Rick Santorum Defends Biblical Values, Gets Blasted By Penn State Student

On Piers Morgan's show this week, Rick Santorum stated that he's not a member of the clergy, and therefore it wasn't his job to state whether or not homosexuality is a 'sin.' He could, however, state that homosexuality is wrong, and that if his son were gay, he would help him through his 'difficult time' to learn to lead a 'healthy,' 'faithful' life. Morgan presses Santorum on whether or not his views, and the views of the Catholic Church, are bigoted. Santorum concedes, then rejects the claim.

Santorum has gay friends, you see. Or so he says. I wonder, however, if Rick Santorum understands that friendship is a two-way street. Somehow I wonder if those folks would claim Santorum as a friend.



Later this week, the frothy mix visited Penn State, where he threw a hissy fit after a student started dropping science on his ass. And, in typical religious right fashion, Santorum brushed it off as ideological conspiracy bullshit.

 

Rick, if you're going to continue to stand by 'biblical truths' as a politician, you'd best get used to being challenged by the growing body of evidence that conclusively shows that sexual orientation is not a choice. If you wish to keep thumping the Bible on the campaign trail, you may want to consider bowing out and becoming a member of the clergy.

Willum Geerts' 'Sorry (Bible)'

Dutch Artist Willum Geerts has taken correction fluid to all letters of a Holy Bible, except for S, O, R, R, and Y, in that order.

A close-up can be viewed here.

In his artist statement, Geerts says, "I share my astonishment about our absurd everyday life and ask the viewer to re-address the complex world around us. I enlarge the banal by isolating it from its regular context, mixing it with apparent opposites and by adding dramatic, theatrical elements to it."

He writes of how, in complex modern life, individuals deal with the chaos of "constant impulses and [try] to canalize these by conforming, losing oneself in material solace or falling into conditioned behavior. With superficiality, alienation, passiveness and banalities as a result.'

More of his work can be explored here.

Poll Shows Way Too Many People Take The Bible Literally

According to a recent Gallup poll, 3 in 10 Americans take the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God. Although this is lower than the 40% recorded in 1980 and 1984 by Gallup, it is up from the low point of 21% in 2001.

49% say the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally, while 17% consider the Bible an ancient collection of stories recorded by man.

Additional findings from the poll show that frequent church attendees (those who attend weekly) are most likely to view the bible as the literal word of God, while those who rarely (or never) attend are more likely to view the Bible as the inspired word of god, or mythology.

This may seem benign to many, but let's consider what this means, exactly. Assuming that this 30% is as familiar with the text as they think, we must assume that they believe the following to be true events in history:

God made the heavens and the earth in seven days. Gen. 1; 2

God made a dude out of dirt, and then, later, as an afterthought, took the dude's rib and fashioned a lady out of it. Gen. 1

The entire earth was flooded for 150 days. Gen. 7

A dude built a boat and put two of every living species on Earth on the boat (because God told him to).  He kept all of them afloat and fed for 150 days.  Gen. 6:14-22; 7:8; Matt. 24:38; Luke 17:27; Heb. 11:7; 1 Pet. 3:20

A dude's cane turned into a snake. Ex. 4:3,4,30; 7:10,12

A dude's wife was turned into a condiment. Gen. 19:26

A dude parted a sea. Ex. 14:22.

A dude's donkey talked to him.  Num. 22:23-30

A bush in flames talked to a dude. Ex. 3:2-5; Acts 7:30

A dude was fed by an angel. 1 Kin. 19:1-8

A dude made an entire army go blind. Kin. 6:18

A dude hung out for a while in a fish's belly. Jonah 1:17

A dude turned water into wine. John 2:1-11

A dude fed 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and a couple of fish. Matt. 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:5-14

A dude walked on the sea. Matt. 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:16-21

A dude pulled money from a fish's mouth. Matt. 17:24-27

A dude brought a bunch of other dudes back to life. Matt. 9:18,19,23-26; Mark 5:22-24,35-43; Luke 8:41,42,49-56; John 11:1-46; Luke 7:11-16
 
A dude healed all kinds of handicapped people (blind, crippled, lepers, deaf, mute, demoniacs, you name it) John 4:46-54; John 5:1-16; Matt. 12:22-37; Mark 3:11; Luke 11:14,15; Matt. 9:27-31; Mark 7:31-37
 
A virgin had a baby. Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:27,34

A dude came back from the dead. Matt. 28:6,7 Mark 16:6,7; Luke 24:5-7; John 20:1-18

After he came back from the dead, that dude floated up to heaven, body and all. Mark 16:19,20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:9-12.

This is only a fraction of the fantastical, supernatural claims made in The Bible.  One could fill a whole book with them (oh, wait).

If anyone claimed any of the above events occurred today, we would consider them to be delusional, insane, or a ridiculously gullible victim of someone's tall tale. What gives these fantastical, supernatural biblical events their legitimacy is, quite simply, their inclusion in a text that is believed to be the word of God. This is circular reasoning at its finest: "The Bible is literally true, because The Bible tells us it is literally true. If any of it is not literally true, then we can't trust any of it, and that's not possible."

We must ask ourselves why it is that these fantastical, supernatural events only seem to occur during and prior to the Bronze Age, and in the future.  This leaves us with a large gap of zero fantastical events of a biblical scale.  In between what we think occurred, and what we expect will occur, we are lucky to get a Cheeto shaped like Jesus.

This is not just about debunking religion.  These literal beliefs have real-life impacts. When we believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, we deny human rights, we impede progress in medicine, we condone wars, we are complicit in the submission of women, we subscribe to religious exceptionalism, and we deny the realities of the natural world and of the cosmos.  Until we come to terms with the fact that the Bible includes mythology, legend, and parables, we perpetuate suffering and condone harm. There is impact on decisions that are made every single day in the halls of governments across the country.

And as we have seen from the potential GOP presidential candidates, a few are having a hard time separating their literal religious beliefs from public policy.

The thirty percent finding from Gallup is not a number we can should feel comfortable with.  It is not a stretch to state that 30% of Americans are incapable of thinking critically, do not have a grasp on the fundamental laws of nature, and reject basic science.  And a good portion of those folks are penning legislation at this moment.

From the Guy Who Gave Us 'Veggie Tales': 'What's In The Bible?'

You'd have to have been in a coma for the past 18 years to not know about Veggie Tales, the Christianity-based anthropomorphic vegetable show (and movies) for kids. You'd also have to have avoided a Chick-Fil-A, as it seems there is perpetually some Veggie Tales tie-in with their kids meals. (Chick-Fil-A, of course, being the Christianity-based (and anti-LGBT) fast food chain where actual vegetables are scarce).

Veggie Tales co-creator, Phil Vischer, has created an online network for kids called Jelly Telly. His goal is to grow Jelly Telly into a Christian Nickelodeon of sorts. The venture is partly funded by Focus on the Family, James Dobson's tax exempt non-profit organization founded in 1977. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Focus on the Family as one of a "dozen major groups [which] help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade."

Lots of folks would assume that Jelly Telly and its programs are fairly benign, but the association with Focus on the Family should be enough to raise concern about whether any of the 'Christian values' threaded through Jelly Telly's programming also help drive the religious right's ideology into the minds of young children.

One Jelly Telly property that is gaining in popularity is a new DVD series based on the network titled What's In The Bible. The show features a mix of puppetry, animation, and musical performances. Kind of in the same vein as Jack's Big Music Show or The Muppet Show.

In an introduction to the series, Phil Vischer tells us that the Bible is the "most widely owned, least widely read in history. It sits on more shelves, gathering more dust, than any book in the world." I would agree with him there. He continues, "And yet this book holds the keys to understanding our lives." That certainly is the opinion of many.

Vischer says, "We have a crisis in the church today. Sixty-five percent of kids are dropping out of church as soon as they graduate from high school. We need to do something about this."

What's Phil going to do? He continues: "We're gonna walk kids through the Bible all the way from Genesis to Revelation and answer their big questions about who wrote it, and where it came from, and why we can trust it, and what difference does it make."

The series contains 5 DVD's, and I have not viewed the material outside of the clips that can be found online, but from what I can gather, the series steers clear of the tired fundamentalism associated with Young Earth Creationism and biblical literalism. So that is somewhat of a relief.

For example, it was refreshing to see that they describe up front how the Bible is a collection of writings (including letters, poems, etc.) written by over 40 people over the course of 1600 years, instead of insinuating that it's one book written by God which should be taken 100% literally.



However, as a secular parent, I personally am not too crazy about the idea of presenting The Bible in this way to children (Christian or otherwise).  While I certainly believe that some of The Bible's themes (i.e. empathy, good will, sacrifice, compassion, etc.) are important to instill in a child at a young age (these are not unique to Christianity, or to any religion), I think many of the Bible's themes, even some of those simplified and presented here in this series, are capable of doing more damage to a child than people realize.

I'm all for religious literacy.  I think too many people, including the devout, do not know enough about religion.  However, there is a big difference between teaching about religion and religious indoctrination, which is precisely what is going on in What's In The Bible?. 

We don't learn from the series that "many people believe X and Y." We learn that, "This is the truth, straight from God, and this is the doctrine you must follow to avoid misery in life." Of course, I expect as much from Phil Vischer and Focus on the Family. He's not teaching Religion 101 to children. This is not a Unitarian Universalist show.  He's planting the seeds of Christian faith (and all that comes along with it, good and bad) in the minds of impressionable children who have no reason to reject what they are being spoon-fed.

Phil seems to have taken to heart the Jesuit maxim, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

While I am sure that many children enjoy the series (there are quite a few children's reviews on YouTube, many of which aren't terribly convincing), and while I'm sure that many of Vischer's young viewers will grow into fine grownups, I can't help but think about the ones that are being primed for a life of Christian exceptionalism.  To be indoctrinated at a young age with the belief that there is only one route to salvation, and that thinking differently will lead to misery and damnation, is to be primed for intolerance (not to mention undue anxiety and guilt).  Sure, this is just a t.v. show, one that does the same thing that Sunday school did for previous generations, and many of us turned out just fine. But Sunday school was never presented with such production value, and quite honestly most of us didn't pay much attention.  Vischer's intention is to get the child's attention by imitating the entertainment they see on Clubhouse Disney and Nick Jr., and then start in with Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus.

Granted, much of children's programming is irreverent, abstract, and sometimes a little creepy (Barney, anyone?), but I would think some of this series' segments could be rather terrifying to a child, because the show speaks about the child -- about her life (and afterlife), her soul, and her fate as it relates to her behavior and her beliefs.  This, when you think about it, is really quite heavy, and quite disturbing for children's programming.  The child is presented with concepts that appear to have serious implications. Yo Gabba Gabba it's not.

For example, if we view the section on Genesis below, from a young child's perspective, we learn that God is male, that we shouldn't trust ourselves (it will make God angry at us), and that sins are small terrifying monsters that will attack you, ride around on your back forever, and cause facial blemishes.



I kid (sorta), but young children do not need to be saddled with supernatural concepts of salvation, eternal damnation, and sin.  Young children can be taught to be moral, compassionate, and ethical without invoking the supernatural, and without employing guilt, insecurity, and fear.

The truth is, even the above segment, which is actually some fucked up shit to lay on a toddler when you think about it, is tame in comparison to what's really in the Bible.

At what point, Phil, are you going to tell the kids about what else is in the Bible: slavery, selling your daughter, dashing babies against the rocks, killing kids who sass their parents, killing brides who are not still virgins, killing those who follow other religions, women as submissives who cannot teach, killing those who work on the sabbath, etc., etc.  I look forward to seeing those episodes.

My point in bringing up those barbaric passages is that, despite the fact that the Genesis clip above does not contain killing or raping or slavery does not make it any less distressing to a child.  In fact, describing how ancient civilizations committed barbaric acts for their god is much more abstract and less harmful to a child than saddling them with the concepts of sin, damnation, and pleasing an all-knowing, always-watching, supernatural man in the sky who holds their very fate in his hands.

What do I suggest as an alternative to What's in The Bible?  What alternative means do we have to instill our children with morality, ethics, and compassion?  We can best serve our children by teaching them, in real world, non-supernatural terms, why it is important to treat others with compassion and respect, and why it serves society to act morally.  We can best serve our children by teaching them about the world around them -- its people (and their wide range of beliefs), its cultures, and its beauty. We can explain to them why humanity rewards compassion and honesty, and why harmful actions are rejected. We can even point to examples of this that predate monotheism.  We can draw from religion, for sure (religious literacy, after all, right?).  Many religious traditions feature wonderful stories that highlight the merits of being a moral person -- they are literature, after all.  But there are just as many, if not more, wonderful stories (or other means of teaching) that fall outside of religion, and which are just as effective (and which don't have those pesky raping, killing, slave-holding parts to avoid).

While many atheists and secularists believe that children should be shielded from religion, I tend to believe that they need to learn about it.  Our culture, especially here in America, is steeped in religion. Our wars are based partly on religious clashes. Clashes the world over have at their root religious disagreements.  To shield a child from knowledge of religion is not much different than shielding them from history or biology.  However, the key is teaching children about religion in the way that we teach them about different cultures. Muslims believe X. Buddhists believe Y. Christians believe Z. Etc., etc. Teach them that even within each religion, there exists an entire spectrum of beliefs. Teach them that religion can be used for good and evil, and provide them with examples.  And most importantly teach them that they can choose what (or if) they believe when they feel they wish to make that decision.  And most importantly, that they can change their minds.

So, I say, "Thumbs down, Phil Vischer." "Thumbs down, What's In The Bible."  I appreciate that you're not telling children that the earth is 6,000 years old, that people cohabited with dinosaurs, or that homosexuality is an abomination.  But I do think that you're putting blinders on children. (I also realize this might be your intention.)

If there were a way to groom children into a life of Christian exceptionalism, serving up religious dogma masquerading as a Nick Jr.-style musical puppet show wouldn't be the worst way to go about it.

That's Not In The Bible: Phantom Passages and Biblical Illiteracy

CNN's Belief Blog has an interesting look at sayings, proverbs, and quotes that people often inaccurately attribute to scripture.

A handful of examples:

"God works in mysterious ways."

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness."

"This, too, shall pass."

"Spare the rod, spoil the child."

“God helps those that help themselves.”

None of these phrases appear anywhere in the bible. 

There are many things that play into the emergence of such "phantom passages." The number one culprit is ignorance. Most who profess to love and live by The Bible have not actually read very much of it. Confusion is another factor. Sometimes the phantom passage is a distillation of a concept found in scripture (i.e. "Spare the rod" is likely a loose distillation of Proverbs 13:24: "The one who withholds [or spares] the rod is one who hates his son."

I have added some more quotations that are often inaccurately attributed to The Bible:

"Money is the root of all evil."

"Moderation in all things."

"God works in mysterious ways."

"God will not give us more than we can bear."

The Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

Aside from mis-attributed quotations, there are also numerous stories from the Bible that have become distorted over the years as people have passed them along in Bible classes, sermons, or in the living room. CNN points out the following examples:

The scripture never says a whale swallowed Jonah, the Old Testament prophet, nor did any New Testament passages say that three wise men visited baby Jesus, scholars say.

Those details may seem minor, but scholars say one popular phantom Bible story stands above the rest: The Genesis story about the fall of humanity.

Most people know the popular version - Satan in the guise of a serpent tempts Eve to pick the forbidden apple from the Tree of Life. It’s been downhill ever since.

But the story in the book of Genesis never places Satan in the Garden of Eden.

“Genesis mentions nothing but a serpent,” says Kevin Dunn, chair of the department of religion at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“Not only does the text not mention Satan, the very idea of Satan as a devilish tempter postdates the composition of the Garden of Eden story by at least 500 years,” Dunn says.

To most, this is not a big deal. In most cases, the gist of the story is intact -- and let's not fool ourselves, these are simply stories. But what this does illuminate is the fact that most religious people do not really know this book which serves as a foundation for their lives.  And, as the CNN article notes, we tend to infuse the Bible with our own values and morals, rather than the other way around.

Take, for instance, the case of the phantom passage, "God helps those that help themselves." As mentioned above, this can be found nowhere in the Bible. It is so often cited as a validation of self-reliance, or to justify our voracious appetites for capitalism and consumerism. It evokes a reluctance to provide for others. No, this is not a biblical quotation.  It can, however, be attributed to Ben Franklin. 

Sidnie White Crawford, a religious studies scholar at the University of Nebraska, states:

Yet that passage contradicts the biblical definition of goodness: defining one’s worth by what one does for others, like the poor and the outcast, Crawford says.

Crawford cites a scripture from Leviticus that tells people that when they harvest the land, they should leave some “for the poor and the alien” (Leviticus 19:9-10), and another passage from Deuteronomy that declares that people should not be “tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.”

These examples point to a big problem in America, where, despite the Establishment Clause, scripture finds its way into the political sphere, informing everything from war to healthcare to presidential elections.  It's dangerous enough that we must tolerate religious ideology in public affairs, without having to worry about faux religious ideology.

From the March 22, 2007 cover story in TIME Magazine, The Case for Teaching The Bible:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the Bible holds the answers to "all or most of life's basic questions," but pollster George Gallup has dubbed us "a nation of biblical illiterates." Only half of U.S. adults know the title of even one Gospel. Most can't name the Bible's first book. The trend extends even to Evangelicals, only 44% of whose teens could identify a particular quote as coming from the Sermon on the Mount.

I know that many secular folks would argue that a diminishing understanding of an ancient religious text is not such a bad thing. Surely, they may think, every dead religion once had a period where people began to lose interest in, and knowledge about, their religious stories -- this is just one more instance of that.

Biblical illiteracy is a problem. Not because we need to be more religious as a society, but because the Bible is the most influential book (or, more accurately, collection of writings) on the face of the earth.  It informs countless literary works.  It reverberates throughout history and politics. One cannot study Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., or even George W. Bush without encountering allusions to biblical writings. Many of us would not last very long in a sales job if we only knew the name of one or two products in the company's inventory.  A chemist would be laughed out of the lab if he could only recall a handful of elements (and several faux-elements that were nowhere on the periodic table). Can you imagine receiving a lifeguard certificate only knowing the first step of CPR?  Why is it that we can ascribe to a belief system of which we apparently know so little about?  Not that everyone needs to have exhaustive knowledge of their belief system -- we can never know enough. But the figures from the TIME Magazine story illustrate a level of illiteracy that would be unacceptable in most areas of our lives.

Although much good is inspired by scripture, The Bible is used on a daily basis to justify violence, oppression, and discrimination (of course other religious texts do as well).  Most often, these justifications, like the phantom passage examples above, are distorted, erroneous distillations of passages devoid of context. They are often cherry-picked from larger passages which, if the context were understood, might encompass an altogether different sentiment or meaning. Too often, passages which are used to justify violence, hatred, or oppression, are adjacent to other passages that are ignored for their lack of relevance in modern society (but somehow, the cherry-picked passage is perfectly applicable).

Polls suggest that that over 60% of Americans favor secular teaching about the Bible.  Obviously, teaching the Bible, from a literary, historical-critical perspective would be a tough sell in America. Many evangelicals would have issues with this type of warts-and-all presentation that did not include a sales pitch, and many liberals (and those of other faiths) would have issues, since it would be difficult to ensure that teachers were teaching instead of preaching. Other faiths might wish that their holy books get equal time (maybe not such a bad idea, either).  And certainly some vocal atheists would object from the get-go on the grounds that religion is not appropriate for public schools, period, no matter how it is presented. 

If anything, our society needs to have a better understanding of the writings which have so greatly influenced our society. We should be familiar with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the great speeches from American history (Gettysburg Address, MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, Daniel Webster's Plymouth Oration, etc.), and the American literature which has contributed to our culture, and which reflects our past ("Huckleberry Finn," "The Great Gatsby," "The Scarlett Letter," "Invisible Man," etc.). Why is the Bible any less important for Americans to be familiar with?

One benefit that would come from a more biblically literate America would be a decline in scriptural literalism. As we saw above, from the examples of phantom passages, and from the surveys showing our lack of knowledge of what is actually in The Bible, the majority of Americans possess a blind allegiance to something that they truly do not understand.  This is not only embarrassing, it is dangerous.  Biblical literalism leads to a variety of societal ills, including the denial of science, the denial of human rights, sickness, and death. It leads to the rejection of logic.

If Americans really knew The Bible as well as they proclaim, they would understand that it is a cobbled-together collection of writings by many different people (often writing under the guise of someone else), written over many years, in many different languages, for many different audiences, for many different reasons, in very different times.  It has been translated, and re-translated, edited, and assembled, by a variety of people, with certain books rejected and certain books admitted, for a variety of reasons.  It should be read and understood as such.

If we, in our time, have erroneously associated this many quotations and passages to The Bible, we can only begin to imagine the misconceptions and embellishments contained within its very pages.

Rick Perry: The Economic Crisis is God's Way of Bringing Us Back to Biblical Principles

Texas Governor and possible GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has not been shy about his alignment with the Religious Right. And not just the 'mainstream' Religious Right hate groups like the Family Research Council. We're talking extreme Christocrats.

We also shouldn't forget last month when Perry issued a "Pray For Rain" proclamation. 

If his unapologetic mix of church and state weren't enough to scare you, then how about this? He has the words 'Liberty' and 'Freedom' emblazoned on his cowboy boots. Scared yet? Take a look at the following clip of Perry on James Robinson's Life Today television show, in which he states that the current economic crisis is God's way of making America return to biblical principles and free us from our slavery to the government.

We already had a president who made war decisions based on biblical prophecy. And that didn't work out too well.  

Reflections on The Rapture That Wasn't

It appears that we needed the rapture more than it needed us.  The cultural and political landscape was ripe for Harold Camping and his May 21 prediction.  We have witnessed earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, and tornadoes that rival the most devastating natural disasters on record. We have seen, time and time again, religious leaders state that these events were doled out as punishment, or warnings, from an angry god.  We have heard repeated claims that President Obama is the antichrist.  This was simply the next step in ratcheting up the heightened religious rhetoric of recent years.  But Camping and his ilk are really not as crazy as we'd like to think.

In America, 38% believe that God employs natural events to dispense judgment.  If we look at evangelicals, this number jumps to 60%.  So, clearly, this idea of an angry god who punishes non-believers is far from fringe stuff.  Nearly 4 out of 10 people actually believe that God punishes humans through violent devastation and catastrophic loss of life.

Is it really a stretch to go from belief in an angry, punishing god to the belief in the rapture?  Based on modern interpretations of the rapture, the wrath doled out during the tribulation would include war, disasters, famine, sickness, etc.  The same stuff, yet on a grander scale.  And approximately the same numbers believe in the rapture as believe God punishes us with disasters: 41% say the rapture will occur within the next 40 years (80% believe the rapture will occur at some point in time). 

So, when we look at Harold Camping and Family Radio, most of us see a bunch of loons.  Yet so many of us believe the same things Harold Camping believes.  How do we reconcile this?  There is only one detail that separates him from 80% of Americans: the fact that he believed he knew the date. It reminds me of the Woody Allen joke:

This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs."

Family Radio is a tax-free non-profit venture. They own 66 radio stations worldwide, and are worth $72 million according to 2009 IRS statements.  Most of us find this to be maddening.  He has amassed a fortune by swindling people into believing his crazy stories!  Yet, his story is one with which 80% of Americans agree -- except that one detail: the date.  If he preached all of the same stuff, yet never set a date, he wouldn't be any different from the majority of us.  This should be alarming.

I wonder if perhaps the difference between Camping and the other 80% of Americans who believe the rapture will occur is the fact that Camping (and many of his followers) were willing to put their money where their mouth was.  If the 80% of rapture believers were put to some kind of test -- whether putting their face on a billboard that says, "I believe that the rapture will occur!" in the town that they live and work, or, for those who believe the rapture will occur in the next 40 years, signing over all their belongings at the 40 year mark, I wonder how many would think again.

The failed rapture prediction was not harmless.  Many sold all their belongings and wiped out their savings.  Families were torn apart.  In Vietnam, hundreds of ethnic Hmong were forced into hiding after security forces dispersed thousands who had convened to await Jesus' return.  There are reports of rapture-related suicides.

One of the more heartbreaking stories involved a California woman who slit her two daughters' throats with boxcutters, before slitting her own throat. Her intention was to save her family from suffering the tribulation. Fortunately, all survived, but certainly the event has caused irreparable psychological damage that will affect this family, and those close to them, for the rest of their lives.  Of course, we do not know if this woman was mentally ill (one would certainly think so), but if we take the rapture claims into consideration, the act could be considered one of great compassion.  When we believe in fantastical religious concepts, we can justify nearly anything.

We are able to cast judgment on others who do things that we believe to be crazy.  We believe these people to be crazy because their beliefs are different from ours.  Often, however, their beliefs are closer to our own than we might realize.  How many degrees separate our beliefs? How many degrees until our beliefs cross the line into delusional?

We often forget that the Bible is full of crazy.  It is full of crazy by anyone's standards.  Let's take a look at a few examples:

• No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:1)

• If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals, then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity. (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)

• Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man. (Numbers 31:17-18)

• Happy [shall he be], that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137:9)

• This is what the Lord says: Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass .... And Saul ... utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. (1 Samuel 15:3,7-8)

• The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and dries it up; he makes all the rivers run dry. Bashan and Carmel wither and the blossoms of Lebanon fade.The mountains quake before him and the hills melt away. The earth trembles at his presence, the world and all who live in it. Who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him. The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. (Nahum 1:2)

Yes, a real refuge in times of trouble, it appears.

I'm not naive. I know that the above scriptures cannot be cherry-picked and paraded around as evidence of God as a maniacal, genocidal, barbaric, egotistical monster. There is context, to be sure. (Although, I'm not convinced that context can explain away some of those examples.)  I also know that we cannot ignore these passages and only cherry-pick those which suit our carefully honed personal idea of God.  You have to accept him, warts and all, or do a hell of a lot of shoehorning. 

My reason for listing a few examples (believe me, there's plenty where that came from) depicting God as what we would define by modern DSM standards as psychopathic is to illustrate that folks like Camping, and the lady who sliced her girls' throats, are really no crazier than the scripture which likely informed their ideology (and their actions).

What do you believe? And why? Are your reasons rational? Isn't life and death (and possibly eternal life) important enough for us to really examine the rationale for our beliefs? Are your beliefs supported by anything other than an ancient text which we know to be replete with contradictions, errors, and highly questionable morality? (Yes, there are also many wonderful instances of beauty, and fine instances of morality as well.)  Are these beliefs essential to living a fulfilling life as a contributing member of society?

There is a thought experiment put forth by Sam Harris in The End of Faith that underscores the fact that most of our beliefs have more to do with tradition and our place in space and time than they do anything else:

"What if all our knowledge about the world were suddenly to disappear? Imagine that six billion of us wake up tomorrow morning in a state of utter ignorance and confusion. Our books and computers are still here, but we can't make heads or tails of their contents. We have even forgotten how to drive our cars and brush our teeth. What knowledge would we want to reclaim first? Well, there's that business about growing food and building shelter that we would want to get reacquainted with. We would want to relearn how to use and repair many of our machines. Learning to understand spoken and written language would also be a top priority, given that these skills are necessary for acquiring most others. When in this process of reclaiming our humanity will it be important to know that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that he was resurrected? And how would we relearn these truths, if they are indeed true? By reading the Bible? Our tour of the shelves will deliver similar pearls from antiquity, like the "fact" that Isis, the goddess of fertility, sports an impressive pair of cow horns. Reading further, we will learn that Thor carries a hammer and that Marduk's sacred animals are horses, dogs, and a dragon with a forked tongue. Whom shall we give top billing in our resurrected world? Yaweh or Shiva? And when will we want to relearn that premarital sex is a sin? Or that adulteresses should be stoned to death? Or that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception? And what will we think of those curious people who begin proclaiming that one of our books is distinct from all others in that it was actually written by the Creator of the universe?

There are undoubtedly spiritual truths that we would want to relearn—once we manage to feed and clothe ourselves—and these are truths that we have learned imperfectly in our present state. How is it possible, for instance, to overcome one's fear and inwardness and simply love other human beings ? Assume, for the moment, that such a process of personal transformation exists and that there is something worth knowing about it; there is, in other words, some skill, or discipline, or conceptual understanding, or dietary supplement that allows for the reliable transformation of fearful, hateful, or indifferent persons into loving ones. If so, we should be positively desperate to know about it. There may even be a few biblical passages that would be useful in this regard—but as for whole rafts of untestable doctrines, clearly there would be no reasonable basis to take them up again. The Bible and Koran, it seems certain, would find themselves respectfully shelved next to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Egyptian Book of the Dead."

I know that the above passage will anger many who read it.  We put up defenses when our long-held beliefs (and for many, our religious heritage) are compared to the many dead religions of the world.  Yet we must not hide from the fact that there will be a time when our civilization will share shelf space with the ancient Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians who built the pyramids.  To deny this is to deny the vastness of time.  How and why are your supernatural beliefs going to outlive our civilization? (If the rapture doesn't come first, of course.)  If you, like 80% of Americans, believe that the rapture will occur, why do you believe it?  Most likely, because you read it in a book or heard it in church.

Dave Muscato, of MU SASHA (University of Missouri Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics) wrote:

Now, imagine that a pharmaceutical company had a drug that repeated, controlled-condition clinical testing had confirmed did not work. If the pharmaceutical company were to say about this drug, “We know that scientific tests and clinical trials demonstrate that this drug is actually ineffective. But despite that, we believe that it works, and selling this product, including implying and telling people directly that it really does work if you just believe it, too, should not be considered fraud on that basis.”

Muscato states that there would be an uproar. We would not stand for it.  This is what Harold Camping and his ilk do on a daily basis, tax-free, as they rake in millions of dollars, and continue to scam followers out of their money.  Yet, Camping is a Man of God, and is entitled to do what he does.  He can rationalize his beliefs in the same way you rationalize yours, using the exact same text. 

Harold Camping was MIA on Saturday, May 21. His Website was scrubbed of any information about the Rapture.  He didn't comment immediately on the failed prediction.  According to the Associated Press, the Family Radio camp has responded to the failed rapture prediction with the following:

May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said...But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

Certainly, fewer people will be lining up to be raptured as were on May 21.  Once bitten, twice shy.  However, there will be others who continue to believe Camping. Others will ignore the realities of life and march towards Oct. 21 with the expectation that they will no longer have a need for money, a home, a car, or a family.  And Americans will continue to gawk and remark how crazy it is that these people believe that  all the Christians in the world will be gathered into the air to meet Jesus when he comes down from heaven on October 21, when in actuality all the Christians in the world will be gathered into the air to meet Jesus when he comes down from heaven some other time.

There is no scientific basis for Harold Camping's rapture predictions, or for any religious rapture scenario, period.  There are plenty of ways, explainable in scientific terms, in which the end of the world might actually occur.  Each possibility is extremely unlikely to occur in our lifetime. Each possibility is infinitely more likely to occur than the rapture we find in Christian eschatology. 

Religious beliefs have consequences.  Our beliefs should not interfere with the lives of others, specifically those who do not share them.  They certainly should not lead to the cutting of throats of children.  It is in society's best interest to call into question religious claims for which there is no basis in reality, especially those which prevent or impede others' pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. 

As Dave Muscato, in the aforementioned MU SASHA blog entry, writes:

I don’t care one bit if people want to believe irrational things in the privacy of their own minds, so long as their outward actions are in accordance with what logic, evidence, and reason would lead them to do. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for not allowing gay people to marry. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for barring stem-cell research. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for teaching creation myths in science classes. There is no logical, evidential, or reasonable excuse for denying women & transgendered men the right to safe and affordable abortions.

What does Harold Camping's failed rapture prediction have to do with all of this?  It provides us with an opportunity to see firsthand that our religious beliefs can greatly affect the lives of others.  It provides us with an opportunity to examine the variety of beliefs regarding the rapture.  It provides us with an opportunity to question whether any number of our fantastical, supernatural beliefs culled from ancient texts are reasonable.  It allows us an opportunity to celebrate reason and to remind ourselves that many of the claims of scripture have been explained away (geocentrism, the firmament, the Genesis creation narrative) as we have learned more about the way the natural world works and how our holy books came to be.  Mostly, it reminds us that our religious beliefs are based on traditions -- constellations of beliefs, many drawn from a variety of previous traditions -- handed down generation by generation.   And often these beliefs (such as our modern ideas of heaven and hell) feature post-biblical components.  At any rate, these are not beliefs that are based on evidence.  As such, there are really no religious beliefs any more or less credible than Harold Camping's.

For now, we will continue on living our lives until the end of the world fails to materialize on October 21. We should have confidence that the scientific community will let us know if and when we have reason to fear a cataclysmic event of global proportions.  But people will continue to make claims about the end of the world -- without a doubt.  We have the evidence to support this.

Sex and The Bible: A Quiz

From the New York Times:

Faith is a huge force in American life, and it’s common to hear the Bible cited to bolster political and moral positions, especially against same-sex marriage and abortion. Choose the best responses (some questions may have more than one correct answer):

1. The Bible’s position on abortion is:
a. Never mentioned.
b. To forbid it along with all forms of artificial birth control.
c. Condemnatory, except to save the life of the mother.

2. The Bible suggests “marriage” is:
a. The lifelong union of one man and one woman.
b. The union of one man and up to 700 wives.
c. Often undesirable, because it distracts from service to the Lord.

3. The Bible says of homosexuality:
a. Leviticus describes male sexual pairing as an abomination.
b. A lesbian should be stoned at her father’s doorstep.
c. There’s plenty of ambiguity and no indication of physical intimacy, but some readers point to Ruth and Naomi’s love as suspiciously close, or to King David declaring to Jonathan: “Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (II Samuel 1:23-26)

4. In the Bible, erotic writing is:
a. Forbidden by Deuteronomy as “adultery of the heart.”
b. Exemplified by “Song of Songs,” which celebrates sex for its own sake.
c. Unmentioned.

5. Jesus says that divorce is permitted:
a. Only after counseling and trial separation.
b. Never.
c. Only to men whose wives have been unfaithful.

6. Among sexual behavior that is forbidden is:
a. Adultery.
b. Incest.
c. Sex with angels.

7. The people of Sodom were condemned principally for:
a. Homosexuality.
b. Blasphemy.
c. Lack of compassion for the poor and needy.

Follow the link for the answers.

Top Ten Bible Verses Quoted on Facebook and Twitter Following Bin Laden's Death

OpenBible.info collects realtime data on Bible quotes on shared on Twitter and Facebook. The following are the most popular verses quoted on the two social networks within the first 12 hours after the announcement of Osama Bin Laden's Death.

1. Proverbs 24:17 "Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice."

2. Psalm 138:8 "The LORD will make PERFECT the things that concern me"(KJV). (NIV: "The LORD will vindicate me; your love, LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.") (Unrelated tweet by Rev Run.)

3. Proverbs 21:15 "When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers." (Rick Warren started this one):

4. Ezekiel 33:11 "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?"

5. Ezekiel 18:23 "Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?"

6. Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

7. Proverbs 11:10 "When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy."

8. Proverbs 24:18 " … or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them." (The popularity of this verse is due to it finishing the sentence begun by the #1 most popular verse.)

9. Proverbs 24:1 "Do not envy the wicked, do not desire their company;" (probably an effort to quote Proverbs 24:17)

10. Proverbs 28:5 "Evildoers do not understand what is right, but those who seek the LORD understand it fully."

Full list at Christianity Today

Easter Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of Scripture

So you think you know the Easter narrative?  Take the quiz.