Category Archives: Sociopathic God

Lies, lies and more lies: the resurrection and guns

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I was watching a video of Richard Dawkins and John Lennox in debate on the question “Has Science Buried God.” One expected — and I do not think that, given the academic reputation of the debaters, this is unreasonable — that there would be no lies. And yet, prominent in Lennox’s argument was a critical lie, a lie so central to his argument that he should have lost by default the moment he uttered it. Here he is telling that lie:

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Now, the lie is this. Geza Vermes does not defend the historicity of the resurrection. While I don’t intend to read any new books on the resurrection, it seemed to me worthwhile looking it up on amazon.com and seeing whether anyone had commented on Vermes’ position vis-à-vis the resurrection, and, sure enough, someone had. So I am going to quote that reviewer here. He’s a so-called Vine Voice™ reviewer, so he has at least some credit with Amazon (at least with a particular demographic — see below). His name is Christopher Price. Here’s part of what he has to say about Vermes’ book on the resurrection, The Resurrection: History and Myth (which he awards two stars):

Despite his misgivings, Vermes seems to accept the historicity of the empty tomb and the fact that some sort of appearances occurred. He explores alternative theories, such as the wrong tomb, stolen body, and not-really-dead theories, and finds them all lacking as historical explanations. So just what does Vermes think happened? I still do not know for sure. His epilogue is titled, “Resurrection in the Hearts of Men.” He admits that Jesus’ followers experienced a powerful mystical event that caused them to proclaim the gospel with authority. His theory seems to be that these two factors combined to spur them on to proclaiming the gospel, and that when their newfound missionary activities were successful, their doubts eased and Jesus was resurrected in their hearts. This seems to put the cart before the horse and fails to offer an explanation for the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances in the first instance. It also leaves unexplained Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus. Finally, it fails to explain why Jesus’ followers would have interpreted these events as a resurrection rather than some other event — such as an assumption into heaven. This last issue is one of the crucial historical questions surrounding Jesus’ reported resurrection and the absence of any serious exploration of it is a substantial omission[!]

It is worthwhile pointing out, if you didn’t guess from that last remark, that Christopher Price is a Christian — of the charismatic persuasion, by his own account – and this may be why he gives Vermes’ book on the resurrection only two stars. But this is valuable testimony, for it shows clearly that Christians who believe in the resurrection will not think that Vermes does.

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True Religion — We’ve Been Warned!

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The following appeared in the Wall Street Journal today (h/t Ophelia Benson, Butterflies and Wheels):-

Cardinal-designate speaks of joy, love – and blood

Associated Press
VATICAN CITY  — The top U.S. bishop, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, has told a meeting of the pope and his fellow cardinals that they must spread the faith with joy, love — and blood if necessary.

Dolan, archbishop of New York, gave the keynote address Friday to a gathering of the cardinals who will participate in the ceremony Saturday to bring Dolan and 21 other cardinals into the elite men’s club that will elect the next pope.

Dolan said the Vatican No. 2 had told him to speak about spreading the faith in a secular world since New York was the “capital of a secular culture.” Dolan said while there’s “graphic secularism” in the Big Apple, “it is also a very religious city.”

He said cardinals wear scarlet to show they are willing to shed blood for the faith.

Saying Farewell to God

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Since I have found that I have a way of distilling (or “capturing” as the software says) episodes from videos on disk, I have decided to put up the moment when, at the memorial service for my beloved Elizabeth, I said farewell to God in public. She would have been forty-three this year, and we would have celebrated our 22nd. anniversary this month – but that was not to be. However, what I said at the memorial might be of interest to some of you, so I put it up here. The whole talk was over 40 minutes long, I am afraid, and this is only a small part of it. I put up the conclusion some time ago. So, without further comment from me, here is my farewell to God. (The new WordPress uploader is not as convenient as the old one, so I have had to divide it into smaller segments.)

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Putting William Lane Craig in his place

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Jerry Coyne — I might have known — has already beat me to it! I was almost finished this, when I received notification of Jerry’s take on Dawkins’ article about why he won’t debate William Lane Craig: It’s about morality, stupid!

In a short severe article in the Guardian this morning Richard Dawkins puts William Lane Craig decisively in his place, and punctures Craig’s self-serving balloon in several places. Dawkins explains “Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig.” As Jerry says, it’s about morality, stupid! Apparently Craig has gone into overdrive trying to shame Dawkins into debating him in Oxford this month, saying that he will place an empty chair on the stage of the Sheldonian Theatre to represent Dawkins’ absence. Here’s the poster for the event:

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An All Good, All Powerful God of Love?

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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation hosted an IQ2 debate on the motion: “Atheists are Wrong“. (You can access the whole debate by clicking on the link.) Russell Blackford was one of those who spoke (every effectively, I might add) against the motion, and Peter Jensen, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney (and an evangelical Christian), was amongst those who spoke for the motion. The following two clips from the debate make an obvious point, though I will draw the moral for you at the end.

The question that was put to those who affirmed the motion was this. The universe has been around for over 13 billion years, yet there has been life on earth for the last 3 or 4 billion years, and humans have been around only a small fraction of that period. What was God doing in the meantime? Here is Peter Jensen’s answer:

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That was the archbishop’s answer, despite the fact that in his address Russell Blackford had said the following. (Notice, however, that Jensen’s description of god as love is really an account of self-love, since all the members of the Trinity are identical with each other according to the Athanasian Creed, their love for each other is their love for themselves.) Now to Russell’s point, passionately argued:

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The moral of this is, I take it, obvious, and Peter Jensen should have seen at once how thoroughly juvenile his response was, and how immediate and devastating the contradiction is. For if God spent billions of years enjoying himself and “planning it,” how did it come about that, in all the time that “he” (just assume the scare quotes in the following pronouns) was enjoying himself and planning it he couldn’t come up with a plan that didn’t allow his creation to thoroughly enjoy themselves? The burden of proof lies with those who claim that there is a god of love who is infinitely powerful and infinitely good. But when it comes to the crunch, religious believers just are this incapable of giving us a reason why we should believe it.

Christians continue to claim that God has prepared for us a glory and a joy that is past description. Well, as Russell Blackford says, if God has done this, why didn’t he just start off that way? Would that not have been the loving thing to do? The obvious truth is that belief in God is just this pathetically jejune. It’s there, staring believers in the face, and they go on repeating the old lie, that their god is good and loving and all-powerful, and yet there is not a smidgen of evidence in this god’s supposed creation that he spent those billions of years planning things, and, of course, thoroughly enjoying himself, to any good purpose.

Add to that, of course, the idea, so clearly stated in the Church of England’s report on assisted dying, On Dying Well, and it makes even less sense. Now, remember, before you read this, that, according to Peter Jensen, God spent billions of years — not suffering note, but — thoroughly enjoying himself, and it takes on an entirely different coloration:

But suffering as exposure to what is beyond one’s voluntary control, suffering as undergoing, even as diminishment, is part of the pattern of becoming human. [22]

Their god, according to Jensen, spent billions of years thoroughly enjoying himself, but, in order to become human, we need to suffer and be diminished, and Jensen, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his ilk, are not at all backward when it comes to forcing people to undergo this suffering and this diminishment, all the while repeating the empty catch phrases about the goodness, the power and the love of their god.

What on earth possesses people to say such stupid things? Authority. Not reason, not good sense, and certainly not consistency: just authority. Their authority and power over others, just like their god who subordinates everything to himself, and we must be subordinated, because that is the only way that their god comes out of this without a scratch. God, no doubt, didn’t need suffering to become God, but we need to suffer in order to become human — that is, to acknowledge our smallness and insignificance in the presence of the all-powerful, all good, god of love. But, if the Christian heaven is so wonderful, without suffering, where everyone acts beneficently according to their nature, what has suffering got to do with it? The truth is that it’s a human, even man made, game, that the religions are playing. It’s really all about power and subordination, and certainly not about love. Condemned out of his own mouth, Peter Jensen should have left licking his wounds, but I daresay he thought that was quite a brilliant response. But his response is just a defence of tyranny, and his god no better than a tyrant. God creates us sick and commands us to be whole; meanwhile, of course, this god is thoroughly enjoying himself, sociopathically isolated in self-love and self-regard.