Marriage and Sex

I listened to the most recent 'Unbelievable' podcast yesterday, featuring Rob Bell and some random UK based apologist who was simply there to disagree with Rob's opinions on everything.

Eventually, and inevitably, their conversation landed on Rob Bell's much publicised recent affirmation of gay marriage. Listening to the conversation made me almost as annoyed as Rob sounded.

If you were to take the stance of the opponent here, it seems that marriage is all about sex. Indeed, sex defines marriage. I don't know if you've ever been married, but I have to say that in my experience of marriage, sex is only one part of the whole thing. Indeed, occasionally there are weeks and fortnights when sex is no part of being married.

So should we let sex define marriage, or should we let marriage define sex?

Consider the following (made up) example. Imagine there are two people who, for reasons we really don't need to specify, are physically unable to have sex. Indeed, let's go one step further and imagine them to have no sexual urges at all. Their relationship is entirely celibate. Yet they want to get married. Should they be allowed to?

Well, if marriage is all about sex, then clearly no. As they're not going to have sex, they shouldn't have marriage. Right?

If this couple was one man and one woman, then I can't imagine anyone would use this reasoning. We know marriage is not all about sex. Indeed, these days, sex without marriage is quite common and is merely frowned upon by some. But we would permit a marriage between two non-sexual people, if they were of different genders.

But consider this, suppose the couple was two men. Two celibate men, who want to live together in a mutually supporting relationship, without sex. Should they get married? Well, here you can't use arguments against homosexual sex to argue against male-male marriage (note, we're imagining them without sexual urges, so I can't really define them as 'gay' or 'straight'). What reasons are there for preventing this marriage? 

Oh, so you say that as they can't 'consummate' the marriage, they can't be really married? Once again, we're letting sex define marriage. It should be the other way around - marriage should define sex.

So at this point, someone will probably invoke the bible. But this isn't considered in the bible. So this is one of those places where we have to do some thinking, and work out ethics for ourselves. (Oh, and by the way, we know of several instances of celibate male-female marriages in the early years of the church, so we actually have precedent for not defining marriage using sex...)

Once the question of sex is removed, what barriers are left which prevent us from allowing same-gender marriage? You're basically left with convention and tradition. Neither of which are particularly strong reasons for preventing marriage.

So assuming that a celibate couple can have a 'real' marriage, without sex, why do the goalposts shift when we add sex into the equation? Is there something inherently morally wrong about homosexual sex? Well, some would say yes - it is explicitly condemned in the bible. Then again, so is wearing poly-cotton clothing and eating prawns, but never mind that, those things aren't really important, but this thing is. Apparently. Why?

Because its an 'abomination'...?

True, many English translations of the bible use that word in Leviticus. But then again, the same word is used for many things that we don't think twice about, such as eating any seafood that doesn't have fins or scales. The word 'abomination' is also a rather strong (mis)translation of a word that apparently means something more like 'mixing' or 'confusion' in its original language. Seafood that doesn't have fins or scales is a 'confusion' because it doesn't conform to our general concept of 'fish'. Sex between two people of the same gender is a 'confusion' because it breaks down the usual definition of gender roles - that is, one partner in gay sex is confusing his gender by assuming the female role.

Basically, an abomination is any animal or action that doesn't fit with conventional categories (see Mary Douglas's 1966 book 'Purity and Danger', particularly chapter 3 on 'The Abominations of Leviticus' - you can find copies online). And the Israelites were prohibited from 'abominations' not because these were bad for them, or because they were morally wrong, but to clearly delineate themselves as a people 'set apart' - avoiding 'confusions' was a way of ensuring that nobody could confuse them with the other nations. So if we're prawn eating, mixed fabric wearing, non Jews, in what way should these regulations apply to us?

But I seem to have digressed substantially from my original point. Marriage is not defined by sex. Sex is only a part of marriage. So we need to sort marriage out without reference to sex, and then - I expect - all the confusing ethical issues about sex might just fall into place...

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Oh, and on a completely irrelevant note, I was also niggled by Rob Bell's use of the word 'birthed'. This is a word that I have only ever heard used by preachers. Nobody else uses this word. Just stop it, OK?

Why did the angels say what they said?

Happy (belated) Easter to all my readers!

What happened on the first Easter Sunday morning? I'm sure most of us have heard or read some of the stories over the past couple of weeks or so. But looking at the stories with a critical eye, there are a few issues that are hard to resolve. Like this one, why did the angels say what they said?

Here is the story as told by (what most scholars agree is) the earliest of the four gospels:

Mark 16: 1-8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

The message of the 'young man', who we will assume to be intended to be understood as an angel (the word only means messenger anyway), is clear: If you want to see Jesus, you need to go to Galilee. The final portion of this chapter, from verse 9 onwards, is generally considered to be a later addition which was not part of the original. So we can't speculate about what the original ending might have been if, indeed, verse 8 is not the original ending, as some claim.

Matthew has a slightly different take on things:

Matthew 28: 1-10
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

In this version of the story, the angel delivers the same message as in Mark. But here, Jesus himself appears and, erm, says the same thing as the angel. So what was the point of the angelic message if the women were about to meet Jesus anyway, and he was going to give them the same message? Waste of a good messenger, if you ask me.

Most critical scholars agree that Matthew's account is an embellished retelling of Mark's original. It certainly appears as if Matthew thought the empty tomb was a bit of an anticlimax, and really needed a risen Jesus in his story straight away, so inserts a quick (and pointless) appearance of Jesus to the women, before the final appearance of Jesus to the disciples, in Galilee, for the great commission at the end of the chapter.

It certainly seems to me that even if there really was an empty tomb, and even if there really was an angelic messenger, that the appearance of Jesus to the women must be considered as an invention of the writer of 'Matthew', and not a historical event. That is, even if the overall Gospel message is true, and Jesus really is the risen saviour and Son of God, the gospel account of Matthew still contains stories that the author just made up. But if that's the case, how can you trust anything else in there? Sigh.

So we've got to the point of identifying major problems with the story, and we're only two gospels in. Things get more complicated when we look at Luke:

Luke 24: 1-12
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Then, in verses 13 to 32 we have the well known 'road to Emmaus' story, in which Jesus appears to two of his (presumably male) disciples in a non-Galilean setting. They specifically say that others (not the women) went to the tomb and found it empty, but saw no angels. Following this, the story continues in verses 33-36:

They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognised by them when he broke the bread.
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 

After this, they all go out to Bethany and Jesus ascends to heaven (v 51), having never gone to Galilee.

So in this version of the story, the angel(s) have a different message. Its not 'go to Galilee to see him', it has become, 'remember what he said in Galilee'. Indeed, the story here reaches its definite conclusion in the ascension with Jesus and all the disciples never having left the vicinity of Jerusalem. It would appear that the writer of Luke knew stories that the angels had apparently said something about Galilee, but also had heard stories that Jesus had appeared exclusively in the vicinity of Jerusalem, and so modified the original wording (remember from Luke 1:1-4 that he thinks the earlier gospels were inaccurate; we assume he had access to a copy of Mark, possibly Matthew as well) to keep reference to Galilee, but not to instruct anyone to go there. So it appears that 'Luke' changed the meaning and details of the stories he had in order to harmonise them. In other words, Luke too includes stuff that he just made up.

Another odd feature of this telling of the story is in verse 34, where one of the 'road to Emmaus' disciples claims, not only that Jesus had risen, but also that he had appeared to Simon (Peter?), an event that doesn't actually occur in this telling of the story. They say this to 'the eleven' - presumably including Peter himself! i would have thought that if Peter had seen Jesus by this point, he would have known about it and not needed telling. Surely their 'gospel' message should have been 'the Lord has risen - we know because we've seen him' not 'the Lord has risen, we know because Simon has seen him'. And again, it is a pointless message as Jesus promptly appears to all of them anyway.

I think my point is pretty much made by now, but we may as well have a look at the story in John as well:

John 20: 1-20
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

In this telling of the story, we don't have a self-contradiction (as in Matthew), as the angels, though present, don't say or do anything to drive the story on. They're just there apparently in attendance on the risen Jesus, who does most of the talking. Here, as in Matthew, one of the women is the first to see Jesus, and here, as in Luke, Jesus appears to all the disciples in Jerusalem, before anyone has gone to Galilee. Of course, there is a Galilean appearance in John 21, but many people consider that chapter to be a later addition to the gospel, and not part of 'John's' original. Here it is Jesus who tells the woman (singular this time) to go and tell his disciples / brothers something, but the content of the message is not an instruction to go to Galilee, but a fairly vague message that he is about to ascend to the Father. This also is a fairly pointless message - without the text that follows it, the sense would seem to be 'I am ascending to the Father (soon? immediately?) so you won't see me again', but the story tells of immediate visitations to the disciples, so there was no need for this message. Surely he could have told the disciples this when he saw them?

All the conflicting messages in these stories are suggestive. They suggest to me that the earliest versions of the stories contained only the briefest appearance of angels (or Jesus) to a tiny subset of his disciples, while the rest had to simply accept that Jesus had risen (and ascended) on the basis of the testimony of only one or two apparent eyewitnesses. That is, the original resurrection stories were spread by only a tiny handful of people, perhaps only one or two women!

But stories grow in the telling. Appearances by Jesus simply had to be added into the mix for dramatic purposes. I mean, nobody would really believe it if Jesus only appeared to one woman, would they? But if he appeared to many, things would be different...

But if he appeared to many, and in Jerusalem, then why did the angels say what they said...?

On the origin of life...

I've just been listening to last week's Unbelievable podcast addressing the question "How did life begin?" 

While the debate between (atheistic scientist) Adam Rutherford and (theistic evolutionist) Fuz Rana was fairly interesting, I felt that their discussion didn't really address the question posed.

Put simply, you cannot invoke pre-existent life (i.e. God) as an explanation for the origin of life, as that is a contradiction in itself. If a living entity creates another living entity, this is not the origin of anything. It may be the start of a new phase, as it were, but it cannot be the origin.

The philosophical question at the root of the discussion should not have been "How did life begin?" but rather "Did life begin?" - was there ever a time before life, or has life existed from eternity, with no beginning and no end?

The Word of God - Part 1 - Your input please...

I was raised to believe that the Bible was the 'Word of God'. These days I'm not so sure. But just out of interest, if there are any Christians reading this blog, I'd be very interested to know how you would go about demonstrating to a non-believer that the Bible actually is the Word of God? Feel free to interpret the 'Word of God' phrase in any way you want. Please comment.

Why suffering?

I just listened to last week's Unbelievable show on the subject of 'Why Suffering?'

The show followed the usual format of a Christian, in this instance Sharon Dirckx, author of "Why?", and an atheist, Alom Shaha, author of "The Young Atheist's Handbook", but this week also featured two short interviews with Christians who have had to deal with great suffering in their own lives.

What the show failed to do was really engage with the 'Why?' question. Which is a big shame because that suggests to me that Sharon Dirckx's book also fails to get to grips with it. I have to say that Alom's issues against God, in the light of suffering, were far better expressed and thought through than Sharon's fairly standard apologetic arguments in favour of God. It became clear to me, in the final interchange between the two, that Alom had won the debate.

But anyway, what interested (and frustrated) me more in the programme was the two interviews with suffering people. 

The first was with a guy who had lost his wife and toddler son in a car accident (he wasn't in the car), but his young daughter (who was in the car) had survived unharmed. By his own admission he was a nominal Christian when the accident happened, but he turned to a much stronger faith following the accident, and spoke of the strengthening he experienced through God and the support he received from the Christian community. He also spoke of how he is blessed now with another wife and three more children.

The second interview was with a woman who has suffered with MS for the past 12 years, and has a fairly hard time looking after her daughter as a consequence. What seems to have helped her through all this is the help, support, and assistance from people in her Church, and a feeling of hope for her future - in heaven - which she believes comes from God.

The thing that struck me about both stories, was that they could both be retold in the context of a different deity and a different religion, and the stories would still ring true.

The guy, faced with death, thought "this can't be the end for my son", refused to believe the secular take on things, saw a religious symbol (in his case he saw a cross on the wall of the mortuary), and decided to investigate the faith of his ancestors, in order to find meaning. He found meaning, hope and support in a religious setting. I have no doubt that exactly the same process could happen for a nominal Muslim in Pakistan, or for a nominal Hindu in India, or whatever. All religions offer community, support, hope, and meaning. The problem is they cannot all be true. In this instance, there is no clear evidence that supports the Christian faith up against any other faith. Its great that the guy found the strength and support to carry on, but his story offers no evidence that Christianity is any more true than any other religious claim.

In the case of the woman, while her story was very different, the same could be said. For her it was the support of the religious community and the hope that her faith provides which has enabled her to cope. But I'm sure you could play out the same scenario in a Muslim, Hindu, or whatever, setting and the same processes would work. You don't need a 'real' God behind the system, what you need is the promise of hope and the assistance of friends. These are available in all religions. 

Of course, this is where 'secular humanism' fails. While it can (sometimes) offer the help and support of like-minded individuals, it has no promise of hope for the future.

But maybe we need the promise of hope, even if that hope is false. Maybe its the promise, not the reality, that enables us to continue through the tough times.

Oddly enough, I listened to this podcast just after reading a chapter in Valerie Tarico's book "Trusting Doubt" (proper review to follow, once I've finished the book) which was basically on the subject of the shared values of most religions. Which probably explains my thoughts above.

The 14th Dalai Lama apparently said:

"Every religion emphasises human improvement, love respect for others, sharing other people's suffering. On these lines every religion has more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal."

I'm not totally sure that's 100% true, I'm sure some religions are founded on other principles, but in general terms, the main, popular, religions all endorse these values. Generally religious people of all religions strive to be humble, charitable, and trustworthy. So in almost any religion, a suffering person should find a community to support them.

What these people have found, in their suffering, is not the love of God, but the support of humanity. Just because they have found it in a religious context does not mean that the religion is in any way true.

So the question remains. Why suffering? This show certainly didn't answer the question. And I'm unlikely to read the book that the show was promoting. But I still find it very hard to reconcile the Evangelical view of God with the fact of suffering. A God defined by love, and unlimited in power would do more to help those he loves. I have yet to hear a decent apologetic response to this.

How to get to heaven or hell?

I was at church on Sunday. The preacher was speaking on Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the "Rich man and Lazarus". The sermon ended up being a traditional 'full gospel' type message, with an invitation to become a Christian at the end.

The problem I have with this is that the passage he was preaching on doesn't contain the full gospel, or anything like it. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the passage in question actually disagrees with the traditional gospel message in a number of important ways. So let's have a look at this passage:

Luke 16:19-31 (NIV)
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

The basic assumption of this passage regarding how to get to heaven or hell is plain - if you are rich, live in luxury, and ignore the needs of the poor in this life, then you will end up in hell, whereas if you have been poor and had a hard life in this world, you will get blessing and riches in the next. This is a thoroughly Jewish and not-Christian view of eternal realities. It is far closer to eastern concepts of karma (you get what you deserve) than it ever is to Christian concepts of redemption and salvation (Jesus paid, so you get blessings that you don't deserve).

The preacher, and Christians in general don't notice this problem because he/they have a fundamental assumption that all parts of the bible have the same message and the same viewpoint. All this comes from divine inspiration, so Luke 16 must agree with John 3:16...

I'm not sure the writer of Luke 16 and the writer of John 3 would have agreed on everything. They clearly don't agree here. Here, salvation has nothing to do with belief in Christ, and everything to do with karmic justice. Here, as in several other parts of Luke (and Acts), being rich is seen as bad in and of itself, and the best thing a rich person can do to attain eternal life is give away their riches to the poor.

Of course, its not just Luke that has differing views on how to get to heaven or hell than John, parts of Matthew and Mark also seem to have other opinions, like the famous parable of the Prodigal Son; there all that is necessary for salvation is repentance, again with no reference to faith in Jesus, much like the message preached by John the Baptist.

There is also something funny going on in the final verses of this passage. The original storyteller (whether Jesus, Luke, or someone else) suggests that "Moses and the Prophets" (i.e. the old testament books, minus the 'writings' like the Psalms, etc.) contains all the info you need to know how to get to heaven. Live according to these rules and you will be saved. Once again, this is a Jewish message - be a good Jew and you'll go to heaven. But the final verse appears to take a side-swipe at the Christian message! Could the original version of this story (presumably in edited form here) really have been casting scorn on the story of the resurrection of Jesus? From one point of view it could be read to say that Jesus' resurrection is irrelevant to salvation, and what people really need to do is listen to Moses and the Prophets... Is this an anti-Christian message that has been 'sanitised' and adapted to (partially) fit with the Christian message?

Finally, if we consider that there were oral versions of this story in circulation which may have varied slightly from each other in each retelling, and the version we have in Luke is only one version of the story among many (and not necessarily the original or definitive version), might we also speculate about some of the others? What if one variation on the story considered that the requested resurrection of Lazarus actually happened - that Lazarus returned from the dead, and sure enough his resurrection wasn't sufficient to cause people to repent. What if that re-telling of the parable became narrated as an event rather than merely a parable? Could it have been this story that the writer of the 4th gospel heard and included in his story - not as a parable, but as a miraculous act by Jesus? Given that miraculous resurrections are rate events, while story modifications happen all the time, this seems quite plausible...

Are you sure that all this stuff is divinely inspired and accurate reporting of what Jesus said and did? I'm just not sure anymore.

The Great Omission - What is being dead like?

One thing that always struck me as being a bit odd about the resurrection and post-resurrection stories in the New Testament is that nobody - not the disciples, not Jesus, not anyone else - raises the issue of what Jesus experienced during his three days of being dead.

If somebody I knew had spent some time dead, and then come back to life, the very first things I'd ask would be "So, what was being dead like?", "Tell me about heaven?", and so on.

The fact that none of the characters in the NT stories do this simply does not ring true, at least if the Acts or John chronology is accurate. (Matthew and Luke's accounts don't really give any time for conversation between resurrection and 'ascension', Mark's account, of course, doesn't go anywhere after the empty tomb.)

If there was time for conversation after the resurrection, but before the ascension, then Jesus must have discussed what being dead was like. But this conversation is not recorded in any of the writings of the new testament, whether in the gospels or the other writings. This suggests to me that nobody had a conversation with Jesus about what being dead was like. And the only conceivable reasons for this are either Jesus didn't come back from the dead, or that he did but didn't speak to any of his disciples (or anyone else for that matter) after he did.

But if either of those are the case, then the accounts of Acts and John report fictional stories.

Sigh. Here we are again. Yet another chain or reasoning that leads me to conclude that some, at least, of the biblical stories are fiction...

Kill all Amalekites!

Follow the story in Lego form, click here...

Yet another post springing from a recent episode of the Unbelievable show...

The discussion on the show on Saturday 12th January (link to the show audio) concerned the "Amalekite genocide" in I Samuel 15. My summary of the main points of the Biblical story is as follows:

1. God instructed Saul, through Samuel, to slaughter all the Amalekite people as a punishment for what they did to the Israelite people on their way out of Egypt, several centuries before. 
2. Verse 3 is explicit: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." - This is presented as the direct Word of God.
3. Saul carried out an attack on the Amalekite people, but did not utterly destroy them.
4. God, through Samuel, chastises Saul for not carrying out the total destruction, and rejects him as king over Israel. 
5. Samuel himself kills the king of Amalek who was spared and, in a later chapter, David destroys the remaining Amalekites. These two show obedience to the command of God, which Saul did not.

The discussion on Unbelievable was between the Revd. John Allister, an Anglican vicar, and Justin Schieber, an atheist (former Christian) and host of the podcast Reasonable Doubts. I have to say that the role played by Schieber in this debate was mostly to be incredulous and point out the plain meaning of the text, which is apparent to anyone.

John Allister's defence of the Biblical story and the God portrayed therein would have been comical, had the subject in hand not been such a horrible one of slaughter and genocide. His take on the issue was basically as follows:

1. God did issue the command, as given.
2. But armies are slow moving things and people have plenty of time to run away, so the only people who should have fought the Israelite army were soldiers; all able bodied women, children and non-fighting men would have easily got away and would therefore not have been slaughtered.
3. It is reasonable to assume that no children or infants were actually killed as a consequence of this command.
4. The Amalekite people who escaped could have assimilated into other tribes - the aim of this was not to destroy individual people, but a tribal identity.

So, in summary, his defence is that God commanded it, but it never happened, even though the bible stories are true...

This is nonsense on so many different levels. But so is the response of several of the people who called or e-mailed in to Unbelievable the following week. A common theme in their responses was that the slaughter of the innocents must have been necessary, but it is morally acceptable because all innocents who died would have gone to heaven. Once again, this is the use of an unseen, but infinite, good to explain or justify a seen, but finite, evil.

Come again? It appears that a commonly held belief is that any infant or innocent child who dies goes straight to heaven. What about original sin? What about freewill? If the people who believe this actually considered the implications of their belief, they would find that the only logical conclusion - assuming that the general aim of Evangelicalism is to get lost souls to heaven - would be to kill all infants at birth, bypassing their freewill and assuring their salvation. If we let children grow up then we run the risk that they might reject God and be damned. Of course, I'm not advocating this, I'm merely pointing out how this argument - as used by William Lane Craig, I believe - is inconsistent nonsense and provides no solution to the problem inherent in this passage.

John Allister's case is no better. He believes that no children actually died. But if, as he believes, the command came from an omniscient God, then why would God give the command? If God knew that no children would die, then why command anything to do with children? No, that doesn't wash. If the command came from an omniscient God, then he knew there would be children there and he knew that they would die, and furthermore, following my reasoning above, that some of them would be going to hell.

I can't see an acceptable way to understand this passage within an Evangelical mindset. Either we have to abandon an inerrant/inspired view of the passage or we have to abandon a view of an omnibenevolent God. There is no middle ground.

So what are the available options of what happened:

1. That the events happened as described.
   As I've noted above, this necessarily entails that God is not a God of love.


2. That the events happened as described, that Samuel genuinely believed he had a revelation from God, but that he was misguided and God never issued such a command.
   This option gets God off the hook, but undermines any claims about the inerrancy or inspiration of scripture. It also casts doubt over any and all claims of revelation from God. I mean, if Samuel got it wrong and didn't hear from God clearly, then what hope is there for the rest of us?


3. That the events (battles, slaughter) happened, more or less as described, but that the command of God and the human dialogue was added by a later storyteller in an attempt to explain why the events happened as they did.
   The supposition here, made by the later historian/storyteller is that the events must have happened because of a divine command, so a divine command was invented to explain an otherwise senseless slaughter. For several years I have found myself drawn to this line of reasoning when dealing with problem passages of Israelite history where God appears to command an immoral action. The assumption is that the history is basically true, but the analysis was fabricated to shift the blame for the immoral actions from the people to their God. An immoral action becomes acceptable if God commands it, right? Or it could simply be a way to insert God into a story which he really had nothing to do with. But all history is God's story, isn't it? So he must have been involved. However, I have come to realise that the only reason to hold to this line of thinking is an attempt to maintain some sort of inspiration or authority of scripture. Even though logic led me to the conclusion that the whole story couldn't be true because of the problems described above, my natural inclination was to preserve some of the authority of the bible by finding a way to ensure that some, at least, of the story was true. But if we're honest with ourselves here, that simply doesn't wash. Which brings us to the final possibility...


4. That the events simply did not happen.
   Once you've given up on this passage as being in any way an inspired account of a historical event, you have to consider why this passage is included in the bible. Well, its there to teach us about God, isn't it? But if we've rejected the view of God which this passage paints, that is, God simply cannot be like the character described here, and we realise that the main intent of the story is to convey a message about God, not a message about history and human battles, we have to consider the option that perhaps the whole incident is simply made up. Certainly, as far as I know, there is no historical evidence (outside of the bible) for these events. This is just the same as the alleged Canaanite genocide from the days of Joshua, there we get the same arguments, but there we have a greater amount of archaeological evidence. Evidence that the biblical stories of conquest and slaughter simply did not happen. Maybe there were some minor skirmishes, and some children died, etc., but there was no genocide, commanded by God or otherwise.

So a serious consideration of the facts, the evidence and the arguments leads me to the conclusion that the story of the Amalekite genocide in the Old Testament is simply fiction. It was probably written many (tens or hundreds of) years after the time of the alleged events and reflects more the beliefs and wishes of the storyteller than anything in real history.

If that's the case here, why can't that also be the case for the rest of the old (and new) testament?

If the Bible is not true here, then where - if anywhere - is it true, and how can you distinguish the truth from the fiction? I still haven't found an acceptable answer to that question.

---

Update
A couple of the responses to this Unbelievable show which were read out in subsequent weeks expressed the opinion that because God is the author and originator of life, it is therefore entirely within his rights to take it away. Everyone dies at some point, right? And presumably God determines when that point is? So whether you live or die, and how long you live for is all God's choice. He has the right to end life as he sees fit, even if this is the life of an ostensibly innocent child. Right?

No. I can't accept that. Suppose I give you a gift for Christmas. I can't reclaim it in January. That would not be right. So how can it be right for God to take away the gift of life? But even if God has the right to reclaim life at any time, claiming the life of an innocent child, before the child has had the opportunity to exercise their freewill in choosing whether or not to follow God, is still wrong. As we've seen above, the child's eternal destiny cannot be assured, so reclaiming the life of innocent children must mean consigning some of them to hell or, at least, annihilation.

How do you define 'atheist'?

Just listened to the recent Unbelievable podcast on the topic of defining the word 'atheist'. Is an atheist someone who actively believes that there is no God, or merely someone who lacks belief that there is a God?

It was an interesting, if ultimately pointless, discussion. Not everyone can be adequately labeled by a single word. Not everyone fits neatly into categories on a Venn diagram.

I'm not even sure where I'd fit in a Venn diagram of belief. I probably fall into some people's definition of 'Christian', while almost certainly falling into other people's definition of 'agnostic', possibly even falling into someone else's definition of 'atheist', though I certainly wouldn't use that word to describe myself.

As usual with Unbelievable, there was something in this show that I found frustrating, largely (as ever) because there was no guest on the show representing my side in the debate... In this instance, the most frustrating thing was that for the whole programme they attempted to nail down definitions of the word 'atheist' without ever once considering what was meant by the word 'God'.

The Christian guest on the show stated his God concept at one point, but nobody really got to grips with precisely what it is that atheists don't believe in.

It seemed to be assumed that theists generally believe in a supremely powerful being who created the universe, while atheists reject this notion. But what of the person (much like me!) who considers that there might be a powerful 'supernatural' being, but that this being might be part of the universe, not transcending or pre-existing it? Is creation a necessary part of the God concept as defined by atheists?

I suppose the best point made in the show was made by considering the 'screen name' of one of the guests, "NonStampCollector". You really can't define someone in terms of characteristics they don't have.

"Truth" and liberal interpretation...

Was he?

I've just been listening to a recent Unbelievable podcast featuring a discussion between an evangelical Christian and a liberal Christian on the subject of the Christmas story. The question was basically are the nativity stories historically accurate? But I'm not going to look at that question in the current post.

What interested (and frustrated) me more in the discussion was the repeated claim of the liberal Christian that the gospel stories were not intended to be understood as factual, but were created as a teaching tool to convey truth.

In other words, the intent of the gospels is to use fiction to explain truth in a way better than mere facts can.

Now this is all well and good if the fiction is used to explain a philosophical or scientific concept which is otherwise evident, though hard to explain, but an allegorical explanation cannot be used as the basis for an otherwise unattested belief. That just makes no sense. If something is true, give me evidence for it. Saying that something is true and explaining it by fictional analogy gives me no access to real truth.

For example, the claim that Jesus was the "offspring of a virgin's womb". Here the liberal Christian dismissed the suggestion that this was historically true, but spoke of the deeper meaning that Jesus was both human and divine. Now I can see why such a story could have been created to explain how a human-divine being could have originated, assuming that there is other, attestable, evidence (or at least an established pre-existing belief) that there really was a divine-human being, but this story is of no evidential value in itself. If it is fiction and there is no other reason to suppose that Jesus was born of a virgin, then this story conveys nothing. It might be true, but it is highly, highly probable that it is false. Yet the majority of Christians believe in the virgin birth precisely because the gospels claim this. If this claim was not in the bible I am sure that far fewer folk would hold this belief. It is only because this claim is in the bible and is presented as fact that people believe it.

And surely the same goes with all other assertions in the gospels. They only have value if they are claiming to be true. The gospels claim that Jesus walked on water. If - in actual fact - he did not and could not do this, then the story contains no truth, allegorical or otherwise. The story is often expounded to mean that if you have faith (keep your eyes on the Lord) then you can overcome anything the world can throw at you. But would it not be better to demonstrate this by some example that actually happened, rather than by fiction? If this story isn't true then the message is: Faith can overcome anything, even the force of gravity; well, actually no, faith can't overcome the force of gravity; but it can overcome some other things, honest; no, really, it can... surely you believe me...? If this story is understood to be fiction, it loses all power.

But liberal Christians seem to be able to derive meaning from fiction. I just can't see how you can do that with any honesty or integrity. This effectively reduces "truth" to anything claimed in a compelling manner. If you can convey truth by analogy, then anything which is sincerely believed by someone and expressed in a meaningful way becomes "truth". Whether this "truth" corresponds to reality is another matter entirely.

I was going to stop here, then had this other thought:

A further problem this raises for me lies with the parables of Jesus as recorded in the gospels. The majority of Christians I know fundamentally base their God concept on the "truth" of God, expressed by analogy in the parables. Jesus doesn't present any evidence that God is like these claims, he simply explains his God concept in parable form. Now, IF the gospels are an accurate account of the things that Jesus said, AND Jesus really is/was the Son of God in such a way that did not limit his divine understanding of reality, THEN we could accept these claims as being an accurate representation of God. But given that there is reason to doubt the accuracy of the gospel reporting, and there is reason to doubt the extent of divine knowledge that Jesus had (even working under the assumption that he was God incarnate!), then we really shouldn't take any of these claims about God as, erm, gospel truth... We should use the analogies for explanation if (and only if) we have external evidence that supports the claims.

Hmmm. That means that it is reasonable to accept the claim that God is like an absentee landlord, but not to accept the claim that he will return and expect an explanation from his unfaithful servants...