I maintain that the doctrine of Original Sin as understood by Catholics and other Christians is incompatible with evolutionary theory, as I will attempt to show in the following argument. I will use documentation from the Catholic tradition, simply because that is what I am most familiar with, but the points should, for the most part, be acceptable to most other christians who accept the doctrine as well.
more…

“According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ birth coincided with a supposed ‘decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed’. Its dating places this ‘decree’ in AD 6 and it allegedly brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem where the birth of the Messiah had been prophesied in ancient texts. In fact, this supposed ‘decree’ could never have affected a man of Galilee, as it was a client kingdom which saw to its own taxes. The Gospel’s dating is also contradictory and there is no evidence that outside Galilee, the global ‘decree’ ever existed. The story of the ‘first Christmas’ rests on a historical impossibility.”
Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World, pg. 507-508

Additionally, the story of the birth of Jesus is not mentioned in the Gospel of Mark, the first gospel written. It is only mentioned in Matthew and Luke, and in these stories we find references to astrology, references to actions by Herod the Great (who died in 4 B.C.) that are recorded no where else in antiquity (the slaughter of the innocents), improbable astronomical events (a star that moves and then stops), violations of biology, and contradictory information regarding where Joseph and Mary lived.

And yet we are supposed to believe this actually occurred. It’s hard for me to understand how people can accept something as true that is marinaded in so much falsity.

In my previous post, I lamented that Wednesday celebrations do not include Woden, the anglo-saxon god, as they rightfully should. I argued that secularism has taken away much that is wonderful and holy regarding Woden’s Day and replaced it with banality and carnal pleasures.

Perhaps I was too hasty…

In reality, those who wish to deny Woden in a sense still honor him whenever they utter, write, or think “Wednesday”. If they are serious in their disdain for his holy countenance, they should logically avoid any connection to his day in word or deed. That they do not only shows that, deep down, they are Woden-worshippers in their hearts.

Anyone who uses the term “Wednesday” honors Woden, whether they intend to or not.

For too long, the celebration of Wednesday has been infected with secular notions and has fallen away from its original, religious meaning. This sacrilege must end. Clearly, Wednesday was named to honor Woden, the anglo-saxon God, also called Mercury by the Romans.

Wednesday is not a “hump” day. It is not a mid-point in the those evil Woden-haters’ work-weeks. It is a day to honor the God of the northern forests, mountains, and glens: Woden. All praise to the Woden on Woden’s Day!

Let’s put Woden back in Wednesday, people!

And while we’re at it, we should put Tyr/Mars back in Tuesday, Thor back in Thursday, Frigg back in Friday, Saturn back in Saturday, the Sun-god back in Sunday, and Moon worship back in Monday.

Once we have achieved all this, then perhaps we can consider putting Christ back in Christmas.

Changing my belief in God has caused a lot of self-questioning, and a lot of introspection (which I hope to spare you from as much as possible, Dear Reader). Belief was a large part of my life for a very long time. As an aside, I have thought about totalling up the time I spent actively supporting my belief over the years through studies, ministries, and worship; but I concluded such an activity would only result in depression over the time that could have been spent in other, more worthwhile pursuits (I can only imagine how much better my skills as an artist would be had I spent more time and effort in that direction). Nevertheless, after so much time spent in committed belief, it is only natural that I should revisit the reasons for my previous views and submit them to renewed scrutiny.

I spent a fair amount of time as a believer browsing through books on theology. Aside from my natural curiosity in such matters, I suppose I also wanted my faith to have some intellectual force to back it up - I didn’t want to be left without a reasonable response when confronted by doubt or hard questions. Having looked into the history of religion, and gained a superficial appreciation for many of the great religious thinkers throughout that history, I eventually came to trust their views and their reasons for belief. I remember using variations of the following argument in discussions with non-believers:

“Well, if belief was good enough for some of the greatest minds in history, then who am I to doubt their conclusions?”

In reality, this is not a good reason to believe, but merely an evasion of one’s responsibility for their own beliefs, though I obviously did not see it that way at the time. In a way, I was subjecting my beliefs to the approval of men who, I was certain, knew much more than I did. But that conviction was false.

In fact, it is obviously true that most people living in the 21st century know more than did Aquinas, Augustine, Constantine, Paul, Peter, and even Jesus. This is not the view of a conceited and self-centered narcissist. It is an easily demonstrable fact.

None of these men knew that the brain was the center of a person’s thoughts, personality, and consciousness. None of these men knew that germs, viruses, and other microscopic entities even existed, nor the effect they have on our lives. None of these men knew that the sun is just another star, and that hundreds of billions of stars exist in our galaxy, and that there are billions of other galaxies in the universe. None of these men knew anything about evolution, or the age of the earth.

Had they known these things, and thousands of other bits of information that modern society understands, would their beliefs have been different? Who can say? The point is that we do know these things, and we cannot help but to consider them in connection to any beliefs we choose to embrace.

Therefore I cannot rest my beliefs upon the assumptions of men who, however nimble and intelligent they were at the time, did not know important facts about the world. I must evaluate the claims of religion based upon what I know, not simply rely on the imperfect knowledge of men who were brilliant for their times, but still profoundly ignorant in many areas.

The American Family Association is spreading fear of an impending gay invasion in their new video, They’re Coming to Your Town!

Residents of the small Arkansas town of Eureka Springs noticed the homosexual community was growing.  But they felt no threat.  They went about their business as usual.  Then, one day, they woke up to discover that their beloved Eureka Springs, a community which was known far and wide as a center for Christian entertainment–had changed.  The City Council had been taken over by a small group of homosexual activists.

It is not against the law to be afraid of homosexuals, to be sure; and everyone is entitled to their stupid opinions. But those who hide their homophobia behind the shield of religion deserve every measure of contempt and mockery that comes their way.

Baptist raises hell in Jewish dialogue

A BAPTIST pastor has admitted telling Jewish leaders that Jews were “going to hell” and faced a fate “worse than the Holocaust” because they had not accepted Jesus as their saviour.

Those Baptists are quite a fun-loving bunch.

From the “God Is Punishing America For [insert your issue here]” Files, we have a screed from Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer in which he blames all our ills upon “our lust for abortion”.

This did not happen, though, without dire and prolonged warnings about the institutionalization of evil. We can’t say we were not warned. When moral persuasion about the killing of innocents did not work, rational science was our witness. When science was ignored and then co-opted for the works of death, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases came to awaken people’s consciences, but these did little better. God then had to allow such an onslaught of terrorism, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and tsunamis in the past decade that He surely thought we would wake up to the deadly reality of the culture of death and repent. When that didn’t happen, He hit us in the most sensitive spot on the human body: our wallets. The gas price hikes and the recent financial meltdown surely would do the trick, He thought, but apparently that did not work either because our people adamantly refused to be deterred at any price from our lust for abortion and put into office all those who would serve the interests of this unholy agenda for decades to come. Alas, we all need to get on our knees and repent from the very depths of our hearts for the plague that we have just invited onto our beloved nation.

Our “lust for abortion”? Personally, I’m more of a leg and breast man, myself.

I was thinking about Aquinas’ Five Proofs yesterday as the result of an online conversation. A believer challenged me to offer counter-arguments to the First Cause argument (I’m not posting it, but you can find it here), which is the real base of the five proofs.

So, without further ado, I hereby offer my personal reasons why the First Cause argument is unpersuasive to me….

1. The First Cause argument stops too soon. Why is God the termination to the regress? Why is God the exception to the chain of causality? It’s also possible that something caused that which caused the universe. Maybe this God is a minor God, created by greater Gods, who were also created by greater Gods still, and so on. Or maybe this God who caused our universe is the result of billions of years (in an alternate time-space continuum, of course) of evolution of divine creatures that started out sort of small and unremarkable, like field mice in some cosmic uber-dimension. Hey, if we’re going to make assumptions about things we can’t know, we may as well dream big.

2. The First Cause argument assumes too much. Maybe the universe was simply inevitable, just one of many possible universes, or one out of dozens, thousands, or millions of existing universes.

3. The First Cause argument assumes that God exists. Why does the universe need a conscious creator? Believers assume that the First Cause is an intentional, conscious entity because such an idea fits their theology, but it is just as likely (if not more so) that impersonal, uncaring forces caused the universe.

4. The First Cause argument is conjecture built on assumptions without proof. We simply do not know what happened prior to the Big Bang; this is an inarguable fact. The only people who claim to know do so as a statement of faith.

5. The universe may simply be an unexplainable brute fact. The First Cause argument, since it is built upon the assumption that God exists, and attempts to answer unanswerable questions, posits God as the ultimate reality. But it is also possible that no God exists, and that the only ultimate reality is the universe itself.

I don’t expect these counter arguments to convince any believer. But they do cast enough doubt upon the First Cause argument to make it unconvincing to a skeptic.

The latest ad campaign by the American Humanist Association (below) in which they urge people to “Be good for goodness’ sake,” is creating quite a stir, featuring outrage from all the usual suspects. Of particular interest to me was the following quote from Tim Wildmon, president of the Christian group, American Family Association:

“It’s a stupid ad,” he said. “How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God? God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong. If we are each ourselves defining what’s good, it’s going to be a crazy world.”

I must assume that a man of Mr. Wildmon’s stature has undoubtedly heard of Euthyphro’s Dilemma which poses the following two-pronged question:

Does God command something because it is good, or is it good because God commands it?

The first horn of the dilemma (God commands it because it is good) places “Good” apart from God, as something independent. God may agree with what Good is, but has no control over its definition. As such, knowledge of good is available to all without respect to any divine being. We do not need to know God to know what is good.

The second horn (It is good because God commands it) places “Good” solely within the desire of God. Good is limited only to what God defines as good. In order to know what Good is, then, we must first know what God wants. This removes knowledge of Good from the reach of most people, and leaves it only to a few trusted believers who can discern the will of God. It is this second horn of the Dilemma to which Mr. Wildmon apparently accedes.

To Mr. Wildmon, and those who agree with him, the source of morality is God and God alone. Nonbelievers are unable to lead moral lives on their own. The believer alone has the answers to what is good, what is just, and what is moral, because she has access to true knowledge of God’s will.

But history shows that figuring out what God wants is easier said than done.

• Some would say it is God’s command to withold simple medical treatment to the sick (see here and here).
• Some say God commands them to handle poisonous snakes to prove their faith (see here).
• Until recently some churches and believers regarded black people as second class humans (see here) and some still do (see here).
• God said slavery was acceptable (see THE CIVIL WAR - The South).
• God said slavery was wrong (see THE CIVIL WAR - The North).
• Some believers thought God commanded them to persecute and eliminate jews (see HISTORY OF EUROPE).
• Some believers think God wants them to strap on bomb vests and kill infidels (see Middle East).
• Killing without mercy all men, women, children and even livestock in an enemy village is good (see the Book of Joshua, chapt 6).
• God commands that the genitals of infant boys and teenage girls be mutilated (see CIRCUMCISION).
• God wants us to obey the Church of Rome (see Catholicism, the Council of Trent, etc.).
• God wants us to resist the Church of Rome (see The Reformation, Sola Scriptura, etc.).
• God wants everyone converted to our beliefs (see Matthew 28:19-20, and every variation of christianity since the first century).

This is just a small list. History is bursting with examples of those who thought they knew what God wanted, and their path is often strewn with carnage and destruction.

It’s easy to claim that those were simply misinterpretations, or willful misrepresentations of God’s commands, but such an argument merely reinforces the point that one cannot with certainty know what God wills.

So if Good is subject to God’s caprice, and if God’s commands are so hard to figure out because of this, where does that leave us?

Easy, it leaves us with a standard of good that has nothing to do with God, but only with what we can determine using our (God given, if you wish) intelligence, logic, compassion, and reason. God is not the master of what is good. Morality is open to all humanity.

In short, we don’t need God to know what is good.