I think this might be a good idea, unless you’re someone who’s learned to be fatally compromised in relationships. In some cases, it would be better to cut your enemies out of your life, instead of being commanded to love them. (And what’s with being commanded to love? Geez.)

Even then, there are some weird inconsistencies in this part of Jesus’ message.

And this is the same Jesus who sends people to hell. But more on that later.

Let’s just say that loving your enemies is good if you can manage it. It’s an advanced move.

Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

This reminded me of a poem by Charles Bowen:

“The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella”

See you next time.

NT Lesson 7 (Miracles)

14 February 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 7 (Miracles)

“[He] Took Our Infirmities, and Bare Our Sicknesses”

Mark 1–2; 4:35–41; 5; Luke 7:11–17

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show that science has actually accomplished everything Jesus is claimed to have done, but much better and for more people.

Reading

Jesus is really getting into the miracles in this lesson. Here’s what he’s been up to.

  • Jesus casts out devils.

In Mark 5, Jesus finds a man who seems to be some kind of container for unclean spirits. Jesus casts them out, but in a compassionate gesture, allows them to inhabit a herd of swine. The pigs have other ideas, and drown themselves. That’s very sad, isn’t it? Let’s imagine another ending for the piggies:

  • Jesus heals the sick and raises the dead
  • Jesus walks on water

Look out, Jesus!

Main ideas for this lesson

The Bible is wrong about unclean spirits

There are lots of exorcisms in this reading.

Luke 4:33 And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice,
4:34 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.
4:35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.
4:36 And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.

Luke 4:40 Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.
4:41 And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ.

And of course, the pig episode.

The Bible teaches that mental illness is caused by demons. And, as with so many things in the Bible, it’s unhelpfully and inexcusably wrong. How easy would it have been for Jesus to point out the real causes of mental illness — psychology, biology, and genetics? Blaming it on malevolent supernatural agents is the kind of thing that pre-scientific people would have come up with.

Thankfully, most Latter-day Saints don’t seem to believe in demonic possession anymore. I still remember one time in church, where a woman had a rather violent psychotic episode in the middle of sacrament meeting. I wonder why no one performed an exorcism — perhaps no one in attendance had the experience. Instead, health services were called, the women was collected, and then jittery ward members — in an adult meeting and a separate youth meeting — were counselled by a psychiatrist and a psychologist who happened to be ward members. It was really handled very well, and all without casting out devils.

In some other Christian churches, though, exorcisms are de rigueur. Benny Hinn makes a good living out of it.

They’re so easy, even a child could do one.

While this ritual seems silly to me, the participants sure do seem to think something real is happening to them. But what’s really going on here? The psychological explanation is that people undergoing an exorcism are conforming to expectations about what is supposed to happen in an exorcism, and how the participants are supposed to behave.

Exorcisms tend to follow a predictable path. The apparent victim of possession’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, perhaps even violent, until the exorcist casts the demonic spirit out. “Possessed” people may speak in tongues, vomit, become violently ill, or harm themselves. And while these behaviors might seem shocking, they can be easily explained.

Mental issues can cause strange behavior, and people tend to conform to expectations. This means a person experiencing an exorcism is more likely to act in ways he or she has heard of others behaving during exorcisms. Exorcisms sometimes also involve the use of potions, drugs, or fasting, each of which can induce violent illness and strange behavior. Starvation can affect brain function, and the stress of an exorcism may radically alter behavior.

In other words, both exorcist and exorcee are both playing a role. And in some cases, participants can break out of the role at inappropriate times.

“Hang on, it’s the Prince of Darkness; I gotta take this.”

And now for the part that’s not so funny: exorcisms do a lot of harm, and in some cases people get killed. Try reading this very long list of people (especially children) murdered by parents and others who believed they were possessed.

Evelyn Vasquez
Age: 6
The child had a history of sleepwalking. Her mother confessed to brutally stabbing her to death because she believe she was possessed by the devil. She was charged with murder.

Amora Bain Carson
Age: 13 months
They believed the child was possessed and tried to rid her of demons. They allegedly bludgeoned her and bit her more than 20 times. She died. Her mother and a man were arrested and held on $2 million bond.

Dane Gibson
Age: 12
After attending a fundamentalist church, they became convinced they were surrounded by demons. The boy had been held down in the yard as part of an exorcism. They were found not guilty of murder.

And on and on and on and on and on. Exorcism is a barbaric practice that has no basis in fact, and a book that claims to come from the all-knowing creator of the universe ought to reflect this.

Healings

Healings are another dodgy area. Jesus was supposed to have healed a few people of blindness and illnesses. The effect of this on us today in practical terms is about nil. Diseases in our time don’t seem amenable to healing.

Also, some types of healings never occur at Lourdes, as indicated by the comment of French writer Anatole France. On a visit to the shrine, seeing the discarded canes and crutches, he exclaimed, “What, what, no wooden legs???” 

Ask: Why won’t God heal amputees?

But then some people claim that God has indeed healed people of their illnesses, and that this is evidence of God’s existence, love, and what have you. In fact, this really makes the case for God’s goodness even more problematic, not less. If God really is healing various individuals in piecemeal fashion, without addressing the underlying causes of disease and while allowing others to languish and die, then this calls God’s goodness even more into question. Why is he so capricious about who he heals? Why does he choose not to heal the rest, when he could? (What are they, chopped liver?) How does this relate to God not being “a respecter of persons”?

Watch the video for “Thank You, God” by Tim Minchin. In this video, Tim recounts the story of Sam’s mum, who allegedly got God to heal her cataracts.

Ask: What are some other explanations for Sam’s mum’s healing that Minchin mentions? Make a list. How many times can you say ‘Minchin mentions’ really fast?
If God is healing relatively well-off Westerners, then what are some illnesses God is ignoring? Why would he do that?

As with exorcisms, there’s a dark side to faith healing. News reports seem to bring a steady stream of stories of parents who kill their children by denying them medical care in the belief that God will heal them through prayer. Here’s a smattering of recent stories, and I didn’t even have to try very hard to find them.

Faith-Healing Churches Linked to 2 Dozen Child Deaths
Living on a Prayer: Why Does God Kill So Many Children in Idaho?
Faith-Healing Parents Jailed After Second Child’s Death
Big list on HuffPo

Of course, the believer could always argue that someone wasn’t healed because they didn’t have enough faith. It’s a common enough dodge; even Pat Robertson has engaged in it.

But saying that the sufferer didn’t have enough faith is really just a way of blaming the victim. It allows people to believe that faith healing is real, even when it plainly doesn’t work.

Supernaturalism is terrible at curing illness, but science has done a great job. Let’s see the totals for leprosy.

Take a look at this video of a man who is getting his life and his autonomy back by the use of robotic arms that he can control with his thoughts. This is amazing. I see it as nothing less than new-testamental, in a way that the New Testament can’t match. This, after all, is publicly verifiable.

Some people say God is responsible for medical progress. Isn’t it great of God to heal people at exactly the same time that scientists work out how to treat disease? Unless it’s really medical science doing it all, which seems to be a much more straightforward explanation.

We still have a lot to learn about the body, and progress is sometimes frustratingly slow. But in the area of human health, medical science is doing the job that God has failed to do.

Additional lesson ideas

No exorcisms in John

When you read the book of John, guess what you never see? You never see any exorcisms or cases of demonic possession. The reason is a bit of a mystery; Twelftree cites “theological considerations” which I assume means he thinks some compiler left it out on purpose. Or perhaps the synoptic texts (Matthew, Mark, Luke) just come from a different tradition that John.

For whatever reason, it’s yet another way in which the gospels tell widely varying stories about Jesus, and this should cause the reader to regard these fragmentary accounts with skepticism.

Walking on water

This miracle has been difficult to duplicate by spiritual means. Here’s a story that’s both sad and hilarious. Sadlarious.

Nigerian Pastor Tries To Walk On Water Like Jesus, Then Drowns In Front Of His Congregation
Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation that he was capable of reenacting the very miracles of Jesus Christ.  He decided to make it clear through way of demonstration on Gabon’s beach in the capital city of Libreville.
Referencing Matthew 14:22-33, Kabele said that he received a revelation which told him that with enough faith he could achieve what Jesus was able to.
According to an eyewitness, Kabele took his congregation out to the beach.  He told them that he would cross the Kombo estuary by foot, which is normally a 20 minute boat ride.
Sadly by the second step into the water Kabele found himself completely submerged.  He never returned.

I guess he didn’t have enough faith.

On the other hand, it is possible to duplicate the feat by non-scientific means, at least well enough to fool you and me. Here’s illusionist Criss Angel doing it.

Try one of the YouTube suggested links for an explanation of how he does it.

And of course, with a little corn starch, you can walk across a non-Newtonian fluid.

Science!

Thank you for reading this week’s lesson. To finish our demonic theme, let’s have a closing hymn.

See you next week.

NT Lesson 6 (Calling the Twelve Apostles)

7 February 2015 / / 1 Comment

“They Straightway Left Their Nets”

Luke 4:14–32; 5; 6:12–16; Matthew 10

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To remind readers that Christianity, and Mormonism in particular, drives a wedge between family members by design, and sets itself up as a substitute family.

Reading

This lesson covers the following stories:

  • Jesus calls his disciples

Translation, Picard, translation. But more later.

  • Jesus heals people and casts out unclean spirits

Main ideas for this lesson

Religion over family

In this reading, Jesus gives some of the more evil scriptures, involving how members should react to opposition.

Luke 6:22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
6:23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.

When I was in the mission field, a mimeograph went around about how to install a meme in an investigator’s head. It was called “The Opposition Dialogue”. (Does anyone else remember something like this?) It had these basic elements:

  • In the time leading up to your baptism, it may be that people you know will try to prevent you from joining the church.
  • This opposition comes from Satan. Satan doesn’t want you to join the church.
  • You need to join the church in spite of any opposition you get.

The Opposition Dialogue had an important purpose. In a normal situation, opposition from family members could derail an investigator’s plan to join the church. And why wouldn’t it — people listen to family members, since they’re usually people who care about them and have an interest in them. There’s a shared history.

But the purpose of the Opposition Dialogue was to make that opposition an expected thing, and to turn it to our advantage. Without the OD, the investigator might think: “My family is concerned, and they have information that says I shouldn’t continue.” But with the OD, that same investigator might think, “This is the reaction the elders said I’d get! I should ignore it.”

Though I didn’t realise it at the time, the OD was a not-so-subtle way of getting investigators to ignore input from family members, and only accept information from the missionaries — as well as start looking for Satan around every corner. It was a way of starting people on the process of turning against their families. I never used the OD in discussions, but I’m sure that I encouraged people to ignore information from anywhere but the church, even if that meant cutting themselves off from family. It was a cult tactic, pure and simple.

And, like many evil ideas, it comes straight from Jesus, a end-of-the-world cult leader who insisted on his religion over family. Here it is later on in this reading.

Matthew 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

We need to recognise that, despite its family-friendly façade, the LDS Church does not promote family. It subverts the family, and sets the religion up as a kind of substitute family. It even borrows kinship terms: Brother and Sister So-and-So; the bishop is the father of the ward, and so on. One need only go so far as the Exmormon subreddit to find heart-rending stories about how one spouse stops believing, and then is treated like an unworthy wretch by the believing spouse. Or children who very sensibly question the truth claims of the church, only to find themselves kicked out of home, or coerced back into activity. There are the happy stories, where people are eventually joined in unbelief by their partner or family. I’m lucky; I still have a good relationship with my good-hearted TBM sister, though I’m aware that she at times feels a great deal of worry over my non-existent soul. But her concern — and all the broken families and all the fractiousness and all the ostracism — is completely unnecessary. It only exists because there is a religion that has codified belief in itself and support of itself over one’s own family as a foundational meme.

I don’t know what it takes to make a person choose a religion over their spouse or their own child, but whatever it takes, Christianity has done it. Every time I see it happen, I think: That is some powerful juju right there. And it’s all approved by Jesus himself. It went to work early on in Christianity. Separation from family is a feature, not a bug.

The Golden Rule

As far as moral codes go, the teaching which has become known as the Golden Rule is a pretty good one.

Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

We could quibble about the phrasing. I can think of maybe two variations that might improve it a bit.

  • Don’t do something to others if you wouldn’t want them to do that to you — which has become known as the Silver Rule
  • Do unto others as they would like you to do unto them — which I think of as George’s Platinum Rule

Still, the Golden Rule as it stands is a good way to go. When people make lists of secular commandments — as they sometimes do — this one consistently comes up at the top.

But here’s the thing: the Golden Rule predates Jesus, and is not particularly unique among the world’s religions. Here are some formulations in other religions.

Native American Spirituality: “Do not wrong or hate your neighbor. For it is not he who you wrong, but yourself.” Pima proverb.
Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Shinto: “The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form” Munetada Kurozumi
Zoroastrianism: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself”. Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
Confucianism: “Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state.” Analects 12:2
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” Udana-Varga 5,1

And many others. It also comes up in the writings of non-religious people:

Plato: “May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.” (Greece; 4th century BCE)
Socrates: “Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.” (Greece; 5th century BCE)
Epictetus: “What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others.” (circa 100 CE)

It was also a strong contender in the recent 10 Atheist Commandments, crowdsourced from ordinary people.

7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.

Sounds good to me.

Additional lesson ideas

Taking apart the roof

There’s kind of a funny story here: Jesus is teaching in a house, and some men are trying to bring a sick man so Jesus can heal him. But there are too many people listening to Jesus for them to get through the door. So what do they do? Easy! Haul the guy up onto the roof, and start dismantling the roof tiles! These guys know how to get stuff done, and I appreciate that.

This story appears in both Mark and Luke — with one crucial difference. The author of Mark tells the story fairly straightforwardly. The author of Luke tells the same story, but he forgets to mention that the story is taking place in a house. The men are pulling off tiles for a house that hasn’t been mentioned in the story yet. Compare:

Mark Luke
Mark 2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.
2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.		 Luke 5:17 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
2:3 And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. 5:18 And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him.
2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. 5:19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.

This is what we’d expect if Luke’s version were copied a bit haphazardly from an earlier source, and the author lost track of where in the story he was copying from.

How did Jakob become James?

In the Greek text, the apostle James is Ἰάκωβος, or to put it more Anglishly, Jakob. How did he turn into James? Was someone trying to brown-nose King James?

Not exactly. This rundown is as good as any, but the short version is that Greek Iacobus turned to Latin Iacomus. It’s easy for a /b/ to change to an /m/; just that one’s oral and the other is nasal. From there it was a short hop to Old French Jammes, and thence to James.

Oh, and Santiago in Spanish? That’s just the way they said Sanctu Iacobu, or Saint James.

UPDATE: I missed this one, but Redditor apostatereligion mentioned it, and it was too good not to pass on.

Joseph Smith seemed unaware that Jacobus and Jacomus referred to the same people. In his King Follett discourse, he mischaracterised the sound change as a translation error.

I am going to show you an error. I have an old book of the New Testament in the Hebrew, Latin, German, and Greek. I have been reading the German and find it to be the most [nearly] correct, and to correspond nearest to the revelations I have given for the last fourteen years. It tells about Jachobod the son of Zebedee. It means Jacob. In the English New Testament it is translated James. Now if Jacob had the keys, you might talk about James through all eternity and never get the keys. In the 21st verse of the fourth chapter of Matthew, the German edition gives the word Jacob instead of James. How can we escape the damnation of hell except God reveal to us? Men bind us with chains. Latin says Jachobod means Jacob; Hebrew says it means Jacob; Greek says Jacob; German says Jacob.

Yeah, you wouldn’t want to be getting any keys from James and not Jacob, even though they’re… the… same person. As apostatereligion drily notes: “Some prophet.”

But then Joseph Smith had a little trouble keeping his transliterated Bible characters straight. Elias, anyone? (But more on that soon enough.)

OT Lesson 35 (Amos and Joel)

14 September 2014 / / Comments Off on OT Lesson 35 (Amos and Joel)

God Reveals His Secrets to His Prophets

Amos 3; 7–9; Joel 2–3

LDS manual: here

Reading

Now we’re into the minor prophets, Amos and Joel. Like other prophets, they predicted death and destruction for those who didn’t believe them.

Ask: According to these passages in Amos, how will Jehovah / Jesus kill those who don’t obey him?

Amos 1:3 Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have threshed Gilead with threshing instruments of iron:
1:4 But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Benhadad.

4:2 The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

Answers: Fire and fishhooks.

By this time, God has had to resort to some pretty drastic measures to get Israel to worship him, including “cleanness of teeth” (or famine), drought, blasting, mildew, worms, pestilence, and the sword.

4:6 And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
4:7 And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.
4:8 So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
4:9 I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
4:10 I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
4:11 I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.

They didn’t love you after all that?

4:12 Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

If God says he wants to meet you, tell him “no thanks”.

There is one interesting thing about Amos, though: Jehovah / Jesus is turning his talent for death and destruction toward social justice issues. In particular, Amos is riled about Israel’s treatment of the poor, and bribery.

5:11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

For those in a real Gospel Doctrine class: Does anyone mention the poor? If they do, does a class member immediately rush to qualify this with a comment about “the deserving poor”? Does the teacher encourage class members to do anything individually to combat poverty, or are the steps taken by the church (e.g. fast offerings, church welfare) generally seen as sufficient? I’d welcome your answers in comments.

This lesson also looks at Joel. But no one cares about Joel. Seriously.

Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

Oh, whatever, Joel. People might do better listening to these guys.

Prophet Three is my favourite.

Main points from this lesson

There’s one scripture that the entire lesson hangs on, and it’s about prophets.

3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

Mormons love this scripture because it has the word ‘prophets’ in it, and it says that God is really into them. So let’s investigate prophets in the Mormon universe.

Mormon prophets do not prophesy

Here’s a quote from the real lesson manual.

“When I was a young wife and mother, my husband spent two years in the air force. We lived in military housing on Long Island, New York. While tending our young children, I often visited with neighbors who had come from all over the country. One day as a neighbor and I were talking about our beliefs, she became curious about what was different about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I told her briefly about the Restoration, and I explained that the restored Church of Jesus Christ has a living prophet today. This really seemed to pique her interest, and she wanted to know what the prophet had said. As I started to tell her about the Doctrine and Covenants and modern revelation, she said, ‘But what has he said lately?’ I told her about general conference and that the Church had a monthly publication with a message from the prophet. Then she got really interested. I was so embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t read the current message. She concluded our conversation by saying, ‘You mean you have a living prophet and you don’t know what he said?’ ” ( Janette Hales Beckham, “Sustaining the Living Prophets,” Ensign, May 1996, 84).

This neighbour was onto it, but more to the point: You have a living prophet, and he doesn’t prophesy? When was the last time a Mormon prophet made a prophecy? Presumably that’s part of their job.

Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but the last time I can remember where an actual prediction was made was in the Proclamation on the Family.

…we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

I think that if they’re going to say this kind of thing, they should go “full Old Testament”. In particular, they should specify the kind of calamities. Flood? Fire? Famine? Fishhooks?

It’s fishhooks, isn’t it?

So great is this tendency to avoid saying anything official, that even books by the current president of the church carry a disclaimer! Check out the front of A Prophet’s Voice by Thomas Monson:

It’s called A Prophet’s Voice, but the views “do not necessarily represent the position of the Church”? Whose voice would be considered authoritative, if not the prophet’s? Talk about having it both ways.

If there really were prophets, they would have far more responsibility than they take.

Let’s say you’re one of the Twelve Apostles. That presumably means you have the Holy Ghost — a member of the Godhead — with you all the time. You are also “in constant touch with Him who created this earth and knows the world from beginning to end.”

Ask: What problems would you be capable of solving, with that kind of access to the creator of the universe?

  • Advance scientific knowledge
  • Use information about the human body to eliminate disease
  • Warn people about upcoming life-threatening events, like tsunamis, earthquakes, or hurricanes. People could use this information to save lives, carry out timely evacuation, and help with coordination of resources
  • Foresee the consequences of policy decisions, and communicate them

Ask: What do Mormon prophets actually do?

See, earthquake prediction is one thing, but that quote is really good, too. I like how it all begins with W.

If a god actually exists, and he speaks to people, then those people have some kind of responsibility to use that knowledge to do something besides promote their scammy religion-business. That they don’t do this speaks to either

  • their lack of prophetic knowledge, or
  • God’s lack of concern for the welfare of his children.

“We do not know.”

Okay, so for whatever reason, Mormon prophets don’t seem to be leap-frogging scientists in advancing human knowledge. But maybe this is unrealistic. Maybe prophets don’t involve themselves in temporal matters, just spiritual. But if that’s the case, they seem equally inept in answering spiritual questions.

Activity: Go to the corpus of General Conference talks and search for “do not know”

Ask: What kinds of things do LDS leaders say they “do not know” about? Here’s my list:

• Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why does a just God allow bad things to happen, especially to good people? Why are those who are righteous and in the Lord’s service not immune from such tragedies?

• Why did Eve’s sin result in sexism?

Now, Virginia, you call attention to the statement in the scriptures that Adam should rule over Eve. You ask why this is so. I do not know.

• What will be some of the effects of the Iraq War of 2003–2011? How will that affect the church?

Great forces have been mobilized and will continue to be. Political alliances are being forged. We do not know how long this conflict will last. We do not know what it will cost in lives and treasure. We do not know the manner in which it will be carried out. It could impact the work of the Church in various ways.

• When’s Jesus coming back?

We do not know the precise time of the Second Coming of the Savior.

• Can you tell us anything about science, Book of Mormon archeology, or anything about conflicts between religion and science?

I do not know the details of the organization of matter into the beautiful world we live in.
I do not understand the intricacies of the Atonement, how the Savior’s sacrifice can cleanse all repentant people, or how the Savior could suffer “the pain of all men”.
I do not know where the city of Zarahemla was, as referred to in the Book of Mormon.
I do not know why my beliefs sometimes conflict with assumed scientific or secular knowledge.

Gee, what a shame there’s no way you could find these things out. With a prophet or something.

Even more tellingly, a knowledge of the Atonement seems outside their grasp.

For fuck’s sake, guys, this is the foundational doctrine of Christianity. You guys are professional Christianity-explainers. This is the one thing you should be clear on. And yet, you simply “do not know” how this is supposed to work. Is sin a real thing, and you have to use a sin-transfer-omatron? Or does God see Jesus suffer, and say, “Okay, that makes me feel better about all this. I can stand to have a relationship with the humans again”? They simply don’t know. And they seem satisfied with not knowing.

Read this text from a PBS interview with Jeffrey Holland about race and the priesthood. How many times does he say “we don’t know” why African-American men were denied the priesthood?

“One clear-cut position is that the folklore must never be perpetuated. … I have to concede to my earlier colleagues. … They, I’m sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong.
… It probably would have been advantageous to say nothing, to say we just don’t know, and, [as] with many religious matters, whatever was being done was done on the basis of faith at that time. But some explanations were given and had been given for a lot of years. … At the very least, there should be no effort to perpetuate those efforts to explain why that doctrine existed. I think, to the extent that I know anything about it, as one of the newer and younger ones to come along, … we simply do not know why that practice, that policy, that doctrine was in place…
[when asked to specify the folklore] Well, some of the folklore that you must be referring to are suggestions that there were decisions made in the pre-mortal councils where someone had not been as decisive in their loyalty to a Gospel plan or the procedures on earth or what was to unfold in mortality, and that therefore that opportunity and mortality was compromised. I really don’t know a lot of the details of those, because fortunately I’ve been able to live in the period where we’re not expressing or teaching them, but I think that’s the one I grew up hearing the most, was that it was something to do with the pre-mortal councils. …
But I think that’s the part that must never be taught until anybody knows a lot more than I know. … We just don’t know, in the historical context of the time, why it was practiced. …That’s my principal [concern], is that we don’t perpetuate explanations about things we don’t know. …We don’t pretend that something wasn’t taught or practice wasn’t pursued for whatever reason. But I think we can be unequivocal and we can be declarative in our current literature, in books that we reproduce, in teachings that go forward, whatever, that from this time forward, from 1978 forward, we can make sure that nothing of that is declared. That may be where we still need to make sure that we’re absolutely dutiful, that we put [a] careful eye of scrutiny on anything from earlier writings and teachings, just [to] make sure that that’s not perpetuated in the present. That’s the least, I think, of our current responsibilities on that topic. … “

It’s good to admit when you don’t know something. However, it’s strange that the Lord who “doeth nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” leaves those prophets with such embarrassing omissions.

Another: Why was God, who knew Joseph Smith was going to be killed, so fuzzy on who his successor should be? Isn’t that something that should have been revealed, so as to prevent the arising of splinter movements?

They want to promote themselves as sources of divine knowledge, but when it comes down to it, they peep, “We don’t know.” I want to repeat this: not only is religon no better than random chance at coming up with answers to temporal questions, it’s equally inept at coming up with answers for things in its own domain.

This leads us to an inexorable conclusion:

Having a prophet is a stupid and unreliable method of getting truth.

Let’s say you’re a god. You have a lot of spirit children (that’s us humans), and you want them to live with you for eternity. You’ve also decided that those who aren’t with you either have to live forever in Outer Darkness, or in varying degrees of separation from their eternal family. You know, for some reason. So this is serious stuff.

You’ve also decided, for some reason, that a key criterion for their salvation is whether they believe in you.

Let me just stop here and say that this is really odd. Why would belief be the key criterion? For an imaginary god, this would matter, since lack of belief kills imaginary gods. But for a real god, it wouldn’t matter whether people believed in her or not.

But anyway, you want to make sure that as many of your spirit children as possible believe in you. How would you go about this?

  • Appear to a large number of people, in some way that is easily verifiable.
  • Appear to one guy in one place, who no one is going to believe.

If you chose number two, you’ve chosen the least effective method, and the one also chosen by Jehovah / Jesus.

Why wouldn’t God try to communicate his existence as unambiguously as possible? Does he not want to be believed? Remember — the eternal salvation of his spirit children is on the line. Why is he being so cagey about verifying his existence? Why would he take the risk of making himself look like one man’s delusion?

The answer that Mormons typically give is faith. God doesn’t prove that he exists because he wants us to have faith in him (for some reason). Here’s LDS apologist Daniel Peterson with a representative quote:

Likewise, if God were to reveal himself directly and conclusively, he would destroy our freedom, so overwhelming would that revelation be.

Destroy our freedom! Gosh! That’s why he has to make his existence seem ambiguous. In fact, he could take it one step farther, and make himself as unbelievable as possible, in order to find those who have truly been able to bypass the rational mind and rely on faith 100%. (Which would explain several things about the LDS Church.)

But this is poppycock. When God was supposed to have appeared so unambiguously to Moses, did that destroy Moses’ agency? Did God appearing to Joseph Smith destroy his agency? Of course not. If God can appear to one person without destroying their agency, he can appear to multiple people in a verifiable way without destroying their agency. Or he could appear to everyone. Again, the salvation of billions is hanging in the balance.

Then believers try to have it two ways. On the one hand, they say, “God refuses to prove his existence because that would destroy agency.” On the other, they play up the resiliant nature of skepticism and doubt: “You could show people the Golden Plates, and they still wouldn’t believe you!” Which is it?

There is no reason for a god to work this way. There is, however, a very good reason for a person to work this way: pretending to be a prophet gives you a certain credibility among the credulous. Many people have made lucrative careers out of pretending to have God’s phone number.

Fortunately, the LDS Church is dropping the whole cumbersome prophet thing, and transitioning to using arguments from professional apologists, sending out PR flacks to deal with the media, and releasing carefully-worded statements via the First Quorum of the Newsroom.

Additional teaching ideas

No technology without the Restoration?

Mormons are happy to use technology when it benefits them. However, in this lesson the manual takes it a step farther, and claims that technological progress was explicitly designed to further the LDS Church.

You may want to read the following statement from Elder Joseph Fielding Smith to help class members understand the great benefit of these inventions in performing the work of the Lord:

“I maintain that had there been no restoration of the gospel, and no organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there would have been no radio; there would have been no airplane, and there would not have been the wonderful discoveries in medicine, chemistry, electricity, and the many other things wherein the world has been benefited by such discoveries. Under such conditions these blessings would have been withheld, for they belong to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times of which the restoration of the gospel and the organization of the Church constitute the central point, from which radiates the Spirit of the Lord throughout the world. The inspiration of the Lord has gone out and takes hold of the minds of men, though they know it not, and they are directed by the Lord. In this manner he brings them into his service that his purposes and his righteousness, in due time, may be supreme on the earth.
“ . . . I do not believe for one moment that these discoveries have come by chance, or that they have come because of superior intelligence possessed by men today over those who lived in ages that are past. They have come and are coming because the time is ripe, because the Lord has willed it, and because he has poured out his Spirit on all flesh” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1926, 117).

In other words, technological advancements happen, not because people think, work, experiment, and struggle through the creative process, but because some Bronze-age Hebrew tribal deity twiddles their brains without them knowing, and — whaddaya know! — airplanes and Internets. This man — who never created anything but silly explanations — takes everything people have made, and attributes it to his myth. What a sad trivialisation of human achievement.

But then let’s remember that this is a guy who typically underestimated the power of human thinking.

We will never get a man into space. This Earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it.
The moon is a superior planet to the Earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.
Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith at Stake Conference in Honolulu, May 14, 1961

And this is why Mormons like to say that television, radio, and the Internet were actually invented by God to spread the Mormon gospel.

“…100 years ago, people still traveled by horse and buggy. The age of the telephone and electricity was just dawning. There was no air travel, no E-mail, no fax machines, no Internet. There has been an explosion of secular knowledge. I believe that God has opened up these treasures of intelligence to enhance His purposes on the earth.”

If God (and not Al Gore) really did invent the Internet, maybe he should have thought again. The Internet is a factor in the demise of religions worldwide.

Ask: How has the Internet helped you in your deconversion?
Possible answers:

  • By making information possible, especially information about the real history of the church
  • By helping to form alternative communities with different interests, making the church community less appealing
  • By connecting us with people who offer support when we’re faced with the loss of our families and social group as a result of deconversion
  • By facilitating scientific knowledge through allowing collaboration

We are living in a time when more information is more available than ever before. Tellingly, the church has not benefitted from it.

Are we as concerned about poverty as Amos is?

Many of us used to donate to the LDS Church through tithing and fast offerings. If you are no longer donating to the church, have you taken any compensatory steps to alleviate poverty through your own giving?

Atheists are sometimes criticised for donating less to charities. This may be skewed, if religions automatically qualify as charities just for promoting a religion, whether they actually help anyone or not (which is the case in Australia) . But we could all be doing more than we do.

Here are some lists of secular charities:

Atheist Foundation of Australia
FreeThoughtPedia

When I stopped paying the church, and dumped my World Vision kid, I decided that I wanted to contribute to secular charities instead. My list skews a bit Australian; yours can reflect where you live.

Do you have worthy causes others should know about? Put them in comments.

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