The Role Evangelical in Our Post-Truth Society

I often lament that the Republican Party has transformed from a political party where knowledge, learning, science, and logic were valued to one where ignorance and a rejection of knowledge and science is celebrated.  Personally, I have long blamed this transformation on the rise of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians within the GOP.  I left the GOP when it became clear that the party could no longer separate right wing religious belief from the civil laws and sought to intertwine the two. I was hardly alone.  Many other moderates fled the party and those who remained tried to convince - delude might be a more apt word - themselves that the party had not fundamentally changed.  Now, even some of those hold outs have fled the insane asylum.  Yes, it is Easter weekend, but I could not help but note a piece in the New York Times that lays the post-truth agenda of today's society square at the feet of where it belongs: evangelical Christians whose fear of having to think objectively based on scientific facts threatens the nation..  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

THE arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake news” are nothing new. “The deep distrust of the media, of scientific consensus — those were prevalent narratives growing up,” she told me.

Although Ms. Evans, 35, no longer calls herself an evangelical, she attended Bryan College, an evangelical school in Dayton, Tenn. She was taught to distrust information coming from the scientific or media elite because these sources did not hold a “biblical worldview.” . . . “Part of that was that climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”

[T]hey believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural human aversion to unwelcome facts a special power on the right. This religious tradition of fact denial long predates the rise of the culture wars, social media or President Trump . . .

That innocuous phrase — “biblical worldview” or “Christian worldview” — is everywhere in the evangelical world. . . . . Ever since the scientific revolution, two compulsions have guided conservative Protestant intellectual life: the impulse to defend the Bible as a reliable scientific authority and the impulse to place the Bible beyond the claims of science entirely.

The first impulse blossomed into the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Scripture became the irrefutable guide to everything from the meaning of fossils to the interpretation of archaeological findings in the Middle East, a “storehouse of facts,” as the 19th-century theologian Charles Hodge put it.

The second impulse, the one that rejects scientists’ standing to challenge the Bible, evolved by the early 20th century into a school of thought called presuppositionalism. The term is a mouthful, but the idea is simple: We all have presuppositions that frame our understanding of the world. Cornelius Van Til, a theologian who promoted this idea, rejected the premise that all humans have access to objective reality.

The conservative Christian worldview is not just a posture of mistrust toward the secular world’s “fake news.” It is a network of institutions and experts versed in shadow versions of climate change science, biology and other fields . . .

We all cling to our own unquestioned assumptions. But in the quest to advance knowledge and broker peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic world, the worldview based on biblical inerrancy gets tangled up in the contradiction between its claims on universalist science and insistence on an exclusive faith.

By contrast, the worldview that has propelled mainstream Western intellectual life and made modern civilization possible is a kind of pragmatism. It is an empirical outlook that continually — if imperfectly — revises its conclusions based on evidence available to everyone, regardless of their beliefs about the supernatural. This worldview clashes with the conservative evangelical war on facts. . . 

“cynicism and tribalism are very closely related. You protect your tribe, your way of life and thinking, and you try to annihilate anything that might call that into question.” Cynicism and tribalism are among the gravest human temptations. They are all the more dangerous when they pose as wisdom and righteousness.

Whether these folks want to admit it or not, the Bible is NOT inerrant and much of it is simply not true.  Mental gyrations to avoid the reality that one has built their life on lies does not change the end result.  It is far past time that these people be ridiculed and rejected in decent society.  They are a cancer that threatens the nation's future. 

Evengelical Propaganda - the "Museum of the Bible"

While Syrian children are dying while fleeing civil war and religious extremism, American evangelicals - in particular, the founders of Hobby Lobby - are squandering millions of dollars building a massive propaganda vehicle in Washington, D.C., just a short way south of the National Mall.  For me, it's a symbol of the misplace values of the "godly folk" whose only real agenda is to force their childish beliefs on all of us whether we like it or not.  For these folks, the Gospel message of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless doesn't exist.  Instead, the engage in conduct that makes the Pharisees of the Bible sound upright and the height of morality.  The Washington Post looks at this travesty being built in the nation's capital.  Here are excerpts:

To many in the scholarly community, the museum seems like an oversize piece of evangelical claptrap. Some academics and curators also worry about the origins of its collection — the more than 40,000 biblical artifacts were amassed in a remarkably short time by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.

Why did Green want to turn his private collection into a museum? A number of academics have questioned his family’s motives. “I don’t expect the Bible Museum to be anything other than a tax-deductible kitsch attempt at spreading Christian fundamentalist propaganda,” archaeologist Dorothy King said. In an interview with NPR, Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University, questioned the location of the museum, two blocks south of the Mall, where it might overlook periodic rallies opposing abortion or same-sex marriage, offering brick-and-mortar moral support to conservative causes. Sarah Posner concurred, writing in Talking Points Memo: “The museum will be a living, breathing testament to how American evangelicalism can at once claim it is under siege from secularists, the LGBT rights movement, or feminism — yet also boast of acquiring a prime private perch, strategically located at the nation’s epicenter of law and politics.”  

There also have been questions about what approach to the Bible the museum will take. Green has promoted a public school curriculum based on the Bible as a factual historical text. Another ideological red flag: Museum President Cary Summers consulted for the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which teaches creationism as fact, with didactic material showing dinosaurs and humans living side by side on a 6,000-year-old planet Earth. The Summers link has prompted unflattering comparisons of the two museums.

The Green family’s initial public line on the Museum of the Bible seemed to confirm some of the concerns. The museum’s 501(c)(3) filing in 2011 declared that its mission would be “to bring to life the living Word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.”

Beyond the possible motives for the Museum of the Bible, some scholars question the collection itself. Green began spending heavily on it in 2009. He had amassed more than 30,000 items by June 2010 and has added 10,000 more since.

That 40,000 number, however, is suspicious to Roberta Mazza, a leading scholar and professor at University of Manchester in Britain. The UNESCO convention controls the export of antiquities and makes it bureaucratically difficult to legally sell abroad objects that were excavated after 1970. Mazza wonders how Green managed to collect so much “in such a brief period of time and in the context, in theory, of a strictly regulated antiquities market?” 

Heightening their skepticism, Mazza and other scholars identified one item in the Green Collection — a Coptic papyrus fragment with lines from Galatians 2 — that was once advertised on eBay by a seller who was later banned from the site for allegedly selling looted antiquities.

Apparently mindful of skeptics, the Greens hired David Trobisch, a prominent liberal academic, to head its collection.  If Trobisch doesn't sell his soul for money, then the museum will document that there is no "official version" of the Bible and that the text was re-written at will over the centuries after first being authored by ignorant goat and sheep herders in the case of the Old Testament.  If done right, the museum would show that the Bible is anything but the "inerrant word of god."  I suspect, however, that this is not the Greens' agenda to tell the truth.  Propaganda is the real goal, in my view.

Biblical Scholar: The Gospels Are Absolutely Full of Historical Errors

As noted many times, science and accurate history are the biggest threats to "Bible believing Christians" who continue to insist that the Bible is inerrant and "the literal word of God."  Among the threats to those who congratulate themselves on the embrace of ignorance is increased biblical scholarship that demonstrates the the Gospels - and Bible in general - are riddled with errors.  Among the leading critics of biblical literalism is Professor Reza Aslan.  As Salon reports, Aslan recently destroyed biblical literalism.  Here are excerpts:

Professor Reza Aslan, . . . . has bad news for biblical literalists: The Gospels are “replete with historical errors and with contradictions,” and for over a thousand years, religious leaders did not take the Bible as literal fact.

 

Aslan explains that biblical literalism is actually a relatively modern phenomenon.

“Let me just say that one more time,” Aslan continued. “In the 2,000 year history in which the Gospels have existed, the idea that what you are reading in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is literal and inerrant is a little more than 100 years old. It was the result of a very interesting movement, a backlash to Christian liberalism and the Scientific Revolution at the end of the 19th century … by a group of American Protestants who began a movement that was launched by a series of tracts that were written called ‘The Fundamentals’ and that is where we get the term ‘fundamentalism’ from. It’s a very new phenomenon.”

Along with biblical literalism being a new phenomenon, Aslan also points out that the Gospels are full of errors, and some of them don’t even match up in terms of date. More shockingly, he states that religious men in the church didn’t really have a problem with these historical inaccuracies.

The gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born in 4 B.C. The gospel of Luke says Jesus was born in 6 A.D. That’s 10 years difference! Which one was right?”

“Now, let me ask you a much more important question than which one is right,” Aslan states. “Do you think that the church fathers who in the fourth century decided to put both Matthew and Luke in the canonized New Testament didn’t bother to read them first? They didn’t notice that they have different dates for Jesus’ birth? They didn’t notice that the gospel of John absolutely contradicts the entire timeline of Matthew, Mark and Luke? They didn’t notice that there are two completely different genealogies for Jesus in Matthew and Luke?

“Of course they did!” Aslan responds. “They didn’t care, because at no point did they ever think that what they were reading was literally true.”

Why didn’t the discrepancies bother these church fathers? In short, to them, fact did not equate to truth.  “We think that truth and fact mean the same thing,” Aslan explains. “Indeed, science tells us, ‘that which is true is that which can be factually verified.’ But that’s not what the ancient mind thought.”

“They were not as interested in the facts of Jesus’ life as they were in the truth revealed by Jesus’ life. When they constructed these stories about Jesus, and I mean that quite literally, they constructed these stories. If you asked them, ‘Did this really happen?’ they wouldn’t even understand the question. What do you mean did this really happen? You’re missing the point! The point isn’t ‘Are these facts true?’ the point is, ‘What does this story reveal about the nature of who Jesus is?’”

Thus, the irony is that the biblical literalists  are killing belief in the Bible and Christianity as a whole.

Ancient Manuscript: Jesus "Married Mary Magdalene and Had Children"

This blog has noted frequently the problem that biblical literalists are facing both from modern scientific knowledge - such as the human genome project which confirms that Adam and Eve never existed as historical persons - to new history discoveries that challenge the Church's manipulated and enforced version of the Christ story.   Now, a rediscovered ancient manuscript has yet again suggested that the Church's version of Jesus' life is not accurate.  The Independent has details.  Here are highlights:

Jesus married the prostitute Mary Magdalene and had children, according to a manuscript almost 1,500 years old unearthed at the British Library.

The so-called “Lost Gospel”, which has been translated from Aramaic, allegedly reveals the startling new allegations, according to The Sunday Times.

Professor Barrie Wilson and writer Simcha Jacobovic spent months translating the text, which they claim states Jesus had two children and the original Virgin Mary was Jesus’s wife and not his mother.

Many experts have downplayed the biblical figure’s historical importance but, according to the translators of the new gospel, she is of much greater significance than previously thought. 

Mary Magdalene already features in the existing gospels and is present at many of the important moments recorded in Jesus’s life.

“The Lost Gospel” is not the first to claim that Jesus married Mary Magdalene.  Both Nikos Kazantzakis in his 1953 book “The Last Temptation of Christ” and, more recently, Dan Brown in “The Da Vinci Code” made the same allegation.

Further revelations from the book, including the names of Jesus's children, will be released on Wednesday.

The publisher, Pegasus, has confirmed the press conference will go ahead as planned.

More details will follow.  Expect shrieks and spittle flecked rants from those whose fragile faith depends on a literal (albeit very selective) reading of the Bible  and not having to think.

Can Christianity Survive Modernity?

As I have argued before, science, modern knowledge and even new archaeological discoveries - indeed, modernity in general - are the true enemies of Christianity, or at least the forms of Christianity which depend on an inerrant interpretation of the Bible and which cannot tolerate anything that deviates from a literal - albeit, often very selective - reading of the Bible.  Hence, the conniption fits by folks like Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Convention over the findings of the human genome project which demonstrate that Adam and Eve as portrayed in Genesis simply never existed.   And hence, in my view at least, the extreme hostility on the part of far right Christians towards LGBT individuals.  If society comes to see us as normal and with equal rights the development flies directly against the cherry picked passages of the Bible used to condemn us.  Bart Ehrman’s new book,  How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of A Jewish Preacher From Galilee looks at some of the biblical scholarship that threatens the simplistic, anti-knowledge and anti-modernity mind set of the Christofascists.  Andrew Sullivan summarizes some of it:

What Ehrman does in this book – as he did most memorably in Misquoting Jesus – is explain how the texts that we have about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus came to be written. I am not qualified to judge the details of the scholarship – my knowledge of such matters is a tiny fraction of Ehrman’s. I know no Aramaic or Hebrew and very little Ancient Greek. Readers with more expertise may well, with any luck, deal with some of the specific controversies – such as the notion that Jesus probably wasn’t buried at all – as we go along.

But the book’s main claims about the origins and nature of the texts are not in any scholarly doubt. And they challenge the traditional and reflexive mental universe that most Christians, and all fundamentalists, share. For many Christians in the modern world, there is an unchallenged notion of an inerrant text that contains what we have even come to call the “gospel truth.” It is entirely inspired by God. It has complete authority in Protestant circles and shared authority in Catholicism (along with church teaching and the sensus fidelium). It is the sole authorized account of the extraordinary story that changed the world. 

And yet it isn’t the only account – we have many other extant Gospels that never made the cut. Those Gospels are not as compelling or as coherent or as influential – but they sure do exist. That very fact – established in the 20th Century – explodes any idea of “orthodoxy” among the first Christians.

Does this rebut Christianity in a decisive way? For many orthodox Christians, wedded to the notion of a single, coherent and inerrant text, it must. But since the scholarship is pretty much indisputable, it seems to me that it is not Christianity that should be abandoned in the wake of these historical revelations, but a false understanding of what the Gospels and Letters actually are. In the end, the sole criterion of a religion is whether it is true. And if you’re misreading its core texts and failing to understand their origins and nuances, you’re not committed to the truth. You’re committed to a theology that has become more important than the truth.

I think that it is pretty clear to anyone honest that today's Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP care nothing whatsoever about the truth.  Rather, all that matters is upholding the alternative universe that they increasingly live in as science, knowledge and the real truth threaten their house of cards religious belief system.  This absolutely terrifies them and is more than their sick psyches can deal with. Hence the way they lash out a gays, modern science and anything else that would force someone rational to question their beliefs. 

 

Big Bang Theory Advance Bad News for Bible Literalists

Science, not gays and sexuality, continues to prove itself the main threat to knuckle dragging Biblical literalists who are already reeling from evidence from the human genome project that Adam and Eve never existed as historical persons.  Now, new findings give the "Big Bang" theory a major boost and make the supposed seven days of creation laid out in the Bible look about as moribund as the belief in Adam and Eve.  All of this will be terrifying, of course, for the Bible beaters who find thinking for one's self and having uncertainty in their lives the most frightening prospects of all.  It also underscores the idiocy of having government and public policy guided by Old Testament literalism.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the latest scientific findings:

In the beginning, the universe got very big very fast, transforming itself in a fraction of an instant from something almost infinitesimally small to something imponderably vast, a cosmos so huge that no one will ever be able to see it all.

This is the premise of an idea called cosmic inflation — a powerful twist on the big-bang theory — and Monday it received a major boost from an experiment at the South Pole called BICEP2. A team of astronomers led by John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that it had detected ripples from gravitational waves created in a violent inflationary event at the dawn of time.

“We’re very excited to present our results because they seem to match the prediction of the theory so closely,” Kovac said in an interview. “But it’s the case that science can never actually prove a theory to be true. There could always be an alternative explanation that we haven’t been clever enough to think of.”

The reaction in the scientific community was cautiously exultant. The new result was hailed as potentially one of the biggest discoveries of the past two decades.

Cosmology, the study of the universe on the largest scales, has already been roiled by the 1998 discovery that the cosmos is not merely expanding but doing so at an accelerating rate, because of what has been called “dark energy.” Just as that discovery has implications for the ultimate fate of the universe, this new one provides a stunning look back at the moment the universe was born.

“It gives us a new window on the universe that takes us back to almost the very beginning of time, allowing us to turn previously metaphysical questions about our origins into scientific ones.”

The measurement, however, is a difficult one. The astronomers chose the South Pole for BICEP2 and earlier experiments because the air is exceedingly dry, almost devoid of water vapor and ideal for observing subtle quirks in the ancient light pouring in from the night sky. They spent four years building the telescope, and then three years observing and analyzing the data. Kovac, 43, who has been to the South Pole 23 times, said of the conditions there, “It’s almost like being in space.”

The fact that the universe is dynamic at the grandest scale, and not static as it appears to be when we gaze at the “fixed stars” in the night sky, has been known since the late 1920s, when astronomer Edwin Hubble revealed that the light from galaxies showed that they were moving away from one another.

This led to the theory that the universe, once compact, is expanding. Scientists in recent years have been able to narrow down the age of the universe to about 13.8 billion years. Multiple lines of evidence, including the detection of the CMB exactly 50 years ago, have bolstered the consensus model of modern cosmology, which shows that the universe was initially infinitely hot and dense, literally dimensionless. There was no space, no time.

Then something happened. The universe began to expand and cool. This was the big bang.

The inflationary model implies that our universe is exceedingly larger than what we currently observe, which is humbling already in its scale. Moreover, the vacuum energy that drove the inflationary process would presumably imply the existence of a larger cosmos, or “multiverse,” of which our universe is but a granular element.

“These ideas about the multiverse become interesting to me only when theories come up with testable predictions based on them,” Kovac said Monday. “The powerful thing about the basic inflationary paradigm is that it did offer us this clear, testable prediction: the existence of gravitational waves which are directly linked to the exponential expansion that’s intrinsic to the theory.”

Obviously, there is much more to yet be discovered.  Nonetheless, it is pretty clear that the Genesis story written by ignorant and uneducated nomads to explain the unknown is anything but the truth.

Quotes of the Day: Fading Christofascist Power and Privilege

I often remark on the growing meme that one hears among Christofascists that they are facing growing persecution, intolerance and hostility - things that they have subjected others to for years, if not centuries or millennium.  Recently, I reflected on Ross Douthat's op-ed in the New York Times that continued this meme and, to my mind demonstrated the ultimate selfishness of the Christofascists and their never ending quest for power and control over others.   In a post today, Andrew Sullivan highlighted comments from readers on this issue that summed up the real basis for the Christofascists' unhappiness and feigned persecution.  Here are excerpts:

I find I have little sympathy for the protestations of Douthat, Dreher, etc., and here’s why: what they’re protesting is their fading ability to dictate to others how to live their lives. They have not actually lost any rights, but rather lost a position of privilege and authority from which they have called the tunes to which others have been forced to dance. What they’re upset about isn’t the loss of power over their own lives; it’s about the loss of power over others’ lives. To which I say, “Boo-freaking-hoo.”

Here's another:

I’m sure it’s painful to discover that your world view is actually just one among many, rather than Reality Itself, and I can sympathize with the pain since I was once a child and had to endure many such painful realizations as I grew up and learned that I was not actually the central character in the universal drama.  . . . .   But I’m finding my resources of compassion seriously over-taxed by Douthat’s et al. reaction to the coming of the age of marriage- equality because it is rooted in the moral and intellectual complacency of privilege.  Douthat, especially, is expending all his intellectual energy on rationalizing his prejudices rather than attempting to examine them. Even so, nobody is forcing him, or anybody, to change his attitudes or behavior – conservative Christians remain free to profess and practice their beliefs.  Indeed, this really isn’t about them at all.  And there’s the rub.  Suddenly they and their views are not the American Unum, but merely part of the Pluribus.  Their outrage (or, in Dreher’s case, apprehension and sadness) is really a reaction to a loss of prestige, a loss of a sense of centrality, a loss of the sense that this is their country and they are the normal ones . . . 

And for the Christofascists, despite Christ's Gospel message, it is ALL about them.  They support the discrimination against others and for the most part support Republican agendas thare the antithesis of the Gospel message.  An final reader then zeros in on what I have argued for a long time as to why a special level of animus has been reserved for gays in the Christianist circles:

The larger issue at stake is the truth claims of Christianity, at least in the view of its most stringent interpreters. If the Bible can’t be trusted to be right about whether or not gay people are horrible monsters on par with murderers, swindlers, and slave dealers, what can we trust it for? . . . I’ve often wondered whether, as gays and gay marriage become more mainstream and, well, banal, many Christians won’t find themselves wondering why the apocalypse hasn’t come after all and what that says about Scriptural authority in a lot of other areas. That’s what’s not sitting well with a lot of Christian culture warriors right now.

The absolute worse thing one can demand of a Christofascist is that they think for themselves and make their own reasoned moral judgments rather than merely parrot what they have been taught.  Suddenly, if their convenient little check list that proves that they are "saved" cannot be relied upon, their entire simple minded world collapse.  And this scares the Hell out of them.  Hence why they lash out so violently at those who threaten their house of cards world view. 

Kepler Telescope Reveals 715 New Planets

In addition to refusing to accept that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old or believing that evolution is true, the Christofascists believe that the Bible - written by ignorant nomads/herders in the case of the Old Testament and unknown authors in the case of the New Testament - is the final word for the entire universe. This latter belief requires, of course, that there be no other intelligent and/or humanoid life in the universe.  As with many other Christofascist beliefs, science is steadily threatening this tenant of the Christofascists' fantasy alternate universe.  A case in point? The discovery of 715 new planets that are located in the habitable zone of there respective solar systems.  Here are highlights from a new NASA press release:

NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.

"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now, scientists have a statistical technique that can be applied to many planets at once when they are found in systems that harbor more than one planet around the same star.

To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., analyzed stars with more than one potential planet, all of which were detected in the first two years of Kepler's observations -- May 2009 to March 2011.

Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.

This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the galaxy.

 One thing is probably certain - the Bible does NOT provide an accurate understanding of our place in the Milky Wat galaxy much less the vastly larger universe.

'Snake Salvation' Star Dies From Snake Bite

Not to be cruel or mean spirited, but if one wants to see the idiocy of the Christofascist crowd that demands that the Bible be taken literally - or at least certain favored passages - look no farther than Pastor Jamie Coots, one of the stars of National Geographic's "Snake Salvation," who died on Saturday after he was bitten by a snake.  Coots refused medical care citing his belief that snake bites will not hurt believers.  (Would that more of Christofascists in Virginia would take up snake handling.)  The example of Coots again raises the issue of why does anyone take these people seriously much less give them deference or respect.  They are a menace to themselves and others.  Here are details from WBIR-TV:

Kentucky Pastor Jamie Coots died Saturday night after he was bitten by a snake, according to officials and family members.  Coots starred on the reality show "Snake Salvation" alongside Pastor Andrew Hamblin, from LaFollette, who was recently in court for TWRA citations for snake-handling. The National Geographic show profiled the Pentecostal, serpent handling preachers.

Middlesboro Police Chief Jeff Sharpe said Coots was found dead in his home at about 10 p.m. Saturday a snake allegedly bit Coots while he was handling the animal in his Middlesboro church, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name.

Sharpe said Coots went home before emergency workers got to the church. Officials then went to his house but weren't given consent to treat him or transport him to the hospital. About an hour later officials said they returned to the home, but Coots had passed away.

Another preacher at the church, Cody Winn, said he was right next to Coots when he got bit during the Saturday evening service.  "Jamie went across the floor. He had one of the rattlers in his hand, he came over and he was standing beside me. It was plain view, it just turned its head and bit him in the back of the hand before, within a second," Winn said.

He said Coots dropped the snakes, but then picked them back up and continued on. Within minutes, he said Coots headed to the bathroom with his son and Andrew Hamblin, an East Tennessee preacher who also handles snakes.

"Andrew said he looked at him and said 'sweet Jesus' and it was over. He didn't die right then, but he just went out and never woke back up," Winn said.  His son, Cody, said his dad had been bit eight times before, but never had such a severe reaction.

A little more than a week from Sunday would have been exactly a year since Jamie Coots pleaded guilty to violating Tennessee's exotic animals law. As part of a plea deal, Coots surrendered his vipers.

Jamie Coots isn't the first to get fatally bitten at the Middlesboro church. Back in 1995, a snake handler named Melinda Brown passed away after she was bit.

True, snake handlers are among the most extreme of the Christofascists, but in the last analysis, they are all equally crazy and embrace the same kind of ignorance based on the myths of Bronze Age herders and the writings of unknown authors from the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Adam and Eve Debacle: Science Drives Theologians into Frenzy of Fabrication

As noted previously on this blog, the human genome project has scientifically confirmed that the Adam and Eve of the Book of Genesis never existed as historic people.  Thus, the story of the serpent, the fruit from the tree of knowledge and mankind's fall through the sin of Adam and Eve never happened.  Obviously, this blows the Hell out of the Christian story line and the need for a redemptive Messiah to atone for mankind's sinfulness.  Some denominations are trying to merely ignore this reality which has blown apart Christianity's entire premise as violently as the U-boat torpedo ended the Lusitania's reign as a queen of the seas.  Other denominations - e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention - that have stupidly held to the inerrant truth of the Bible are desperately seeking to fabricate a revised story line that avoids the total collapse of the story of the Fall and Christ's redemption.  A piece in Why Evolution is True looks at this desperate endeavor.  Here are excerpts:

Busily engaged in apologetics, BioLogos has a new post on the never-ending kerfuffle about the meaning of Adam and Eve: “Why the church needs multiple theories of original sin.” It’s by Loren Haarsma, who has a doctorate in physics from Harvard and teaches it at Calvin College (he’s also the co-author, with his wife Deborah, of Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design). 

The cynical—but correct—answer to the title question is: “Because science showed that there isn’t an Adam and Eve, so you have to make up stuff to save the meaning of Jesus.” And indeed, that’s precisely what theologians do, though of course they don’t admit it. Instead, they pretend that the scientific results showing that humans didn’t evolve from a single pair of ancestors simply means that we must reinterpret the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. But, as usual, theology cannot solve this problem, though Haarsma pretends that diligent theological study and proper interpretation of Scripture will yield an answer. It’s a prime example of how religious tenets are not only disproven by science, but, more important, how religion, unlike science, is powerless to find truth.

The facts first. Sheehan et al., building on an earlier paper by Li and Durbin (references below), calculated that the minimum population size associated with the worldwide expansion of humans out of Africa about 60,000 years ago was 2,250 individuals . . . . Note: 2,500 is larger than two.

Normally, such a scientific trashing of scripture could be absorbed, at least by liberal theologians. They’d just reinterpret Adam and Eve as metaphors. But that causes big trouble on two counts. First, if there really were 2,500 or more ancestors, then all of them must have transgressed to bring original sin into the world. That is hard to fathom: did everyone do something bad at the same time?

Second, if Adam and Eve were metaphors, and the source of original sin is mysterious, then we have no idea why Jesus died. After all, his death and Resurrection occurred precisely to save us sinful humans from the transgressions of Adam and Eve. If you have to turn that story into a metaphor, then Jesus died for a metaphor. That’s not very palatable to Christians.

But before Haarsma even gets to the science (whose truth he gracefully admits, because he has to), he discusses how the Church has historically dealt with the problem of atonement. The answer is that they’ve considered multiple theories and can’t settle on one. 

A variety of scenarios are being proposed by Christian scholars today for how we might understand the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2, and their disobedience in Genesis 3, in light of modern science.

1. Some scenarios propose Adam and Eve as two individuals living in Mesopotamia just a few thousand years ago, acting not as ancestors but as recent representatives of all humanity. As our representatives, their disobedience caused all of humanity to fall into sin.

2. Other scenarios propose Adam and Eve as two individuals, or as literary representations of a small group of ancient representative-ancestors, selected out of a larger population, living in Africa over 100,000 years ago at the dawn of humanity; they were ancestors—but not the sole ancestors—of all humans today . . .

3. Other scenarios propose that Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Genesis 3 is a symbolic retelling of the story of every human who, over our long history, became aware of God’s claims on how they ought to live, and then disobeyed.

[E]ach of these has its own set of problems if you want to save the idea of original sin. The first raises the problem of how the transgressions of two people could infect the entire species.

The second scenario, which proposes that Adam and Eve could be “literary representations” (i.e., made up) of an entire group of ancestors, also fails to explain how that whole group became infected with original sin.

The final alternative, if you wish to save original sin, is the one employed by more sophisticated theologians like Peter Enns (reference below). Enns, formerly a biblical scholar at BioLogos, but presumably expelled from Paradise by his science-y transgressions, simply says that the whole scenario is metaphorical. . . . In other words, the Adam and Eve story is fictional.

[T]he whole problem is this: what, exactly, is God’s revelation in Scripture? It used to be a literal interpretation of Adam and Eve, and still would be had science not taken that off the table. But maybe original sin is metaphorical, too, and perhaps even Jesus is!  Indeed, maybe God isn’t loving and good, either. After all, he’s pretty much of a hateful bully in the Old Testament.

In the end, the inerrant Bible crowd is left with nothing.  This, of course means their entire house of cards faith construct collapses.  Yet despite this reality, we continue to see folks like those at The Family Foundation and individuals like failed GOP candidates Ken Cuccinelli, "Bishop" Jackson, and Mark Obenshain seeking to impose precepts based on fictional myths on all citizens.  Thinking, decent people need to resist these efforts strenuously.
 

Australian Prime Minister Slams Anti-Gay Pastor

One of the things that drives me to distraction at times is the unwarranted deference given to religion in American politics.  When one looks at the fruits of religion - hate, intolerance, hypocrisy, the embrace of ignorance, and at times physical violence against others - the negatives far out weigh any positive benefits in the form of actual, honest to goodness charitable works done.  Yet American politicians remain terrified at the prospect of offending the pious set.  Not so Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who lost patience with a anti-gay pastor who challenged Rudd on his support for gay marriage and let the pastor have it verbally.  Would that we could see such honesty in America.  The Guardian looks at the exchange involving Rudd and the gay hater:

Kevin Rudd has insisted his views in favour of same-sex marriage are compatible with his Christian faith, saying a literal interpretation of the bible that opposed gay unions would also dictate support for slavery.

Challenged by a pastor and Christian radio announcer on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night as to why as a Christian he did not follow the teaching of the bible that marriage was between a man and a woman, Rudd replied: “Well, mate, if I was going to have that view, the bible also says that slavery is a natural condition because St Paul said in the new testament: ‘slaves be obedient to your masters,’ and therefore we should all have fought for the confederacy in the US civil war.”

He added: “I mean, for goodness sake, the human condition and social conditions change. What is the central principle of the new testament? It is one of universal love, loving your fellow man,” Rudd said, during a passionate performance in which he insisted he was still not contemplating losing Saturday’s election despite Labor’s declining standing in the opinion polls.

Rudd is 100% on point.  Of course, today's conservative Christians have lost the message about love and instead fill their lives with hate and bigotry.  

Jesus Needs Reza Aslan, Author of 'Zealot'

In prior posts I've looked at the exploding heads among the "godly Christian" crowd over Reza Aslan's new book, "Zealot" that takes on some of the myths, if you will, promoted from far too many pulpits.  What am I talking about?  The fact is that we know few true "facts" about Christ other than what is passed down through the often revised and rewritten Bible.  A Bible that in its current form contains passages not even included in the earliest texts.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at why Zealot - which doesn't really break new ground in biblical scholarship - is good for bringing out need knowledge.  Here are excerpts:

The author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth is at the center of an inexplicable firestorm for writing a book about Jesus. He’s been treated to hair-splitting attacks on his academic credentials and claims of a secret Muslim agenda. Nearly every critic of the Iranian-American and Muslim author has fretted over whether he has the right to tackle his subject. In an interview, Aslan was exasperated, pointing out to me repeatedly that his credentials were never questioned when he wrote the bestselling, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.

Reviewers spanning the theological spectrum have reacted with a curious level of hostility toward a writer who even by their own estimation is embracing a theory of the historical Jesus that has been around for a long time.  What’s going on? Aslan told me, “My faith background makes me suspect. Not just to the fringe, but to the Washington Post and the New York Times.”

That’s too bad. A Muslim writing an academic book about Jesus is groundbreaking. It should be welcomed. You don’t have to agree with his conclusions about Jesus – I don’t – to hold this view.

Aslan concurs. “About 90 percent of the scholarly historical study of Islam is written by Christians or Jews,” he told me. “Very few scholars of religion who are Muslim write about Christianity.”

The academic field is famously hostile to believers and Aslan has bucked that worldview.  Perhaps the most high-profile anti-God academic is Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, who this week created controversy when he tweeted, "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."

Says Aslan, “Dawkins gives science and atheism a bad name. This is a man who believes any person of faith is not just wrong, but stupid. That he is in solitary possession of truth. That’s called fundamentalism.”  Aslan eschews fundamentalism.  He is a Muslim, but in his book he rejects the virgin birth of Jesus and concludes that Jesus was in fact crucified, putting him at odds with mainstream Islamic doctrine.

In the FoxNews.com interview that helped launch “Zealot” to the number one spot on the New York Times bestseller list, Aslan said he had been obsessed with Jesus most of his life. I asked him why this was. He responded, “I don’t know why everyone isn’t obsessed with Jesus. He is the most interesting person who ever lived.”  So he wrote a book about him.

The real issue, of course, is that Aslan's book shakes up the house of cards faith system of the far right.  And the fact that he's a Muslim is used to conveniently ignore the fact that other biblical scholars have come to the same conclusions which underscore that the Bible is anything but inerrant.

 

Forged: Writing in the Name of God--The Truth About the Bible's Authors

Admittedly, this blog is often not kind to religious fundamentalists of any stripe, but American Christofascists get particular attention.  Why?  Because modern scientific knowledge increasingly shows that some of the claims/myths set forth in the Bible simply are not true.  The human genome project which has shown that the Adam and Eve of the Bible never existed as historical individuals is but one glaring example.  But adding to the batshitery and hypocrisy is the fact that much of the Bible was written by unknown authors or even outright forgers.  A new book by Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and is a leading authority on the Bible and the life of Jesus.  Here are details from his new book "Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are":

Bart D. Ehrman, the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus, Interrupted and Gods Problem reveals which books in the Bibles New Testament were not passed down by Jesus's disciples, but were instead forged by other hands and why this centuries-hidden scandal is far more significant than many scholars are willing to admit. A controversial work of historical reporting in the tradition of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan, Ehrmans Forged delivers a stunning explication of one of the most substantial yet least discussed problems confronting the world of biblical scholarship. 

The Untold Story of Forgery in the Bible:  In Forged, leading Bible authority Bart D. Ehrman exposes one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian tradition: the use of deception to establish the truth. With the scholarly expertise and provocative claims for which he's known, Ehrman reveals which texts were forged in the name of Jesus's disciples and considers how the deceptions of an unnamed few have prevailed for centuries. The untold story of widespread forgery in the ancient world sheds new light on how documents of scandalous origin became part of the Bible we have today.

Straight blogger, Bob Felton, has some very apt remarks on the truth about the Bible and the utter dishonesty of "conservative Christians" who maintain - either through ignorance and stupidity or in the quest to shake down the gullible or money - rant that the Bible is inerrant.  Here are some money quotes:

When Bart Ehrman’s Forged was published a few years ago, he characterized it as a popular work and promised that a textbook-level treatment of Biblical forgeries would be published soon afterward. That book is now to hand: massiv

It is bad enough that scholars don’t actually know who wrote most of the Bible’s ‘inerrant’ texts, or anything about the authors. Worse, scholars do know that a great many of those texts are forgeries, texts written by somebody who wasn’t Paul but claiming to be Paul, for example, with the purpose of influencing early Christian beliefs, doctrine, behavior. They probably weren’t written at midnight by some drunk who just wanted to see what he could get away with — but, then, you can’t be sure. Nobody knows who was the author of a majority of the Biblical texts, and scholars have known since the revival of historical criticism in the 1850s, following the suppression of Spinoza in the 1670s, that many of the texts are forgeries.

The Bible is not the progressive revelation of the Invisible Wizard’s plan, et cetera, et cetera; it is a collection of texts by different men who practiced related but different religions, and its hundreds of well-documented contradictions are there because they believed different things and sometimes made-up stuff for propaganda purposes.

On what grounds, then, do Holy Men claim that the Bible in inerrant? There are no grounds. It is done solely because the preposterous claim of inerrancy provides them a platform upon which to build their authority, and once they acknowledge the Bible is highly, endlessly, hopelessly errant — this is before we get to the hundreds of years of deliberate revisions by anonymities, scribal errors, and mistranslations — their schtick falls apart and they look like nothing so much as gaudy flim-flam men.

A brutal assessment?  Yes.  Is it on point and accurate?  Again the answer is yes.  Personally, I do believe in the existence of a higher being/creator.  Likewise, I believe in the Gospel message and the teachings attributed to Christ.  The rest of the Bible?  It is most likely mythology written by the ignorant and uneducated and by those with a personal agenda to further (likely involving power, money and control of others).  The true history of Christianity and the Catholic Church is very ugly stuff.  So many deaths and so much suffering so that the few could bask in power and wealth.  It's the antithesis of what Christ - if he truly existed - was all about.

 

Neuroscientist: Religious Fundamentalism Could Be Treated As A Mental Illness

I have personally come to believe that there just isn't something mentally right about Christian fundamentalists who have a bizarre need to believe that the Bible is 100% inerrant and often react in a way that borders hysteria when confronted with anyone or anything which challenges their close minded belief system.  It is a mindset, of course which is loved by the Albert Mohlers and Tony Perkins of the world because (i) it makes their sheep like followers easier to control and (ii) it makes it far easier to fleece them for money so that Mohler and Perkins can live well.  Now, a British neuroscientist suggest that religious fundamentalism may well be a treatable form of mental illness.  The beliefs may vary - e.g., Christian extremism versus Islamic extremism - but the mental state that needs/allows the indoctrination and creates a willingness to blindly follow seems to be similar.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post:

An Oxford University researcher and author specializing in neuroscience has suggested that one day religious fundamentalism may be treated as a curable mental illness.

Kathleen Taylor, who describes herself as a "science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics," made the suggestion during a presentation on brain research at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday.

In response to a question about the future of neuroscience, Taylor said that "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated," The Times of London notes.

“Someone who has for example become radicalised to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance," Taylor said. “In many ways it could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage."

This is not the first time Taylor has explored the mind processes of a radical. In 2006, she wrote a book about mind control called Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control, which explored the science behind the persuasive tactics of such groups as cults and al Qaeda.

"We all change our beliefs of course," Taylor said in a YouTube video about the book. "We all persuade each other to do things; we all watch advertising; we all get educated and experience [religions.] Brainwashing, if you like, is the extreme end of that; it's the coercive, forceful, psychological torture type."

Personally, I view raising children in Christian fundamentalist homes to be a form of child abuse since the damage done can affect individuals' lives for their entire lives. Raising children to be full of fear, hate and close mindedness is not a positive thing for society.

GOP Congressman Introduces Bill To Require Political Approval Of Scientific Papers

Nothing threatens the house of cards world view of the Christofascist - and by extension, the policy positions of the Republican Party - than modern scientific knowledge which shows that much of the Bible's supposed inerrant historical and doctrinal positions are untrue.  The human genome project that has confirmed that Adam and Eve were not historical figures is perhaps but one of the many scientific break through that have sent the fundamentalist crowd into conniptions and spells of the vapors.  So what does one do if one is a fundamentalist Christian or one of their political whores in the GOP?   You try to block new scientific research which may further discredit the veracity of supposedly Christian sacred texts.  Rushing in to do just that is GOP Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas (pictured at right) who has introduced a bill that would require that any research done using federal funds (which constitutes the majority of research done in the United States) must have its results and finding approved by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives.  Given the far right GOP's stranglehold on the House of Representatives, this means that scientific research would come to a halt.  Thus we see the GOP's further embrace of ignorance in the quest to pander to the sensibilities of the most lunatic elements of the GOP base.  Here are some highlights on this idiocy:

Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas really does not understand science. Not scientific method, not scientific theories or laws, none of it. Which is why he submitted a bill draft titled the “High Quality Research Act” which would in effect add a politician into scientific studies.

The bill says that any research done using federal funds (which is the majority of research done in the United States) must have its results and finding approved by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives. If the findings are not agreed to, the research is taken from the researchers and disposed of by Congress as it sees fit.


Congressman Smith has already landed himself in scientific hot water over his April 25th Letter to the National Science Foundation where he demanded that the NSF conduct an investigation into five research programs which contradict policies his donors want passed. This is what was expected when the noted anti-science Texan was appointed to the Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Congressman Lamar Smith is a leading example as to the disconnect within the Republican Party and reality. His “improvement” would compromise scientific research, and dismantle what little America has left for integrity. Despite how many other industries have fallen apart across the United States, we as a nation remain the gold standard of scientific research. It appears Lamar Smith will not rest until that too joins our other areas of once excellence, and we surrender to our national collapse.

To be a Republican nowadays, one must be either (i) a far right religious nutcase, (ii) clinically insane, (iii) motivated first and foremost by greed, or (iv) have had a lobotomy.   My many Republican ancestors must be spinning in their graves if they can see what the once respectable and rational GOP has become.

Religious Based Ignorance Stifling Climate Change Action in U.S.A.

Hatteras Island looking north from Buxton

UPDATED:The May 5, 2013, Virginian Pilot has a lengthy article on what rising sea levels are doing to North Carolina's Outer Banks.  Unfortunately, the North Carolina GOP refuses to have any discussion about climate change and global warming.

Our home in 2009 - the entire block and many other parts of the neighborhood were flooded

As yet more evidence that fundamentalist Christianity and the embrace of ignorance that goes with it constitutes a threat to America's future and security, a new study has found that fundamentalism and belief in the "end times" is preventing America from taking much needed action on climate change.  Here in Virginia and GOP controlled North Carolina where rising sea levels and the increasing intensity and frequency of tropical storms is a very real problem, the Christianist controlled Republican continue to refuse to admit that global warming and the related sea level rises and storms is even happening.  It's lunacy and dangerous public policy, especially for those of us who live in coastal areas.  Here in Tidewater Virginia, coastal flooding is a growing problem and we've had four serious storms and flooding in the last 10 years.  An article in The Raw Story looks at the study findings:

The United States has failed to take action to mitigate climate change thanks in part to the large number of religious Americans who believe the world has a set expiration date.

Research by David C. Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David H. Bearce of the University of Colorado uncovered that belief in the biblical end-times was a motivating factor behind resistance to curbing climate change.

“[T]he fact that such an overwhelming percentage of Republican citizens profess a belief in the Second Coming (76 percent in 2006, according to our sample) suggests that governmental attempts to curb greenhouse emissions would encounter stiff resistance even if every Democrat in the country wanted to curb them,” Barker and Bearce wrote in their study, which will be published in the June issue of Political Science Quarterly.

“[I]t stands to reason that most nonbelievers would support preserving the Earth for future generations, but that end-times believers would rationally perceive such efforts to be ultimately futile, and hence ill-advised,” Barker and Bearce explained.

That very sentiment has been expressed by federal legislators. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) said in 2010 that he opposed action on climate change because “the Earth will end only when God declares it to be over.” He is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.

Though the two researchers cautioned their study was not intended to predict future policy outcomes, they said their study suggested it was unlikely the United States would take action on climate change while so many Americans, particularly Republicans, believed in the coming end-times.

“That is, because of institutions such as the Electoral College, the winner-take-all representation mechanism, and the Senate filibuster, as well as the geographic distribution of partisanship to modern partisan polarization, minority interests often successfully block majority preferences,”

To these religious zealots, the writings of unknown, uneducated and ignorant nomads and herders trump modern scientific knowledge and the objective evidence that we see all around us.   What's amazing is that these same folks ridicule and condemn fundamentalist Muslims for the same knowing embrace of ignorance of which they themselves are guilty.  They are a menace plain and simple.

As for the picture of our home, it was built in 1958.  Yet the serious flooding issues have only arisen in the last 10 years.  Obviously, something is happening whether the cretinous Christofascists want to admit it or not.  I'm sorry, but religious belief has no place in the civil laws or in public policy.

The Bible as Justification for Hate

Click image to enlarge

My likely distant cousin, James Hamar, shared this image on Facebook which to me illustrates the utter hypocrisy of the anti-gay Christofascists who cite the Bible as inerrant and something to be taken literally - only when it's convenient, of course.  As I have said many times, if the Bible is inerrant and must be taken literally, you do not get to pick and choose which passages to follow.  You have to take all of it, no matter how batshit crazy the result.  And the "godly Christians" wonder why it is they themselves who are beginning to be stigmatized.  Their hypocrisy is truly unbelievable. 

Notorious Homophobes Were Advisers on History Channel's 'Bible' Mini-Series

Is it a mere coincidence that the actor playing Satan (pictured above) in History Channel's mini-series "The Bible" looks uncannily like an older Barack Obama?   Perhaps yes, perhaps no.  What is a certainty is that the panel of advisers recruited by producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey  to ostensibly to ensure the "accuracy" of the story line is a veritable who's who of extreme homophobes.  In a puff piece in TV Guide the panel is described as follows:

"We weren't qualified to teach the Bible, but we knew plenty of people who were," says Burnett, whose interfaith panel included pastors Joel Osteen, Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes, Bishop Michael Sheridan, Focus on the Family president Jim Daly and Rev. Samuel Rodriguez.

Of course, the production is treated as if the story line of the Bible is historic fact and ignores such petty problems as the fact that the human genome project has confirmed that Adam and Eve never existed as historic individuals or that the Great Flood was likely a mythical description of the flooding of the Black Sea basin many millennium ago when the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus rather than any type of divine intervention.  As for the panel of advisers, Towleroad looks at their track record on gays:

That's Osteen, who said "I don't believe homosexuality is God's best for a person's life" and called it "sin" many times, Prop 8 supporter Rick Warren who compared homosexuality to poison and compared acting on gay urges to assaulting someone, TD Jakes who has called homosexuality a "brokenness" despite his son getting arrested in a sex sting, Bishop Michael Sheridan who has called homosexuality "intrinsically evil" and told Catholics who vote for gay marriage that they can't receive communion, and Samuel Rodriguez, who teamed up with NY state senator Ruben Diaz to rally opponents of same-sex marriage, and Jim Daly, the head of virulently anti-gay Focus on the Family.

Frankly, other than including Fred Phelps, it would have been difficult to come up with a more homophobic gathering of hate merchants.  And, of course, then there's Rick Warren who looks to be the personification of the sin of gluttony.

But back to the Obama like appearance of Satan: So far neither History Channel nor Mark Burnett, The Bible series’s creator, has issued any statement on the matter.

Texas Public School Classes Teach Races Come from Noah’s Sons, Biblical Literalism, 6000-year-old Earth

As America faces increasing global competition and the need for quality fact and science based education becomes more urgent if the nation is to prosper, a number of schools in Texas -what a surprise - have taken a 2007 law encouraging the state’s public schools to teach about the influence of the Bible in history and literature and turned it into a route to teaching utter batshitery as part of their curriculum.  While the Christian Taliban no doubt rejoice at such idiocy, taxpayers ought to be outraged.   The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund has released a report, authored by a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, that examines what students are learning in the 57 school districts that teach Bible related courses under the guise of the 2007 law.  Here is some of the crap actually being taught to students:

• Instructional material in two school districts teach that racial diversity today can be traced back to Noah’s sons, a long-discredited claim that has been a foundational component of some forms of racism.
• Religious bias is common, with most courses taught from a Protestant — often a conservative Protestant — perspective. One course, for example, assumes Christians will at some point be “raptured.” Materials include a Venn diagram showing the pros and cons of theories that posit the rapture before the returning Jesus’ 1,000-year reign and those that place it afterward. In many courses, the perspectives of Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Jews are often left out.
• Anti-Jewish bias — intentional or not — is not uncommon. Some courses even portray Judaism as a flawed and incomplete religion that has been replaced by Christianity.
• Many courses suggest or openly claim that the Bible is literally true. “The Bible is the written word of God,” students are told in one PowerPoint presentation. Some courses go so far as to suggest that the Bible can be used to verify events in history. One district, for example, teaches students that the Bible’s historical claims are largely beyond question by listing biblical events side by side with historical developments from around the globe.
• Course materials in numerous classes are designed to evangelize rather than provide an objective study of the Bible’s influence. A book in one district makes its purpose clear in the preface: “May this study be of value to you. May you fully come to believe that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the son of God.’ And may you have ‘life in His name.’”
• A number of courses teach students that the Bible proves Earth is just 6,000 years old.
• Students are taught that the United States is a Christian nation founded on the Christian biblical principles taught in their classrooms.
• Academic rigor is so poor that many courses rely mostly on memorization of Bible verses and factoids from Bible stories rather than teaching students how to analyze what they are studying. One district relies heavily on Bible cartoons from Hanna-Barbera for its high school class. Students in another district spend two days watching what lesson plans describe a “the historic documentary Ancient Aliens,” which presents “a new interpretation of angelic beings described as extraterrestrials.”

The report blames part of the problem on Texas' failure to properly develop course guidelines for Bible related classes.  I suspect that the larger cause is that the State Board of Education which has been under the control of religious conservatives has refused to adopt serious curriculum standards to help guide school districts as they planned their courses.

The irony, of course, is that members of the far right are those most likely to whine about America's decline in the world, yet their joyful embrace of ignorance and idiocy is one of the factors holding America back.  Not to mention their racism, bigotry and misogamy in general.

Christianists and the Non-Existence of Adam and Eve

As noted before on this blog, new advances in the human genome have more or less conclusively confirmed that the Adam and Eve of the Bible did not exist as historical people.  For those not obsessed with Biblical literalism, this reality is perhaps not unavoidably fatal to their faith/religious belief construct.  But for those who foolishly continue to claim that the Bible is literally true in every respect - except, of course for those inconvenient passages such as the ones that condemn divorce, instruct the wealthy to give all they have to the poor, etc., that they ignore with abandon -  the non-existence of Adam and Eve as historical figures threatens to destroy their entire artificial faith world.  As Bob Felton at Civil Common notes, some of the extremists in the Southern Baptist Convention are in a particular dither over the collapse of the Adam and Eve myth:

Hey! What do you know? Albert Mohler and a buddy are giving a talk next April about the historicity of Adam and Eve.

Are Adam and Eve Historical Figures?
Recent challenges to the historicity of Adam in evangelical settings make it essential that we discuss the necessity of our first parent’s existence and origin according to the biblical record. Mohler and Chapell will discuss both the importance of Adam to our understanding of humanity, our world and salvation, as well as, the “field and fences” of what should be considered consistent with biblical fidelity.

The answer is … No. Adam and Eve were not historical figures.  Y’all are not going to believe I’m saying this, because it’s no secret that I loathe Mohler unreservedly, but he is right about at least this much: Adam and Eve are necessary, absolutely indispensable, to the Christian narrative.

• IF no Adam and Eve, then …
  
• No Fall, and …
  
• No such thing as Original Sin, and …
  
• Jesus doesn’t save us from our Just Cosmic Death Sentence.

Read Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Kierkegaard … Adam and Even are not a poor metaphor for the idea that we could all be nicer to each other. No. In Christian theology, that couple’s actual criminal guilt is transmitted from parent to child and at the very instant of your ‘ensoulment’ you were sentenced to eternal torture because of that guilt.

 Bob is correct.  Without Adam and Eve, the entire far right Christian - and that includes reactionary Catholics like the current Pope - face seeing their entire story line collapse.  And as science and knowledge continue to progress and expand, the challenges to Christianity will only intensify.  Bishop John Shelby Spong has correctly argued that unless Christianity changes, it will ultimately die.  Those unintentionally leading the charge to kill it are the Mohlers and Benedict XVI's of the world.