Science is not a liberal conspiracy

But is science simply a revealing of the wonders of god's creation?  
Well, if one believes in a god or gods that created everything, then by definition those gods should get credit for all the good and bad things we see in the world, so in a circular sort of way, one's faith could be reinforced by the wonders of science as they are now revealed in our secular age. 
But the problem with this is that it assumes a partnership between religion and science which certainly was not there for much of European Christianity. From the burning of scrolls and later books on the writings of antiquity (which were seen as pre-Christian and therefore pagan) to the persecution of Galileo and the insistence on teaching creationism and abstinence-only education in the place of science today, Christianity has mainly come kicking and screaming into the scientific age. It is a sad indictment that Christian Europe for about a thousand years knew less about the planet - its shape and size and relationship to the sun - than did pre-Christian Greeks. The real flourishing of science did not occur until the Enlightenment, which was a secular (or at least deist) movement hostile to religious mumpsimus. 
One of the founding myths of Judaism and Christianity - the original sin for which women have to suffer labor pangs and men must work, and for which some Christians began to believe Jesus had died in atonement - involves a hostility to knowledge and curiosity. Adam and Eve were not punished for mass murder, gang rape, or torture, but for an illicit fruit-picking expedition (helped by a talking snake). Was it any coincidence that they were happier when they were ignorant, and what does this tell us about the Jewish and Christian relationship to empiricism and exploration of the world as we find it (as opposed to obedient, unquestioning acceptance of religious authority)?
Finally, the sacred texts of Judaism then Christianity had the opportunity to educate the world to the wonders of science and math but either chose not to or were simply incapable of it (the biblical authors were far less educated about scientific and mathematical matters than many of their colleagues in antiquity). This of course badly undercuts the argument that an omniscient god was either literally writing or at least being channeled by these authors, since such a god surely would have known about the shape of our planet, the wonders of light transmission, and genetics (which makes a mockery of the exclusively male family inheritance chains given in the bible (where Abraham begot Isaac, etc.) since a child inherits 50% of genes from each parent, who are therefore equally important, however Jewish and Christian societies demeaned women). Why would such a god hold back on stories that could have amazed, instead telling much smaller ones that he must have known (being omniscient) we would discover were nonsensically false with time? 
As Carl Sagan put it best, "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."

Virginia Christians prepare for 40-day spouse swap sex strike against same-sex marriage

By Mike Victor

May 1, 2014

A Virginia-based evangelical Christian group known as the Family Foundation is planning for its members to pray and abstain from sex for 40 days and 40 nights later this year in an effort to fight same-sex marriage.

According to LGBT website FrontiersLA.com, The Family Foundation announced earlier this week that members will be refusing to have sex with each other or even themselves from Aug. 27 to Oct. 4 in support of the state’s Marriage Amendment, passed in 2006, which defined marriage in Virginia as a right reserved only for heterosexual couples. The Amendment was overturned earlier this year and goes before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 11.

A statement on the Family Foundation’s website said, “Our state and nation are mired in a morass of confusion and post-modern thinking that does not believe in absolutes nor [sic] that any truth can even be known. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current debate raging about what constitutes marriage.  Clearly, marriage involves a woman and a man and sometimes electric toys or special lubricant, but never two members of the same sex.  Pagan philosophies, a secular humanist education establishment and an entertainment industry that is absolutely determined in pushing the envelope on decency and morality have all combined to turn this great land into a country that our forefathers could not even begin to recognize.   When Thomas Jefferson was having hot sex with his teenage slave, that was decency and morality.  Now, if Sally Hemming had been Sam, that would have been wrong.”

The Family Foundation is outraged that the values of the founders are being trampled.  "The foundation of this country, its bedrock, its core principles can be summed up in two words:  vaginal sex.  It's what Jesus would have wanted. "

The group hopes to enlist as many fellow Christians as possible in the weeks-long sex-free vigil, but so far has enlisted only two couples pictured above who, to strengthen their resolve, have engaged in an elaborate, but decidedly platonic, wife-swapping scheme.  "Sure, there are those who think it's kind of weird, spending 40 nights in the bed of another man's wife, but I figured it was the least I could do for the spirit of the Lord.  It's not like I would look forward to having a new playmate or anything, or that after 20 years of marriage it wouldn't be nice to see Miss Chastity here come dripping out of the shower and have a little towel malfunction.  But I'm a Christian, see, and so I know adultery is wrong.  That's why I know that the only way I can guarantee that I won't have sex is if I share the bedroom with another woman who I just met at this rally. "

Her husband, pictured on the far left, appeared nervous.  "It sounded kind of crazy at first, but this gentleman makes a good point.  There are many who might not trust their spouse to spend 40 days and sharing a bed with a virtual stranger, but those people aren't Christian, I guess.  You gotta have faith, know what I mean?"

When asked if they were discouraged, Chastity shrugged.  "Oh, sure, when the Supreme Court hears the case, we expect it will be like David and Goliath.  Who were both men, by the way.  Who didn't have sex with each other.  They tried to kill each other and one did, but god's cool with that.  But a kiss, a hug, maybe more, no way.

"Anyway, the federal government, news media, Hollywood, the public education system, big business, biologists, health care professionals, marriage and family counselors, and even the Lord all are on the side of same-sex marriage.  But the church we formed supports what we think Jesus would have thought of homosexuality if he ever got around to saying anything about it one way or the other.  But we have faith that just because he didn't condemn it doesn't mean we can't."  

The group is asking other men and women to vow not to touch their private parts or anyone else's until and unless same sex couples are forced to have sex outside of the sanctity of marriage.   "Sure, it's been a hard sell.  To be honest with you, not a single person has agreed to go along with us.  Especially the wife-swapping part - that kind of weirds people out, but we're used to weirding people out, being evangelicals and all."
Her husband, who only gave his first name "Bubba", nodded vigorously.  "Our religion is based on trust.  If someone asks, Are you a virgin?  and she doesn't say anything, it kind of settles it that she must be, right?    So if at the end of 40 days and nights, I ask my wife if she was touched, kissed, caressed, fondled, or stimulated to the point of orgasm by this gentleman here, if she says no, I will take her word for it."

I don't believe in [the divinity of] Jesus but I do believe in Bono...

 In a very compelling, short video, Bono, the lead vocalist of U2 talks candidly about his spiritual and religious beliefs.  
I don't believe in Jesus, but I do believe in Bono, so I found the video compelling. However, Bono is a far more brilliant musician than he is a religious historian (or even demographer of contemporary religious affiliation because far fewer than half of the planet is Christian).
Bono, like so many today, misuses the word messiah. It means anointed ones (all Jewish kings were anointed ones) and more loosely messenger, but is not at all synonymous with divinity. When Jesus was asked who he was, he repeatedly described himself as "bar nasha" (son of man).
Bono argues that because so many people cannot be so wrong for so long, modern Christians must be right. This would only be true if the popularity of an idea makes it true, or if we have few or no examples of wildly popular ideas that were later shown to be wrong. We bled people for centuries to get the bad humors out and thought the Earth was flat and a few thousand years old, but that doesn't mean these ideas were correct. Billions believe in astrology but this does not make it true.
Also, this same reasoning could be applied to the billions of people who adhere to non-Christian faiths, some far older than Christianity. Since there are far more non-Christians than Christians, does this mean that they are right and Christians are wrong (modern Christians claim exclusivity so some hybrid reality is not admissible)?
Christianity reached Europe and Ireland not so much because of its compelling narrative but because it had become the exclusive religion of the Roman Empire shortly before it collapsed. All other competitive belief systems and their followers were systematically hunted down and killed or forced to convert. We simply don't know how many people in Europe, if free to do so, would not have renounced the faith of their fathers for this Mediterranean import because they were not free to do so. Throw in a public burning or two, torture a few dissenters to death, and you have yourself a totalitarian theocracy that held huge swathes of Europe in its grip until the Enlightenment.
At any rate, Bono is assuming, as many modern Christians do, that his conception of who Jesus was and what he represents has been accurately portrayed, faithfully transmitted and translated, and that he has had an opportunity to be exposed to alternate hypotheses and seriously consider them. Bono's faith was not something that occurred to him through divine revelation but was passed along to him as an accident of geography. Were his parents Hindu or Ireland a predominantly Muslim country, I might be impressed with his reaching out and finding Christianity spontaneously and by choice, but there is a certain inevitability to what he considers a miracle. Again, it could be true that people in Western and Northern Europe and their former colonies are correct and that billions of other human beings, most people on the planet, are incorrect, but then this argues that god is not universal and transcendental but regional.
Bono has a right, as do all of us, to imagine god or gods in our own way, to choose saints or intermediaries that personalize an otherwise unapproachable, distant deity, but my point is a simpler one: Jesus never said he was divine. None of those who knew him claimed that he was divine. Paul (who never met him) did not believe he was divine. Half of the first few centuries of Christians did not believe he was divine.
It's very possible, of course, that he was divine and simply failed to mention it, but this seems a rather glaring omission for what  modern Christians especially of the evangelical variety consider a core tenet of their faith.
And by the way, even if Jesus did claim divinity (he didn't), this does not mean that he was right. It doesn't mean he was lying or even delusional either. Many men throughout history, even great teachers (which I believe he was), have simply been wrong.

Bill Maher's Shocking Conversion

April 1, 2014
The only constant in this world is that it will never be constant.  Prepare to be surprised.  I was so shocked to read this article in today's New York Times that I just clipped the entire thing:

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Television

Bill Maher Makes Shocking Conversion; Negotiating With 700 Club

By BILL CARTER  APRIL 1, 2014

Photo

Bill Maher made a stunning confession to air on his next episode of the HBO series, “Real Time With Bill Maher.” Credit Janet Van Ham/HBO

Bill Maher made little effort to hide his own contempt for many religious leaders, most of them fundamental Christians.  He recently went so far as to call God a "mass murderer" and a "psychopath".    So fans and critics alike will be shocked to learn that he now considers himself a born again Christian.  

On his weekly HBO talk show, “Real Time With Bill Maher,” this Friday night, Mr. Maher plans to announce his conversion and explain his sudden turn-around.  

“I know this will disappoint many of my fans, but after receiving thousands of calls and emails asking me to recant my views of God as depicted in the Bible at the time of the flood, it hit me:  even if he is a 'mass murderer', that doesn't mean God should not be feared and worshiped.  Hell, the more God is a bad ass, the MORE reason to worship him.  And this guy knows where you live!  I consider myself a smart guy and I've got to go with Pascal on this one."  Maher was making an apparent reference to what has become known as Pascal's Dilemma, the resolution of which is to worship God just in case God exists since the penalty for failing to worship an existent god is so much greater than the penalty for worshiping a non-existent one.
Maher says that the tipping point came when Answers in Genesis President and CEO Ken Ham called on Bill Maher to repent for his sins, end his "God-hating comments" and discontinue his "present spiritual state," because he truly feared for Maher's soul.  "So why does God allow Bill Maher to continue his increasing God-hating comments? He really is tempting God. It's as if he's saying, 'Come on God, I'm saying more and more outrageous things about You-come on-come and get me!  Bill Maher is blaming God for death because he does not want to accept that he is a sinner in need of salvation. He wants to be his own god-he shakes his fist at the God who created man and also provides the gift of salvation for those who will receive it."

"That did it," Maher admitted.  "He hit the nail on the head.  I was trying to taunt God to do something, hopefully on live television, and, yeah, I've got my own show, so what's next if not being my own god?"   Maher admits he was high at the time he had his epiphany but doesn't believe that in any way diminishes its authenticity.  "Look, you've read the Bible, right?  These guys were obviously all high when they wrote this stuff.  I always though that discredited them but then it hit me - those biblical authors knew how to party.  I am sure they would have been for legalization of pot today since without some far more serious stuff than marijuana, the bible never could have been written.  So the Bible - one of the greatest works of Western literature - has to be Exhibit A for the legalization of marijuana."

Ham said he is delighted to admit sinners such as Maher back into the fold even if he does not share his view that the biblical authors must have been altered by drugs.  "We will have to clarify a few points of Scripture with him, but he's new to this business of salvation."

Maher said that he and Ham spoke extensively by phone after Maher's fourth joint and although he doesn't remember much of the conversation, he is pretty certain they talked a lot about God.  

Maher's announcement stunned many of his own staff who were hoping it is some publicity stunt.  Scott Carter, the show’s executive producer said he will offer his resignation by the end of the week if Maher is seriously going to renounce everything he has stood for all these years.  
"I don't mean to be as intolerant as the other side," Carter said in an email.  "But this is deeply embarrassing and no doubt will turn off many of the humanist and atheist viewers who tuned in to Maher for intellectual and even spiritual support."

Maher shrugged off Carter's criticisms.  "Sure, we'll lose some viewers, but we'll get the whole 700 Club audience and that is one lucrative demographic.  These chumps have already shown they are willing to part with their money for just about nothing.  Imagine what they will pay for edgy, in-your-face comedy from an atheist-turned-Bible-thumper."  Maher was referring to a deal, still in its infancy, for a joint HBO-700 Club production called Real God Time with Bill Maher and Pat Robertson.

Pat Robertson was not available for comment, but a production assistant who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations said Maher's conversion, if authentic, would be a major victory for the 700 Club and the Lord.  "We've pretty much squeezed this lemon dry," he said of his viewers.  "You can only get so much money from the trailer park demographic, know what I mean?  Maher brings a fresh new set of viewers with very deep pockets.  I haven't seen the final negotiations, but it looks as though Maher and Robertson will take a 50:50 split of all call-in donations while Robertson prays and Maher rants against liberals and all those who have not accepted Jesus as their personal savior."

Do Atheists Really Lack Faith? And Why is Mediterranean Monotheism the Default Hypothesis?

"Everyone, atheists included, can benefit from meeting people with different beliefs — or lack of beliefs" concluded a recent NPR story on atheist displays in a San Diego park.
Why is atheism always framed as a "lack of beliefs" (or sometimes a "lack of faith").  A scientist who conducts an experiment and has a negative result (such as finding Drug X is no more effective than placebo at treating Y) does not lack faith; she simply has ruled out one more hypothesis in which to place her faith, thereby honing in on those that are more worthy.  We don't define modern physicians by what they don't believe in (as "those who lack faith in humoral theory" for example). 
And only in religion would anyone claim that the failure to prove that Drug X is effective must mean therefore that Drug Z21753912789a4361.2 Version 4 MUST by default be effective (and the only drug that is effective).  Nonsense. 
The default hypothesis in science is the null hypothesis, the idea that something does not work or is no more effective than placebo.  (As Karl Popper made depressingly clear, scientists never prove anything, only fail to disprove it.)  Why is it that the default hypothesis for so many in Europe and the United States is that god is a single Jewish male with a strikingly Northern European visage in a toga floating in the clouds who visited Palestine about 2,000 years ago and hasn't been seen since?  It's such an extraordinary, bizarre claim or set of claims.  Of course, this does not mean the claims are incorrect - the fact that light is both a particle and a wave is pretty weird but turns out to be true, as best as we can tell - only that they should not be the DEFAULT, the go to explanation if other explanations cannot be proven, as though this explanation was itself proven. 
Technically, there are no atheists (agnostics is the more scientifically correct term) anymore than there are scientists who have successfully proven that a drug works.  But this is a very narrow, philosophical distinction that is unhelpful on a day-to-day basis.  I cannot prove that my seat belt will save my life on any given trip, but you damn well better believe I buckle up.  So although no one will ever be able to disprove - in a Popperian sense - all of the god hypotheses that societies have generated, it is fairly easy to prove that the null hypothesis (there is no personal god and if there is, his existence was almost certainly not restricted to Palestine during .0000000574% of the Earth's existence) is close to infinitely more likely. 
Here is another thought:  all except for the most tolerant of mystics are atheists to all gods except their chosen ones.  Monotheists such as Christians (side-stepping the idea whether the Trinity and the tens of thousands of saints are multiple gods) are atheists to all gods but one.  Some of us go one god further. 

Inside the Creation Museum

At first I found this amusing, then weird, then just plain creepy.   

According to MSNBC,

The Creation Museum is a lavish 27-million dollar edifice devoted to a literal belief in the creation of the world as recounted in the Christian Bible. Created by Answers in Genesis, one of the most prominent creationist groups in America, the Creation Museum paints a history of the world where humans coexisted with dinosaurs, the biblical flood carved the Grand Canyon, and the Earth itself is only 6,000 years old. Despite, or perhaps because of its wholesale rejection of modern scientific consensus, the Creation Museum is popular–it claims to have had almost two million visitors since opening in 2007.

I know that tearing apart a fundamentalist's creation myth is a bit like carefully explaining to a child why Santa Claus could not possibly deliver all of those toys to all of those children in one night propelled by flying reindeer while squeezing down chimneys despite a BMI far north of 30.   Most of us simply smile and say something polite such as, That's nice, but the difference is that fundamentalists are not children and they are at risk of making other adults believe this silliness, thereby lowering the scientific IQ of America even further (very few Christians outside of America believe in a literally true Genesis account).  

 Only in Turkey do more people (over 50%) than in the United States (40%) believe that human beings have not developed from earlier species of animals.   In no Western European country except for Greece is the number significantly higher than 20%.   Beyond Europe, only about 11% of Japanese believe that evolution is false.   What is also interesting is that in countries with low endorsement of evolution, there is a high level of confusion ("Not Sure"), further evidence that this is more a function of scientific ignorance than of religious faith per se (not that the two are not highly correlated).  

But the museum is cute in places.  I like how Adam and Eve look like relatively hairless, nudist hippies of Northern European descent - perhaps the people (coincidentally of Northern European descent) who created this exhibit did not realize that the bible was written by Mediterranean Semitic people who were far hairier and swarthier than the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian peoples they never met and certainly never intended as the target audience of these stories.

What's not to like?  An Adam with no body hair and a nicely-trimmed G.I. Joe Beard goes skinny-dipping with Eve.

Did you know that Adam and Eve were vegetarians until Eve's illicit fruit-picking expedition with the talking snake. Not only that, all animals, including the dinosaurs that allegedly co-existed with humans, were vegetarians until Eve broke her diet.  (Why DID an all-knowing god put a talking snake into Eden - surely, he could have anticipated this was a Really Bad Idea if eating delicious fruit within arm's reach (also not so bright) would have such an impact on so many people and animals.)   So anyways...  god went through all the trouble of creating (since there was no evolution in this parallel universe) dinosaurs equipped with tearing claws and razor sharp teeth ideal for hunting, others with wings or speed ideal for evading predators, and others with flat molars and long necks ideal for grazing plants, but make most of those features dormant until bam!  it's fruit-eating time in Eden.

Yet this harmonious model (until Eve ruined it!) ignores the fact that even in a vegetarian world, there is plenty of brutal struggle for survival among and within animals and plants (our bodies are really farms with more host bacteria than cells and specially-equipped cells (phagocytes) whose only job is to surround, devour, and kill invading, competing microbial life (but I guess since this violence is microscopic and unknown at the time the biblical authors were making this stuff up, it doesn't count to a creationist).  In fact, there are carnivorous plants and certainly carnivorous insects; without spiders, for example, Adam and Eve would have been spending so much time fending off mosquitoes, they would not have had time to do much else.  And how on earth could an insect that lives off of blood, sometimes killing its host in the process as it introduces parasites such as malaria, have refrained from bloodshed without dying?   And who says plants don't have as much right to life as animals?  We each need each other for survival, so isn't this plant-ism mean-spirited and misplaced?  Certainly not very god-like.

Adam, a mother-less man, never born, never with an umbilical cord, mysteriously has an umbilicus (belly button).

Eden certainly must have been a very crowded place since without evolution, all species, including the 99.9% we now know are now extinct, must have coexisted in one place and time.  Also, without evolution, the mutation of viruses that leads to the emergence of different strains of virulent influenza would have been impossible, so somehow all of the strains that have ever existed must have existed then.  Small pox, diphtheria, polio, malaria, and even HIV (no evolution, no possibility of a virus evolving).  Who among the early humans was seropositive and how did they have lifespans of 700 years or so without antiretrovirals? 



 

 No!  Leave Voltaire out of this!  And if you must drag him in, at least get the facts right.  Unlike Diderot and some other Enlightenment thinkers, Voltaire was not an atheist, and felt that abandoning religion would be dangerous at a societal level.  On his estate at Ferney, France, he built a church and encouraged anyone from the village to attend.  He was more accurately a Deist.  The idea that the Geneva Bible Society took over his house is a myth, by the way, perhaps one created in America over a misunderstanding in another century (the 19th) in another Swiss town (Lausanne) involving another skeptic (Edward Gibbon).  

OK, I'm done for now.  These would all be harmless beliefs if adults outgrew them or if those who didn't were not intent on dumbing down an already dilute scientific curriculum in our public education system.   Put another way, there would nothing wrong with a Tooth Fairy museum if it didn't make some people get it into their heads that they no longer needed tooth brushes or dentists.

Imagine There's No Heaven, It Isn't Hard if You Try

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

 - Mark Twain

In an interesting NPR post by Adam Frank on death and dying  ("Embracing Life and Death", November 19, 2013), I could not help wincing at the final line of this paragraph:

The arguments about what happens after we die are manifold. Some religions are quite explicit about what to expect after death. They provide us with visions of heaven or hell, depending on the choices made in this life. Many atheists are pretty explicit, too, about their expectations, or lack of them, for what lies beyond. As a scientist, however, I have always been unimpressed with both positions.

Atheists have no dogma of course, so there is no such thing as a fixed position on the afterlife or lack thereof that anyone has to believe.  I don't think it's accurate to call it a "position" and then to express disapproval with it "as a scientist."

If I do not pack a winter coat for a summer vacation in Florida, I am not taking a position as much as responding to reality as any of us can measure it.  Yes, it could snow in Florida in July and that extremely unlikely event is orders of magnitude more likely than a heaven or hell as medieval Christians imagined them, but there should be nothing to be impressed or unimpressed with about this observation. 

What atheists (or the ones I know and read) reject is the idea that anyone can tell us with any certainty what waits after death. People are certainly free to speculate in the absence of contrary evidence, but the default hypothesis is that an organism that is no longer able to move, respond to pain or pleasure, eat, copulate, or even maintain bodily integrity is, for lack of a better word, dead.  Maybe there is some soul or other ghostly entity that floats around invisible and without any evidence whatsoever of its existence but to speak of invisible things with certainty is dishonest.  To point out this dishonesty is not a "position" but a commonsense reflection on what is.

I cannot prove that there is no heaven or hell anymore than I can prove that if I purchase a lottery ticket that I will win some kind of jackpot.  Of course, there is the tiniest of probabilities that this is the case, but it would be irresponsible to plan my life around the certainty of such a jackpot.  Christians do just that, forgoing certain earthly experiences and shaping their behavior in anticipation of winning an eternal lottery.  Since most of these behaviors are identical to those of people who do not believe that they will get a grand prize if they do not lie, cheat, steal, or murder (I avoid those behaviors simply because they are wrong and would make me feel terrible, no god or afterlife necessary), the extreme anxiety that comes from conjuring up some fiery pit is gratuitous and warped.  Describing its existence in as much detail as Dante did, for example, is ludicrously dishonest from an intellectual and "scientific" point of view.  No atheist has ever made up such an absurdly detailed fabrication of the experience of non-existence (what the Hindus call Nirvana and the Buddhists believe we achieve when we finally get things right and no longer have to be punished with the cycle of rebirth and death). 

And as with any sort of prediction, the more details you add, the greater the probability that it is untrue - it is far more likely that I will develop cancer than that I will develop cancer of the pancreas which itself is exponentially less likely than my developing cancer of the pancreas at age 50 the day after my birthday.  Create tomes filled with these sort of lurid details and the probability that they are true approaches that of a serial lottery player winning the jackpot each time in several thousand games.  It is not unreasonable to point this out and pointing this out is not a prediction in itself with which anyone should be "impressed" or not.

So atheists - again, the ones I know, I cannot and will not speak for all - are not predicting that you will lose the lottery, only that you are a fool or worse to bet heavily on it.  Those who might by some fluke win cannot have known beforehand that they would, nor could they have done anything differently to affect their chance of winning (the Puritan idea of predestination comes close to this, although it states that the lottery winners are predetermined, their names written down in a book somewhere before they are even born).  Anyone who says otherwise is lying. 

This is not a radical position.  It's not even a position, really, as much as a conservative acceptance of the null hypothesis.

There might be some sort of consciousness beyond our individual deaths but what is 100% clear is that we have no mechanism of perceiving such an existence (imagining, yes, having sensory awareness of it or credible reports by those who died and communicated with us there non-non-existence, no), so perhaps we should let such metaphysical speculation go.  Even the Christians at their most honest admit this, which is why they say you need faith - the capacity to believe something for which there is no evidence. 

Was GOP Senator Ted Cruz Heckled by Jesus?

Republican Party

Was GOP Senator Ted Cruz Heckled by Jesus?

By Mike Victor Oct. 11, 2013   33 Comments    

Sen. Ted Cruz R-Texas pauses while heckled by a man identified only as JC while speaking at the Values Voter Summit, held by the Family Research Council Action, Friday, Oct. 11, 2013.

A Friday morning summit of religious conservatives in Washington took a bizarre twist when a tall, bearded, Palestinian man dressed in a white robe and a yamaka, later identified only by his initials "JC" with which he used to sign into the event, repeatedly stood and heckled Sen.Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as the Senator tried to deliver red-meat lines to the right wing faithful about the horribleness of the Affordable Care Act (which he repeatedly referred to as "Oblamacare").   When Cruz called Obamacare a “disaster” and a “trainwreck” that violates the Constitution, JC stood and said in what others described as a clear, calm, commanding voice:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

Some of those in attendance immediately recognized the line as Matthew 5:25 and felt the heckler was part of the presentation, advocating the delivery of their "adversary" (President Obama) to the "judge" so actually applauded.  

Not sure how to respond himself, Cruz laughed, nervously, muttered "that's right - I think" then continued his diatribe against the president and healthcare reform.  He said he agreed with radio talk show host Mark Levin who called the law a “direct assault on religious liberties” as well as a massive expenditure which would threaten the wealth of those in the room, to which JC rose and said,

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

His last words were drowned out by chants of "USA! USA! USA!" and when security approached the heckler he was able to still them by simply raising a finger.

Cruz engaged the heckler, as he had dozens of others.  "Buddy, I appreciate your memorization of some random biblical passages.  That's especially impressive if you work for President Obama who we all know owns only a Quran."

The stranger said over raucous laughter:  

   

Bear not false witness even against thine enemy.

To which the audience booed loudly and the security again tried to lay hands on him.  

”Is anybody left at the Organizing for America headquarters?” Cruz jokingly asked.  "You do a very good Jesus impersonation, but you came to the wrong convention.  We are here to talk about Christian values:  shrinking government by cutting off unnecessary, wasteful nutrition assistance to poor mothers and children, sealing our borders so illegals can't use our schools and hospitals, and making sure tough sentencing mandates keep our prisons full and our streets safe."

To which the stranger replied:

Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.  I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink.  I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.  Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

At this point security managed to grab the man's garments and pull him from the room, more for his protection than to stop his heckling.  The crowd was turning ugly, especially the Southern Baptists who had been acting strangely disinhibited after the sparkling water they had ordered for the event had earlier been turned into some sort of alcoholic beverage, a sweet wine that no vendors were able to identify.

Civil rights and LGBT rights groups who had bashed the conference for being “anti-gay” witnessed JC offering no resistance as he was pulled from the room.  When one of the group started to shout "FASCISTS!  FASCISTS!  FASCISTS!" JC silenced them by raising his hand and saying:

           Forgive them for they know not what they do.

Security released the stranger after he promised not to re-enter the hall.  However, several minutes after Cruz continued, his talk was interrupted again by sounds from the lobby:  shouts and the sound of glass shattering and something heavy hitting the ground.   Witnesses later said that the stranger had at first kept his promise to remain calm, talking quietly among the protesters, but then grew furious when he saw a table full of books by Pat Robertson entitled Pray and Grow Rich with an image of a Nordic-looking Jesus on the cover.   He overturned the table and many others, saying they were defiling this place.

When the owner of a stand selling pamphlets on how to survive the End Times pulled a concealed handgun, JC calmed visibly, put his hand on the man and - with the gun pressed against his chest - said,

Put up again thy gun into its place: for all they that take the gun shall perish with the gun.  

"He was so calm," the vendor said.  "It almost hypnotic.  I mean, he touched me and all my rage just sort of disappeared.   I put the gun away and started cleaning up my stuff.  Then I felt silly and just threw it all away.  I don't know if I will come to these things again.  It's just getting too weird for me."  

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who was crossing the lobby in time to see the stranger turning over the tables, shouted out at him to stop.   When the stranger disappeared - literally according to several witnesses - Paul swept his hands over the scattered DVDs and books comparing Obama's Dreams of My Father to Hitler's Mein Kampf and said this just showed you how far the left would go on its “war on Christianity.  Some people just really want to get attention, I guess," he said, stepping past a dozen posters of President Obama with a Hitler moustache now sprawled over the lobby floor.  "It's getting harder and harder to be a true Christian these days."  

Although most of the attendees were convinced that JC was some liberal imposter, a few were not so sure.  "I think it might have been Jesus," said a conference attendee who asked not to be identified.  "Stranger things have happened.  Bleeding paintings.  Clouds.  Grilled cheese sandwiches.  It's not how I imagined the guy, but who knows?"

Cruz was not available for an interview, leaving immediately after his speech to make sure the government stayed shut down. 

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Jesus shared at most 1 in 67 million genes to 1 in 1.1 trillion genes with David

The Lineage of Joseph (and by extension, Jesus)

              The first 16 versus (1.5%) of Matthew addressed the lineage of Jesus, or more specifically of Joseph.  It is quite clear that the authors of this text are responding to an argument, namely that Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah predicted by earlier Jewish prophets. Although it seems somewhat awkward to a modern reader, it was important enough for them to devote, in painstaking detail, the first 1.5% of their text to this point, one that seems to be of questionable significance, since elsewhere in the text we are told that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, that his teenage wife was made pregnant by an angel.  If Jesus has no DNA from Joseph, it seems unclear as to why Joseph's lineage should matter.  David lived nearly a thousand years before Joseph, so it is likely that many Jews alive at the time would have descended from him anyway. 

              This is the first problem with Matthew.  The lineage is moot, but it is also contradicted by the other Gospel that addresses Joseph's lineage in pain-staking detail.   Matthew described 26 generations between Jesus; Luke describes 40.  Assuming 25 years per generation, this implies an error of 350 years!   More disturbingly, for those who would like to take these logical accounts literally, is that not a single name on the David-Joseph lineage of Matthew overlaps with the David-Joseph lineage of Luke.   Clearly, they cannot both be right in the way we use the word right today. 

    Another problem with this lineage is that even if Joseph were Jesus's biological father, with 26 generations, Jesus would only have a relatedness of 0.00000149% to David.   

Relatedness is an interesting concept that quantifies the probability of a given gene in one person being shared by another.  Our relatedness to our parents is ½, meaning that there is a 50% probability of a given gene in our parents being in us.  Put another way, half of either parent's genes, on average, are in us.  Our relatedness to our siblings is also ½, by the way.   At each generation, our relatedness is halved, so that our grandchildren will have a relatedness of ⅛ to us, and our great grandchildren 1/16 relatedness.  Given the number of generations n that separate two people in a direct line of descent, our relatedness is 1 divided by 2 to the power of n.  In only a few generations, our relatedness to a given ancestor quickly approaches that of our relatedness to anyone else in the human gene pool.  If you are interested in more detail including an excellent excerpt from Richard Dawkin's classic The Selfish Gene, click here.

Biblical authors knew nothing about this, of course, and had the strange idea (shared by many primitive cultures) that all of a male's attributes (or right to rule) were inherited from his father's father's father's father... (with the mother a nameless breeding vehicle).  Doubtless they never would have spent so much time and energy creating these completely non-overlapping genealogies in such detail if they knew that in the end - even if true - the proportion of Jesus's genes that would be shared with David would only be 1 in 67,108,864.  Put another way, the probability that a gene of David made it through to Jesus would be less than one in 67 million.   

    Luke's 40 generation genealogy is even worse, of course:  Jesus would share only one gene in 1,099,511,627,776 with David, or 1 in 1.1 trillion.  Obviously, since we are all quite literally each other's cousins and quite a bit of interbreeding and outright incest occurs in our species, the background relatedness of any two strangers is much greater than 1 in a trillion, but the point is that by 40 generations, whatever genetic impact David would have on Jesus (or Joseph, to be more specific) would be no greater than that of anyone else on the planet.  I am as related to David as Jesus was, as are all of us.