The Uncomfortable Truth

When I was a young boy I had a horrible and haunting experience. It was a few days after my seventh birthday, and I was awoken by the sound of my Grandad calling my Nan from the bottom of the stairs. I ran to see what I could do. 

He was stood there with blood all down his lips, neck and chest. To my innocent eyes it looked like a very bad nosebleed. I ran to tell my Nan about the nosebleed, and it was this fact which she took at face value. Grandad was having a nosebleed. The tissues were in the kitchen. I should go off to tell him. She would follow on in a bit. No big deal.

A few minutes later I was kneeling on the blood-soaked floor of the kitchen, cradling my beloved Grandad, as he died. His eyes were begging me to help him. There was nothing I could do but hold him.

I finally came to terms with this in my late thirties.

When I was 19, I met with a psychologist who explained how my tendency to run the incident through in my mind could have been shut off by grief therapy, had it existed when I was seven. Later still, another counsellor asked me to honestly ask myself what a seven-year-old me could have done... really? The honest answer was nothing, but that fact took a while to sink in.

You see, the problem is that as I got older, and studied more about first aid, First Response & pre-hospital emergency care, in these increasing levels of complexity, I saw that incident from a more and more informed perspective. I lost sight of the fact that I was only a seven year old kid, with none of the knowledge I gained as I grew up.

This 'Grandad's Death Apologism' ultimately led me to have some serious delusions about how his demise was my fault, because I didn't perform some, now, routine actions which may have saved him. Such as recognizing that it wasn't an epistaxis for starters!

An astute reader will already know where this story is headed. This is a blog about religions and their follies after all. So, where do we usually find events recorded by ill-informed, scientifically ignorant authors whose stories are later retold from more modern and complex perspectives as more information becomes available?

Yes... The Holy Bible.

The job of the Christian Apologist is to deny the actual words of the authors, the stories within the text as seen through primitive eyes, and make up new ideas to explain what they meant, and why the stories actually meant something other than what they say.

Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a text by Aaronid "Priestly" scribes of the 6-5th centuries BCE, writing around the time of or just after the Jewish exile in Babylon, whose Yahweh speaks everything into being from some pre-existing materials, such as space, water and soil. Meanwhile, Gen 2:4b-Gen 3:24 is a text two hundred years older, written by Elohists who were following their tradition of Yahweh moulding humans, animals and plants out of the earth, clearly more from an agricultural perspective.

These texts actually have messages all of their own, but modern Creationists cannot bear to accept that these are from two traditions, which if taken at face value, clearly demonstrate that Yahweh is a human literary construction, used as 'Priestly Propaganda'! Instead, they have to find a way to construct a narrative that explains how the second, older story is a clarification of a period within the first, younger story, and tells us that they are both, in fact, telling a single story.

They are rewriting the story from a point of view of having both an agenda and a new set of data. Just as I did with my Grandad's death.

When you fail to take a story, or an account of an event, at face value, and forget the knowledge level of its author(s), or participants, you diminish your ability to objectively analyse the truth of it. If you're not 100% honest in your dealing with Bible texts, you relinquish any claim you have of understanding some 'arcane knowledge' or 'hidden truths' held within the text.

I didn't know about pulmonary pathologies, traumatic cardiac events, haemostatic techniques, CPR, or Stroke management when I was seven. I had to be honest about that before I could recognize the truth of my Grandad's death. If you're honest about the Creation myths of the Bible, you must accept that they inadvertently undermine the veracity of your god claim... in short, they explain the circumstances in which you can be certain your god isn't real... and never was. 

This is the uncomfortable truth!

Something You Ought To Know About

Hi,

I'm not sure it's usual for a blogger to recommend you leave his site immediately and check out someone else's blog, but that's precisely what this blogger is now doing.

A twitter friend of mine, who goes by the necessarily anonymous title of @Elishabenabuya, has a blog in which he shares his extensive knowledge of the Old Testament. His background is that of being a Talmud scholar for over 50 years, but who is now an atheist, putting to rest those oft cited myths of the Bible being a reliable source of history and the current translations being representative of the original texts.

You can find it here: apikoris.blogspot.co.il

If you are an atheist and you're not reading Elisha's blog and following him on twitter I don't really know what to do with you.

Perhaps a darkened room might help.

I jest, but you do really need to get on it.

Cheers y'all!

Onus Probandi

I've been off for a while. My apologies, but my health fluctuates so sometimes I'm unable to focus clearly enough to write extensively.

Back with it now though.

While I've been away I've noticed that many theists on twitter, and in TV debates are still using the old fallacy of trying to turn the debate around and putting the onus probandi, or burden of proof, back onto the person denying the claim that they are making. This argument from ignorance is truly annoying.

Theists think that they get to claim whatever they like and because we cannot prove them wrong they get to claim victory.

The problem lies in their inability to extrapolate. If we cannot prove a god exists, then the god must be real, right? Well, they cannot prove that a universe-creating troll exists, so that must be the real truth. How would we ever decide which one was responsible for creating our universe? Then there's Bertrand Russell's cosmic teapot. How do you prove him to be incorrect? Is the teapot going to collide with any future mission to Mars? Does NASA need to take it into account?

Sometimes you achieve minor successes. I recently got one theist to admit that humans make up gods, but he couldn't get his head around the idea that the one he follows might likewise be a human invention. How frustrating! The cognitive dissonance required to apply rules to other ideas, but not your own, is beyond me.

Theists also tend to demand greater evidence for the negation of their claim than the claim they are themselves making. If I told you that I could fly without mechanical assistance you wouldn't be expected to prove me wrong, and likewise it wouldn't be incumbent upon you to prove that humans could not fly under any circumstances. I would not expect you to provide anatomical evidence, such as examples of bone or muscle tissue, or models of the physiological makeup of humans etc. etc. The onus is on me to provide you with evidence, perhaps by actually flying!

This moving of the goalposts is irritating, but like the shifting of the burden of proof it is just aimed at shutting down the conversation. It's the debating equivalent of "I am, but what are you?"

Why should an atheist be expected to be an expert in archaeology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, biology, anatomy, evolution, geology, theology, philosophy, literary studies, Biblical studies, history, climatology, or many other theoretical and physical sciences, arts and social sciences, just to defend their rejection of a theist's ridiculous claims? Atheism is the adoption of single position on a single claim. The burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not on you or me.

Theists need (constantly) to be reminded of that.

In a recent to-ing and fro-ing in the local paper's letters section a contributor claimed that the Bible was true because he had knowledge of 40 excavations which proved the Bible to be historically accurate. Several problems arise as a result of this comment, but chief among them is the fact that even if the Bible was 100% reliable in its account of history and every single detail was absolutely true, nothing about that would be proof of a supernatural entity creating, or controlling, everything!

What on Earth makes him think it does?

If an excavation of, let's say, Tell ed-Dab'a, the home of the Canaanites* in Egypt, revealed intricate details of their religion, supporting every word of the Bible in remarkable detail, why should that prove Yaweh is real? After all, an investigation into Roman ruins does not in any way prove that Julius Caesar was a divine being. No examination of Japanese texts or temples proves that the Emperor is godly! Why do these people make that leap from A to WTF?

I think you can probably sense that I'm somewhat frustrated by these situations. I perhaps need to take a lie down and do an Apache-language crossword puzzle or a 10,000 piece jigsaw, perhaps even nail a jelly to the ceiling. Something less difficult than trying to argue with theists about their own responsibilities in the "god-debate"!

Remember:

onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

The burden of proof lies on the claimant, not the person denying the claim.

*Excavations revealed that the language of the inhabitants of Tell ed-Dab'a was Semitic, therefore they would have to have been Canaanite. Further evidence of the nature of their religious ideas and burial methods cemented the fact. The idea of a sudden Hyksos invasion, previously accepted by many historians as the true history, but now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration, was attributed to Manethos, an Egyptian historian who must have thought that a sudden attack on Egypt sounded sexier than the centuries of slow migration by Canaanites which actually is known to have happened.

"The Bible is True"... but which version?

As a part-time hobby I like to discuss ideas with the Jehovah's Witnesses [J-Dubs] which blight the streets of my home town every week. I only do it every now and then because some of them have banned me from visiting their stall after being unable to properly answer my questions. I'll explain why this week I even got one of them to ask me "What's the purpose of your coming here today telling us this? What difference does it make to you what our beliefs are?" Let the fact that this comment came from a Jehovah's Witness, famed for going door-to-door peddling their crap, who at the time was sitting behind a desk in a pagoda full of Witness literature and with signs outside proclaiming God to be this and that wonderful thing, sink in for a moment... yes.. indeed!

The reason I annoyed them this week was because I approached them with the topic of "Versions of the Bible"; my pitch being that for every line in the Bible which can be interpreted two or more ways there forms a pathway which leads to a new version of the doctrine. It's not as sketchy as it sounds.

For instance, if you believe that the account of The Creation [A] is true, as they do, then that's one version. If you don't then that's another. If you then consider the comment made by God prior to the Flood in which mankind is limited to 120 years [B] and think that this is a countdown to destruction, as the J-Dubs do, then that's another factor to consider, as is the idea that the 120 years is a literal age-limit set on each of us.

Putting them together we get four different versions of the story:

God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and gave Mankind 120 years to shape up = AaBa
God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and limited Mankind to lifespans of 120 years = AaBb
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did give Mankind 120 years to shape up = AbBa
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did limit Mankind to 120 year lifespans = AbBb

So we have the four versions... Of course there are other versions of each of these but I'm trying to keep this simple for now.

Out of two lines of text we can derive FOUR different versions of the Bible. I told this to the male J-Dub but got the standard "They're not versions, they are just different opinions." Well, I'd love to know what a version is if not a different opinion on the text. Clearly whether one has the opinion that God did create the Earth etc. in six days, or not, informs your practice of your faith. It informs your reading of other texts too. So how you interpret that one line does make a big difference.

As it is with other lines, and events.

Take for instance the event in the Bible when God supposedly appeared to Moses on a hill top [C]. The story says he appeared to Moses in a pillar of smoke. Now then, some interpret that as Moses having an actual visit from God manifesting as a pillar of smoke [a]. Others say that the fire and smoke was to cover God's face from Moses and so God appeared more as a man than the smoke itself [b]. Does this not fundamentally change your view on what your God is, or can be?

I personally think it was a charlatan's trick and Moses was making the whole thing up, making use of rudimentary pyrotechnic skills he'd learnt from other charlatans descended from Abraham. who you'll remember pulled a similar trick earlier on. However, we're talking about other people's interpretations here so mine do not matter.

So... should we add this event to the narrative? With the Creation [A], the 120 years comment [B] and the new Moses smoke trick [C] what combinations are now available?

AaBaCa
AaBaCb
AaBbCa
AaBbCb
AbBaCa
AbBaCb
AbBbCa
AbBbCb

That's eight versions from three events, using only two possible versions of each story.

The Bible is beginning to look like those old Steve Jackson books I used to read as a kid, where I got to pick my own story through the book. only this time instead of only my character dying the Bible wipes out over 2 million!

How about we add the parable of the "Water into Wine" [D]? Either Jesus really did make wine out of water [a], or it is a narrative explanation of the Jewish rite of passage [b].

I won't bore you with the details but that makes 16 possible versions.

Then what if we add the Raising of Lazarus [E], the 100 Zombie Saints [F] and on and on back and forth throughout the texts of the Old and New Testaments... how many versions of one book can there be, each with a unique narrative through the text?

At no point have I touched on how many printed versions there are, but if you even take one fundamental narrative, that of the idea that sin leads to an eternity in Hell, and you realize that the original Old Testament didn't feature Hell at all, and that even some versions of the New Testament lack that idea, you now see how utterly incompatible these books are from one simple change in dynamic.

So when I ask you which version of the Bible you trust to be the whole truth I'm not talking about the KJV, or the NIV or the YLT or KJV2000, I'm talking about all these little ideas and events and how you the reader, the believer, chose to form your ideas about what you believe. If as a conservative estimate we suggest that there are 100 lines in the Bible which can be taken two ways each, the total number of possible pathways through the Bible is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.

Of course this is a rather facetious way of looking at it, but I think that if Christians are going to go down the line of saying that "The Bible is true" as so many insist on doing, I think we do get to ask "which version"... because I do not see that it is such a stupid question after all.