Trump's Clueless About Pittsburgh - Just Like Everything Else

If there is one thing that one can depend upon, it is that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer, doesn't know what the hell he is talking about and that his facts and figures are more or less pulled out of his ass.  A case in point is his comment about Pittsburgh when he was declare that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.  Specifically, he said he was more concerned about the citizens of Pittsburgh than the citizens of Paris.  The reality, however, is that Pittsburgh cared little for Trump and Hillary Clinton garnered 56.4% of the vote as  opposed to Trump's measly 40% (Gary Johnson got 2.5% of the vote).  Stated another way, almost 60% of Pittsburgh voters did not want Der Trumpenführer.  And then there's they myth that Pittsburgh longs for the "good old days" of coal and steel.  As a piece in Politico points out, the city has long since moved on and now has one of the most educated and truly is indifferent about Trump's false claims that he will revive the moribund coal industry.  Here are article excepts:

Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords was framed as his obligation to “represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” The line conjures an image that a reindustrialized Pittsburgh will return to its smokestack roots, becoming once again the center of the nation’s steel production, fueled by Appalachian coal, and delivering raw material to vastly expanded American manufacturing industries. And it seems to suggest that this blessed future awaits not just Pittsburgh, but virtually all of the American Rust Belt, once crippling environmental regulations have been vanquished.

But Pittsburgh is not muddling through a post-industrial funk. In fact, it is a leading example of a city, and a region, that has rebuilt itself to compete in the post-industrial 21st century economy. Much of that transformation has only been possible because of the concerted efforts to clean the land, air and waterways damaged by virtually unregulated industrial use for over a century. Yet Pittsburgh has been able to generate new jobs, attract new workers and successfully compete against the world.

This truth got lost in the 2016 election which radically oversimplified the debate about how to strengthen America’s manufacturing industries and declining regions.

Three decades ago, a handful of macro-economic forces—the mass obsolescence of industrial capital, contractionary monetary policy, global over-capacity and disruptive technology within the steel industry—came together to eviscerate Pittsburgh's historic advantages in producing steel. Until then, few regions had fought harder, or failed more dramatically, to retain their industrial base than Pittsburgh. Moving forward was made all the more difficult by the scale of the collapse that the region endured in the 1980s. Over 150,000 manufacturing jobs permanently disappeared from southwestern Pennsylvania, and the Pittsburgh metropolitan region contracted by 176,000 people—the single largest population loss of any metropolitan region over the decade.

A lot has happened in Pittsburgh in three decades that followed the worst of the job destruction. Pittsburgh has been forced to redefine itself, a transformation that started with its workforce. Where once Pittsburgh was possibly the most blue-collar city in the nation, the region today relies on a workforce that is one of the most educated in the nation. . . . . . Once dependent on a singular industry, Pittsburgh has created new jobs across a range of industries. Building upon a core of stability in both the health and education sectors, employment has been shifting into finance and a broad range of professional service industries. Of late, Pittsburgh has attracted new technology-based investment by the likes of Google and Uber and looks to become a center of self-driving cars.

One pole of the city’s growth has been the expansion of both academic research and enrollment at Pittsburgh’s universities and colleges. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh—the city’s two largest universities—together expanded their annual research and development expenditures to over $1 billion dollars for the first time in 2010. Much of that growth has been fueled by federal research funding that appears to be at risk in the new priorities coming from Washington. Take into account that Pittsburgh’s university-based research is focused in the fields most agree are economic drivers for the nation: life sciences, information technology, robotics and more, the potential harm of diminished research funding is even greater.

More than anything else, the public has been told relaxed environmental regulations will aide a beleaguered coal industry. Yet, peak employment in the coal industry in both Pennsylvania and West Virginia came a full century ago. Today, less than a thousand coal miners are still employed across the Pittsburgh metropolitan region. Fewer than 6,000 coal miners are employed across Pennsylvania, and this is less than were employed in the state before the Civil War.

The hope that a reinvigorated coal industry will in the long run help Pittsburgh, or its neighbors across northern Appalachia is a false one. Regulation is easy to blame for coal’s continuing decline as a fuel choice, but new domestic supplies of natural gas have put coal at a competitive disadvantage that will be almost impossible to offset short of direct subsidies.

Make no mistake, Pittsburgh’s transformation is incomplete, uneven and ongoing, but there is no rational reason for the region to turn back on the progress it has made.

Unlike Pittsburgh, much of Trump country will not be able to transform itself through education and recruitment of new industries.  In contrast to Pittsburgh, they eschew education, reject scientific knowledge and have few reputable colleges and universities. I'm sorry, but unaccredited bible colleges will not make a positive impression of progressive and innovative business.  Nor will right wing Christian extremism and open racism and bigotry. Pittsburgh demonstrates the route to economic improvement and an embracing of the 21st century.  Sadly, most of Trump country wants to return to the 1950's - something that will not happen - and the war against modernity and diversity will only accelerate the economic death spiral for these regions.  Bigotry and the embrace of ignorance (much of it Bible inspired) carries a huge economic cost. .   

Why Evangelical Christians Reject Climate Change

Throughout our lives we face many choices some of which are easy and others of which are difficult - for Fox News viewers, sexual orientation isn't one of them.  Often making decisions or failing to make them comes down to intellectual laziness and/or an unwillingness to face facts and knowledge that cut against childhood indoctrination.  Most of us grow up and come to think for ourselves.  One block of Americans do not: evangelical Christians.  When confronted with inconvenient facts - e.g., the human genome project says that Adam and Eve never existed as historical persons - the reaction of this group is to reject them and to double down in the embrace of ignorance and to cling more desperately to myths and fairy tales.  Anything and anyone that challenges their serious thought free "world view" is deemed an enemy and lashed out at. Gays represent by one group that challenges their childish beliefs and bigotries.  Which brings us to climate change where 72% of evangelicals refuse to believe in it.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the deliberate embrace of a book authored by uneducated, Bronze Age goat herders over scientific acknowledge.  As the piece notes, climate change is but one of the numerous idiocies that the "godly folk" embrace.  Here are highlights:

The United States will withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change, President Trump announced Thursday. Environmental scientists say the consequences could be catastrophic for the planet. But for some Trump supporters, there’s no reason to worry.

“As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us,” Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) told constituents last week at a town hall in Coldwater, Mich. “And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”
 Among conservative evangelicals, that is not an unusual opinion. . . . only 28 percent of evangelicals believe human activity is causing climate change. Confidence that God will intervene to prevent people from destroying the world is one of the strongest barriers to gaining conservative evangelical support for environmental pacts like the Paris agreement. Climate change isn’t the first issue where such faith has presented itself. During the Cold War, premillennialist evangelicals, who believe that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent, argued that God wouldn’t allow humanity to destroy itself in a nuclear war. Conservative evangelicals during the Cold War often saw disarmament as a greater threat to the United States than the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Jerry Falwell adopted the slogan “Peace through Strength” in the early 1980s and declared that a nuclear freeze would be “national suicide.” Premillennialists such as televangelist James Robison preached that the Antichrist, who was destined to unite the world under his leadership, would use fear of nuclear weapons and a promise of peace to deceive the world into accepting world government. When scientists began sounding the alarm over climate change in the 1980s, conservative evangelicals, who had been somewhat accepting of environmentalism in the 1970s, became convinced that the Antichrist would use the fear of climate change to seize power. The 1970s environmental movement had enjoyed widespread support as it focused on smaller issues like pollution and litter. In the 1980s, though, scientists revealed problems like the depletion of the ozone layer and global warming, which required worldwide cooperation and significant economic changes to redress.  For Christians like Walberg, globalism is the most dire threat to the United States, not rising oceans and more powerful hurricanes. Just as conservative evangelicals opposed arms treaties during the Cold War, they see environmental pacts, like the Paris agreement, as paving the way for a charismatic world leader to form a global government and begin the seven-year Tribulation that precedes the Second Coming of Christ.  Trump’s anti-globalism was part of what made him attractive to conservative evangelicals in last year’s Republican primaries and the general election — and still now as president. Even if Trump’s personal life is an affront to Christian values, his message means that the United States will be standing against the potential forces of the Antichrist.  Trump doesn’t seem to have any firm beliefs, religious or otherwise. He didn’t pull us out of the Paris accord because he truly shares the conservative evangelical beliefs of many of his supporters and advisers. Still, by calling climate change a Chinese hoax, he’s shown a willingness to use similar arguments for his own purposes. We must accept that a number of conservative evangelicals, especially from older generations, will never support significant action on climate change, especially if it means signing a global treaty. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement has proven that he lacks the flexibility and foresight of Reagan, who dared negotiate with the country he declared an “evil empire.” But we can appeal to moderate and liberal evangelicals with different or milder end-times beliefs, and nonevangelical conservatives can still be convinced to cooperate if persuaded that inaction threatens U.S. standing in the world. We have no choice but to give up on Trump now, but maybe we can hope the party of Reagan will find the moral courage to combat climate change.   

In my view, the author is too optimistic about the Republican Party.  Evangelical Christians are akin to a cancer within the party that has metastasized and rendered the party in a terminal condition.  As for the fears of an Anti-Christ , I would argue that their vote him in the White House.  The only way to deal with evangelicals is to reject them socially and politically.  Their "faith" - i.e., embrace of ignorance - deserves zero respect nor do they.  They constitute a clear and present danger to America. 

Five Myths About the Nativity

Not to play the role of Scrooge, but as Christians around the world celebrate today the supposed birth of Jesus - including falsely pious Christofascists and hate filled evangelicals who betrayed the Gospel message they pretend to honor by voting for Donald Trump - it is necessary to remember that much of the day's celebrations are based on myths that have little or no historic basis. Even the day December 25th was picked by Pope Julius I in the 4th century most likely to in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival and/or other pagan festivals held in December around the time of the Winter Solstice.    More troubling yet to the Christmas story is the fact that the human genome project has proven that Adam and Eve never existed as historic persons, so the myth of the Fall due to Adam and Eve's sin is purely fabricated. No Fall, then no need for a savior. I find it disturbing in the year 2017 that so many base their lives on and justify their hatreds based on myths and legends. A column in the Washington Post by a historian reminds us of myths surrounding Christmas.  Here are highlights:

[T]he story of the birth of Jesus is more complicated than many people think. Between the difficulty in reconciling different versions of the tale and the 2,000 years of popular interpretation and culture layered on top of them, much of what people commonly know about the story of Jesus’ birth, from the date to where it took place, is wildly different from what the Gospels have to say. MYTH NO. 1Jesus was born on Dec. 25.The overwhelming majority of Christians mark the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25. But there’s no biblical reason to celebrate Christmas on this particular day.

According to the Gospel of Luke, shepherds were watching their flocks at night at the time Jesus was born. This detail — the only clue in the Gospels about the timing of the birth — suggests that Jesus’ birthday was not in the winter, as shepherds would have been watching their flocks only during the lambing season in the spring. In the colder months, the sheep probably would have been corralled.

As late as the 3rd century, Christians didn’t celebrate the birth of Jesus. The earliest discussion of the birthday is found in the 3rd-century writings of Clement of Alexandria, who raises seven potential dates, none of which correspond to Dec. 25. The first record of a celebration of the birth of Jesus on Dec. 25 comes from a 4th-century edition of a Roman almanac known as the Philokalia. Alongside the deaths of martyrs, it notes that on Dec. 25, “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”

Some have argued that the date of Jesus’ birth was selected to supplant pagan festivals that were held at the same time. But while Pope Julius I set the date of Christmas (for Western Christians) in the 4th century, Christians did not deliberately adapt pagan rituals until the 7th century, when Pope Gregory the Great instructed bishops to celebrate saints’ feast days on the days of pagan festivals.

MYTH NO. 2Jesus was born in a stable.As depicted in Nativity creches and Renaissance paintings such as Giotto di Bondone’s Nativity scenes and Sandro Botticelli’s “The Mystical Nativity,” Jesus was born in a simple stable. Generations of pastors and priests have used this notion as evidence that Jesus had a humble birth. As a theological argument, that’s true. But this particular detail of the story isn’t in the Bible.

The more likely interpretation, as New Testament scholar Stephen Carlson has argued, is that Joseph and Mary intended to stay with his relatives in Bethlehem and that there wasn’t enough room in the guest quarters — typically located in the upper level of a house — to accommodate an imminent delivery. So, Mary had to give birth elsewhere, most likely in the main room of the house, on the lower floor. There’s no mention of animals being present, but the detail of the manger seems to be what has led to the image of a stable — and many live Nativity scenes featuring farm animals. MYTH NO. 3‘Manger’ is another word for ‘stable.’When people talk about a manger scene, or Jesus being born in a manger, or a star shining down on the manger, it’s not clear they always understand that “manger” refers not to a barn but to Jesus’ makeshift crib. . . . In 1st-century Judean houses, mangers were found both outside and inside the home, sometimes separating an interior space for people from a space where animals were kept. Thus, in the Nativity story, Mary may have had one at her disposal, despite not being in the immediate vicinity of a stable.

MYTH NO. 5Three wise men attended Jesus’ birth.According to the Christmas creche on display in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, the best-dressed attendees at the birth of Jesus were the three wise men. Often mistaken for kings — think of the Christmas carol “We Three Kings” — these visitors from the east are described in the Gospel of Matthew with the Greek word “magoi,” or wise men. Nothing about the story’s language suggests that these visitors were monarchs or even that they were three in number. People commonly think there were three because of the gifts enumerated in the Gospel of Matthew: We are told that they brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, but there could as easily have been two, four or eight wise men as three.

There’s also no indication that the wise men visited Jesus as He lay in the manger, as is often shown on Christmas cards. When King Herod anxiously meets with them in Matthew 2:16, he thinks his reign might be threatened by the child they’ve come to visit, so he orders all boys 2 years old and younger slain. Thus Jesus could have been as old as 2 — a walking, talking toddler — when the wise men arrived.

I fully support Christmas as a time for family and loved ones and for charity for towards others, but this behavior can - and should - fully exist without reliance on myths.  To me, it is telling that those who bloviate the most about Christmas the most and shriek about the "war on Christmas" are the Christofascists and evangelicals who in their daily lives do not reflect Jesus' purported values but instead resemble the Pharisees that the Gospels say he so harshly condemned. Better to stay home away from church and do an act of kindness to someone less fortunate than go to church and be filled with hate and bigotry throughout the year. 

Ben Carson Lunacy and Lying on Display

Ben Carson: granaries built by a fictional person

Thankfully, Ben Carson seems to be getting some much needed scrutiny that (i) shows that the man is crazy in my view, and (ii) very challenged when it comes to truth and veracity.  The latter, of course, should be no surprise given Carson's religiosity and purported conservative Christian faith since in my experience, literally no one lies more than the "godly folk."  Between Carson's belief that Egypt's pyramids were built as granaries by Joseph, a mythical figure in the Bible, to his lie that he was offered a scholarship to West Point,  Carson clearly lives in an alternate reality - which may be why he is so popular with the equally delusional Teabagistan crowd.  First, the Washington Post looks at Carson's beliefs about the pyramids:

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old video surfaced of Ben Carson claiming that the Old Testament figure Joseph built the Egyptian pyramids to store food.

“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said in a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University, unearthed by BuzzFeed. “Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big — when you stop and think about it, and I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time — to store that much grain.”

Social media quickly overflowed with scorn. Critics — and not just archaeologists — pointed to well-documented evidence that the structures were built as tombs, not granaries. Photos of pyramid burial vaults circulated on Twitter. Soon, Carson’s comments had become a meme with references to the food pyramid and “Stargate.”

He has made a string of incendiary comments in recent years. . . . . But to claim that the pyramids, which American kids learn about in grade school, were not tombs for pharaohs but grain silos built by a biblical hero appeared to rise to another level. To some critics, it was akin to Dan Quayle’s infamous “potatoe” gaffe. And when Carson confirmed to CBS Wednesday night that he still believes Joseph built the pyramids as granaries, the video began to assume Mitt Romney “47 percent” proportions as the moment when Carson’s flaws as a candidate suddenly crystallized into a single quote.

“It’s amazing how one can be a neurosurgeon and a dimwit at the same time,” one person tweeted, echoing a common refrain.

Not surprisingly, most scholars and Egyptologist say that there is no historical proof that Joseph ever existed - just like the fictional Adam and Eve.  Indeed, the Joseph story in Genesis is noted as:

The reworked legends and folklore were probably inserted into the developing textual tradition of the Bible between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. Most scholars place its composition in a genre that flourished in the Persian period of the Exile. 

Do we really want the president of the nation to be someone who bases his beliefs on legends and folklore?   But it gets worse.  Carson seems to have a documented history of lying to embellish his storyline.  True, much of the GOP base is too stupid to question tales that play to their own beliefs and prejudices, but did Carson expect the media to blindly believe his tall tales?  Vanity Fair looks at the West Point lie.  Here are excerpts:

Friday, November 6 might well be remembered as the end of Ben Carson mania. That’s because several key points in his inspirational, rags-to-riches life story were revealed to have been exaggerated, if not fabricated outright.

The collapse actually began on Thursday, when CNN published evidence they believe refutes his claim that he was an angry child: in his best-selling memoir, Gifted Hands, Carson, who had an impoverished childhood in Detroit, claimed that he had a “pathological temper” that led to several stunning incidents, such as attacking his mother with a hammer and attempting to stab a friend when he was in the ninth grade.

[D]uring press conferences and an appearance on The Kelly File later that day, he adamantly refused to admit that he fabricated his personal history, blaming the media for trying to take him down: “Do you think I’m a pathological liar like CNN does? Or do you think I’m an honest person?”

The day after he raised the question, Politico charged that he had lied about having dinner with the famous general William Westmoreland after a Memorial Day parade in 1969, and also erroneously recounted having received an offer of admission and full scholarship to West Point shortly afterwards. He would later claim that he didn't want to go into the military, preferring a life in medicine instead.

The prestigious military academy told Politico that they did not find any records of Carson, who was an R.O.T.C. student, having been admitted. The academy didn’t even find anything indicating that he’d applied or began the application process. As for the full scholarship? All West Point students receive full rides.

It is also highly unlikely that he’d even met Westmoreland in the manner Carson had implied. Per Politico: “The general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day and played tennis at 6:45 P.M.”

New Republic associate editor Adam Peck found that Carson had repeated the West Point claim on Facebook as recently as August 13. . . . 

My Republican ancestors must be spinning in their graves if they can see what a insane asylum the GOP has become.  Once upon a time, no one as unhinged would get to be a serious candidate in the Party much less a front runner.  

The Bible Unearthed - New Archeological Study Undermines the Bible

In follow up to the last post, a new book, "The Bible Unearthed," will not be warmly greeted by Christofascists and charlatans who use the pulpit to shake down the ignorant and gullible for money.  The authors of the book, two archaeologists, use archaeological discoveries and analysis to disprove many of the main stories of the Old Testament and instead describe the Bible's Old Testament  as a contrived and manipulated set of ancestor stories aimed at meeting the needs of seventh-century-B.C. Judah and its quest for a unified kingdom.   As one book review notes:

Their detailed analysis yields conclusions that are startling to the uninitiated: the search for the historical ancestors has failed; the Exodus did not happen as described; the violent, swift and total conquest of Canaan never took place; the picture of judges leading tribes in battle against enemies does not fit the data; David and Solomon existed in the 10th century B.C. but as ''little more than hill country chieftains.'' There was no golden age of a united kingdom, a magnificent capital and an extended empire.

A small nation with big plans could use a grand story. In constructing it, authors and editors drew on many diverse and conflicting traditions, which they embellished and elaborated. The intent was ideological and theological -- not to record history (in the modern sense) but to appropriate the past for the present. The epic that emerged was edited and added to in subsequent centuries to become the powerful saga we know as the Hebrew Bible. Unequaled in the ancient world, it articulated a national and social compact for an entire people under God. Finkelstein and Silberman leave no doubt of their reverence for it. In their view, however, it is ''not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination.'' 

Drawing on new methods, excavations (even of old sites) and assumptions, they turn the traditional argument on its head. Archaeological studies, they argue, undercut rather than support the historicity of biblical traditions about the origin and rise of Israel. 

The take away?  The Bible is anything but inerrant and it is anything but the "inspired word of God."  It was written to serve the political and theological needs of an upstart kingdom that needed to support its boasts of special divine guidance and superiority over others.   It is little wonder that the Bible is so popular among the GOP base which likewise feels compelled to claim that America is under divine guidance and superior.  27 centuries later and the same mindset and agenda are alive and well.

The New Science that Has Creationists and the Christofascists Terrified

Nothing is more terrifying to the Christofascists and their creationist allies than modern science which is steadily disproving many of the pillars of the Christian story line, including the fact that Adam and Eve never existed.   For these people, having to think for themselves and not being able to smugly look down on others who aren't "saved" is a horrifying prospect.  But as science advances, their beliefs in myths and fairy tales is increasingly threatened - something that, in my view, is a good thing for humanity.  A piece in Salon looks at how new science is putting more and more pressure on Christofascist beliefs.  Here are excerpts:

The Christian right’s obsessive hatred of Darwin is a wonder to behold, but it could someday be rivaled by the hatred of someone you’ve probably never even heard of. Darwin earned their hatred because he explained the evolution of life in a way that doesn’t require the hand of God. Darwin didn’t exclude God, of course, though many creationists seem incapable of grasping this point. But he didn’t require God, either, and that was enough to drive some people mad.

Darwin also didn’t have anything to say about how life got started in the first place — which still leaves a mighty big role for God to play, for those who are so inclined. But that could be about to change, and things could get a whole lot worse for creationists because of Jeremy England, a young MIT professor who’s proposed a theory, based in thermodynamics, showing that the emergence of life was not accidental, but necessary. “[U]nder certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life,” he was quoted as saying in an article in Quanta magazine early in 2014, that’s since been republished by Scientific American and, more recently, by Business Insider. In essence, he’s saying, life itself evolved out of simpler non-living systems.

The notion of an evolutionary process broader than life itself is not entirely new. Indeed, there’s evidence, recounted by Eric Havelock in “The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics,” that it was held by the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, who also first gave us the concept of the atom, among many other things. But unlike them or other earlier precursors, England has a specific, unifying, testable evolutionary mechanism in mind.

It doesn’t mean we should expect life everywhere in the universe — lack of a decent atmosphere or being too far from the sun still makes most of our solar system inhospitable for life with or without England’s perspective. But it does mean that “under certain conditions” where life is possible — as it is here on Earth, obviously — it is also quite probable, if not, ultimately, inevitable. Indeed, life on Earth could well have developed multiple times independently of each other, or all at once, or both. The first truly living organism could have had hundreds, perhaps thousands of siblings, all born not from a single physical parent, but from a physical system, literally pregnant with the possibility of producing life. And similar multiple births of life could have happened repeatedly at different points in time.

Giordano Bruno, who was burnt at the stake for heresy in 1600, was perhaps the first to take Copernicanism to its logical extension, speculating that stars were other suns, circled by other worlds, populated by beings like ourselves. His extreme minority view in his own time now looks better than ever, thanks to England.

If England’s theory works out, it will obviously be an epochal scientific advance. But on a lighter note, it will also be a fitting rebuke to pseudo-scientific creationists, who have long mistakenly claimed that thermodynamics disproves evolution (here, for example), the exact opposite of what England’s work is designed to show — that thermodynamics drives evolution, starting even before life itself first appears, with a physics-based logic that applies equally to living and non-living matter.

England appears to have assembled a collection of analytical tools, along with a sophisticated multidisciplinary theoretical approach, which promises to do much more than simply propound a theory, but to generate a whole new research agenda giving detailed meaning to that theoretical conjecture. And that research agenda is already starting to produce results. (See his research group home page for more.) It’s the development of this sort of detailed body of specific mutually interrelated results that will distinguish England’s articulation of his theory from other earlier formulations that have not yet been translated into successful theory-testing research agendas.

Creationists often cast themselves as humble servants of God, and paint scientists as arrogant, know-it-all rebels against him. But, unsurprisingly, they’ve got it all backwards, once again. England’s work reminds us that it’s scientists’ willingness to admit our own ignorance and confront it head on — rather than papering over it — that unlocks the great storehouse of wonders we live in and gives us our most challenging, satisfying quests.

The Bible: Myth or Revisionist Propaganda?

I'm a frequent critic of Christofascists, biblical literalists and the politicians who prostitute themselves to them.  Some readers - and some friends - say I am too harsh, especially when I comment on articles that question, gasp, the horror, whether or not Christ even existed.  A piece in Newsweek has prompted outraged among the "godly folk" by taking a good look at the truth about the Bible and its sketchy origins.  While they mutter about sacrilege, attacks on Christians, the real unspoken issue may be that these folks have possible lived their lives based on myth and/or revisionist lies.  The take away, for me, is that no serious minded person should take the supposed claims of the Bible very seriously and that those who do deserve little of no deference. Here are some highlights from the piece which deserves a full read:

They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.

They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.

This is no longer a matter of personal or private faith. With politicians, social leaders and even some clergy invoking a book they seem to have never read and whose phrases they don’t understand, America is being besieged by Biblical illiteracy. 

The Bible is not the book many American fundamentalists and political opportunists think it is, or more precisely, what they want it to be. Their lack of knowledge about the Bible is well established.  

The Barna Group, a Christian polling firm, found in 2012 that evangelicals accepted the attitudes and beliefs of the Pharisees—religious leaders depicted throughout the New Testament as opposing Christ and his message—more than they accepted the teachings of Jesus.

Newsweek’s exploration here of the Bible’s history and meaning is not intended to advance a particular theology or debate the existence of God. Rather, it is designed to shine a light on a book that has been abused by people who claim to revere it but don’t read it, in the process creating misery for others.   When the illiteracy of self-proclaimed Biblical literalists leads parents to banish children from their homes, when it sets neighbor against neighbor, when it engenders hate and condemnation, when it impedes science and undermines intellectual advancement, the topic has become too important for Americans to ignore, whether they are deeply devout or tepidly faithful, believers or atheists.

This examination—based in large part on the works of scores of theologians and scholars, some of which dates back centuries—is a review of the Bible’s history and a recounting of its words.

At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times. About 400 years passed between the writing of the first Christian manuscripts and their compilation into the New Testament.  . . . . The first books of the Old Testament were written 1,000 years before that. In other words, some 1,500 years passed between the day the first biblical author put stick to clay and when the books that would become the New Testament were chosen.

[I]n the past 100 years or so, tens of thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered, dating back centuries. And what biblical scholars now know is that later versions of the books differ significantly from earlier ones—in fact, even copies from the same time periods differ from each other.

Scribes added whole sections of the New Testament, and removed words and sentences that contradicted emerging orthodox beliefs.  Take one of the most famous tales from the New Testament, which starts in John 7:53. A group of Pharisees and others bring a woman caught committing adultery to Jesus. Under Mosaic Law—the laws of Moses handed down in the Old Testament—she must be stoned to death. The Pharisees ask Jesus whether the woman should be released or killed . . . . .

Unfortunately, John didn’t write it. Scribes made it up sometime in the Middle Ages. It does not appear in any of the three other Gospels or in any of the early Greek versions of John. Even if the Gospel of John is an infallible telling of the history of Jesus’s ministry, the event simply never happened.

[T]he earliest versions of Mark stop at 16:8.  . . . . .  The 12 verses that follow in modern Bibles—Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene and the Disciples and then ascending to Heaven—are not there. A significant moment that would be hard to forget, one would think.

The same is true for other critical portions of the Bible, such as 1 John 5:7 (“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”); Luke 22:20 (“Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you”); and Luke 24:51 (“And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven”).  

Then comes the problem of accurate translation. Many words in New Testament Greek don’t have clear English equivalents. Sentence structure, idioms, stylistic differences—all of these are challenges when converting versions of the New Testament books into English. And this can’t be solved with a Berlitz course: Koiné is ancient Greek and not spoken anymore. This is why English translations differ, with many having been revised to reflect the views and guesses of the modern translators. . . . . In other words, religious convictions determined translation choices.

In other words, with a little translational trickery, a fundamental tenet of Christianity—that Jesus is God—was reinforced in the Bible, even in places where it directly contradicts the rest of the verse.

[W]here does the clear declaration of God and Jesus as part of a triumvirate appear in the Greek manuscripts?  Nowhere. And in that deception lies a story of mass killings.

Christians are believed to have massacred more followers of Jesus than any other group or nation.  Those who believed in the Trinity butchered Christians who didn’t. Groups who believed Jesus was two entities—God and man—killed those who thought Jesus was merely flesh and blood.  . . . .  Indeed, for hundreds of years after the death of Jesus, groups adopted radically conflicting writings about the details of his life and the meaning of his ministry, and murdered those who disagreed.

At Nicaea, rules were adopted regarding the proper positions for prayer on Sundays—standing, not kneeling; nothing was said of the Jewish Sabbath or Saturday. Many theologians and Christian historians believe that it was at this moment, to satisfy Constantine and his commitment to his empire’s many sun worshippers, that the Holy Sabbath was moved by one day, contradicting the clear words of what ultimately became the Bible.  . . . . .  Constantine sided with those who believed Jesus was both God and man, so a statement of belief, called the Nicene Creed, was composed to proclaim that. Those who refused to sign the statement were banished. Others were slaughtered. After they had returned home and were far from Rome, some who signed the document later sent letters to Constantine saying they had only done so out of fear for their lives. 

About 50 years later, in A.D. 381, the Romans held another meeting, this time in Constantinople. There, a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Nicene Creed was rewritten, and those who refused to sign the statement were banished, and another wholesale slaughter began, this time of those who rejected the Trinity, a concept that is nowhere in the original Greek manuscripts and is often contradicted by it.

None of this is meant to demean the Bible, but all of it is fact. Christians angered by these facts should be angry with the Bible, not the messenger.

The declaration in 1 Timothy—as recounted in the Living Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version Bible and others—could not be more clear: Those who “practice homosexuality” will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the translation there is odd, in part because the word homosexual didn’t even exist until more than 1,800 years after when 1 Timothy was supposed to have been written. So how did it get into the New Testament? Simple: The editors of these modern Bibles just made it up. Like so many translators and scribes before them, they had a religious conviction, something they wanted to say that wasn’t stated clearly enough in the original for their tastes. And so they manipulated sentences to reinforce their convictions.

The original Bible verse in Koiné used ἀρσενοκοῖται for what has been translated as “homosexual.” For the Latin Bible, it was as masculorum concubitores. The King James Version translated that as “them that defile themselves with mankind.” Perhaps that means men who engage in sex with other men, perhaps not.  The next thing to check here is whether 1 Timothy was based on a forgery. And the answer to that is a resounding yes. 

There is more which deserves a full read.  Again, the take away?   Those who believe in the Bible as inerrant or that it is the "word of God" are engaged in either deliberate self-delusion, suffer from shocking ignorance, or merely want to believe in fairy tales and myths.  What's even more sad is that so many lives have been damaged or lost based on supposed belief in a book that isn't much more that frequently manipulated fiction.  Belief in the Bible and its supposed strictures have no place in public policy or the civil laws.

Did Historical Jesus Ever Really Exist?

The folks at the Washington Post best brace themselves for spittle flecked rants from the "godly folk" who will no doubt take great offense at a story that raises the relevant question of whether the Jesus of the New Testament ever existed.  If not, Christianity's already damaged story line (e.g., the human genome project says Adam and Eve never existed) virtually collapses.  Here are excerpts from the piece:

The first problem we encounter when trying to discover more about the Historical Jesus is the lack of early sources. The earliest sources only reference the clearly fictional Christ of Faith. These early sources, compiled decades after the alleged events, all stem from Christian authors eager to promote Christianity – which gives us reason to question them. The authors of the Gospels fail to name themselves, describe their qualifications, or show any criticism with their foundational sources – which they also fail to identify. Filled with mythical and non-historical information, and heavily edited over time, the Gospels certainly should not convince critics to trust even the more mundane claims made therein.

The methods traditionally used to tease out rare nuggets of truth from the Gospels are dubious. The criterion of embarrassment says that if a section would be embarrassing for the author, it is more likely authentic. Unfortunately, given the diverse nature of Christianity and Judaism back then (things have not changed all that much), and the anonymity of the authors, it is impossible to determine what truly would be embarrassing or counter-intuitive, let alone if that might not serve some evangelistic purpose.

The criterion of Aramaic context is similarly unhelpful. Jesus and his closest followers were surely not the only Aramaic-speakers in first-century Judea. The criterion of multiple independent attestation can also hardly be used properly here, given that the sources clearly are not independent.

Paul’s Epistles, written earlier than the Gospels, give us no reason to dogmatically declare Jesus must have existed. Avoiding Jesus’ earthly events and teachings, even when the latter could have bolstered his own claims, Paul only describes his “Heavenly Jesus.” Even when discussing what appear to be the resurrection and the last supper, his only stated sources are his direct revelations from the Lord, and his indirect revelations from the Old Testament. In fact, Paul actually rules out human sources (see Galatians 1:11-12).

Also important are the sources we don’t have. There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All we have are later descriptions of Jesus’ life events by non-eyewitnesses, most of whom are obviously biased. Little can be gleaned from the few non-Biblical and non-Christian sources, with only Roman scholar Josephus and historian Tacitus having any reasonable claim to be writing about Jesus within 100 years of his life. And even those sparse accounts are shrouded in controversy, with disagreements over what parts have obviously been changed by Christian scribes (the manuscripts were preserved by Christians), the fact that both these authors were born after Jesus died (they would thus have probably received this information from Christians), and the oddity that centuries go by before Christian apologists start referencing them.

So what do the mainstream (and non-Christian) scholars say about all this? Surprisingly very little – of substance anyway. Only Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey have thoroughly attempted to prove Jesus’ historical existence in recent times. Their most decisive point? The Gospels can generally be trusted – after we ignore the many, many bits that are untrustworthy – because of the hypothetical (i.e. non-existent) sources behind them. Who produced these hypothetical sources? When? What did they say? Were they reliable? Were they intended to be accurate historical portrayals, enlightening allegories, or entertaining fictions?

Ehrman and Casey can’t tell you – and neither can any New Testament scholar. Given the poor state of the existing sources, and the atrocious methods used by mainstream Biblical historians, the matter will likely never be resolved. In sum, there are clearly good reasons to doubt Jesus’ historical existence – if not to think it outright improbable.

In terms of historical fact, the Jesus story has no more documented support that the stories of the Olympian gods, the Egyptian goddess Isis or the middle eastern god Mithras.  Wanting a story to be true, in short, does not somehow magically make it true.

Can Tradional Religion Survive Contact with Extraterrestrials

I frequently note that knowledge and science are the enemies of traditional religions, especially Christianity and fundamentalist Islam.  The "holy book" on which they are based are Earth centric and view human kind as the top of the heap in terms of ruling the Earth and creation.  The human genome project has already demonstrated the lie of the Adam and Eve myth - i.e., that they never really existed as historic personages. Now, with new discoveries on Mars increasing suggesting that life may have existed on that planet and the likelihood that out of the billions of solar systems in the universe other life exists, a piece in The Week queries whether these religions can survive the existence of extraterrestrial life.  For the fundamentalist adherents, I personally believe the answer is no.  Their literalism and claims of inerrancy (ridiculous as they may be) set the stage for collapse when objective proof blows away the focus of their myths.  Here are article highlights:

[T]here are now a pair of books — and a number of essays about and reviews of those books — that reflect seriously on how the major religions of the world would respond to first contact with extraterrestrial life.

From this range of writing, a broad consensus emerges.  Buddhism, as a nontheistic belief system, would be largely unshaken by the discovery of intelligent life on other worlds. Among Christians, the Vatican's long history of adjusting itself to the findings of modern science would lead Catholics to be relatively unfazed. More literalistic Protestants — especially evangelicals of various stripes — would have a much harder time of it, while certain sects with origins in 19th-century America (Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons), which already have folk beliefs about the existence of life on other planets, might actually thrive.

I'm afraid I'm skeptical about much of this, too. Yes, Buddhism and other nontheistic forms of spirituality might emerge relatively unscathed from a close encounter with extraterrestrial life. But most forms of Christianity (like Judaism and Islam) would be profoundly shaken by the definitive demonstration that life — let alone intelligent life — exists elsewhere in the universe.

Consider the theological implications of discovering even the most primitive form of microscopic unicellular life on another world (perhaps in the polar ice caps on Mars, or in a subsurface ocean of water on Jupiter's moon Europa). Such a discovery would seem to vindicate the evolutionary hypothesis that life can and does emerge from (seeming) nothingness all on its own, without divine intervention of any kind. And that would raise the possibility — perhaps a greater possibility than ever before in the minds of believers — that precisely the same thing could have happened on Earth.

In order to shoot down this theologically troubling possibility, believers could always leap to the view that God lies behind all life everywhere. But surely that would complicate the Judeo-Christian creation story in ways that go far beyond the usual debates about reading the Book of Genesis literally or allegorically. Wouldn't it have been more accurate for the text to speak of God creating a universe containing many worlds with life on them instead of implying that life on our planet is somehow unique?

But theological adaptation to the discovery of simple extraterrestrial life is one thing. Adapting to the discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be something else entirely — and I seriously doubt that most of the world's great theistic faiths could succeed in pulling it off, at least short of a truly radical shift in orientation.

Think of it as a theological Copernican Revolution. Just as the scientific Copernican Revolution destabilized and downgraded humanity's place in the cosmos by substituting heliocentrism for a geocentric view that placed the Earth and its inhabitants at the center of creation, so the discovery of advanced life on other planets would imply that human beings are just one of any number of intelligent creatures in the universe. And that, in turn, would seem to imply either that God created many equally special beings throughout the universe, or that God cares for us more than he does for those other intelligent beings.

Did God create those other intelligent creatures, too, but without an interest in revealing himself to them? Or did they, unlike human beings, evolve all on their own without divine origins and guidance?

How believers answer those questions will be a product, in part, of what the extraterrestrials look like. If the aliens have symmetrical body structures — two legs, two arms, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils — then it may be plausible to assume that they were created in the image and likeness of the same God as we were. But if they look nothing like us at all, the case for separation between "our" God and these alien intelligences would grow much stronger.

But I have an equally hard time accepting that believers would be capable of wrapping their heads around the possibility that God loves all intelligent creatures on all planets equally.

I suspect that these puzzles are so corrosive in their skeptical implications that contact with intelligent life from other worlds would produce a rapid collapse of faith rooted in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Quran, with a rapid spread of atheistic secularism in their place.
But not necessarily. Here are two other options.

One possibility would be a growth in the kind of philosophical theism David. B. Hart defended in his recent outstanding book The Experience of God. This would be a form of Platonism, with God treated less as a person who intervenes and reveals himself miraculously and providentially in history than as the ontological unity of Plato's three transcendentals: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. God in this sense stands behind the scenes, invisibly making possible and sustaining every entity and action in the universe — here as well as on any conceivable alien world — from the beginning to the end of time.

But there is another possibility — one that moves in the opposite direction, toward greater divine anthropomorphism. Here Mormons may be able to offer some guidance. Some Latter-day Saints (including, on some readings, Mormonism's founding prophet Joseph Smith) have claimed that God resides within the universe rather than serving as its transcendent ground, that he began as a human being and evolved into his current state of exaltation, that he has a body, that he didn't create the universe so much as form parts of it from preexisting matter, and that Mormon men and women can themselves evolve into gods and goddesses. Such a view — with its hints of polytheism and suggestion of finite divine power — would seem to be far more compatible than traditional Judeo-Christian monotheism with a vision of the universe populated by a multitude of intelligent beings.

As I said at the outset, I don't think religious believers will ever have to cope with an extraterrestrially inspired theological crisis — because contact with intelligent life from elsewhere in the universe is exceedingly unlikely. But we shouldn't kid ourselves about the challenges that such contact would pose, if it were to happen, to the world's religious traditions.

If we are honest with ourselves, there is no tangible, objective support for either Christianity and Islam, both of which springboard off of the Jewish Old Testament that has little archeological evidence to support its most striking claims.  A case in point: Moses.   The newly released Exodus: Gods and Kings, starring Christian Bale, has been condemned by some as not being "historically accurate."  As Wikipedia notes:

The existence of Moses as well as the veracity of the Exodus story are disputed among archaeologists and Egyptologists, with experts in the field of biblical criticism citing logical inconsistencies, new archaeological evidence, historical evidence, and related origin myths in Canaanite culture. Other historians maintain that the biographical details and Egyptian background attributed to Moses imply the existence of a historical political and religious leader who was involved in the consolidation of the Hebrew tribes in Canaan towards the end of the Bronze Age.

While the general narrative of the Exodus and the conquest of the Promised Land may be remotely rooted in historical events, the figure of Moses as a leader of the Israelites in these events cannot be substantiated.

How can there be historic accuracy about someone who likely never existed, or at least not as recited by the Bible?

Christofascists Rally at Utah Capitol Against Gay Rights

Exhibiting a mindset akin the that of ISIS - i.e., that all must adhere to their poisonous form of religious belief - Christofascists and Mormons rallied at the Utah capitol building in opposition to gay rights, particularly same sex marriage and gay adoption.  As is now the norm, those rallying tried to disguise their real motivation: religious based hate and bigotry and contempt for the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution when applied to anyone but themselves.  The Salt Lake Tribune looks at the gathering of hate merchants and religious extremists.  Here are excerpts:

They were there for the children. Their own, others’, those who haven’t been born yet — even the children of gay couples.

Supporters of man-woman marriage holding signs declaring "biology is not bigotry" and "two moms don’t equal a dad" cheered long and loud as conservative activist Mary Summerhays projected on a screen images of same-sex couples and their children.

Summerhays, who leads the organizing group of Thursday’s rally, Utah Celebration of Marriage, said these children were among the chief reasons several hundred people gathered under the painted dome of the Utah State Capitol: to demonstrate to local and national officials, to media and onlookers that there is still support in Utah for so-called "traditional" families, made up of one mother and one father.

But up in the banisters and sprinkled among sign-holders on the Capitol steps were supporters of same-sex marriage, who held signs of their own denouncing hate and lauding "inalienable rights over states’ rights."

"We want to put a face on the people they’re discriminating against," he said. "If everything stopped tomorrow, and same-sex marriage went back to being illegal in Utah, gay and lesbian couples would still have and raise children. That’s just a fact. ... It’s been happening since the dawn of civilization."

Salt Lake City has one of the highest percentages of same-sex couples with children, according to the Williams Institute at the Univesrity of California-Los Angeles. As of last year, about 26 percent of all gay and lesbian couples in the metro area were raising children.

Utah has pointed to, but later backed away from, the findings of Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, who offered research to bolster the claim that opposite-sex parenting is the "gold standard" for children. 

 The American Sociological Society has found that children raised in a two-parent home tend to do well — regardless of their parents’ gender.

Lawrence, and those who support same-sex marriage, took issue with the premise of Thursday’s event: that Utah’s main concern is to defend the rights of children and protect families.  "These people claim to be family oriented, they claim to be child oriented, but they’re not," Lawrence said. "Yet they promote discrimination that puts our families and our children in harm’s way."

The biggest threat same sex marriage poses to these extremists is that it challenges their mythical faith construct based on the Bible which science is continually proving that is not based on fact or reality.  Rather than use their minds and embrace knowledge, these individuals prefer ignorance, hate and bigotry.  It's one thing for these folks to cling to such ignorance based beliefs, but they should not be allowed to force them on others.

A Must Read: Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

The Bible - more fiction than many want to admit

One of the books I am reading on the trip is Reza Aslam's  book, "Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth."  For anyone who loves history and, perhaps more importantly, seeks to know the truth about Christianity, the book is a must read (I am about 3/4 through the book).  It is easy to see why the professional Christian set and Christian fundamentalists have been horrified by the book and condemned it: it basically blows apart their entire version  of Christianity and underscore how many portions of the New Testament are not historically correct and demonstrates over time how the Church fathers changed the facts to fit their agenda.  

These rewritings range from the conscious effort to distance the new faith from Judaism in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the vengeance of Rome against to shifting the blame for Jesus' execution to the chief priests of the Jewish Temple rather than Rome in the person of Pontius Pilate who in fact had ordered the crucifixion of thousands of Jewish "trouble makers" who challenged Rome's authority in word and deed.  

The other stunning revelation that I never before fully understood is the fact that St. Paul was deemed a heretic and teacher of untruths by the original apostles, particular James, the brother of Jesus (who was diminished over time by the Church because his very existence blows to Hell the Church's myth of Mary as "the ever virgin").  What Paul concocted - and three times was reprimanded for by James and the other apostles based in Jerusalem - and which largely became what is now accepted Christian belief, bore little resemblance to what was being preached by the original apostles and Jesus' acknowledged brother and true successor as leader. Ironically, what allowed the transformation started by Paul to flourish was the fact that when Rome wiped out Jerusalem and all of its inhabitants in 70 A.D., the mother assembly and the surviving remnants of most of the original apostles and their closest followers were wiped out as well.

The overall take away?  The true nature of Jesus - if he indeed existed - and what he and his immediate direct successors taught bears little resemblance to what passes for accepted Christian belief nowadays.