The LORD shall rejoice in his works

My Little Bird concatenates the following picture:

Tossing out the changeling with the bath water

The truth is rarely pure and never simple at No Concept of Liberty reminds us of the delightful tale retold in Judges 19:

the first guy pushes his concubine out of the house and the mob gang-rape her through the night. By the time morning comes, the concubine is one the verge of death. She collapses on the floor outside the house, with one hand on the threshold. When her husband discovers her in this state, and when she does not give any response when he tells her to get up, he loads her onto his donkey and heads home. Thereafter, he cuts her body up into twelve pieces and sends one piece to each tribe of Israel.

(Graphic depiction courtesy of The Brick Testament)

He concludes:

So really the correct response when reading these things is not to try to argue them away by explaining how they are really about showing hospitality or whatever. The correct response is to regard them as the rabid tales of some barbaric ancient tribe and then toss them out of the window.

Some might argue that the passage ends with the words: "Everyone who saw it said, 'Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!'" (NIV), which is hardly approving of the deed. Yet, the mere fact that the conclusion of this sordid tale is absent of any trace of moral condemnation at all is a deafening indictment, considering how verbose the Old Testament is about condemning sin or what JHVH finds distasteful.

The problem, then, is deciding which bits of scripture to keep, and which to dump. For if everyone starts dumping the bits of the bible that they dislike or find repulsive, different people will have different views about which parts are veracious, and no one will have any idea who is right. In the final analysis, what's to stop you from throwing the whole thing out of the window?

Which is one of the main reasons why fundies decide to keep everything, and explain it away with intellectual suicide.

Far better, I think, to toss out the changeling with the bath water and find a real human.


(Cross-posted to Balderdash)

The Canonicity of the Bible

I just saw a notice on the front page of Wesley Church's website.

Exactly which books constitute the Scripture? Why do the Roman Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox have different books that they regard was scripture? How were these documents admitted into the bible? What were the criteria for doing so? Register now at the Info Counter and find out the answers to these questions and more. 20 & 27 October 2005, 7.30-9.30pm...

I'm going to sign up, anyone wants to come along? I've always wondered, how come I can't write a book, and persuade the Committee that compiles the books of the Bible to include my book in it? ;)

Pascal's Wager revisited

One of the more commonly heard "reasons" to believe in the Christian god is Pascal's Wager. Simply, if you believe in the Christian god and he doesn't exist, you lose nothing. If you believe in him and he does, you gain everything. Meanwhile, if you don't believe in him and he doesn't exist, you lose nothing, but if you don't believe in him and he does, you suffer for eternity.

Many objections to this simplistic argument can be found, but more novel and interesting is an alternative wager postulated by a Darwin Bedford, the "Atheist Messiah and Spiritual Reality Therapist:

1. If you don't believe in God and you are wrong, after you die, so long as you have lead a moral life you should have nothing to fear. A compassionate god would not punish you for guessing which religion had an exclusive handle on the truth.

2. If you believe in God and you are wrong, you will have done foolish things such as wasting time praying when you should have taken effective action. You will have lived your life as if it did not matter because you erroneously thought it was merely a trial, preparatory to your real life after death. You would have lived an overly safe conventional life, keeping your nose clean and avoiding all adventure. You would have let evil thrive, because you felt dealing with that was God's responsibility, not yours. You would have done irrational things just because some hoary old book tricked you into it, like mistreating blacks or gays. You would have wasted much of your life in fear of the imaginary divine meat axe.

3. If you don't believe in God and you are right, you live a zestful life. Every second counts. It is all you have got. You don't fritter your time in ritualistic activities. You take responsibility for the planet. You make a difference. You made your decisions rationally, not based on fear of some lunatic bogeyman in the sky. You behave well not because you fear punishment, but because you know that such behaviour is globally and locally optimal, good for everyone and also for you. You are a blessing to the planet.

4. If you believe in God and you are right, you are more likely than not to be an insufferably smug hypocrite, looking down your nose at others and judging incessantly just as Jesus told you not to do. God judges your actions, not your beliefs. In Luke 13:25, Jesus warned you that mere praying would not get you into heaven; only good deeds would. You get punished doubly since you ought to have known better.