The Real Issue

Debate goes on, seeming forever, about the issue of religious belief in a secular society.  The validity of sacred texts becomes grist for the mill and sides line up over What Would Jesus Do bumper stickers.  We see competing fish on cars–Darwin fish with feet in answer to the unembellished christian fish symbol, then a bigger fish labeled Truth swallowing the diminutive Darwin fish, and on and on.

What is really at issue here hasn’t got one thing to do with who believes in god or evolution.  Belief is a self-contained, private matter.  The issue that gets lost in all the polemic is very simple: behavior.

Those who would sap the poison from the “inerrant word” crowd are defending their assumed right to live the way they want.  One might argue that belief in god doesn’t really limit people, and as far as it goes, that is true.  If you, as an individual, choose to believe in god, then you have elected to reform your life according to the tenets of your new faith.  You may adopt whatever modest or byzantine traditions and habits you wish.  After all, you have chosen this, you get to do it.

What you don’t get to do is tell everyone else to behave accordingly, and that’s where the meat of the issue lies.

Because fundamentalists–and we’re talking about fundamentalists here for the most part, of any stripe–do not adopt such an extreme view of faith out of intellectual curiosity or even spiritual need.  They …

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Read more about the article Who changed the Bible and why? Bart Ehrman’s startling answers
Who Changed the Bible's Narrative Ehrman's Findings

Who changed the Bible and why? Bart Ehrman’s startling answers

How often do we hear people “explaining” religious beliefs by stating “The Bible says so,” as if the Bible fell out of the sky, pre-translated to English by God Himself?  It’s not that simple, according to an impressive and clearly-written book that should be required reading for anyone who claims to know “what the Bible says.”

Bart Ehrman’s Exploration: Who Changed the Bible and Why?

The 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus, was not written by a raving atheist.  Rather, it was written by a fellow who had a born-again experience in high school, then went on to attend the ultraconservative Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.  Bart Ehrman didn’t stop there, however.  He wanted to become an evangelical voice with credentials that would enable him to teach in secular settings.  It was for this reason that he continued his education at Wheaton and, eventually, Princeton, picking up the ability to read the New Testament in its original Greek in the process.

As a result of his disciplined study, Ehrman increasingly questioned the fundamentalist approach that the “Bible is the inerrant Word of God.  It contains no mistakes.”  Through his studies, Ehrman determined that the Bible was not free of mistakes:

We have only error ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.

(Page 7).  At Princeton, Ehrman learned that mistakes had been made in the copying of the New Testament over the centuries.  Upon realizing this, …

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The Ethics of Morality

     A few months ago I stumbled on a preacher on television.  The reason I stopped to listen was that on the screen he was scrolling through a litany of famous scientists, their fields and contributions, and noting that each was a Great Christian.  Then the preacher–I don’t know who he was, sorry–ended his litany by making the claim that science and religion are inextricably linked, that they must have each other to work, that there is no dispute between them–
     –and that evolution is wrong.
     This was a week after I listened to an NPR interview with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in which he made the claim that it is vital to settle this question of where “we” (meaning humans) came from because if evolution is true, then we would have no basis for morality.
     This is one of the most perverse false syllogisms I have ever heard, and it baffles me no end.  Underlying it is the assumption that morality only ever comes from a supernatural source, that without a deity we are too dumb, puerile, self-serving, and just plain hopeless to ever do anything right–for ourselves on anyone else. (The Erik Von Danniken theory of moral provenance.) That atheists are a priori immoral and that evolutionists, who reject special creation, are necessarily atheists, and therefore, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, likewise immoral.  They can’t help it.  They have no god giving them direction.
     A minute of clear thought shows how this is substantively untrue.  …

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Do bad drivers (or bad eaters) make bad voters?

What kinds of voters are we?  It’s hard to tell by looking what kind of candidates we elect.  After all, we usually only have two viable choices; we often hold our noses and vote for the “lesser of two evils.”   Many potential candidates never appear on the ballot, thanks to our horrifically corrupt political system, a system that requires a candidate to have corporate money in order to seen as viable by the corporate-owned media. It is a ludicrous and vicious circle.

Even acknowledging the severely limited choices we have at the polls, how well do we vote? Do we prepare ourselves carefully before entering the voting booth?  Do we work hard to expose ourselves to a wide range of perspectives before voting or do we fall prey to the availability heuristic, voting on the basis of highly suspect political ads and intellectually vapid local “news”? Do most voters take time to carefully deliberate on the long-term risks and benefits of the political positions touted by the candidates?  Apparently not, based upon the ubiquity misleading attack ads that invite unreflective scorn rather than a deliberate consideration of the issues.

Another bit of evidence suggesting that many of us vote without enough preparation occurs whenever citizens vote for lesser known candidates and issues.  On numerous occasions, people have admitted to me that they voted for or against a particular candidate (or issue) about whom (which) they knew nothing at all.  In Missouri, this happens all the time when circuit judges seeking …

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