Last week, Geisler and Turek started to tell us about the amazing messianic “prophecies” in the last several chapters of Isaiah, using Larry Helyer’s list of 14 detailed predictions plus an observation of their own. As we ran through the list of details, however, we noticed something odd: either the “predictions” were vague enough to apply to almost anyone, or else the messianic “fulfillment” consisted of believers simply attributing things to Jesus without there being any way for anyone to verify if they were really true.

Starting with item 12, though, things get a little more evangelical-sounding.

12. The Servant accepts vicarious and substitutionary suffering on behalf of his people (53:4-6, 12).

13. He is put to death after being condemned (53:7-9).

14. Incredibly, he comes back to life and is exalted above all rulers (53:10-12; 52:13-15).

In addition to Helyer’s observation, we note that the servant is also sinless (53:9).

A snippet here, a snippet there, and you can almost make the verses in Isaiah sound like a Gospel. But is that really what Isaiah intended? Who was Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant” anyway?

According to Geisler and Turek, the Suffering Servant was none other than the long-awaited Messiah.

Isaiah calls the Messiah the “servant of the Lord,” and he begins to refer to the Servant in chapter 42, in what is known as the first “Servant Song.” However the Servant is most often referred to as the “Suffering Servant,” because of the vivid description of his sacrificial death found in Isaiah 53.

As you read the passage (52:13-52:12), as yourself, “To whom is this referring?”

To reinforce their point, they quote the passage from Isaiah, then return to the story of Barry, the Jewish sports hero who became a Christian. They quote Barry’s testimony about his study of the Scriptures:

Being rather confused over the identity of the Servant in Isaiah 53, I went to my local rabbi and said to him, “Rabbi, I have met some people at school who claim that the so-called Servant in Isaiah 53 is none other than Jesus of Nazareth. But I would like to know from you, who is this Servant in Isaiah 53?”

…The rabbi said, “Barry, I must admit that as I read Isaiah 53 it does seem to be talking about Jesus, but since we Jews do not believe in Jesus, it can’t be speaking about Jesus.”

Personally, I’d like to hear the rabbi’s version of this story before commenting on what a brilliant response that was, but meanwhile, let’s look at the bigger question, in context.

What’s interesting is that Geisler and Turek present this passage, not in its original literary and historical context, but in the context of a story about a Jew converting to Christianity based on the words of Isaiah. The story emphasizes the point that Barry did not believe his own Scriptures could contain a testimony about Jesus, and being drawn reluctantly to the conclusion that it could not be anyone else. Even his rabbi (according to his post-conversion witness) could not find any other possible candidate. Which is strange, considering that Isaiah himself tells us exactly who the “Servant of the Lord” is in the last 27 chapters of the book.

“But you, O Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
you descendants of Abraham my friend,

I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, ‘You are my servant’;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you.

Reading from latter Isaiah and asking yourself who this servant is would be like visiting Grant’s Tomb and asking yourself who might be buried there. It’s not a terribly difficult mystery to solve. A slightly more interesting mystery would be to explore the last part of Isaiah in its historical and literary context, with a view towards understanding what it originally meant, and how it came to be co-opted into a future-looking Messianic expectation.

The last 27 chapters of Isaiah (that is, chapters 40-66) are regarded by some scholars as being the work of a “Deutero-Isaiah,” either an unknown scribe or possibly a second prophet also named Isaiah, who wrote near or shortly after the end of the Babylonian Captivity. Even conservative scholars have noticed the remarkable change in tone and focus between the first 39 chapters and the last 27. (My Bible college OT instructor declared that this was a striking and even prophetic parallel to the change in tone between the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New.) We’ll see in a moment some of the reasons why it makes sense that Isaiah II would be an Exilic or early Post-Exilic writer, rather than the original Isaiah of King Ahaz’s day.

First, though, let’s look at the Babylonian Exile, because that was a period of tremendous theological significance, and we’re never going to understand the writings of that period unless we understand what was going on in the minds of the prophets, priests and people of that time.

Before the Babylonian Captivity, the Hebrews were a henotheistic culture: they believed in the existence of many gods, but only worshiped and served one of them. In their minds, their God was tied to their land, both defining them as a nation, and giving the nation its strength. Within the borders of their God’s territory, He was supreme, and no other gods could intrude, nor foreign army triumph. This union of church and state provided Israel with a sense of community, national identity, and security.

Of course, this community, identity, and security were somewhat compromised when the kingdom split into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom, each with its own king. But still, you could at least say that God was sovereign within His own lands, even if those lands were not entirely friendly with each other all the time.

Enter the Assyrians. God’s nation had been attacked before, but had always managed to struggle through. If they were defeated, they paid tribute and put up with the occupying forces until they could be driven out, but they still maintained their national and religious identity. Assyria did something horrifically different, though: they scattered their captives, and replaced them with prisoners and refugees from other countries, mixing up the peoples, mingling their religions, and obliterating the national/cultural/religious boundaries. But only in the Northern Kingdom.  The Southern Kingdom, where God’s Temple was, managed to bribe, bluff, and otherwise manuver the Assyrians into letting them off (well, more or less).

With Babylon, though, the Southern Kingdom was not so lucky. As the Assyrians had done before, so the Babylonians did as well, carrying a large number of people off into captivity, and replacing them with settlers from other conquered lands. Worse, the Temple itself was devastated, and its gold and finery carried off as spoil.

How could this be? God Himself, supposedly sovereign within His own land, defeated by foreign invaders? God sitting idly by as His own Holy of Holies is desecrated by the uncircumcised? How could this be?

The military defeat of a nation was viewed by the ancient Middle Eastern people as the conquest and subjugation not just of the land and its people, but of its god(s) as well. We see this in the imagery Isaiah uses to describe the defeat of the Babylonians by the Medo-Persians.

Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low;
their idols are borne by beasts of burden.
The images that are carried about are burdensome,
a burden for the weary.

They stoop and bow down together;
unable to rescue the burden,
they themselves go off into captivity.

Bel and Nebo, of course, being some of the gods of the Babylonians. For a good Jew, this was an appealing image: as the pagan idols are loaded on carts and carried away, the pagan gods themselves are bowing down, stooping low in humiliation, and being taken away in their own captivity. And yet, how can the faithful Israelite not suffer just as great a humiliation over the conquest and captivity of his own God?

Exiled in foreign lands, separated from their Temple, exposed to the teachings of the Zoroastrians and other pagans, the nascent Pharisees conceived of a wonderful reinterpretation of their original faith: their God was not just their God, He was THE God, and the Captivity was not His defeat, but His punishment on Israel for their previous failure to realize the unique deity of Yahweh. Yeah, that was it. The whole thing was to purge and purify Israel of their belief in many gods, and to make them into true monotheists, in the Persian sense of monotheism.

Reading through Isaiah 40-66, it’s amazingly clear (to those who read the texts without putting their Messiah-tinted glasses on) that Isaiah is describing a major transition in the religious tradition of the Jews—a tradition that started during the Captivity and was still being felt centuries later, in the sectarian competition between the Pharisees (Farsis) and the Sadducees (followers of the older Temple traditions of Zadok the priest).

Isaiah, of course, is a champion for the Farsi Jewish interpretation of Judaism. Over and over he emphasizes how the past sufferings of the Servant are due to Jewish belief in “false” deities. He is not speaking in some “prophetic past tense” when he talks about how polytheistic Israel used to be, or how much they have suffered (both physically and in their loss of national prestige) in the recent past. He is describing his own current culture and national experiences. And he even says so.

You have heard these things; look at them all.
Will you not admit them?
“From now on I will tell you of new things,
of hidden things unknown to you.

They are created now, and not long ago;
you have not heard of them before today.
So you cannot say,
‘Yes, I knew of them.’

and

“I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes—
one from the rising sun who calls on my name.
He treads on rulers as if they were mortar,
as if he were a potter treading the clay.

Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know,
or beforehand, so we could say, ‘He was right’?
No one told of this,
no one foretold it,
no one heard any words from you.

I was the first to tell Zion, ‘Look, here they are!’
I gave to Jerusalem a messenger of good tidings.

If no one foretold it, then Isaiah himself is not foretelling, he’s just telling. From where he stands, it’s current events, the major story of the day. Read through his writings (i.e. chapters 40-66) and notice how many times he mentions the Servant being punished by physical violence and captivity, and the cause being idolatry, and how the suffering of the Servant was both the result and the atonement for the people’s sins, and how Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, was God’s chosen instrument to punish the Babylonians and turn Jacob’s suffering into redemption.

So how, then, does this rather clear and unmistakable contemporary commentary get turned into a Messianic prophecy? Quite simply because Isaiah, in his zeal to convert his fellow Jews to his new view of theology, got a bit carried away when he was writing down his promises about how great things would be once they converted. His monotheistic utopia didn’t just promise to restore national sovereignty to Israel, he promised that the desert would bloom, that the Gentile nations would all submit to Israel and would follow the light of Judaism, and the land would never again be punished by God (i.e. through conquest). Even the Servant’s children, born during the Captivity, would be so blessed that they would wind up complaining that they needed more room for their burgeoning families (which in itself is rather inconsistent with the desire to apply these prophecies to Jesus). And they would all live happily ever after.

Awake, awake, O Zion,
clothe yourself with strength.
Put on your garments of splendor,
O Jerusalem, the holy city.
The uncircumcised and defiled
will not enter you again…

To me this is like the days of Noah,
when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
never to rebuke you again.

(That’s Isaiah 52:1 and 54:9, for those who are looking up the verses.)

Unfortunately for the Jews, God forgot to tell Alexander the Great about the “happily ever after” part, and the Jews all too soon found themselves an occupied territory once again, with Greek priests sacrificing pigs on Yahweh’s altar. Hardly the reign of peace and prosperity that Isaiah promised. But wait! What if it wasn’t supposed to start yet? What if all of Isaiah’s promises related to some future Suffering Servant? That would explain the defeat, AGAIN, of God’s Chosen People, right? Right?

Yesterday I mentioned that today’s XFiles would provide a spectacular example of re-purposing Scriptures to suit new theological imperatives, but the last 27 chapters of Isaiah actually give us two: not just the re-casting of Deutero-Isaiah as a messianic prediction, but the whole reconstruction of ancient Mosaic Judaism from a henotheistic and nationalistic patron-deity arrangement into a Persian (or Farsi) styled monotheism with the added flavor of a divine war between Good and Evil, and a final judgment for all the world’s peoples based on whose side they were on.

It’s a theological revision whose impact and internal conflicts were still being felt in Jesus’ day, and beyond. Christians, to this day, cite passages from the latter portion of Isaiah as though Jesus were the only person Isaiah could have been talking about, and some Jews support them, even though it’s plainly written in the book itself that Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant” is Jacob/Israel being defeated and exiled because of the idolatry of the Zadokite Jews.

It’s not very often that I put a Bible passage on the Recommended Reading list, but in this case it’s irresistable. If you’ve never looked through this part of the Bible, take a look. The New International Version is fairly readable, and if you click on the single-arrow buttons at the top and bottom of the page, it’s easy to navigate from chapter to chapter. I promise, it will be most instructive. Reading through Isaiah 40-66 and not noticing that it’s about the Captivity purging Israel of polytheism is like reading Genesis 6-10 and not noticing that it’s about a large amount of water. The “Messiah” had nothing to do with it.

Recommended reading.

It is disrespectful to make unsupported accusations against people, e.g. by suggesting that their views are caused by an intrinsically corrupt and immoral nature. I have to say, though, that in my experience atheists like Dawkins are far less likely to make such accusations than to be the target of them. And while it may be tempting at times to think that “the other guy” is arguing out of some personal character flaw rather than a sincere desire to acknowledge the truth, I still think it’s better to debate respectfully, which (as Daylight Atheism points out) means presenting your case honestly, openly, and with a view to the facts.

Recommended reading.

Thanks also to PZ Myers for repeating the list on his blog Pharyngula. We’re seeing a nice bump in the stats right now thanks to these two mentions, and I appreciate it.

The discussion in the comments is particularly interesting as different people weigh in with their perspectives.

My first impulse is to say, “No, atheists should not build churches to atheism.” Atheism is a religion the same way not believing in Santa is a religion, and not being Republican is a political party, and not having a job is a career. Trying to force atheism into a religious framework is not going to work; there are going to be conflicts and inconsistencies as people find that they need to define what “atheistic beliefs” are, when atheism is fundamentally a variety of unbelief. If you’ve ever gotten into a discussion over the difference between atheism and agnosticism, you’ll know what I’m talking about here.

On the other hand, I can think of a variety of religions that would be perfectly consistent with atheism, and that would be a great idea. For example, why not worship Alethea? If you want a real God, you can’t beat Alethea. She has all the real power of the gods, She exists at all times and in all places, all wisdom and knowledge reside within Her, She is greater than or equal to any other god AND—unlike so many other gods—She actually shows up in real life. Alethea is the only God you can have evidence-based faith in, and is the God who actually performs all the wondrous works attributed to other gods (or at least the works that actually happened). If you want to build a church that atheists can support, build a temple to Alethea.

The thing is, religion is fundamentally a social mechanism, a way of using natural, social instincts to compensate for the uncertainties and information overload that routinely inundate us. There are too many real-life situations where we can’t hope to think our way through all the myriad and poorly-understood variables; we need to respond based on a feel for things, an approximate, probabilistic pattern-recognition.

Religion taps into our social instincts, which have evolved to cope with the myriad, poorly-understood variables of human social interactions and are thus uniquely adapted to address this particular need. By casting the complexities of life as a metaphorical relationship with a personified “higher power,” we can apply our predictive and adaptive social habits to the problem of coming up with timely and relatively reliable solutions to real-world problems with a large number of factors that are unknown and/or out of our control. And (speaking from experience here) this approach works just as well even if you know it’s just a metaphor.

I’ve prayed to Alethea and had Alethea “answer” my prayers, and it works just as well as praying to Jesus ever did. The personal trust that used to get me through trying times with Jesus’ help still gets me through similar circumstances with Alethea’s help. In fact, Alethea is even better, because I can see Her and I know She’s real, and that I have a solid foundation of real-world experience of Her as the basis for my faith. It’s not something you can analyze or reduce to an algorithm because the whole point of having a God named Alethea is to address the circumstances that cannot be analyzed and reduced to an algorithm. But it works. It’s a myth, not in the sense of being untrue, but in the sense of being a limited approximation of an incomprehensibly greater reality, made more accessible to humans.

This is why a church that tries to build itself around some impersonal concept, like science or freethought or “the cosmos,” will never thrive. It will never be more than an exercise in believer envy, because impersonal religion misses the whole point of having a religion. Without the social approach to analytically intractable problems, the religion has no advantages over non-religious disciplines like math and engineering. What people need and want is a system that takes their natural talent (social instincts) and harnesses it to solve real-world problems, without the difficult and time-consuming calculations and research and experimental testing. To do that, you need a personal deity, even if it’s a frankly mythical one.

I can’t support an atheistic church, but I can support a church that worships reality itself. Religion in and of itself is a healthy and adaptive solution to a genuine psychological problem. (It’s the superstitions and prejudices that taint common religions and inject them with poisonous beliefs and practices.) A practical, open-eyed religion based on reality itself would be a good thing and a positive contribution to society in general and freethought in particular. But it has to have a personal God, or it will never work.

The other error is more widespread. I was in effect accused of having a worldview that precluded the existence of God, and the audience was invited to compare that with my opponents, who had one that permitted God. But the simple fact is, I don’t have a worldview. In fact, neither do they. I don’t think worldviews exist. They are a gross oversimplification of what is actually going on inside people’s heads, and are mere abstractions. If one believes in God, one might still believe things that are inconsistent with a belief in God. Intellectual schemes are not whole cloth, and you can entertain incompatible ideas, and in fact I think you must, because nobody gets a simple set of coherent ideas handed to them at birth, free of all confounding beliefs.

Christians, who have an extensive body of traditional dogma which they like to reassure themselves is true and consistent, like to think also that everybody has something like this. Religions are “rationally reconstructed” as sets of dogma by the Christian tradition (e.g., when doing anthropology by missionary) when in fact there is no dogma at all, just stories, rituals, and ways of life. The idea that one has a worldview by necessity is one that is made by analogy with a false view of themselves…

Recommended Reading.

August 24, 2006

Rabbi Morris Kosman is entirely correct in summarily rejecting the demands of the Frederick Imam for a “dialogue.”

By blood and faith, Jews are God’s chosen, and have no need for “dialogue” with any gentile. End of “dialogue.”

And there’s more.

November 21, 2004

I would like to comment on the letter to the editor, “Wants off Christian Nation Express,” of Nov. 12.

I am certainly pleased that the writer is dedicated to service in the love of God, even though I find her theological focus on agony and suffering rather than the hope, joy and salvation of the resurrection to be puzzling.

Whether Americans like it or not, the results of the presidential election have propelled charismatic and evangelical Christians into new heights of political power. Many of those individuals would agree that the laws of this nation should be compatible with the Gospel, if not actually based upon it…

November 09, 2004

I read Deborah Carter’s column of Nov. 7, “Election blues,” and I have three comments for the good woman, and for everybody else, as well.

First, it’s clear that views like hers would put Jesus on that cross again. Second, thy loom and churn best be still, come the Sabbath. Third, you can get on board or get left behind, because that Christian Nation Express is pulling out of the station!

Ivins doesn’t come right out and say that he’s an evangelical Christian, but he sure doesn’t sound too unhappy with the prospect of an imminent theocracy. And while he does take a properly scientific view of the biological causes of homosexuality, he nevertheless shares a common conservative Christian conviction regarding Christian morality and its authority over non-Christians.

March 5, 1998

…Even before America was a nation, there was strong opposition to slavery from the religious group known as the Quakers, or the “Society of Friends.” They were steadfast in their belief that slavery was a sin, and this belief led them to be actively involved in the Abolitionist Movement and the “Underground Railroad” in this country.

We should all be thankful that these religious opponents were quite willing to “impose their moral views on others.”

In more recent times we need look no further than those ministers, rabbis and priests whose beliefs brought them to the forefront in the battle against forced, racial segregation in America. Despite real threats to life and limb, they persisted in their efforts to “impose their moral views on others.”

Today we frequently admonish people who oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide or capital punishment to keep their religious, moral, and philosophical beliefs to themselves.

Before dispensing such admonishments in the future, perhaps we should gratefully consider some of our country’s most courageous, historical figures who refused to do so.

Something to keep in mind should you hear any snide remarks about atheistic scientists, eh?

Recommended Reading.

Reading this article makes it easier to understand why religious fundamentalists of all faiths have so much difficulty in accepting the truth since they stand to lose everything, including their very identity.

Contrast this with Mike Adams’s claim that “Accepting Christianity… is far more likely [than Islam] to have come from a rational appraisal of the evidence. And it is far less likely to have come from the threat of the sword.” But there are other threats besides swords, and more compelling.

Science is supposed to be a collaborative activity. Why is it organized (and taught) as if it was a competitive activity? How does that affect science? Negatively, by increasing secretiveness and sometimes outright fraud.

The Web is changing all this. The teenagers already grok that the old selfish notions of intellectual property are going by the way of the dodo. They naturally think in terms of networks, not individuals. And thinking in term of newtorks as opposed to a linear, hierarchical, individualistic focus, is necessary for speeding up the advancement of knowledge and societal good.

In other words, it is not important what each individual knows or does, it is important what the interactions between individuals can do, and how the group or community (or global community) learns and acts upon the knowledge.

Thus, education, especially science education, from Kindergarden through post-doc and beyond, should be organized around collaborations, teaching people and letting them practice the networking skills and collaborative learning and action. Individuals will make mistakes and get punished by the group (sometimes as harshly as excommunication). They will learn from that experience and become more collaborative next time. The biggest sin would be selfish non-sharing of information.

Imagine trying to convince yourself that curling and cricket were more popular in the U.S. than baseball and (American) football.

But that’s not the good part.

He continues:

It wouldn’t be easy. You’d have to ignore massive evidence to the contrary while also overlooking the lack of any supporting evidence. Every time you walked down the street, you’d have to come up with some explanation or evasion for all those people you saw in baseball caps and football jerseys as well as for all the people you didn’t see in licensed apparel for cricket and curling teams. You could never watch Sports Center on ESPN. You could never pick up a newspaper or even walk near a newsstand. But your best efforts to shield yourself from all of that evidence could never be 100-percent effective (or 100-percent unconscious), so you’d also have to concoct increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories about why so many people pretended to follow football and baseball while millions of others apparently disguised their passion for curling and cricket.

That would be a lot of work. It would be difficult to do that much work without it being at least somewhat deliberate. This is the problem with any extensive self-deception — part of your self is necessarily engaged in the act of deceiving and is therefore aware of and immune to it.

Wow. When you think about it, that explains so many human behaviors that we see all the time. Brilliant!

A more intuitive way to explain this result is this: the test is highly accurate, but the disease is rare. Therefore, the vast majority of people who are tested won’t actually have it – and the number of false positives from that group, though small compared to the size of that group, is larger than the relatively small number of people who actually have the disease and correctly test positive.

Recommended Reading.

[T]rust in inerrancy is not a solution to the problem: it is a refusal to face the problem.

Recommended reading!

He seems to just presume that ridiculing someone’s race or gender is equivalent of ridiculing someone’s religious beliefs, but that presumption is clearly false. He is committing a category error here. The difference is that religion is an idea (more properly a set of ideas) and ideas, unlike race or gender, deserve criticism. Someone’s race or gender can’t be wrong or absurd, but their ideas certainly can.

Recommended reading.

Ask any observer of American politics today to name the most influential figures of the religious right, and some familiar names are likely to come up – Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, John Hagee, Tony Perkins, Roy Moore, and others. But one name that’s not as likely to appear is Francis Schaeffer. That is a regrettable oversight, because even though Schaeffer died in 1982, he is possibly the one person most responsible for the existence of the religious right as we know it today.

A most intriguing read. I’m adding it to the Recommended Reading list.

So let’s get this straight: If we don’t do what God says, God’s going to punish us by giving us bad leaders. How exactly will we tell?

Good question.

Here’s why Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech is backfiring: Bullies don’t respect their toadies.The speech includes some decent stretches, but it was not, primarily, a courageous plea for religious tolerance and mutual respect. It was, instead, primarily an obsequious bit of sucking up by an outsider hoping to curry favor with the in crowd by parroting their condemnation of other outsiders.

He has some interesting things to say about the fruit Romney is likely to reap from what he is sowing here, especially as a Mormon. Recommended Reading.

A federal appeals court has ruled that a voluntary faith-based prison program that has proven effective in reducing recidivism by half can move forward at an Iowa prison…

The ruling, by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Judges Roger Wollman and Duane Benton sitting as a panel for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed major parts of a district judge’s earlier ruling.

Meanwhile, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has what Paul Harvey calls “the rest of the story,” including a revelation that substantiates my earlier remarks about prison ministries: if they work, it’s because of the people, not because of God.

Despite the triumphalist spin from the WND, the ruling in this case is not a lot of good news for PF. The court found, among other things, that

• the prison was giving discriminatory rewards to prisoners based on professed belief (a classic 1st Amendment violation)
• the Prison Fellowship program was given the authority to issue disciplinary reports on inmates, resulting in prison-imposed punishments
• the court specifically ruled that PF flunked the Lemon test by providing special benefits to certain inmates based on belief
• the court also found that state aid was administered unconstitutionally
• the court explicitly rejected PF’s claim that per diem aid was indirect and therefore not unconstitutional
• the court sent the case back to the lower court

Big-time First Amendment violations going on, and plainly documented. This is going to be trouble for Colson’s group, especially if it ever makes it all the way to the Supreme Court. But there’s a part of this story that I find particularly interesting, and it concerns an inmate who was kicked out of the program despite the fact that he was making significant improvements. Ed Brayton quotes:

For example, in dismissing one inmate, the entire treatment team met and discussed his progress, concluding: “your conduct has been excellent according to security standards, and you are a hard worker. With you as a member you have always completed your work and assignments, however, you are not displaying the growth needed to remain in the program. Your Focus is not on God and His Son to Change you.”

Here we see very clearly two things. First, the improvements we sometimes see in prison programs like PF are the secular result of having a lot of concerned and caring people interacting with prisoners to give them support and guidance in the rehabilitation process. This inmate was responding well to the program, in terms of his improved behavior, despite the fact that his faith, if he had any, was weak at best. He was improving, but God was not part of the process.

The second thing we see is the real reason why people volunteer for PF: it’s not out of a desire to reform convicted criminals, it’s simply a desire to obtain some kind of validation for their own religious beliefs. Despite the glowing praise PF workers heap on the results of their program, if a prisoner comes along who fails to pay them back, by “giving God the glory,” he’s outa here. We don’t care how much he’s improving, if he won’t encourage us in our own religious superstitions, he can go to hell.

Prison Fellowship is not a charitable organization. The people who work there may well be doing some good, but their work is an investment, not a donation. They expect to be repaid, and the payment they demand is that prisoners have to help them prop up their sagging faith. Over all, I’d tend to say that PF may indeed provide some benefit, but their help is built on a shaky foundation, and probably won’t last, as it becomes more and more clear that this is just the work of man.

“Would you accept this ‘statement of scientific truth’? If God does not exist, it is impossible to scientifically prove this lack of existence.”

On the contrary, we can know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that God, as described by Christianity, does not exist.

Once again, all we need to do is to look at the principle that truth is consistent with itself, and therefore whatever is not consistent with itself, or with real-world truth, is not true. Christians describe God as a divine being, all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving, and all-knowing, Who has a desire to be with us forever–a desire so strong that He was willing (and able) to become human Himself, to walk among us, to die for us and to raise Himself from the dead. If such a God existed, however, there would be a number of immediately verifiable consequences of His abilities and desires. The most fundamental and obvious of these is that, having died and risen again to remove the barriers that separate us from Himself, He would now be here with us, and would abide here with us forever, in real life, in the real world.

It is universally true, however, that God does not show up in real life, not for saints, not for seekers, not for sinners. God, as described by Christians, fails to be consistent with real-world truth and/or with Himself, for He does not show up, which means one must either contradict His willingness to be here with us or one must contradict His ability to be here with us. These contradictions are irresolvable, and thus we can know that the Christian God, as described by Christians, is a non-truth.

All the biologists got together and, inspired by Darwinian writings, embarked on a campaign to sterilize those they perceived as unfit, the campaign known to us as Eugenics. From Eugenics grew other evils, such as Planned Parenthood, Modern Evolutionary Biology, and The Nazis.Or so intoned John West of the Creationist Discovery Institute…

It’s an entertaining and informative read (especially about the Hat Lady), and I’m putting it on the Recommended Reading list. What strikes me most about West’s talk is the way West (and DI in general, and creationists in general) demonstrate such a strong preference for Hitler’s views as opposed to the views of the vast majority of evolutionists and humanitarians.

West’s talk was the now-familiar rant claiming that the Holocaust was a direct result of Darwin’s discovery that new species can evolve from common ancestors via a process of variation and natural selection. Darwin’s discovery, however, is a morally-neutral observation. It says nothing about “inferior” species deserving to be exterminated, and certainly does not say anything about Jews being an “inferior race” that would allegedly be unfit to survive. This has been pointed out (in vain, apparently) many, many times by those who have actual training, experience, and expertise in evolutionary theory.

Hitler, however, did not believe (or did not care) what biologists have to say about evolution. Instead, Hitler adopted the outrageous interpretation that said anti-Semitism had a sound scientific basis, that exterminating Jews (and gypsies and homosexuals) was merely a practical application of evolutionary theory. This is complete nonsense of course. For one thing, there’s no scientific basis for distinguishing between Jews and the rest of the human species, let alone declaring them to be “unfit” for survival. Hitler is simply voicing his own deeply-held prejudices, and applying a thin veneer of “scientificism” by way of rationalizing his groundless and immoral policies.

What’s amazing about West, the Discovery Institute, and creationists in general, is that they all agree with Hitler. Evolutionists say that evolution does not justify genocide or anti-semitism, and Hitler claimed that it does, and the creationists all side with Hitler and reject the expert conclusions of the biologists.

Is there a latent anti-Semitism in creationism? Do creationists really believe that Jews are inherently an inferior race that would deserve immediate extermination if they were not under divine protection as God’s Chosen Race? It would be very easy for them to prove that they are not neo-Nazis under the skin. All they have to do is to admit that Hitler was wrong about evolution, and that there is no sound scientific basis for anti-semitism and genocide.

This is especially important given that Darwin’s theory of evolution is, indeed, a fact. The Discovery Institute’s own Mike Behe and Paul Nelson have admitted that new species do evolve from common ancestors via a process of variation and natural selection, and even the ever-petulant Bill Dembski has waffled at times regarding common descent. Creationists in general have started making a distinction between “microevolution” (what they call evolution within a Biblical “kind”) and “macroevolution” (what they call evolution between Biblical “kinds”). Even the $27million Creation “Museum” has an exhibit showing most modern species evolving from common ark-borne ancestors.

These people are not atheists. They’re not mindlessly kowtowing to the liberal elite educational authorities. They’re approaching the data from the most hostile and denialistic mindframe possible, and they’re still forced to concede that Darwin was correct about the biological processes of variation, natural selection, and evolution of new species from common ancestors. So Darwin was right, and therefore it makes a big deal whether or not you publicly declare your sympathy for Hitler’s doctrines about what ought to happen to Jews if evolution is true.

West also touched on the subject of eugenics, which is somewhat amusing since this is a thoroughly secular ethical issue. Not one word of Scripture or Apostolic Tradition even touches on the possibility of eugenics, let alone denouncing it as in any way unchristian. Christians must approach this issue the same way as anyone else: by a consideration of the consequences, in the light of our natural human sympathies.

Ironically, the Catholic Church has been practicing a form of voluntary eugenics for centuries. Every monk, nun, or priest who takes the Holy Orders also takes an oath of celibacy, effectively removing himself or herself from the gene pool. By its superstitious prejudice against sexual reproduction, the Catholic Church has created an artificial environment that selects against the characteristic of religious piety and devotion. Generation after generation, their most pious and devoted offspring are siphoned off and eliminated from the genetic resources available to the next generation, and today the Church is having trouble finding candidates for the priesthood, monasteries, and convents. Is this purely a social consequence that is entirely unrelated to many generations of selective breeding? Hmmmmm.

Tiny Lebanon baffles outsiders. Even people in the Middle East find its politics confusing.

If Lebanon is so tiny, though, then why should America care? Well, apart from the humanitarian reasons, little Lebanon is farther along a road that many people would like to take the United States.

Lebanon is a state troubled by polarization and sectarianism. In fact, most of the polarization is sectarian. It’s the Jews vs. the Muslims vs. the Christians, with about another 15 significant sects thrown into the mix–and that’s just the officially recognized religions. Mutual suspicion and mutual intolerance have more than once flared up into actual violence, from the odd bombing or kidnapping to outright civil and regional war, as the different sects have fought over whose religion was going to control the government.

And the trouble is that none of these religions have a God who would be willing and able to show up in real life to resolve any of these disagreements over who is right about Him. It’s purely a tribal conflict, each group seeking to enhance its own political (and military) power in order to establish dominance through purely human forces. With a head nod to God, of course. No matter how hard you work to produce the result you want, in the end you claim God did it.

In the meantime, the threat of another civil war looms, as it always has, just over the Lebanese horizon. It’s a sad state of affairs, with no readily available remedy, and it’s a situation that is not entirely inconceivable even in the United States. Many commentators and political leaders are already working to create a similar atmosphere of sectarian polarization, with their talk of a “war” on Christmas (because some people say “Happy Holidays”) and an “assault” on marriage (because some people want to marry partners that Christians don’t approve of).

Don’t get me wrong: we’re a long way from being Lebanon, and I don’t foresee this happening anytime next week or anything. But every step down that road is a step in the wrong direction. We need to change our direction, turn away from sectarian government, and towards greater tolerance and secularism. After all, Lebanon is not that far away.

No matter who becomes the next president of the United States, the American people have already won a great victory – with the total disintegration of the once all-powerful religious right.

The author, Bill Press, goes on to document how the inevitable disintegration of religion-based politics is finally starting to turn the Christian voting bloc against itself, with results that are bad for the Republicans but good for America. Did WND really mean to print that? As peculiar as it seems to put WND on the Recommended Reading list, I have to say it’s an excellent read.

If your name is Sam Harris, you may produce two fatuous volumes entitled The End of Magic and Letter to a Wiccan Nation. Daniel Dennett would then grapple helplessly with the origins of sorcery in his aptly named, Breaking the Spell. Richard Dawkins — whose bias against witches, warlocks, and even alchemists has long been known — will follow these books with an arrogant screed entitled, The Witch Delusion. And finally Christopher Hitchens will deliver a poisonous eructation at book-length in The Devil is Not Great.

What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter?

He then proceeds to take critical reviews of recent anti-Christian books, and substitutes witchcraft for Christianity, Devil for God, and skeptic for atheist, to see if it changes the logic or relevance of the arguments in any way. Guess what?

A great article, and highly recommended reading.

I wanted to gather in one spot a handful of interviews with Pullman. I have to imagine that there is a list somewhere with them, but I could not find them. They all make for interesting reading and I have drawn some excerpts from them.

The rest of the post consists of Pullman interviews and they are indeed interesting reading, especially his reactions to Narnia (which I used to love when I was I Christian–I’d read through one book in one sitting and then sigh and think, “Now why can’t the real Jesus be more like Aslan?”). Anyway, highly recommended reading, so be sure and stop by.

Jim Babka sent me a great article from an orthodox Christian source that well understands America’s Civil Religion is not Biblical Christianity. Writing about the tension between America’s civil religion and orthodox Christianity is one of my specialities. In my last post I noted President Bush’s notion that all religions worship the same God “may not be an authentically Christian belief, but it is an authentically American belief.” This article explains the tension in detail…

What a great insight! People who advocate “One Nation Under God” and other such establishments need to be made aware of the fact that what they’re establishing is not Christianity but Civilianity: a pseudo-Christian cult that has the form of godliness but denies its power. For example, when President Bush teaches that all gods are the same God, that’s Civilianity, not Christianity. When Justice O’Connor writes that “under God” in the pledge is merely a historical relic of purely ceremonial deism, that’s Civilianity, not Christianity.

Civilianity as a competing religion seeking to displace Christianity as our national religion. That’s an insight that just might help some of our fundamentalist friends understand why it’s in their own best interests to build up the wall of separation instead of trying to tear it down.

To insist that faith is required for one to reject claims about my neighbor’s gnome, unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, Odin, angels, or gods misses the mark completely. The individual who refuses to accept such claims need not offer any sort of claim of his or her own. All he or she is doing is pointing out that the evidentiary burden has not been met.

It’s a good post, and I recommend that you drop by and have a look at the whole thing. He’s arguing that “an atheist’s faith” is like the variety of apple you have when you don’t have an apple (as one commenter at another good blog phrased it). But my recent discussion with the Manawatu Christian Apologetics Society leads me to believe that there’s a better answer.

As I told Mr. Admin at the MCAS, I have an evidence-based faith, which is to say a warranted faith. If we step outside of the religious arena for a moment, and look at the topic of faith and trust, we’ll see that there are two kinds: warranted (good) faith, and unwarranted (bad) faith. If you’ve sat down on enough chairs, and they’ve held you up, you trust that the next chair, which you’ve never sat in before, will also support you. Your faith is based on real-world experience, and on the principle that the truth is consistent with itself. Your faith is warranted, because it corresponds to real-world truth, and is consistent with it.

On the other hand, sometimes people put their trust in things that don’t have a solid, evidence-based warrant. Sometimes, in fact, people put their faith in promises people make when the evidence suggests that the promise will not, in fact, be kept. This is bad faith, unwarranted faith, the kind of faith that deceives and disappoints you. Truth is consistent with itself, and this self-consistency is an important factor to consider when deciding what we should, or should not, put our faith in. When we base our faith on well-documented and well-verified evidence, we have a solid and reliable basis for our faith, and can reasonably call it a warranted and justified faith. And conversely when we believe things for which there is no evidence, when we put our faith in things for which a substantial body of evidence should exist, and doesn’t, then that’s poor faith, unwarranted faith. It is, in fact, gullibility dressed up as faith.

It should be clear that, if the atheist and the Christian both have faith, it’s not the same kind of faith: the atheist’s evidence-based faith is well justified and warranted, whereas the Christian takes it as a point of spiritual pride that he “walks by faith, not by sight”–that is, he holds his faith in higher regard precisely because it is not supported by evidence. This is gullibility masquerading as faith. It’s not a sound inference based on repeated real-world verification, it’s a disdain for the principle of consistency with real-world truth, and pride in the spiritual “coup” one has accomplished by willfully putting his faith in the unrealistic and inconsistent things men say about God.

Atheists have denied for ages that they’ve got faith. Maybe it’s time they responded instead by educating the general public about the difference between evidence-based faith, and mere gullibility.

[E]ating and drinking could be a bit difficult as well. No Coke or Pepsi, they both got 100. Nothing from Kraft or General Mills, which wipes out about half the products in the supermarket. No Budweiser. For crying out loud, even Coors, typically a friend to conservatives, has been corrupted by the forces of buggery and scores a perfect 100. And even that old American standy, Campbell Soups, got a 95.

If you haven’t already, be sure and stop by Ed’s blog for the full story.

The IDers have proposed the designer hypothesis, thus the onus is on them to devise falsifiable experiments to support that position. It has long been the position of scientists and philosophers who have examined the ID claims that no such experiments are possible, because the Designer could do anything at any time for any reason. This is why ID fails to qualify as science.

Have a look at the whole post, it’s a good one.