Response to Hammock Highlights: In Defense of Rational Thought

My prayers have finally been answered. Someone has taken me up on my challenge on Twitter to take something I have written and deal with it. @Beechbum has undertaken to do such a thing. He has posted a response on his own blog! God be praised! Here is my response to what he has posted. My responses will be in red.

Sometimes it is worth noting the confusing contradiction of religious fundamentalists for posterity. Some time back I sent the following tweet to @mmcelaney: http://tinyurl.com/yf9hyz8 and part 1 http://tinyurl.com/ydhd8po Watch and grow wiser. To which he wrote the blog here. This is a response to that blog and I fear he didn't grow at all.

I'm not sure why he constantly misspells my name and Twitter username but I will just assume that he simple had typo problems and means no insult.






Marcus McElaney Tries his hand at Bible BS again. The most obvious point is that he does not confront Matt directly but instead addresses yours truly, in this blog.

Actually, I responded to Matt's points in the videos not to Beechbum. What I did was give him credit for sending me the tweet.

As to your first point, @mmcelaney, I would like to bring to your attention that the bible is a work that was canonized 1,685 years ago, when it was transliterated, edited, then rewritten into a form markedly different than the book now being discussed. But, due to the advances of science, the book has been completely discredited as a collection of lies, myths and allegories. The story that has not changed, is the fundamentalist diatribe of apologetics that continually start with the conclusion that god(s) exist, then work out the story in reverse. That is the consistent part of this never ending story that you so arrogantly portray as an ecclesiastical point, when all it points to is typical apologetics are the greased pig of revelatory interpretation. In other words, it is next to impossible to nail down the facts when they are moving around in a sea of ignoramuses. This is why most theologians no longer hold to the interpretations of 100 years ago and many would even disagree with yours today. Every time science advances your ecclesiastics take a step back with apologies and several 'but's'. And with that:

A whole lot of assertions are made as to how the English Bible came down to us. I disagree. Beechbum gives no evidence. No references and no proof. Let me provide a reference that completely kills his hand-waving. Read the King James Only Controversy by Dr. James White. I also would recommend the work of  Dr Daniel Wallace on textual criticism.

1. God of having bad moral standards: (KJV)

a. Slavery:
How about the rules for owning Hebrew slaves or a family of slaves, see Exodus 21:2-6. What should happen to an aggressive master Exodus 21:20-21 and on. These are in the list of commandments - some 613 of them. How about the rules for selling your daughter in Exodus 21:7-9. Maybe 1 Cor. 7:21 where it is said that one should be content as a slave and not seek freedom or Eph. 6:5-6 on slaves being obedient to their masters.

How about showing that the slavery guidelines in the Bible are immoral. You are arguing that any kind of slavery is immoral under any circumstance at any time. Does that really make sense? I also notice that you seem to conveniently forget the scriptures that tells slave masters that they should respect and not mistreat their slaves. Slave masters were not to think of their slaves as mere property to treat how ever they saw fit.  You brought up Eph 6:5-6 but why didn't you bring up the rest of the passage? Simple it denies what you are lying....um insinuating.

 ⁵Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. ⁶Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ⁷Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, ⁸because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

 ⁹And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. - Ephesians 6:5-9

 b. Genocide:
Genesis 8:21 The book of your religion says he killed every living thing. Then in Exodus 12:12 he supposedly kills all first born or how about Judges 6:16 where he is said to have killed all Midianites or 1 Sam. 15:3 in which it is written that he commanded the deaths of all those poor Amalekites.

I've written about this in several places on my blog. So I will refer you to one of  those article:

http://mmcelhaney.blogspot.com/2010/02/youtube-morality-without-god-response.html

c. Human Sacrifice:
First of all, the sacrifice of the daughter of Jeph'thah, your god(s) was complicit in the act for there were many chances for an omniscient entity to change the outcome and nothing was done in that regard. Second Molech was also a god, which was what bothered your version - for he is a jealous god(s). And last but definitely not least, he sacrificed his own son, remember the crucifixion.

He raised his son from the dead. and God was not complicit for Jephthah's actions at all. Where did God tell him to do that? As for why did God not stop him, that's weak because God just allowed Jephthah to live the consequences of his actions.  God has that right.  The Bible says God is a jealous god because He has the right. If your wife was paying more attention to another man, wouldn't you have the right to be jealous because you belong to each other? It's the same thing with God. We belong to Him. It's not any more immoral than it would be for a person to be jealous because of the actions of a cheating spouse.

In 2- 4 Marcus, you insinuate that Matt was incorrect or corrected himself, I'm sure you need to listen to it again for he does not correct himself but his interlocutor, because slaves are mentioned in the ten commandments (the tenth one about coveting maidservants or menservants) and are more explicitly discussed in those verses I mentioned above, Matt did not misspeak.

I made no such insinuation...I called him on it outright.  Matt said, at about the 4 min mark on the first video that he was not referring to the 10 commandments but the totality of the law. He didn't remember about the 10th commandment coveting another's maidservants or menservants. He did misspeak,. Nice try to save him though.

5. People that are so arrogant as to presume to know the unknowable, are also those that are so arrogant as to presume to know without learning by reading what is knowable.

I agree but I fail to see how that applies to the Bible. In my many conversation with Beechbum he failed disprove anything that the Bible says. Therefore God is knowable because the Bible reveal Him to us. God is knowable. If you choose to stay ignorant of Him that is your own fault.

 ²⁴"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. ²⁵And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. ²⁶From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. ²⁷God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'  - Acts 17:24-28

6. The bible or god(s) character is an observers opinion, and personally, I think Matt was being quite generous, for in my opinion, your god(s) is a contemptible war monger.

Beechbum's and Matt's opinions of the character of God is unsupportable. You can cry and wail against God all you want and call His ways and character into question but that doesn't make it true.

7. Accuses God of not caring about what you do but only what you believe.

Titus 3:4-6 (KJV)
4 But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
6 Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;

Titus 3:4-6 does not say that God does not care about what we do. It's saying that what we do is not the basis of our salvation. Therefore no one can take credit. We are riding Jesus' coat tails. When I have said that Beechbum can't exegete scripture this is a great example. There is no conflict. Read what Paul said in Ephesians 2: 1-10 and it's about believers. So is Titus. Neither Beechbum or Matt can apply these passages to themselves.

¹As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ²in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature^[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. ⁴But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And there are many more on both sides of that argument but, the main thing is the first 5 commandments are about worshipping that sadistic artifice of the deluded.

First 5? Does Beechbum  mean the commandment about honoring father and mother? How does that figure with the first 4 dealing with relating with God? Oops. Same sort mistake as Matt's. Will Beechbum admit it? Most likely not.

8. Our morality is the result of millions of years of evolution, cooperation, and cohabitation within an extended family. All the morals in the bible are the expected ethics of a bronze age tribe of desert goat herders, so yes, none of us need that book for the apprehension of ethics useful in today's societal interactions. Especially when that book also holds up some of the most heinous acts ever committed by humanity as testament of a leader's good works.

And Beechbum accuses me of preaching?! No evidence is given. Just more accusation. If our morality came from  "he result of millions of years of evolution, cooperation, and cohabitation within an extended family." where did Hitler's morality come from? And why is ours better than his such that we had the right to stop him from killing Jews and conquering the world?

9. He said "infinite punishment for finite deeds" and the theology you follow preaches that your deity is infinitely good therefore what he does or sanctions is purported to be good, i.e. the many crimes perpetrated in the bible. And we all know that's BS, no matter how 'mysterious his ways,' as apologists put it.

"Our sins are so bad that it equals the need of an innocent man to be tortured to death to balance the debt. Our sins are not finite."

This quote is an example of a "scapegoat," quite typical in Bronze age cultures, just as the many animal sacrifices asked for and sanctioned by your mythical patriarchal deity who shares this blood lust with many of the mythical patriarchal deities of Mt. Olympus. This is an example of how absolutely damaged ones perspective can be due to these delusions. No one can take your responsibility away from you, no one can pay for sins that were never perpetrated or may never be committed in the future, and why do we owe someone other than the victim of our transgressions anything? One shouldn't base their perspective on the narrative of bronze age myths without expecting their morality to be crippled in this way. The manufactured self-loathing of Christians as a product of their origin myths, doctrines and dogmas is in part, part of a mechanism that subordinates the ordinary human being to ideologies and the purveyors of those ideologies. The genius of our Founding Fathers in this regard was the realization that any authority supported by these ideologies was actually in the hands of those interpreting origin myths, doctrines, and dogmas which have never been supported by evidence of any kind. In attempting to fit this preposterously insane concept into the reality of the 21st century, one needs to chisel out room for the absurdities, thus creating the vacuum easily filled by these types of ethical atrocities. Of course every Christian I know starts making excuses at this point, for what boils down to a total lack of character and fortitude in the face of questions of morality.
To all the fundamentalists out there, the crucifixion narrative - never happened and that's the good news. No one should carry the guilt of such an obligation on their shoulders. I can't believe anyone would try to justify the torture of an innocent human - that's just sick/ religion.

More preaching?! More philosophizing. Zero interaction with what the Bible says is the character of God. God is so Holy so other...so beyond us that just the mere existence of sin is an afront to the existence of God. By definition, if you agree that certain acts are good and should be done and others are bad and ought not to be done you have admitted that sin exists. I agree that it's an out. I deserve to die and be eternally separated from God, yet God chose to save those who believe Him. You can't do enough "good" to ever balance what you owe God. To lie on someone is to lie on God. To steal from your neighbor is to steal from God. To cheat on your spouse is to cheat on God. Yes, we all deserve to die - eternal separation for God and eternal torment...we earned it.  

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23

10. The problem is that humans, according to your theology, are purportedly being tortured for not living up to the unattainable standards set by the mythical creator in this bronze age story, the point being that our short comings are this characters responsibility, he, in this origin narrative, supposedly created everything. The tests are his to set and judge, this is distorted superstitious irrationality and very bad writing, so why not cut to the chase in this fictional story - eliminate the games and torture humans outright. It's all a script for a sick 'B' movie.

Jesus lived that life and we can be judge by his righteousness or your own. take your pick. God has a purpose that everyone live and die during certain times in certain places. That preclude torturing us out right. I'm glad for that. If you end up in hell, it's your own choices that put you there. Read Paul's letter to the Romans.

The trinity is a load of irrationality created by starting with the conclusion and reverse engineering an explanation that actually never made sense. But in effect god was himself and JC and the holy spirit, monotheism if one closes one eye and the brain when looking into the apologetics. Do you feel stupid yet? Really, it's not good news if you don't. The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Yeah, Beechbum's problem is that he does not understand the Trinity. He even admits it that he doesn't get it. Just because it's beyond him doesn't make it false. "Being" and :"person" are not the same thing, "Who" you are - "person" - is not the same thing as "what" you are  - "ontological being." For humans we tend to treat them as synonymous but they ain't. God is one being. But three persons. No one completely gets what that looks like but scripture bears that out.

This god character is, without a doubt, extremely evil for not protecting his creation from another of his creations. In every story in which someone is responsible for creating something harmful, their immediate goal is to correct the problem except in the Christian myth. What's the excuse for that one again? And as for moral superiority, there are few people alive today that are not far more ethical than the characters in that canonized myth, especially the main character. And, it has been my observation that those perpetrating the most heinous crimes against humanity, have done so using the instruments of religious inculcation, indoctrination, subjugation and the same dogmatic adherence to totalitarian revelations without any evidence to support their claims.

Oh Beechbum must be referring to macro evolution. Satan has a purpose. God has been playing him like a harp. One day, when God is done with him Satan will be going to hell. I don't know why Beechbum wants to join Satan...but each to their own.

The child analogy to which Matt refers is quite accurate actually, for our father who art in heaven blah blah blah... Some apologetics are so lame as to be embarrassing even to the likes of that jail bird Kent Hovind - or maybe not. This sky fairy of yours is the one claiming to love his creation, humans, and torture in any form is wrong. This is how the evolution of morality works in reality, as we become wiser we also become much more ethical, understanding and tolerant eg. abolition of slavery, women's equality & suffrage, human rights, democracy - none of these things are advocated by biblical Christianity. The child being tortured in the basement for misbehaving is symbolic, simplistic, but accurate when one considers that smarting off to ones parents is a capital crime in the ten commandments, punishable by death.

Does Beechbum really think that a boy would just have to sass his parents one time and he would be stoned? He and Matt have a lot in common. Throwing out a law and calling it part of the 10 commandment when it really is part of the whole law. I'm disappointed that Beechbum did not respond to my modification of Matt's analogy. How is his better than mine, given that all are evil and fall short of God's standard.

The problem with Christians is that they don't even know that they are using religion in place of actually thinking. The sins that Matt is talking about are not in the bible they are the tools used by those brain washing, inculcating, and indoctrinating children to the point that they can't see anything except through their god(s) goggles. Matt is talking about what fearful people do to feel good like a child sucking their thumb, holding on to that security blanket of eternal life or espousing comforting, but ludicrous, claims in the face of evidence to the contrary. When many logical conclusions have presented themselves and many having been confirmed by multiple sources; hence, I think this lying for Jesus is a sin.

The only lying I see is from  Beechbum and Matt. I have seen no contrary evidence presented here. No proof that there is no transcendant, all powerful God who made us and therefore has a right to do anything with us  that He wants. Instead they reject the thought and his revelations and call Christians crazy because we understand what they reject.

In light of the evidence from cosmology, holding on to the Genesis myth like it is the last thread of a security blanket should make anyone question their stand. Evolution is so damning to religion because without Adam and Eve there is no original sin i.e. the Tree of Knowledge narrative, or more accurately, the rest of Genesis is a confirmed myth. Instead of moving forward with knowledge that can help humanity we are stuck defending the freedoms of people from the tyranny of theocracy. Christianity has never given humanity anything substantive, science has progressed in spite of religion which is only the organization of primitive superstitions into a force for totalitarianism.

Didn't you get the memo, Beechbum? All of reality snapped into existence from a singularity that itself popped into existence out of nothing - empty space. Which works with what Genesis 1:1 says - all there is was created out of nothing. Beechbum makes a lot  of assertions like evolution disproves the Bible. Don't believe the hype. Not all scientists agree. I would suggest Beechbum consult the works of Jay Richard, Hugh Ross, and David Heddle before he goes on expressing error like these. I would also suggest he and everyone look at the following links if you really think  Christianity has contributed nothing substantive.

http://tawapologetics.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-there-god-evidence-of-cosmology.html

http://greatcloud.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/what-theology-has-done-for-science/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CloudOfWitnesses+%28Cloud+of+Witnesses%29


Hammock Highlights: In Defense of Rational Thought