The Bible As A Voting Guide

Over at Christian Post, there's an interesting opinion piece entitled Why the Bible Is the Best Voters Guide.

Here are a few of the key takeaways from the piece, along with quotes from the op-ed:

Don't Vote For The Kenyan

Civil leaders should be selected from among their own people. People must know the candidate. This is why the Constitution of the United States requires the president must be naturally born in the U.S.

Don't Vote For The Black Guy Who Supports Equal Pay, Women's Rights, And Equality

He must execute justice without respect to race, gender, and national origin, or any other categorical distinction made in society.

Don't Vote For Women

The Scriptures require that we "choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men." The word men used here is not the generic term for "mankind" but rather the word for "male." Everywhere the qualifications for civil leaders are mentioned in the Bible, males – not females – are identified.

Don't Vote For the Guy Who Endorsed Gay Marriage -- But The Mormon Still Makes Us Nervous

The Bible is clear that marriage is between one man and one woman, since "the two shall become one flesh"...This definition excludes multiple wives.

Never mind The Establishment Clause

So before you consult all the other voting guides, make sure you have rightly prioritized the words of Scripture above all the other voices for how you analyze the candidates.

Would A Chronological New Testament Help Address The Problem of 'Biblical Inerrancy'?

Over at Huffington Post, Marcus Borg writes that we could all benefit from reading a chronological New Testament. He states, "This matters not just for historical reasons but also for Christian reasons."

"About half of American Protestants belong to churches that teach that the Bible is the inerrant "Word of God" and "inspired by God.""

I have written in these pages of the problems with biblical literalism and the belief in biblical inerrancy, and I feel strongly that many of the most divisive social and political issues would not be issues if we as a society could accept that Biblical inerrancy is a relatively recent development.

Borg writes:

The key word is "inerrant." Christians from antiquity onward have affirmed that the Bible is "the Word of God" and "inspired" without thinking of it is inerrant. Biblical inerrancy is an innovation of the last few centuries, becoming widespread in American Protestantism beginning only a hundred years ago. It is affirmed mostly in "independent" Protestant churches, those not part of "mainline" Protestant denominations. Catholics have never proclaimed the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible, even as many have not been taught much about the Bible.

Biblical inerrancy is almost always combined with the literal and absolute interpretation of the Bible. If it says something happened, it happened. If the Bible says something is wrong, it is wrong.

For Christians who see the Bible this way, whatever Paul wrote to his communities in the first century is absolutely true for all time. For them, whatever the Gospels report that Jesus said and did really was said and done by him. So also the stories of the beginning and end of his life are literally and factually true: he was conceived in a virgin without a human father, his tomb really was empty even though it was guarded by Roman soldiers, and his followers saw him raised in physical bodily form.

These Christians are unlikely to embrace a chronological New Testament. It would not only change the way the see the Bible and the New Testament, but also make them suspect and probably unwelcome in the Christian communities to which they belong.

Read the full post here.

Robertson: The Bible Was 'Terribly Wrong' About Slavery, But Not About Homosexuality

Evangelicals love to cherry-pick their scripture. They love to cite 'The Word of God' when it rails against homosexuality. "The Bible is quote clear," they'll tell you.

The Bible is quite clear about a lot of things that Christians have long dismissed: slavery, wearing blended fabrics, eating shellfish, executing people for petty offenses, etc.

Pat Robertson has a long history of hating gay people. "The Bible is so clear about homosexuality," he's said.

However, Pat, like many evangelical Christians, loves to cherry-pick.

"Despite what the Bible says, “We have moved in our conception of the value of human beings until we realized slavery was terribly wrong.”

Have we, Pat? It seems like just a few months ago, evangelicals were up in arms when Dan Savage suggested the same thing.

SAVAGE: We can learn to ignore the bullshit about gay people in the Bible the same way have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish about slavery, about dinner about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waived Bibles over their heads during the civil war and justified it…We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong.…If the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong, slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent.

So, we have Pat Robertson admitting that the Bible was "terribly wrong" about slavery. To extend Pat's thoughts on the "value of human beings" idea into the treatment of the LGBT population doesn't seem to be much of a stretch, does it? It's not that radical a notion.

It will happen. Eventually. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until bigoted dinosaurs like Pat Robertson die out.

Christian Group Backs Away From 'Gay Cure,' But Still Wants To Help Gays Live Heterosexual Lives

Left to right: Chambers, beard

Via msnbc:

The president of the country's best-known Christian ministry dedicated to helping people repress same-sex attraction through prayer is trying to distance the group from the idea that gay people's sexual orientation can be permanently changed or "cured."

That's a significant shift for Exodus International, the 36-year-old Orlando-based group that boasts 260 member ministries around the U.S. and world. For decades, it has offered to help conflicted Christians rid themselves of unwanted homosexual inclinations through counseling and prayer, infuriating gay rights activists in the process.

This is interesting news for those who have followed Exodus International's history.

Michael Bussee, one of the founders of Exodus, and Gary Cooper, a leader within the ministry of Exodus, left the group to be with each other in 1979. Bussee has since been a long-time critic of Exodus.

In 2007, Bussee, along with Jeremy Marks, the former president of Exodus International Europe, and Darlene Bogle, the founder of Paraklete Ministries, an Exodus referral agency, issued an apology to those who had been misled by Exodus. The three stated that although they acted sincerely at the time of their involvement, their message had caused isolation, shame and fear. The three had, in time, become disillusioned with promoting gay conversion.

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," stated the three in the apology.

Another Exodus Chairman, John Paulk was removed by the board of directors when he was identified drinking and flirting at Mr. P's, a Washington, D.C. gay bar, Paulk was introducing himself to patrons of the bar as "John Clint," a name he had used in his previous life as a hustler in Ohio. Paulk was the author of "Not Afraid to Change; The Remarkable Story of How One Man Overcame Homosexuality," and was on staff with Focus on the Family, where was manager of their Homosexuality and Gender Department.

Essentially, Exodus International's ex-gay therapy doesn't work. It never did. It hasn't worked for its clients, and it hasn't worked for its leaders.

At the group's annual conference, president Alan Chambers plans to start disassociating himself and his organization from the ex-gay, or conversion therapy, movement.

"I do not believe that cure is a word that is applicable to really any struggle, homosexuality included," said Chambers, who is married to a woman and has children, but speaks openly about his own sexual attraction to men. "For someone to put out a shingle and say, 'I can cure homosexuality' — that to me is as bizarre as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle that anyone faces on Planet Earth."

Chambers has cleared books endorsing ex-gay therapy from the Exodus online bookstore in recent months. He said he's also worked to stop member ministries from espousing it.

That's great news, right? Finally, Exodus admits that ex-gay therapy is a sham and that people don't choose their sexuality. So, what will Exodus International do now? They're through, right? Kaput?

Of course not. If they can't convert the gays, they'll just help them live a lie.

Chambers said the ministry's emphasis should be simply helping Christians who want to reconcile their own particular religious beliefs with sexual feelings they consider an affront to scripture. For some that might mean celibacy; for others, like Chambers, it meant finding an understanding opposite-sex partner.

"I consider myself fortunate to be in the best marriage I know," Chambers said. "It's an amazing thing, yet I do have same-sex attractions. Those things don't overwhelm me or my marriage; they are something that informs me like any other struggle I might bring to the table."

While we can applaud Exodus International's admission that ex-gay therapy doesn't work, it's certainly not much of an improvement to then state that gay people still need to change.

"We appreciate any step toward open, transparent honesty that will do less harm to people," said Wayne Besen, a Vermont-based activist who has worked to discredit ex-gay therapy. "But the underlying belief is still that homosexuals are sexually broken, that something underlying is broken and needs to be fixed. That's incredibly harmful, it scars people."

So, we have moved on from "it's a choice" to "it's not a choice, but it's an affront to God and must be suppressed."

It's almost like progress. Except it isn't.

Would The Discovery Of Alien Life Spell Doom For Religion?

The vastness and complexity of the cosmos tends to bolster the faith in a creator for many. Certainly something so intricate and expansive could not have just 'happened.'

For many others, myself included, the more we learn about the cosmos, the more we question the validity of religion.

Mike Wall writes at Space.com:

The discovery of life beyond Earth would shake up our view of humanity's place in the universe, but it probably wouldn't seriously threaten organized religion, experts say.

Religious faith remains strong in much of the world despite scientific advances showing that Earth is not the center of the universe, and that our planet's organisms were not created in their present form but rather evolved over billions of years. So it's likely that religion would also weather any storms caused by the detection of E.T., researchers say.

Many believers tend to compartmentalize their religion and their understanding of the world. How else would we explain geologists, astrophysicists, and biologists who adhere to a young-earth creationist belief system? (Yes, they do exist.) While this seems inconceivable, it speaks to the power of belief, and the unshakeable nature of faith.

While it is not inconceivable that people of faith could reconcile alien life with their faith, it certainly would seem to raise many questions -- questions that I often wrestled with during my time as a believer:

According to the Drake Equation, there are "at least 125 billion galaxies in the observable universe. It is estimated that at least ten percent of all sun-like stars have a system of planets, i.e. there are 6.25×1018 stars with planets orbiting them in the observable universe. Even if we assume that only one out of a billion of these stars have planets supporting life, there would be some 6.25×109 (billion) life-supporting planetary systems in the observable universe.

If we are to make a conservative estimate and say that there are 2 planets in the cosmos with intelligent life, we can extrapolate that there might be three major religions on each planet (if religions even exist on these planets). Considering that humans on earth only stumbled upon monotheism 3000 years ago, and that we have run through numerous deities, it is fair to say that none of these hypothetical alien religions are Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. What would that mean?

If Christianity is the one true religion, as many Christians will proclaim, did Christ also exist on these other planets?

If Islam is the one true religion, and if Islam doesn't exist on any other planets, are entire worlds of beings destined for Jahannam?

If religions did not evolve on other planets, what does that say about our own religions here on Earth?

Why do our religious texts (many of which are believed to be the word of God) not make any mention of life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a huge omission by an all-knowing creator?

Doug Vakoch, director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, doesn't think the discovery of alien life would have much effect on religious belief:

"I think there are reasons that we might initially think there are going to be some problems. My own hunch is they're probably not going to be as severe as we might initially think."

Rather than being shaken to its foundations by the confirmation of life on another planet or moon, organized religion may accept the news, adapt and move on.
Vakoch cited the example of Baptist theologian Hal Ostrander, who is an associate pastor at a church in Georgia.

"Dr. Ostrander is adamantly opposed to evolution, and yet he has no problem with the idea of there being extraterrestrials," Vakoch said. "He says it's as if a couple has one child, and then they decide to have a second child. Is that second child any less special? So too if God decides to have life on our planet, and then another planet, and another planet. It doesn't make us less special."

I especially believe this would be the case for many liberal religious people -- those who have not had any problems reconciling scripture with evolution, for example. These people do not tend to approach the scriptures literally. They understand that the scriptures were written by people with a limited understanding of the cosmos, and that much of the stories in the scriptures are parables, myths, and embellished accounts.

It is the scriptural literalists who may have problems with the news of intelligent life on other planets. If the evolution debate has taught us anything, we might expect them to doubt the science used to confirm intelligent alien life.

Or perhaps such a finding might finally be what allows these folks to evolve their religious views.

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

Bryan Fischer: Satan Behind Gay Rights, Planned Parenthood & Environmentalism

Another day, another batshit rant from Bryan Fischer.

According to Fischer, Old Scratch is behind everything from gay rights to Planned Parenthood to environmentalism.

Watch:

Religious Morality Is Broken

Something appears to be wrong with religious morality.

If we were to make an assessment from the following recent news headlines, we might say that religious morality is broken:

North Carolina Pastor Sean Harris: Parents Should 'Punch' Their Effeminate Children

'Several dead' and 41 injured in Nigeria as militants attack two Sunday church services

Taliban bombing kills eight in Afghanistan

Faith-healing couple from Okanogan County take plea in son's death

Broken Arrow Woman On Trial For Refusing Medical Care For Dying Son

Pastor calls for death of gays, lesbians

Afghan arsonists seek to enforce truancy from school

Israeli Girl, Bullied By Jewish Ultra-Orthodox Extremists

Florida Pastor Hangs Obama Effigy Outside of Church

Tony Perkins on LGBT Pride Month: Why not 'Adultery Pride Month' or 'Drunkenness Pride Month'?

Fischer: 'It is Altogether Right to Discriminate Against Homosexual Behavior'

While these headlines are associated with a variety of religious figures from a variety of religions in different parts of the world, they have more in common with one another than you might think.

In each case, common sense, compassion, and empathy have been outright rejected in favor of a flawed morality based on religious doctrine. In each instance, religious ideology dictates that the infliction of discrimination, oppression, suffering, or death is validated by the belief that these actions please a supernatural being.

There is something terribly wrong with this type of ideology. It is incompatible with the goal of lessening suffering in the world. It is incompatible with peace. It is incompatible with progress. It is incompatible with a humanity that values the well-being of living things.

The problem here is that holy books say some crazy things -- things that advanced modern societies know better than to embrace. We know that rape, theft, slavery, and murder are not conducive to maintaining a healthy, flourishing society. It does not take a holy book for us to know this.

Philosopher Theodore Schick writes:

According to Divine Command Theory, nothing is right or wrong unless God makes it so. Whatever God says goes. So if God had decreed that adultery was permissible, then adultery would be permissible.

Let's take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. If the Divine Command Theory were true, then the Ten Commandments could have gone something like this: "Thou shalt kill everyone you dislike. Thou shalt rape every woman you desire. Thou shalt steal everything you covet. Thou shalt torture innocent children in your spare time. ..." The reason that this is possible is that killing, raping, stealing, and torturing were not wrong before God made them so. Since God is free to establish whatever set of moral principles he chooses, he could just as well have chosen this set as any other.

In other words, human beings have the capacity to discern which religious edicts are ill-advised, inhumane, or antiquated. We do not require another religious edict to tell us this. We simply rely on our sense of compassion and our morality, both of which have evolved over millions of years (and which were evolving long before monotheism took hold.)

The Dalai Lama writes:

Certainly religion has helped millions of people in the past, helps millions today and will continue to help millions in the future. But for all its benefits in offering moral guidance and meaning in life, in today’s secular world religion alone is no longer adequate as a basis for ethics. One reason for this is that many people in the world no longer follow any particular religion. Another reason is that, as the peoples of the world become ever more closely interconnected in an age of globalization and in multicultural societies, ethics based in any one religion would only appeal to some of us; it would not be meaningful for all.

What we need today is an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without: a secular ethics.

Many say that without religion, we would not know the difference between right and wrong. If a commandment is the only thing keeping us from murdering other people, we humans are a pretty lousy bunch.

As Michael Shermer states, "As a species of social primates, we have evolved a deep sense of right and wrong to accentuate and reward reciprocity and cooperation and to attenuate and punish excessive selfishness and free riding."

Sadly, however, we see stories every single day in the news in which humans use religious ideology to undermine cooperation, to reject reciprocity, and to validate selfishness, oppression, discrimination, and violence.

While it would be unwise (and incorrect) to suggest that all religious morality is inferior to secular morality, or that the above laundry list of religious moral failings is representative of all religious ideology (it isn't), we must accept that it is the religious ideology that which serves to validate the behavior in each example. Those individuals were not incited by reason.

Fundamentalism is the problem. It is the unwavering adherence to Bronze Age religious doctrine that allows hatred to disguised itself as morality.

Theodore Schick:

Fundamentalists correctly perceive that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. But they erroneously believe that God is the only possible source of such standards. Philosophers as diverse as Plato, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls have demonstrated that it is possible to have a universal morality without God. Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have us believe, then, what our society really needs is not more religion but a richer notion of the nature of morality.

Where, then, you might ask, should we receive our moral code, if we are not to rely on scripture?

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a pretty simple way of approaching this problem:

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”

The Bible Belt's Real Threat To Marriage: Divorce

According to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bible Belt has a divorce problem:

Of the 14 states reporting divorce rates for men that were much higher than the U.S. average -- ranging from 10.0 to 13.5 per 1,000 -- most were in the South. They included Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

In contrast, men in the Northeast divorced less than the national average. Five of the nine states that had divorce rates for men significantly below the U.S. average -- ranging from 6.1 to 8.5 -- were the Northeastern states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey , New York and Pennsylvania.

The same was true for Southern women. Nine of the 14 states with divorce rates for women above the U.S. average, ranging from 10.7 to 16.2, were in the South. They included Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

By comparison, four of the 10 states with below-average divorce rates for women, ranging from 6.0 to 8.9, were in the Northeast: Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Let's take a look at the maps:

It's pretty clear from these maps that the Bible Belt states (and others, to be fair) have a problem staying married.

If I remember correctly, it seems that most folks in these Bible Belt states feel that that they need to ban same-sex marriage in order to protect marriage.

Let's have a look at the status of same-sex marriage in the US (orange and red denotes constitutional amendments banning same-sex civil unions and marriages, respectively):

Looks kinda familiar, right?

Of course, we all know that the Bible Belt is the most religious section of the United States, as detailed in this map depicting US religiosity by state:

Again, looks pretty familiar, right?  Do these highly religious folks not realize that their Bible forbids divorce?

The data is quite telling. While certainly there are many factors to consider when making correlations (i.e. people in the Bible Belt marry at younger ages than their Northern counterparts), this data underscores the blatant hypocrisy associated with much of the Bible Belt's religious, anti-LGBT population.

While their religion dictates that they discriminate against gays and lesbians, they don't seem to care what the Bible has to say about divorce and re-marriage. Or perhaps they choose to believe that the anti-divorce stuff in the Bible belongs in that pile of stuff that we don't follow anymore. But the anti-gay stuff? Totally still relevant.

Funny how they pick and choose based on their own circumstances.

While they claim that the real threat to marriage is allowing same-sex couples to marry, we can clearly see that the real threat to marriage is divorce.

That Old Refrain: 'Marriage Is Between A Man And A Woman As Designed By God'

Since Amendment One's passing in North Carolina, I have seen dozens of letters which support my assertion that this vote was all about religion.

A letter in today's News & Observer states:

The passing of Amendment One was a protection of marriage, which God created. Many people are upset with Christians wanting this protection. Marriage is and always was between a man and a woman. Christians get their direction and information from the Holy Bible. God did not leave his creation without direction. When people try to take matters into their own hands (or definitions ) they get themselves into problems. Many want to do just what they want to do. They will not listen to instruction.

Variations of this letter have appeared in countless newspapers across the country to support anti-LGBT sentiment.

These folks can repeat this refrain over and over -- and they certainly have the right to say (and believe) it -- but the fact of the matter is that this refrain is historically wrong, and a terrible basis for legislation.

How is it wrong?

Well, let's break it down:

'Marriage is and always was between a man and a woman'
Sorry, folks, but you are not allowed to start the timeline at the point in history that helps make your case. If you ate a dozen donuts, you can't say you only ate 4 just because you didn't like how the first 6 tasted.

Marriage has absolutely not always been between a man and a woman. Over the course of human history, marriage has been defined as between a man and several women, a man and an adolescent boy (Greece), a man and a man, a woman and a woman, every woman in the community and every man in the community (Oneida Colony, New York, 1848), etc., etc.

The point? Marriage has evolved over time, and will continue to evolve until mankind is extinct. When you say that marriage has always been between a man and a woman, you are, quite simply, lying.

'God created marriage'
Did God create marriage? First of all, which god are you referring to? Aa? Anubis? Bahloo? Ceros? Cronos? Fu Xi? Horus? Kōjin? Mamaragan? Mars? Odin? Ra? Saturn? Sōjōbō? Thoth? Vesta? Wen Zhong? Yama? Zaraqu? Zonget? (I could list hundreds more, but you get the idea.)

Your god no more created marriage than any of these gods created marriage. In fact, we know for a fact that marriage existed prior to the emergence of monotheism. How is it that thousands of years of marriage existed before the emergence of the god that created it?

Humans evolved. Religion evolved. Marriage evolved. Humans will continue to evolve. Religion will continue to evolve. Marriage will continue to evolve. It's pretty simple.

When people such as the above letter writer start explaining that the 'Christian Bible' explains this or that about marriage, it might behoove those people to realize that one of our most important rights as Americans is that we can practice whatever religion we choose (and that includes the right to not practice one at all). I should no more expect your rights to be defined by my religious beliefs than you should expect my rights to be defined by yours.  Freedom of religion does not mean that you are free to restrict the rights of others who do not accept the claims of your religion.

It doesn't matter what the majority of Christians believe. What matters is that each American should not have his or her rights defined by a particular set of religious beliefs.

The refrain is getting old. Please feel free to start framing your argument in secular legislative terms moving forward. (Good luck with that.)

Amendment One: 11th Hour Thoughts On Faith, Homosexuality & Choice

These words were originally posted in an online neighborhood forum about Amendment One to address a neighbor who believes homosexuality is a sin and that he could not cast a vote that condoned it, regardless of any unintended consequences of the legislation.



As both sides of the Amendment One debate wrap up their closing arguments, it has become clear that the vote comes down to religion. Mostly, it comes down to religion and the debate over the nature of sexual orientation.

I have been chastised in past posts for my adamant stance that homosexuality is not a choice. Some in the LGBT camp have criticized me (and rightfully so) for making this assertion, since people should be free to choose to be gay if they so wish. I agree wholeheartedly -- it shouldn't be anyone's concern if two consenting adults choose to be intimate with one another. But civil rights causes are a marathon and not a sprint, unfortunately. And the linchpin of the gay marriage debate is indeed the belief held by many religious people that homosexuals have made a conscious choice to live a lifestyle of sin and abomination.

We do not choose our sexual orientations. Our sexual orientations are determined by genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors. The following organizations have issued statements concluding that we do not choose our sexual orientation: American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, National Association of Social Workers, Royal College of Psychiatrists, and American Academy of Pediatrics.

Sexual orientations are not binary. Bisexuality is an actual thing, and not just a phase in college.

Gender is also not binary. If you believe it is, please explain your beliefs to an acquaintance of mine who was born with ambiguous genitalia. Doctors and parents made a choice that she would be a girl. Guess what happened? She grew to only be interested in girls. Whoops. Gender dysphoria is a real thing.

At the time of the Bible, people did indeed believe that gender and sexual orientation were binary, just as they thought epilepsy was demonic possession, and just as they thought the earth was flat and at the center of the universe.

When we gained enough understanding, we realized that the sun was not a god, but rather a hot rock. Then we learned enough to understand that it wasn't a rock at all, but a fiery hot ball of plasma interwoven with magnetic fields.

Please read this article in The Atlantic exploring the nature of gender, and tell me that you believe that the boy in the article made a decision to be the way he is. No amount of church, or whippings, or therapy is going to alter what this boy is in his heart, and nobody should try to change that. To deny him the right to grow up to experience marriage and family is cruel and unusual punishment.

Brandon Simms, age 5

I realize that by pointing to examples of gender dysphoria I am not directly addressing the issue of gay marriage. It's not so different, however. My point is that we are who we are. The fact is that we are not all born as males who will grow up to be attracted to females, or females who will grow up to be attracted to males. Some of us will be born gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. We are attracted to who we are attracted to. We can't turn that off and pretend. We all can't simply go along with society and ignore who we are at our very core. To do so is to live a lie. To force others to do so is to punish them for their natural born traits.

The Bible, while a great source of morality for many, cannot be looked upon for every bit of moral guidance. We must adjust our morality to consider our modern understandings about biology and the cosmos. If we don't, we will simply continue to live by Bronze Age morals -- and we know what that has done to Afghanistan, where they still practice many of the same laws that we find in the Old Testament. We Americans abhor their enforcement of holy law. We would do well to abhor it in our own country, too.

Good luck with your vote. I just hope that when you cast your vote you will feel comfortable knowing that a FOR vote will be engraved in stone. You may come to change your mind about sexual orientation. Changing a constitutional amendment, however, is not easily done.

If there is any doubt in your heart -- if you feel anything in your heart for those people like my acquaintance or the boy in the above linked Atlantic article, you should understand that by voting FOR, you are harming those people. (You are also harming heterosexual couples, children, seniors, and women -- but we've been through that already.)

If your Bible tells you to harm them anyway, then I am afraid your morality is flawed.

My morality requires that I never do harm to another human being, and that I respect the rights of minorities, and that I don't force others to live by my beliefs.  Is not one of our central roles as human beings to reduce suffering? How can we reconcile this with the denial of rights to our fellow humans based on their natural traits?

Legalizing gay marriage or domestic partnerships does not force someone else's beliefs on you (Remember, they will still be illegal if you vote AGAINST). This is what so many fail to understand. Legalizing domestic partnerships/civil unions/marriage doesn't alter YOUR rights to form a union that aligns with your belief system. Your YES vote tomorrow, however, will definitely alter others' rights. That is unfortunate, and completely at odds with everything that has made America a beacon of freedom.

I fear I will wake up on Wednesday extremely disappointed in my state. But I feel confident that before I die, I will see NC begin to accept all people for who they are, and afford them the same rights, no matter what their natural traits. It is a shame that North Carolina will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

I thought we were beyond this, but I guess we will have another generation of this way of thinking, until we look back and are embarrassed by this legislation the way we are embarrassed by the inter-racial marriage ban amendment of 1875.

Looking Beyond Amendment One to Amendment Two

I have asked countless people to provide a secular legislative purpose for Amendment One. I have broadcast this question to thousands of people, via Facebook and Twitter. I have posed this question directly to people I know are planning to vote in favor of Amendment One.

Amendment 2?

Crickets.

I have yet to hear one legitimate secular legislative purpose for the amendment. I have also posed a similar question asking non-believers to come forward with reasons why they are voting for Amendment One.

Again, crickets.

I am aware that there may be some voters out there who claim to have a secular purpose for voting for the amendment. I am also sure there may be some non-believers who are doing the same. I do, however, believe that these instances represent a tiny sliver of the population voting in favor of the amendment.

What does this say?

I believe there are only a few conclusions that can be drawn: 1) Voters are ignorant to the effects the amendment will have on heterosexual couples, children, and seniors, 2) Voters are ignorant to the overwhelming scientific evidence that sexual orientation is no more a choice than right- and left-handedness or skin color, 3) Voters will go to great lengths to legitimize their own bigotry.

The common denominator here is religion-based bigotry.

One thing people need to understand is that we do not add constitutional amendments that a) deny rights to a group of citizens based on natural traits, or b) have no secular basis.

It does seem apparent, however, that a large swath of the NC religious population are determined to ensure that we do just this. As North Carolinians, this should be deeply disturbing.

What will Amendment Two bring?

Should the population become overwhelmingly Muslim (as it is in Dearborn, MI), can we expect an amendment to be based strictly on Sharia Law?

Should we add an amendment stating that anyone who does not worship God be killed? (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)

If a city worships a different god (or no god), will an amendment require the destruction of the city and the execution of all of it's inhabitants... even the animals? (Deuteronomy 13:12-15)

Will an amendment require that we kill our own family members who choose a different religion? (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)

If a man has sex with an animal, should we kill both the man and the animal? (Leviticus 20:15-16)

If a man has sex with a woman while she is menstruating, should we cast him out from society? (Leviticus 20:18)

If the preacher's daughter sleeps around, should an amendment require that we burn her at the stake? (Leviticus 21:9)

Will an amendment require that psychics and horoscope writers be put to death? (Leviticus 20:27)

If a man cheats on his wife, or vise versa, will an amendment be in place to ensure that both the man and the woman are executed? (Leviticus 20:10)

Will an amendment outlaw Super-Cuts, and shaving? (Leviticus 19:27)

When men fight with one another, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the man who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, will an amendment require that we cut off her hand? (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)

You might tell me that none of these old laws are valid because they were for a different people at a different time. I will see your old crazy law argument and raise you a few equally as old, and much more vague Bible passages which you claim denounce homosexuality.

You might not want these laws to become amendments because you have broken some of them, and when you broke them nobody got hurt.  The same can be said for homosexuality. Gay marriage hurts no one. Amendment One does.

You are entirely free to cherry pick scripture to validate your own prejudices against taxpaying citizens who simply wish to live their lives in a loving relationship with a consenting adult. You are free to dislike someone based on their natural traits. You are free to be freaked out by homosexuality (That's your problem.) You are free to believe that it is a sin, or that your holy book requires you to believe that it is an abomination.

What is wrong, however, is forcing your personal beliefs into a constitution whose purpose is to protect its citizens, even those of us who do not share your particular religious beliefs.

Be careful what you wish for. It's a slippery slope.

The Great Zombie Uprising Of 33 A.D.: Jesus Wasn't The Only One Who Rose From The Dead

I stopped being a Christian not because I stopped believing in empathy, compassion, and kindness, but because I couldn't accept the main tenets of Christianity -- mostly the supernatural stuff.

Christian theology states that Jesus suffered, died, was entombed, and then was resurrected from the dead. He not only came back to life (which might be half-way believable to a skeptic, given the fact that in biblical times, it might have been easy to declare someone dead prematurely), but he ascended bodily into heaven. This means that Jesus' body floated (of flied) up into the air and into Heaven.

If we're honest with ourselves, this is very far out stuff. There is no reason to believe, given what we now know about life, death, consciousness, and the self, that the body of a human being could come back to life and then float up into space. There is also no science to explain how, without a functioning brain, a person could retain any sense of their former living self in any type of afterlife. (Of course, the claim is that Jesus wasn't just a normal human being, but more on that later.)

I do realize that most Christians actually do believe that the resurrection actually occurred:

In the 2008-2009 wave of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, 94 percent of evangelicals, 91 percent of Catholics and 78 percent of mainline Protestants said Jesus was raised bodily from the dead after his crucifixion.

Jesus' resurrection from the dead was an actual event, said three-quarters of the more than 25,000 respondents to congregational surveys offered by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research from 2004 to 2010. Most of the participants were mainline Protestants.

More than two-thirds of Christian respondents, including 84 percent of black and evangelical respondents, strongly agreed with the statement, "Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead," according to the Portraits of American Life Study.

I also believe that many of these respondents haven't really sat down and thought about what is required to actually believe the resurrection to be true.

I also believe that many people don't like the implications of the resurrection as myth. If the resurrection is a myth, what else is not literally true? If the resurrection is mere symbolism, doesn't that kind of throw a wrench the whole Christian doctrine?

Resurrection aside, there are some pretty amazing claims made in The Gospel of Matthew that are sorely overlooked by the average Christian. In fact, having been a Christian myself for a good part of my life, I was kind of amazed to have been made aware of this particular passage.

After Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, Matthew 27 describes, quite simply, a major zombie uprising:

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

This is fairly clear in the text. Zombies actually rose out of the ground and walked into the city and certainly scared the bejesus out of people. What in the world are we to make of this?

I don't know. I'm no theologian, and I'm sure apologetics have found a way to explain it. But I believe one of the big takeaways from this passage is this: The Bible should not be taken literally. If you do take it literally, it is rife with claims that, quite honestly, are no less fantastical than the claims made in Greek or Roman mythology, or Scientology, for that matter. The only difference is that you likely have heard them since birth, and hence, they seem as true as the crossing of the Delaware.

The Bible is a book written by superstitious Bronze Age men with a very limited understanding of the laws of nature and the capacity to spin a good yarn. This doesn't mean that there was no Jesus. All signs point to the fact that he indeed existed. This doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't offer us great passages of wisdom, beauty, horror, and heartbreak. It does. It doesn't mean that everything in the Bible is bogus.

As comedian David Cross said, "The Bible is the world's longest game of telephone." There is probably a great deal of truth to that. It doesn't make the Bible sinister, or counterfeit. It makes it exactly what it is: a long oral history put to paper in a great undertaking that took hundreds of years, with many different authors writing to many different audiences for many different reasons, in different languages. Throw in some major squabbles over content and purpose, the expulsion of several books, significant editing, and pseudonymous writing, and you have a complex, if not flawed, collection of writing. We also have to take into consideration the fact that the Gospels, which many believe to be eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus, were written many years after Jesus' death. The first Gospel accounts (Mark) did not appear until 40 years after Jesus died. If we take into consideration the life expectancy at time of the writing, that is quite a bit more than a lifetime.

C.S Lewis posed to us his 'trilemma': Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.

Lewis is forgetting a fourth option: Perhaps Jesus never made the claims to begin with. This is not a radical suggestion.

Regardless, there is much to gain from the observance of Easter. It is, after all, a celebration of rebirth that echoes other springtime rituals predating Christianity. Its symbols and traditions reverberate all throughout human history.

There's certainly no reason to let a couple of zombies get in the way.

Wouldn't It Be Better If Satan Was Responsible For Leviticus?

The Book of Leviticus is a doozy. Certainly an apologetic, with a little bit of shoehorning, can make it seem not so bad. It was, after all, written for a specific audience during a specific time in history for specific reasons.

Too often, however, everyday folks cherry-pick things from Leviticus to validate all sorts of ugliness, most notably homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

However, when we read more than just those few segments of Leviticus that might seem to validate some of our own personal prejudices, we see that these cherry-picked lines that are often held as God's truth in 2012, are nested in with a whole lot of downright horrible, or just plain ridiculous, commandments.

Take these for example:

"For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or his mother. His blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20:9)

"And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10)

"If a man lies with a woman during her sickness and uncovers her nakedness, he has discovered her flow, and she has uncovered the flow of her blood. Both of them shall be cut off from her people." (Leviticus 20:18)

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)

"Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." (Leviticus 19:27)

"And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." (Leviticus 21:9)

"...and the swine, though it divides the hoof, having cloven hooves, yet does not chew the cud, is unclean to you." (Leviticus 11:7)

"...do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear material woven of two kinds of material." (Leviticus 19:19)

"A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:27)

"But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you." (Leviticus 11:10)

Now, I don't care who you are, or what time you're living in, this is some of the worst advice you could possibly give to anyone, anywhere. As I often tell my children, 'I don't care what they did to you, violence is never the answer.' They understand this. God apparently does not -- at least not according to his word.

So often, when we bring up these insane passages from Leviticus, the Christian retort is something like, "Oh, well, Jesus came along and tossed that stuff aside. That's the old covenant. Jesus brought with him the new covenant."

Which is all fine until we also take into consideration that Christians believe Jesus and God to be one and the same. Jesus is, after all (according to Christianity), part of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is Lord, right?

So, this means we are to believe that God in his God form said a bunch of crazy stuff to a certain group of people. Then God in his man form came along and said not to pay attention to the stuff that he said in his God form because that stuff was a little much.  If God knew everything he knows now, and he should (he's God after all), his morality should not have changed over time -- or at least it should never, under any circumstances, at any time whatsoever, have involved child-killing or enslavement.

If we are also to believe that God is all-knowing (including all scientific and medical knowledge), and that he is all-loving and the source of morality, we have to accept that his commandments to these people were totally lacking in scientific and medical knowledge, and that his morality is easily questionable -- even by simple human beings such as you and I.

Take slavery (please!). You would think that under no circumstances could God, the source of morality for the three Abrahamic religions, possibly endorse slavery. It's not even like he was ambiguous about it. Leviticus is very clear on how slavery works, including the minor details of slave-keeping, -selling, and -trading. It's pretty embarrassing, actually.

The below video, by NonStampCollector illustrates just how horrible the slavery laws in Leviticus are, by presenting us with a scenario that would actually be more believable than believing that God would be cool with slavery: Satan, ever the trickster, takes a pen to God's manuscript, turning his very ethical guide on the treatment of other humans into a horrible, slavery-condoning nightmare. Only someone as terrible as Satan could possibly come up with such morality, right?

We can only conclude that flawed humans wrote Leviticus, that morality evolved over time, and that new scripture had to be written later to catch up with the human morality that allowed us to view Old Testament morality as immoral.

We can also conclude that if you use scripture from Leviticus, or anywhere else in the Bible for that matter, to validate the discrimination or mistreatment of other human beings for any reason, you're relying on the archaic morality of Bronze age desert tribesmen.

Ken Ham: The Battle Over Genesis, Literal Adam & Eve, Really Heating Up

Ken Ham claims there's a war on Adam & Eve. As the founder of Answers In Genesis and the man behind the Creation Museum, you kind of expect him to say that. His livelihood, after all, depends on it.

Ken Ham: founder, house of cards

Ham spoke to the Christian Post:

"One of the things that we see happening in the Christian culture is that the battle over Genesis – the literal Adam and Eve, the literal fall – is really heating up," said Ham, who leads what is considered the largest biblical apologetics ministry in the United States. "Not just the battle over the age of the earth, between creationists and evolutionists, but now it's gone onto a battle over literal Adam and Eve, their literal fall."

The opponents are "getting much more involved, and really challenging the Church to take a stand on God's way to Genesis," which he stressed as "the foundation for the rest of the Bible."

"That history is the foundation for every doctrine."

If there is no literal Adam and Eve, then why are men sinners, Ham asks. Where did sin come from? Why did Jesus die? "Once we reject Adam and Eve, the rest of the scriptures fall like dominoes," he added.

They sure do, Ken.

Well, they do if they read the Bible as a scientific and historical document, something that most people do not do. (Three in 10 Americans take the Bible literally -- still an unfortunate number of people.)

Ham believes that too many churches are teaching that Bible stories are just that -- stories.

When I teach children I tell them: 'The Bible is a very special book. It's the history book of the universe,'" he explained. "This is history, it's not just stories." Ham also sees the churches approach to teaching the Bible as stories as the reason for young people leaving church. They are being taught that church is not the "real stuff."

he outspoken apologist is a controversial figure, even within the Christian community. He has attracted criticism from other apologists for what many view as more extreme views. For example, Ham believes that the universe is relatively new and that it was created about 6,000 years ago. He also believes that dinosaurs co-existed with modern humans, which is illustrated at AiG's Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

Ham is also convinced that the animals carried on Noah's ark produced the biological diversity observed on Earth. To spread that idea he has embarked on a grand project of building a life-size ark in Williamstown, Ky., to serve a similar purpose as the museum – attracting visitors from across the nation and the world.

Ham's concern is certainly good news for rational people everywhere, for it shows us evolution in action. One day, if we want to hear about a literal Adam and Eve and a literal Noah's Ark, we won't be able to hear about it in a church. We'll have to visit a theme park or a tacky tourist trap instead.

The Biological Logistics Of Noah's Ark

If you've ever thought the Noah's Ark narrative in Genesis is a bit far-fetched, you'll really appreciate this very smart, and extremely funny, send-up created by NonStampCollector.

And if you've never thought the Noah's Ark narrative is far-fetched, you will now.

Kansas GOP Speaker Calls First Lady 'YoMama,' Cites Psalm Calling For Death Of Leader

Mike O'Neal (R-Asshat)

Via ThinkProgress:

ThinkProgress reported last week that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal (R) was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after forwarding an email to fellow lawmakers that called her “Mrs. YoMama” and compared her to the Grinch. 

Earlier that same week, the Lawrence Journal-World was sent another email that O’Neal had forwarded to House Republicans that referred to President Obama and a Bible verse that says “Let his days be few” and calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to be widowed.

The particular Bible verse is Psalm 109.

Via Faith In Public Life:

A popular conservative meme after President Obama’s election were bumper stickers issuing a “tongue-in-cheek” call to pray for the President, referencing Psalm 109 in the Bible, which actually is a prayer for the death of a leader.

The psalm reads in part:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

O'Neal forwarded the Psalm email to House Rebublicans with his own endorsement:

“At last — I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up — it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!”

O'Neal is denying any wrongdoing. He claims that the email, which has been made its way around the Internet, refers to a bumper sticker that reads "Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8."

Pat Cunningham, writing in the Rockford Register Star, doesn't buy it. In a criticism of O'Neal's (and readers') defense of the scripture usage, he states:

You say that verse 8 of Psalm 109, as applied to President Obama, does not suggest a wish for his death. But the first five words of verse 8 are: “Let his days be few.” And verse 9 says: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

The clear implication is not changed by the intervening words: “And let another take his office.”

You suggest yourself that scripture should not be “taken out of context.” Well, the context of Psalm 109 is a wish for someone’s death. As O’Neal says himself: “Look it up — it is word for word!”

Does he expect that anyone who looks up Psalm 109 is going to isolate the second half of verse 8 from the rest of that Psalm?

Don’t be silly.

As an indication of just how un-silly this defense is, Zazzle, one of the biggest sellers of the Psalm 109 stickers and shirts, has posted the following statement on their site:

...It is only after great thought that we have determined that these products, in the context of the full text of Psalm 109, may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest physical harm to the President of the United States. In deference to the Office of the President of the United States, and in accordance with federal law prohibiting the making of threats against the physical wellbeing of the President of the United States, Zazzle has therefore determined that these products are in violation of the Zazzle User Agreement and not appropriate for inclusion in the Zazzle Marketplace. We have begun efforts to remove them from our website, and we will be vigilant to the publication of similar products moving forward.

Zazzle will continue to allow and encourage the submission of products that express disapproval or approval of the President’s policies and actions, but Zazzle will not permit products that may be interpreted to suggest violence toward the President.

Tebow 3:16 -- Coincidences, Odds & Our Need To Find Order In A Chaotic World

By now you've probably heard that Tim Tebow is a miracle worker. Last night, the bible verse-wearing, sideline-kneeling quarterback threw an 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime to lift his Broncos past the Steelers.

If the entire season had not already elicited talk of divine intervention, last night's overtime win put the miracle-speak in overdrive.

Tebow passed for 316 yards against the Steelers, completing 10 of 21 pass attempts. In other words, he passed for 31.6 yards per completion.

For those unaware, Tebow's favorite Bible verse is John 3:16.

Anyone who dipped into the Twitter stream last night would likely have seen the coincidences piling up. Many of them making any number of peripheral and mundane facts and figures into signs of the divine.

Sure, it's a neat story. The publicly devout Christian football player has had his share of come-from-behind victories this year. He has overcome the odds on many occasions. He happened to throw for 316 yards in the most important game of the year.

Oh yeah, and his coach's name is John. And he threw that winning pass to a guy who was born on Christmas. And the abbreviation for overtime is OT, which is also the abbreviation for Old Testament.

But does it prove anything? Is it more than a coincidence? I mean, seriously, what are the chances?

Lisa Belkin, in a wonderful 2009 New York Times Magazine piece on odds, coincidence, and our need to find order in our chaotic world, writes:

The true meaning of [coincidence] is ''a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.'' In other words, pure happenstance. Yet by merely noticing a coincidence, we elevate it to something that transcends its definition as pure chance. We are discomforted by the idea of a random universe. Like Mel Gibson's character Graham Hess in M. Night Shyamalan's new movie ''Signs,'' we want to feel that our lives are governed by a grand plan.

The need is especially strong in an age when paranoia runs rampant. ''Coincidence feels like a loss of control perhaps,'' says John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University and the author of ''Innumeracy,'' the improbable best seller about how Americans don't understand numbers. Finding a reason or a pattern where none actually exists ''makes it less frightening,'' he says, because events get placed in the realm of the logical. ''Believing in fate, or even conspiracy, can sometimes be more comforting than facing the fact that sometimes things just happen.''

Belkin reminds us of the mountain of coincidental details that many saw as meaningful after the events of 9/11:

We need to be reminded, Paulos and others say, that most of the time patterns that seem stunning to us aren't even there. For instance, although the numbers 9/11 (9 plus 1 plus 1) equal 11, and American Airlines Flight 11 was the first to hit the twin towers, and there were 92 people on board (9 plus 2), and Sept. 11 is the 254th day of the year (2 plus 5 plus 4), and there are 11 letters each in ''Afghanistan,'' ''New York City'' and ''the Pentagon'' (and while we're counting, in George W. Bush), and the World Trade towers themselves took the form of the number 11, this seeming numerical message is not actually a pattern that exists but merely a pattern we have found. (After all, the second flight to hit the towers was United Airlines Flight 175, and the one that hit the Pentagon was American Airlines Flight 77, and the one that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was United Flight 93, and the Pentagon is shaped, well, like a pentagon.)

Sound familiar? If we were to start digging though other statistics from the game, and from Tebow's life (and believe me, many are busy piling these up right now -- we will continue to see them trickle out this week), we would find an endless stream of forced, and increasingly thin, coincidences.

We would also find the same coincidences by crunching numbers related to our own daily lives -- even those of us who are not devout. The most breathtaking of happenings, Belkin says, could actually have been predicted by statistics.

The mathematician will answer that even in the most unbelievable situations, the odds are actually very good. The law of large numbers says that with a large enough denominator -- in other words, in a big wide world -- stuff will happen, even very weird stuff. ''The really unusual day would be one where nothing unusual happens,'' explains Persi Diaconis, a Stanford statistician who has spent his career collecting and studying examples of coincidence. Given that there are 280 million people in the United States, he says, ''280 times a day, a one-in-a-million shot is going to occur.''

Throw your best story at him -- the one about running into your childhood playmate on a street corner in Azerbaijan or marrying a woman who has a birthmark shaped like a shooting star that is a perfect match for your own or dreaming that your great-aunt Lucy would break her collarbone hours before she actually does -- and he will nod politely and answer that such things happen all the time. In fact, he and his colleagues also warn me that although I pulled all examples in the prior sentence from thin air, I will probably get letters from readers saying one of those things actually happened to them.

Robert J. Tibshirani, a statistician at Stanford University, uses the example of a hand of poker as a great example of how we ignore the millions of meaningless events in our lives, but find meaning in the events which happen to trigger a mental connection.

''The chance of getting a royal flush is very low,'' he says, ''and if you were to get a royal flush, you would be surprised. But the chance of any hand in poker is low. You just don't notice when you get all the others; you notice when you get the royal flush.''

The odds that Tim Tebow passed for 316 odds are similar to the odds that he'd pass for 309. We simply would not have made any big deal out of it if he threw for 309 yards (except for the fact that it was impressive yardage that helped him win a game).

Still, the faithful will continue to insist that there simply has to be meaning. They will continue to say, "Coincidence? I think not," and ask, "What are the odds?" Again, these people are focusing on the seemingly meaningful connection, and ignoring real-world statistics.

Belkin describes 'The Birthday Problem':

There are as many as 366 days in a year (accounting for leap years), and so you would have to assemble 367 people in a room to absolutely guarantee that two of them have the same birthday. But how many people would you need in that room to guarantee a 50 percent chance of at least one birthday match?

Intuitively, you assume that the answer should be a relatively large number. And in fact, most people's first guess is 183, half of 366. But the actual answer is 23. In Paulos's book, he explains the math this way: ''[T]he number of ways in which five dates can be chosen (allowing for repetitions) is (365 x 365 x 365 x 365 x 365). Of all these 365 5 ways, however, only (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) are such that no two of the dates are the same; any of the 365 days can be chosen first, any of the remaining 364 can be chosen second and so on. Thus, by dividing this latter product (365 x 364 x 363 x 362 x 361) by 365 5 , we get the probability that five persons chosen at random will have no birthday in common. Now, if we subtract this probability from 1 (or from 100 percent if we're dealing with percentages), we get the complementary probability that at least two of the five people do have a birthday in common. A similar calculation using 23 rather than 5 yields 1/2, or 50 percent, as the probability that at least 2 of 23 people will have a common birthday.''

Got that?

Using similar math, you can calculate that if you want even odds of finding two people born within one day of each other, you only need 14 people, and if you are looking for birthdays a week apart, the magic number is seven. (Incidentally, if you are looking for an even chance that someone in the room will have your exact birthday, you will need 253 people.) And yet despite numbers like these, we are constantly surprised when we meet a stranger with whom we share a birth date or a hometown or a middle name. We are amazed by the overlap -- and we conveniently ignore the countless things we do not have in common.

We are pattern-seeking creatures. This is likely part of our biology, a behavior that evolved to help us survive. Early humans needed to be hyper-aware of anomalies in order to detect threats. And while these happy accidents provide many with hope and inspiration, our willingness to attach meaning also works to our detriment. We have, in many ways, become fundamentally irrational beings.

The more personal the event, the more meaning we give it...

The fact that personal attachment adds significance to an event is the reason we tend to react so strongly to the coincidences surrounding Sept. 11. In a deep and lasting way, that tragedy feels as if it happened to us all.

[This] sheds light on the countless times that pockets of the general public find themselves at odds with authorities and statisticians. Her results might explain, for instance, why lupus patients are certain their breast implants are the reason for their illness, despite the fact that epidemiologists conclude there is no link, or why parents of autistic children are resolute in their belief that childhood immunizations or environmental toxins or a host of other suspected pathogens are the cause, even though experts are skeptical. They might also explain the outrage of all the patients who are certain they live in a cancer cluster, but who have been told otherwise by researchers.

While the Tebow divine intervention anecdotes themselves are harmless, and while many may find inspiration and hope in his story, we must remember that there is a down-side to cobbling together random bits of information and forming a conclusion.

In some ways, the Tebow narratives reinforce many people's irrationality. We are simply too caught up in the feel-good nature of the story to realize that this is the same type of thinking that has fueled everything from truthers and anti-vaxxers, to bigotry and grilled cheese sandwich auctions.