Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: evasion of personal responsibility

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 27 (Resurrection)

26 July 2015 / / Comments Off on NT Lesson 27 (Resurrection)

“He Is Not Here, for He Is Risen”

Matthew 28; Luke 24; John 20–21

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show contradictions in the resurrection story, and to encourage readers to seek evidence for extraordinary claims.

Reading

This lesson is about the pivotal event of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus. I say it’s pivotal because if it didn’t happen, then there’s no point to Christianity at all. And Paul says as much.

1 Corinthians 15:14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

This really came home to me when my father passed on. I realised that I was the grown-up now, and I had to decide how I was going to live. And if there was a life after this, or no life after this, I wanted to know it. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you don’t care about defending the story you’ve always lived by, and you just want to know if you’re right or wrong. Well, at this point, I wanted to know if I was right or wrong.

So for me, the crucial question became: Did the resurrection of Jesus happen?

And my answer: Of course not. Why would it? Don’t be a credulous nincompoop. People don’t just get up from being totally dead. When has that ever happened in all of human experience? Never. So if someone wants to convince me that it really happened, thry’re going to need better evidence than copies of documents. And as Sam Harris points out, that’s all we got.

Bible scholars agree that the first gospels were written decades after the life of Jesus. Decades.

And of course, we don’t have the original manuscripts. We have copies of copies of copies of ancient Greek manuscripts which have thousands — literally thousands — of descrepancies between them, many of which show signs of later interpolation, which is to say that people added passages that then became part of the canon. There are whole books of the canon, like the book of Revelation, which for hundreds of years were not included because they were deemed false gospel. There are other whole books, like the Shepherd of Hermas, which you probably haven’t heard of, but for centuries it was considered part of the canon, and then was later jettisoned as false gospel.

Generations of Christians lived and died being guided by gospel that is now deemed both incomplete and mistaken. Think about that. This process, this all too human process of cobbling together the supposed authoritative word of god is a very precarious basis to assert the claims of Christianity. But the truth is, even if we had multiple contemporaneaus claims of the miracles of Jesus this would not be good enough. Because miracle stories abound even in the 21st century. The devotees of the South Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba ascribe all of the miracles of Jesus to him. He reads minds, he fortells the future, he heals, he raises the dead, he was born of a virgin. Sathya Sai Baba is not a fringe figure. You may not have heard of him, but they had a birthday party for him a few years ago and a million people showed up. There are vast numbers of people that think he is a living god.

So Christianity is predicated on the claim that miracle stories — exactly of the kind that today surround a person like Sathya Sai Baba — become especially credible when you place them in a pre-scientific religious context of the first century roman empire, decades after their supposed occurance, as attested to by copies of copies of copies of ancient Greek and largely discrepant manuscripts. We have Sathya Sai Baba’s miracle stories attested to by thousands upon thousands of living eye witnesses and they don’t even merit an hour on cable television. And, yet, you put a few miracle stories in an ancient book and half the people on Earth think it a legitimate project to organize their lives around. Does anyone else see a problem with that?

Actually, yes, I do.

Speaking of “largely discrepant manuscripts”, we’re going to see how the stories in the gospels are hopelessly confused as to the details of the resurrection. Here’s a helpful infographic.

This was God’s opportunity to report the facts of the case, and it resembles nothing more than a mishmash of human fabrication.

So how does Christianity paper over this? The surprising answer: By expecting you not to demand any evidence for its claims, and by telling you that you’ll be blessed if you believe without evidence. How about that?

Main ideas for this lesson

Rolling away the stone?

Let’s start at the beginning: In the morning, two Marys (and a Salome, if you believe Mark) were heading to the tomb.

Matthew 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.

Mark 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

Other Mary: Why do I have to be ‘other Mary’?
Mary: You’re not married to Jesus.
Other Mary: Well, you’re not married to Jesus!
Mary: (silence)

I don’t know what they thought they were going to do; there was supposed to be a huge stone there. But then Matthew reports a second huge earthquake that no one else noticed, and an angel rolls away the stone.

Matthew 28:2 And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.

Already we have a fail. Round tomb stones weren’t really a thing at the time. They wouldn’t be popular until about 70 CE, which supports the idea that this was a later addition. Richard Carrier notes:

There is another reason to doubt the tomb burial that has come to my attention since I first wrote this review: the tomb blocking stone is treated as round in the Gospels, but that would not have been the case in the time of Jesus, yet it was often the case after 70 C.E., just when the gospels were being written. Amos Kloner, in “Did a Rolling Stone Close Jesus’ Tomb?” (Biblical Archaeology Review 25:5, Sep/Oct 1999, pp. 23-29, 76), discusses the archaeological evidence of Jewish tomb burial practices in antiquity. He observes that “more than 98 percent of the Jewish tombs from this period, called the Second Temple period (c. first century B.C.E. to 70 C.E.), were closed with square blocking stones” (p. 23), and only four round stones are known prior to the Jewish War, all of them blocking entrances to elaborate tomb complexes of the extremely rich (such as the tomb complex of Herod the Great and his ancestors and descendants). However, “the Second Temple period…ended with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In later periods the situation changed, and round blocking stones became much more common” (p. 25).

Appearances

Jesus then appears to different people in contradictory and mutually exclusive ways. Rather than recount it, I refer to this portion of our infographic.

If that’s not enough for you, I have this PDF file from my good friend David Austin. (He should get a blog.) Click the image to download a copy for yourself.

Thomas and doubt

Jesus appears to the rest of the apostles. And since it’s John, notice the “fear of teh Jooz”. He’s always on about the Jews.

John 20:19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

Good so far, except Thomas wasn’t there. And he won’t believe it until he sees it.

John 20:24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
20:25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Good on him. He’s demanding the kind of evidence that’s required to support a claim. That’s what a person should do.

John 20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

Thomas believes, but at least he’s doing it right. He wants evidence, he gets it, and he changes his mind.

But now here’s Jesus with the kicker.

John 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

Here we have it, folks. This is the one that I count as the worst verse in scripture. Jesus is saying that evidence is fine, but no evidence is just as good. Maybe even better.

By insisting that believing without evidence is somehow on a par with believing with evidence, Jesus takes the metric that rational people use to evaluate claims, and turns it on its head. If we all did this, there’s no limit to the mutually exclusive and contradictory claims we could believe. To accept this way of thinking is to abandon reason.

Imagine how irresponsible it is for a god to demand this. Here we are in our short lives, having to choose the right religion or philosophy or story among tens of thousands, and if you get it wrong, it’s no salvation for you. Those are serious consequences (which God has set out). A responsible parent would spell out the evidence for his gospel fairly clearly. God doesn’t do that. Instead, he expects you to pick one without adequate reasons, and hope you got it right. To be fair, he also is supposed to give out feelings, the nature of which can easily be misunderstood, and which are experienced by followers of all religions. Otherwise, good luck.

This theme of not needing evidence is often taken up by believers I’ve met. When I ask for evidence, they never provide it. Instead, they make excuses for why I shouldn’t expect evidence, or they tell me why I should accept substitutes for evidence (like feelings). Strangely, they don’t seem to see how this is an evasion of the responsibility to back up what they say.

Read this excerpt from The Ethics of Belief, written by William K. Clifford in 1877

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

Ask: How does the LDS Church encourage people to “avoid the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss” church doctrines?
Answers: By avoiding material that is not “inspiring”, and by labelling books and people who tell the truth about the church as “anti-Mormon”.

Ask: How is the refusing to confront doubts “one long sin against mankind”?
Answer: One of the most important things we can do in life is to advance our collective knowledge. Doing this helps create technologies that can cure illness, sustain life, and improve the quality of living. But this only works if we make reality the metric against which we compare other ideas. Accepting false beliefs means that we stop advancing, and start retreating, and this helps humankind not at all.

I’d like to take a moment and bear my testimony of doubt. Doubt is amazing! Doubt has helped me figure out what’s true and what’s false far better than faith can. Having faith just confirms what you believe, whether it’s right or not. It’s like a compass that always points in the way you’re going. What good is that? It might be okay if you’re trying to feel good about your beliefs, but if you’re trying to find out what’s true, it’s no use at all.

By contrast, doubt won’t hurt true claims (as long as you understand the kind of evidence required to establish a claim). However, it’s lethal to false ones.

Why’s it have to be snakes?

Jesus eventually jet-packed back up to heaven, but before he did, he left this instruction:

Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Poison aside, let’s talk about the snakes. This scripture has resulted in generations of pastors dying in snake-handling churches of the American South.

Snake-handling preacher Cody Coots got scared when the 6-foot long rattler bit his right hand early Monday.

Just three months ago, his father, Jamie Coots, died within minutes of being bitten by a rattlesnake during a service at his Middlesboro church.

 The loss was still fresh for his family and friends, and Cody Coots, who took over for his father, had just been bitten by an even bigger rattler.

At first, “All I could think about — am I going to make it?” Coots said.

…

Jamie Coots, 42, was handling three rattlesnakes during a Saturday-night service at the church when one bit him on the right hand. Jamie Coots had survived more than half a dozen previous bites, but that night the venom quickly overwhelmed him.

His legs buckled in the bathroom at the church after he murmured “Sweet Jesus,” said Andrew Hamblin, a snake-handling minister from Tennessee who was with him.

People at the church rushed Coots home. He had made clear earlier that he did not want medical attention for a bite; his family sent an ambulance crew away as believers prayed over him.

A deputy coroner pronounced Coots dead about 90 minutes after he was bitten.

This raises all kinds of questions for me.

  • When someone dies from a snake bite in these churches, why don’t they take it as a sign of the victim’s lack of faith?
  • Why do they pray for the person to get better? Is that supposed to be some kind of Plan B, in case of lack of faith?
  • And where are all the poison-drinking churches? Did they used to exist, but poison worked more reliably than snakes?

Then there’s this quote:

“If you don’t understand it, don’t knock it,” said Hamblin, who was close to Coots. “We adhere to the literal interpretation of the Gospel.”

I think I do understand it. They believe the Bible, and that is a terrible and costly mistake. However, unlike most believers, they take the claims of the Bible seriously. Well, one of them.

NT Lesson 25 (Gethsemane)

4 July 2015 / / 4 Comments

“Not My Will, But Thine, Be Done”

Matthew 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; Luke 22:39–46

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To explain that the concept of the Atonement makes no sense and is immoral.

Reading

Jesus is about to be captured, so he heads to the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. They fall asleep, but Jesus can’t bear to wake them because they’re so cute when they’re sleeping like that! But it’s Atonement time, so Jesus knows it’s time to…

Apparently, in a way that’s so amazing that we humans can’t possibly understand it, Jesus suffered for a while, and this meant that everyone’s sin was paid for. It was an infinite atonement and an infinite sacrifice; it stretched forward and backwards in time to pay for all the sins of — not just every human who ever lived or will live — but it also paid for the sins of everyone on all the planets in all the solar systems in all the galaxies in the universe.

It sounds like the whole process took about an hour.

Main ideas for this lesson

Jesus tries to pike out

Jesus falls on his face and prays, asking if the whole torture-and-death thing is really necessary.

Matthew 26:39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

This one’s for all the trinitarians.

Actually, Jesus’ question was a pretty good one. Why was Jesus’ torture and death necessary?

Let’s take that up in a minute. But first, blood.

Blood from every pore?

There’s a rather ambiguous simile here in Luke. Sweat, or blood?

Luke 22:44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Mormons have taken the blood idea and run with it. In particular, the D&C takes the “blood from every pore” idea very seriously.

D&C 19:18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

Well, this verse seems to have been a later addition. It doesn’t appear in early versions of Luke. Kyroot explains the implications in reason 171.

These verses do not appear in the oldest manuscripts of Luke and are clearly a later addition. This presents two problems. First, it is another example of tampering with the scriptures, one that was detected only because it occurred later than the dates of the earliest manuscripts. Keep in mind that there is a sizable time gap between the original manuscripts and the oldest ones that have been recovered, so many other examples of scripture tampering may exist but cannot be identified at this time.

Second, it presents an unlikely scenario, for if Jesus was fully divine, he would have known all that was about to happen, would be prepared for it, and would therefore not be in a mental state of agony requiring assistance from an angel.

Problems with the Atonement

The story of Jesus having to suffer and die so everyone could be forgiven of sins has been around for a long time. We’ve all heard about it so often that we hardly think about it.

Once you do think about it, however, the incoherence becomes obvious. And there are so many ways that this story fails to hold together that I’ve made a rather long list.

There are other lists out there — a similar one is at Patheos — but here’s mine.

The suffering was unnecessary

Why didn’t God just forgive everyone? He could have.

The idea comes up in this early episode of Mr Deity:

Instead, he decided to have his son tortured and murdered so he could feel okay about having a relationship with us again. Isn’t that a bit strange?

There have been some attempts to answer this, and the responses center around God’s fairness and sense of justice. Simply forgiving everyone would have short-circuited God’s sense of justice — and yet, strangely, punishing some other guy and then forgiving everyone was totes okay.

These responses can be dealt with very simply. Just keep asking this question: Was it possible for God to find a way to forgive everyone in a way that

  • didn’t violate God’s sense of justice?
  • didn’t upset God’s sense of equilibrium?
  • didn’t involve Jesus’ torture and death?

If so, why didn’t he? And if not, then he’s not all-powerful.

Another line of explanation says that God had to have Jesus tortured and killed because doing so fulfilled some greater “principle”, and this principle could not have been fulfilled in any other way.
If that’s the case, then why worship God? Again, he’s not all powerful, since there are principles that are more all-mighty than he is. Why not just worship the “principles”, since God is clearly subordinate to them?

The nature of the “debt” is never explained

What exactly is this debt? People keep describing this in terms of “Jesus paying the debt for sin” or “paying the price for sin”.

From the LDS manual:

Elder Marion G. Romney: He paid the debt for your personal sins and for the personal sins of every living soul that ever dwelt upon the earth or that ever will dwell in mortality upon the earth.

And so it’s very common for Mormons to use a monetary metaphor. Here’s the one suggested by the LDS manual.

Boyd Packer’s story: “The Mediator”
Elder Boyd K. Packer used a parable to teach about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ frees us from sin as we repent and obey the commandments. You may want to share this parable to help class members understand the need for the Atonement.

A bit of background: The late Boyd Packer was the church’s foremost homophobe. He inveighed against threats to the church, notably feminists, homosexuals, and “so-called scholars or intellectuals”. He was in church leadership for 50 years, and during that time fostered the kind of anti-gay climate that doubtless led to the suicides of numerous LGBT Mormon kids. He decried “Satan and his substitute counterfeits for marriage”, and denied that homosexuality was preset, saying, “Not so! Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, he is our father.”

Upon his death, the world instantly became a better place.

Anyway, if somehow you’re unfamiliar with the “mediator” analogy, here’s the video.

Or you don’t like being bored and lied to, here’s the short version.

  • Person A incurs a debt to Person B, and can’t repay it.
  • Person B threatens to throw person A into prison.
  • Person C steps in, pays the debt, and allows Person A to repay on more manageable terms.

Ask: In this metaphor, who are Persons A, B, and C?
Answer: A and C are a snap. Person A is all of us, and Person C is Jesus.

But what often gets glossed over is the identity of Person B. Who is it?

It can’t reasonably be anyone other than God. So now we have a situation where God wants to throw you in prison, and Jesus intervenes. But Jesus and God are supposed to be on the same side. Instead, they’re playing good cop / bad cop. Why the games? This situation, which we all seem to have been railroaded into at birth, is a set-up.

Ransom

Jesus’ sacrifice is described as a “ransom”. From Joseph Smith, via President Newsroom:

The glorious news, the glad tidings is that Christ our Lord has come to earth, offered Himself as a ransom from sin and made available deliverance from death and hell.

A ransom to whom? Who is demanding this sacrifice? Again, if God is in control here and set up this system, as believers claim, then God is in the role of a kidnapper. I don’t want to worship a kidnapper.

And another similar point: when you pay a ransom, you don’t get the money back. The kidnapper keeps it. Kyroot again (point 63):

The central concept of Christianity is that Jesus died on the cross as a final sacrifice to allow his followers to receive it vicariously and thus be washed of sin for entry into heaven.

But whereas a sacrifice means losing something permanently, Jesus lost nothing. He came back three days later good as new. So, in effect, there was no sacrifice.

The foreknowledge of Jesus is another problem. There he was, telling everyone how his body would be destroyed, and he would rise again in three days. If he knew that he was going to suffer for a few hours, be dead for a weekend, and then become a god and sit at the right hand of the father for eternity, then the whole proposition begins to look less like a sacrifice and more of a career move.

Many people suffer intense pain for a lot longer than Jesus reportedly did. Pseople with cancer or AIDS suffer for months and months; Jesus just had a rough couple of days.

Nothing more should be required

If God demanded a sacrifice and got it, then why should anything more be required of me, like belief or obedience? God’s got the sacrifice he wanted, and we’re done.

When I pay off a debt (say, a mortgage), then my obligation to the bank is over when the money is paid, and there’s nothing more for me to do. The bank doesn’t demand that I “believe” in it or “accept” it into my heart.

In short, the sin-debt metaphor maks no sense. It makes me wonder if people who use this metaphor even understand the idea of ‘money’.

We “can’t understand”

When I point out these inconsistencies, believers respond that the workings of this are somehow “incomprehensible”. They respond that we can’t “understand” it.

Elder James E. Talmage taught: “Christ’s agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. . . . He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. . . . In that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world,’ could inflict. . . . In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world” ( Jesus the Christ, 3rd ed. [1916], 613).

Now this is not quite right. This is the central tenet of Christianity, so if any element of Christian doctrine should be well-understood, this should be it. Yet even professional Christianity explainers can’t explain it satisfactorily, often kicking the can down the road and saying that we’ll understand it “someday”.

If it can’t be understood, fine. It can’t be understood. So don’t keep telling it to others like you do understand it.

These are the kinds of things that believers never seem to think through. It makes no sense, but they don’t seem to notice.

Vicarious suffering for sin is immoral

Sacrificing oneself for someone else is a very common theme in literature. It shows up in everything from A Tale of Two Cities to Frozen.

That’s one thing. But in Christianity, this idea of making an innocent scapegoat pay for the consequences of your actions is a massive evasion of responsibility.

What must go through a believer’s mind? “I can avoid the consequences of my actions by having some innocent guy get tortured? Sign me up!”

As Christopher Hitchens said:

I’ll take your place on the scaffold, but I can’t take away your responsibilities. I can’t forgive what you did, I can’t say you didn’t do it, I can’t make you washed clean. The name for that in primitive middle eastern society was “scapegoating.” You pile the sins of the tribe on a goat, you drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. And you think you’ve taken away the sins of the tribe. This is a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and all morality must depend.

For that matter, when in the world has human sacrifice ever been a solution for anything? Hitchens again:

You said in a debate with Richard Dawkins, I have it down, you said that the great thing about God is He knows what it’s like to lose a son. Now I want you ladies and gentlemen to ponder that expression for just a moment. First, it’s self-evidently—if the story is true, which I don’t think it is—it’s self-evidently not the case, even in the narrative. He doesn’t lose a son, He lends one. He doesn’t offer one because no one’s demanded it. There’s no problem that has so far been identified in the human species that demands a human sacrifice. For what problem, for what ill is this a cure? There’s no argument, there’s no evidence that there is. No, it’s imposed upon you. I’m doing this because the prophets said I would and I’m going to have the boy tortured to death in public to fulfill ancient screeds of Bronze Age Judaism. But wait, I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I don’t feel better for it. I feel very uneasy about it. Well that’s a pity, because then you’re going to be cast into eternal fire. This is no way to talk. I don’t like to be addressed in that tone of voice.

The idea of the Atonement — putting our sins onto a scapegoat — makes absolutely no sense, even on its own terms. The story doesn’t hold together on any level. It does, however, make a lot of sense in terms of cultural evolution. For someone who’s in a culture that accepts the idea of animal sacrifice, the sacrifice of God’s son would be a natural extension of the idea.

Thankfully, we do not live in such a culture. I do not accept that human sacrifice is moral, and I don’t accept that I must become complicit in the torture and death of an innocent person to become cleansed of my imperfections.

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