Why do we suffer because of Adam's sin?

We suffer for Adam’s sin because we inherited this depraved state from him. Adam and Eve had free will and God gave them an opportunity to exercise that free will with one rule about not eating fruit form a single tree in the garden. They choose to exercise that free will to disobey that only command. They entered into what we call the fallen state where they took on a rebellious sin nature. In that state they conceived the rest of humanity and in a sense, we are Adam. Animals and human reproduce of their own kind. When they reproduced the rest of us it’s as if we are saying that we have that same nature and that the entire human race sinned along with them. Romans 5:12 says all men have sinned. Notice it is past-tense. It’s as if we all sinned at once. Notice, also, that Ephesians 2:1-2 calls us the sons of disobedience.

Biologically, we are a family and, in a way, we are one. We all have Adam and Eve’s DNA floating around in us. In a very real way, I was there with Adam when he sinned. I had just not spawned yet. Millard Erickson puts it this way,

“The entirety of our human nature, physical and spiritual, material and immaterial, has been received from our parents and more distant ancestors by way of descent from the first pair of humans.” Augustine called this our seminal nature. John Calvin said, “By the corruption into which he [Adam] himself fell, he infected his whole seed… Our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle.” [1]

I think we struggle with this because we look at this from an individualistic point of view. We need to look at it as if we were a tribe or, in more modern terms, we need to look at our corporate choice and condition. A number of biblical passages give us a look at the concept of a corporate identity. [2] We may object to this corporate view of sin and guilt because we feel we never had the chance to not sin. However, that does not mean that we should not be guilty because, in a sense, we ratify our guilt by our own sin. It is true that, by one man, we have all sinned but the good news is that, by one man, Jesus Christ, all men can be saved. “For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” [3]

In a way, this corporate view cuts two ways. In one way, we are guilty even before we are born. The upside to this is we could never be good enough on our own and by the life, death and resurrection of the second Adam (Jesus Christ) our debt is paid for. Yes it works both ways but the benefit is all ours.

What about pain and suffering caused by natural disasters?

Suffering from natural disasters is a result of Adams sin. God cursed the ground for Adam and Eve’s sin. [4] Suffering caused by all natural disasters can be accounted for as a result of Adam’s sin.

Hugh Ross also makes the argument that natural disasters are needed in order to make our planet livable. Without plate tectonics and volcanic activity, our planet would not be able to sustain life. We cannot live on this planet without natural disasters. In a very real way, the catastrophe is a small price to pay for a greater good.

Notes:

Recently Sam the Steamroller argued the Bible was not reliable for the following reasons:

“The KJV of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England. There were no original texts to translate. There still aren't. The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last apostle died. There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts with no two alike. The King James translators used none of these manuscripts. None. Instead, they edited previous translations to create a version their king and Parliament would approve. 21st century Christians (you...), believe the "word of God" is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century translations from 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written in the 1st century..”

Surprisingly this statement against the reliability of textual transmission of the Bible is made up of a number of intertwined arguments and misrepresentations. To get at the heart of this we will need to untangle the intermixed arguments and assess them separately and determine if as a whole they make a compelling case against the reliability of the transmission of the Bible.

Argument 1

Overall this statement can be simplified in the following conditional syllogism:

• Major premise: “The King James Version is not reliable.”
• Minor premise: “The King James Version the Word of God (Bible).”
• Conclusion: “Therefore the Word of God (Bible) is not reliable.”

First the argument is logically invalid and is a strong defeater for the whole argument. Just because the KJV is not reliable does not mean that Word of God is not reliable. There are a multitude of translations of the word of God and it is a fallacy of composition to assume that because one translation is unreliable that they all are.

Separate from the invalid argument the major premise is falsifiable.

Yes there are known errors in the KJV translation of the Bible. We know there are minor errors because today we have over 5824 Greek manuscripts we can compare (New Testament alone). However, none of the errors effect any major Christian doctrine. Therefore the translation is reliable for Christian doctrine.

Argument 2 (implied and unstated)

• Major premise: “The King James Version is not reliable.”
• Minor premise: “New English translations are based on the King James Version.”
• Conclusion: “Therefore, new English translation are not reliable.”

While this syllogism is logically valid the premises are both false making the argument false.

I have shown in a previous statement why the major premise is false.

The minor premise is false because new translations are not based on the KJV they are based on the oldest most reliable manuscripts. For example the English Standard Version is based upon an entirely different Greek texts than the King James Version which is based primarily on the Textus Receptus.

Argument 3

“There were no original texts to translate.” In this statement there is the unstated presupposition that you have to have the original documents in order to have an accurate translation. We can turn this statement into the following conditional syllogism:

• Major premise: If you don’t have the original documents, you can’t make an accurate translation.
• Minor premise: We don’t have the original documents.
• Conclusion: Therefore, we don’t have an accurate translation.

It should be clear that just because we don’t have the original documents does not mean that we cannot have a reliable translation based on copies, provided that the copies are reliable.

Incorrect facts:

1.) “There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts with no two alike.”

At last count there are over 5824 Greek New Testament manuscripts. There are over 10,000 New Testament manuscripts in other languages such as Coptic, Syriac, Latin and Arabic and an additional 10,000 manuscripts quoting passages from the New Testament. Many of the earliest Church fathers (such as Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp) quoted portions of the New Testament and we have their writings. From those writing we can reconstruct the entire New Testament. In fact only 2 books Jude and 2 John were not quoted before 100 AD after 100AD they are all quoted. These manuscripts equate to millions of pages of text. It is because we have so many manuscripts and sources that we can determine the differences and reconstruct the originals with a high degree of accuracy. In fact, the more manuscripts we have the more we can compare and contrast these manuscripts and the higher degree of accuracy.

2.) “…they edited previous translations to create a version their king and Parliament would approve.”

This statement is a circumstantial ad hominem. Attacking the translators by claiming they had vested interests is fallacious unless it can be showed that they had the bias and that that bias resulted in material mistranslations.

3.) “21st century Christians (you...), believe the "word of God" is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century translations from 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to be copies of lost letters written in the 1st century.”

A minority of Christians, those in the King James only camp, believe that the perfect “Word of God' is a book edited in the 17th century and that the KJV is innerrant (true and without error). Overwhelmingly, Christians believe the Word of God was faithfully written by the original authors and reliably transmitted to us.

4.) "8,000 contradictory copies"

The textual differences (variants) are often cited as being in the hundreds of thousands of differences. 99% of the textual differences can be spotted easily because we have so many manuscripts and most of them are differences are in word order, grammar and spelling. These are all minor textual variants don’t amount to material errors that would change the meaning of the text. In fact 200,000 variants, over half, are spelling errors. Of the estimated 396,000 variants we can still reconstruct the original with a high degree of accuracy and confidence.

5.) "4th century scrolls"

There are plenty of other manuscripts that date before the 4th century. Recently we have discovered the earliest manuscripts ever, it is a portion of Mark that dates from the 1st century, and previously the earliest was from the early second century and was from the book of John known as the John Rylands Papyri.

From the second century alone we have 18 manuscripts that include 40% of the New Testament. There are over 60 manuscripts from the 3rd century. In addition, as previously stated we have second generation Church leaders form the 1st century quoting from all but two books of the New Testament in over 10,000 separate manuscripts.

6.) The translators were "8 members of the Church of England"

In truth 54 scholars were approved for the translation but 47 actually undertook the task of translating. The translators were divided into 6 committees translating different portions of the Bible. The names of the translators are publicly accessible. See: Daniell, David (2003). The Bible in English: its history and influence. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press.

Conclusion

One of the unstated claims is that copyists made so many errors that we cannot consider the text we have as being reliable. They point to thousands minor textual variants as proof that the Bible we have is unreliable. However, even the hyper-skeptical Bart Erhman agrees that most of these variants are minor.

“…Most of the changes found in our early Christian manuscripts have nothing to do with theology or ideology. Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another.” - Bart Ehrman [1]

Greg Koukl sums it up this way:

“…Our New Testament is over 99% pure. In the entire text of 20,000 lines, only 40 lines are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine.” - Gerg Koukl [2]

Most of this information has about the New Testament. Well what about the Old Testament? According to Peter Flint PhD, excluding spelling, word order and grammar errors, we can determine that even over 2000 years of coping, the Old Testament is 99% accurate. This is due in large part to the discovery of the Dead Seas scrolls which had been lost for the last 2000 years. This is strong evidence that suggests we can determine a statistical error rate for the scribes that copied the Bible over the years. For the Old Testament we are talking about a material error rate of less than 1%. This is in line with our current estimates of 0.2% material error rate for the New Testament.

I think I have done a good job in untangle the intermixed arguments and assess them separately and determined as a whole they do not make a compelling case against the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. As you can see almost all of the assertions are wrong and the logic does not follow from those facts.

Much more could be said but it should be apparent that Sam failed to make the case the Bible is unreliable. In fact, a good case can be made that the transmission of the Biblical text is free from material errors.

Endnotes:

[1] Ehrman, Bart D. ‘’Misquoting Jesus.’’ Kindle Edition. HarperOne. 2009 Kindle Edition. (Kindle Locations 884-886).

[2] Koukl, Greg. Stand To Reason Solid Ground Newsletter “Misquoting” Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman September/October 2010 by Gerg Koukl

For further information see: ReasonWiki.org's List of Resources on the Reliability of the Bible

 

A recent poll has found that 1 in 25 people claim to have had near-death experiences. A quick search at Amazon will show many books have been written about near-death experiences (NDEs) claiming the experiences are proof of heaven, an afterlife or even hell.  I read my first book on NDEs back in the 90’s.  It was Dr. Maurice Rawlings’ book, To Hell and Back.  If you ask most people what they think about NDEs they will say it is always like heaven.  They will think of beings of light and lush indescribable gardens.  However, what struck me about Rawlings’ accounts was that the after-life people were experiencing was not always heavenly; in fact it was darn right hellish.  Recently a very popular book came out describing the events of a 4 year old boy who recounts an experience of heaven while his body was in emergency surgery.  In Heaven is for Real, Colten explains what he saw and who he met.  Skeptics will no doubt discount his experiences because there is no way to verify what he saw.  However, Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each.  The question remains what do you do with stories like that?

In a recent interview Gary Habermas relates what we can and cannot learn from NDEs.  Habermas explains that one of the most import aspects of researching near-death experiences (NDEs) is the determination of verifiable evidence.  Many people who have had a near-death experience relate that they went to heaven or, in some cases that they went to hell.  However, stories like this are subjective.  They are subjective in the sense that what they saw may have been true, but there is no way of verifying their experience.  This simply means that NDEs don’t prove whether heaven or hell exists.  However, some people relate stories where they see or hear something somewhere where their body could not have possibly seen or heard. (For example, seeing shoes on the roof of the hospital or hearing what nurses were saying three floors up.) When those stories relate to things that the person had no way of knowing and that can be verified, it is a good indication that the mind is more than the matter in your head and that our conscious mind is non-corporeal (not physical). Essentially, verifiable NDEs are convincing proof that materialistic naturalism is false and supernaturalism is true.

I don’t know that I would call NDEs proof of heaven or hell.  It's not that I discount those stories. For me, I wouldn’t want to overstate what the evidence proves.  What is convincing for me is that NDEs seem to be strong evidence that militates against a materialistic naturalistic worldview, where the only conclsion is your mind is nothing more than the material in your head. NDEs prove the mind is not material and that lends strong credibility to an afterlife.

If you plan to investigate NDEs I suggest you start with Habermas’ book, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality.  Then I would move on to Steve Miller’s book, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language.

Reference Notes:

• Koukl, Greg and Habermas, Gary. 'What We Can and Cannot Learn from Near Death Experiences?' Stand To Reason Podcast. 25 FEB 2013 http://www.str.org/site/PageServer?pagename=podcast accessed 04 MAR 2013
• J. Steve Miller, Brain Autin. 'Steve Miller Intertview' Apologetics 315 Interviews Podcast http://www.apologetics315.com/p/interviews.html accessed 18 MAR 2013

See Also:

• Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality by Gary R. Habermas and J. P. Moreland
• Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language by J. Steve Miller and Jeffrey Long MD
• Life after Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon - Survival of Bodily Death by Raymond A. Moody
• Reflections on Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody
• Return from Tomorrow by George C. Ritchie and Elizabeth Sherrill
• To Hell and Back by Maurice Rawlings
• 23 Minutes In Hell: One Man's Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in that Place of Tormentby Bill Wiese
• 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life by Don Piper & Cecil Murphey
• Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent

Interesting online discussion on Abortion and Personhood

Original Poster (OP)
‎"As the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade passes, it’s important to remember the both sides of the evangelical anti-abortion movement’s history. Yes, it did involve legitimate moral concerns about abortion, it did occasion serious reflection on the issue by evangelical scholars and pastors, and it did bring a formerly apolitical segment of America into the political process.

But its founding moral outrage stemmed not from Roe v. Wade, but from the prospect of government-imposed desegregation; it rest its intellectual foundation on highly dubious, non-scholarly arguments advanced by Francis Schaeffer; it mobilized lay evangelicals to action by telling them the Bible teaches something it does not actually teach; and it actively suppressed the scholarship of evangelicals who held alternative viewpoints."
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/6801/the_not_so_lofty_origins_of_the_evangelical_pro_life_movement_/

(Me)
I actually think the Bible does talk to this issue. Whether it comes from the commandment not to murder or to the judgment of the Canaanites and others who sacrifice their children to Moloch. I do not think it is an unwarranted leap to apply either to the issue of abortion. In fact, I think it rationally follows from both. Especially when you understand the context of ancient near-east cultures and their promiscuous activities needed a form of birth control. Child sacrifice being the only possible form of abortion for them. – Yes, I grant that the word ‘abortion’ is not in the Bible, neither is the word gravity, but that is not an argument against gravity or abortion.

(John)
God is Pro Life otherwise he might as well not have made Adam or Eve.

(OP)
Donald your argument assumes that the debate over abortion is a debate over whether or not we should murder people--one would which certainly would be settled by the Bible's clear prohibition of murdering people. In reality, however, the debate is over whether or not embryos or fetuses are people in the first place. Those who don't think they are (and the Bible gives no conclusive reason to think one way or another on the subject--commandments against murder are irrelevant to the question of when full moral life begins) would not find themselves guilty of supporting murder by supporting abortion.

(Me)
OP what do you mean by "people" and "full moral life"?

(OP)
I mean an entity that possesses rights, such as you or I. The debate over abortion is a debate over whether or when the embryo is an entity like that. It's not a debate over whether or not we should murder people.

(Me)
OP How or what does an entity have to do to gain those rights? Does the act of birth confer those rights?

(OP)
That's the question at the heart of the debate over abortion. And that's exactly my point. It is not a debate over whether or not we should murder people; it's a debate over whether or when the embryo has the same rights as we do.

(Me)
I think that is the problem. The debate has been moved from concrete human rights to slippery subjective personhood rights. Reframing the debate from human rights to personhood rights leaves us with the question as to who decides this subjective definition of personhood. Any definition can be challenged. For example if it was based on moral capability how could you make the argument it wrong to kill a child after birth? What is the difference in moral capability an embryo have over a new born or over someone with advance dementia? In Jewish circles and still in some Christian groups children are not seen as being morally until the age of accountability. Would we say that it is ok to take their life until that age? If not, says who? It becomes a subjective slippery slope that will change with society’s whims.

Human rights on the other had are not subjective. We as human beings recognize the inherent value of all human life regardless of arbitrary divisions. Human rights are about protecting all, regardless of what they can do for society, their race, their sexual orientation, their stage of development or disorder. We can determine with scientific accuracy that the embryo is a unique, human life. Further the embryo has not broken any laws and is also innocent. So we have an innocent, unique, living human. Don’t we as moral agents have a duty to protect innocent human beings?

(OP)
And hence you've expressed one side of the debate over whether or not the embryo has human rights. My argument here is not that the embryo does not have human rights, although I do believe that, but that the question of whether it does (a question which the bible does not answer) is at the heart of the debate over abortion--not the question of whether or not murder is permissible (a question which the bible does answer).

(John)
God said he knew us before we were in our mothers womb. That settles it for Christians on whether it is life or not. Unless your one of those pick and choose Christians when it comes to Gods word.

(OP)
That verse was not widely interpreted as teaching when life begins until around 1980, when the evangelical Right emerged. Probably because 1) it's a poetic reflection on God's foreknowledge, not a treatise on personhood and 2) it says that God knew us before we were in the womb. On your reading, shouldn't we then conclude that life begins before conception?

So no, the Bible does not answer the question, despite the very recent, politically-motivated efforts to suggest otherwise.

(John)
Yes life was already here when he spoke it here. I dont try to figure out every single thing with my own thoughts. I let the Holy Spirit guide me into all truth and wisdom of Gods word. His word changed my life 5yrs ago and continues to everyday. Thank You Jesus!!

(John)
When you speak politically are you talking about the morons up in Washington, The ones who use God to get votes or the other ones who mock God. Well I dont pay one bit attention to anything them liars spew from their greedy evil mouths. The President included with them.

(Me)
By definition an embryo is a human and thus has human rights.

(Me)
The Bible is silent about nuclear war. Yet I think any rational person using the precepts of the Bible can come to the conclusion that it is wrong and violates God’s created order. Likewise, abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. The Bible not speaking to the issue directly is to be expected. If the Bible said abortion was wrong the original readers would not understand the context and that portion of the Bible would be meaningless to thousands of years of readers. Yet we can take the precepts of the Bible and natures witness to God’s created order (science) and come to the conclusion that in fact it is a human being, that it is unique from the mother and father, that it is innocent and that it is alive. God’s created order is that we use sex for reproduction and abortion violates the God ordained outcome.

(Me)
OP are you saying that even though the Bible does not speak directly about a recent medical procedure, you think that God should have included it in the Bible 3500 years ago, if He really thought it was wrong?

(OP)
Your getting your conclusions there from catholic natural law theology, not science. Science cannot prove that the embryo is a human being since the category "human being" is defined by moral and philosophical criteria as much as by scientific ones. And you're forgetting that abortion has in fact been practiced for thousands of years, including at the time the Bible was written.

(Me)
1.) I am not getting the definition from catholic natural law theory. I am using a Biological definition of what a Human being is.

Let me explain my point including more explicit references to the biology that is pertinent. First, the embryo is unique from the mother and the father, the child has a unique DNA sequence from the parents. Second, the DNA of the embryo is not that of a baboon or mushroom, it is human DNA. Third, is it growing (reproducing on a cellular level) and metabolizing the definition of biological life. We can even determine there is brain activity before the child is born. As far as we can tell all humans share a certain sequence of DNA that makes them Human and there are variations that uniquely identify the particular person from other people. I don’t need natural law to make my case. The only other premise I had was that the child was innocent. Generally, you need to prove guilt, otherwise innocence is presumed.

What cannot be defined scientifically is personhood as you have defined it. How would you define ‘full moral life’ scientifically? It can’t be done.
(Me)
2.) What specific evidence is there that ancient cultures performed abortions, other than death by exposure and sacrifice? Both of which are infanticide and morally on the same level. I spoke to this issue earlier as the Bible does say God finds infanticide detestable.

(OP)
The criteria you set forth for defining the category "human being" depend on philosophical assumptions about the nature of humans. I could just as easily assert a list of empirically verifiable features and say they characterize the nature of persons, such as the presence of a neocortex. Why a set of criteria should define a category like "human being" or "person" is determined by philosophy, not science.

As to the history of abortion, here's one place to start: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion

(Me)
OP The article you cited about abortion in the past uses a very broad definition for abortion and merely restates the type of activity I already mentioned that is not technically abortion in today’s use of the word but miscarriage or other forms of infanticide. For example in the cited article they equate the Code of Hammurabi’s “miscarriage through assault” as abortion.

So if you maintain the broad definition for abortion (as in the website you cited) in order to prove it has been done in Biblical times then the Bible does speak directly to the issue. If not, then abortion is not in the Bible because it is to narrow a definition and not something the readers could have related too.

(OP)
What you really mean is that we define infanticide to extended to unborn life then the Bible condemns abortion. But to do that is to assume the fetus is a person, the very question we are debating. #circularreasoning

(Me)
OP I think you may be missing something. I am not advocating the position that the Bible speaks directly to the issue, only that ‘your’ reference uses a broad of a definition for abortion. If you find it circular, then you should not reference it. ;-)

My claim is that we are taking the life of an innocent human being and that using the precepts of the Bible come to the rational conclusion that abortion is wrong in God’s eyes. I don’t claim the fetus is a ‘person,’ I think that is an ambiguous and arbitrary term. I think the fetus is an innocent ‘human being’.

The difference is a human being is something you are and a person is something you can do. Any being that qualifies as a "person" has to meet a set of criteria to gain rights. In fact, scientists claim that dolphins qualify as a “person” under the same set of criteria. However unborn and even newborns don’t qualify as persons under this criterion. This same a linguistic sleight of hand has been used in the past to exclude some humans from right from African America slaves in the US to Jews in Germany.

(OP)
The claim that the embryo is a human being is a philosophical one, just as much as the claim that it is a person, as the category cannot fully be defined by science. It is based on criteria that exclude some entities and include others.

(Me)
OP Well we have found our area of disagreement. When I say ‘human beings,’ I mean a ‘Homo sapiens’. To me the two terms are synonymous and can be quantifiable via sciences as I have previously explained and you have not yet refuted. I don’t want to be accused of using the term inappropriately, so here are some official definitions: “human being n. A human. human being n a member of any of the races of Homo sapiens; person; man, woman, or child.” The medical dictionary defines human being as “human [h(y)o̅o̅′mən] Etymology: L, humanus a member of the genus Homo and particularly of the species H. sapiens.” Form a science dictionary “A member of the species Homo sapiens” Based on the official definition and how I use the term ‘human being’ it is a question science can answer simply based on a DNA test. Therefore, it is not a philosophical question.

I believe the Bible supports this definition. The Bible uses adam as the term for all human beings. Sometimes translated ‘man’ it is used in the same way we often use the male specific term to mean all human beings. I don’t think this is a just happenstance. The Bible often sees all humans as an extension of Adam. As his descendants we carry forth his same nature. In science we see the same thing in the parents passing on their genetic makeup to their child via conception and the process of DNA transference. I won’t press this much further other than to say it is a fair interpretation and most importantly both view “human beingsness” as innate and not subjective.

Now that I have clarified what I mean by human being you might be able to see where I am coming from. My point is you use ‘person’ as an ambiguous term, you agree it is ambiguous and think there should be debate over what it means to be a person. I think that debates on the ambiguity of a term when the rights of human beings (homo sapiens) is involved will undermine the rights of all. That is why in the past people talked of human rights and not personhood rights. Human rights being rights you do nothing to earn but are simply conferred based upon your being human (a being of inherent worth to God).

Since you and I were discussion how the Bible sees this issue I think it is important to reflect on your definition of personhood and what Biblical support you have for that definition, so that I can better understand from the Bible how you support your view of what it means to be a person.

(OP)
Donald, you are confused in several ways. First of all, if having unique human DNA not found in any other cells means an entity is a human being, then the sperm an egg would be human beings, since they also have unique DNA produced by the process of meiosis. Second, quoting a dictionary definition of human being obviously doesn't prove the category is a purely scientific one anymore than quote a dictionary definition of person. It is no more purely scientific than the category "person," as any definition of "human being" requires a particular set of criteria to be put forth (ex. unique human DNA, gathered into close proximity, a member of the human species, etc...") that depend on philosophical assumptions that are outside the realm of science. You fault personhood thinkers for setting forth a category defined by philosophical criteria than excludes some forms of human life, but "human being" is also a category defined by philosophical criteria that excludes some forms of human life. Why, for example, do you include the embryo but not the egg? Or why not cells in the human body? Both are living, may be genetically unique, are human life, and in the proper context may develop into a child. Yet you exclude these based on a category that depends on philosophical criteria, just as the personhood advocate does. My point here is not to argue for a particular definition of person, but to point out that both "human being" and "person" are philosophically-defined categories that will exclude some form of human life. The difference between them is semantics, and nothing more.

(Me)
I used my definition advisedly when I previously said ‘unique’ human person. An egg or any other cell has only the mother’s DNA, something I can test by science. (And we rely on this fact for court cases) The Embryo however has unique DNA from the mother, again something that can be determined scientifically. There is no contradiction in my argument. Again the official definitions and I do not mean that a toe nail or piece of hair is a human being simply because it has human DNA. Where I think you may be confused is I am not saying DNA = human being, what I am saying DNA can be used as a test to determine the child is unique from the mother and human. The embryo is not the mother and it is not a dog, it is a unique human being. This is scientifically proven and irrefutable. Is the DNA of the embryo unique? Does the embryo have human DNA? These are yes or no questions that science can easily answer. I can see nothing philosophical about them, they seem to be hard facts.

In this explanation, where is the philosophical criteria I am setting forth?

(OP)
You're not understanding my objection. Your assertion that whether or not an embryo is a human being is a strictly scientific question is wrong because how the category "human being" is defined is not strictly scientific. This is the structure of your argument:

1. A "human being" is an entity that is living, human, and possesses unique DNA from the mother and father. (a philosophical argument)

2. An embryo can be scientifically show to be living, human, and possessing unique DNA from the mother and father. (a scientific argument)

3. Therefore, the embryo is a human being. (a logical deduction)

#2 is true: the embryo can be shown to possess those characteristics. But #1 is a definition that is based on philosophical assumptions that not everyone shares (for example, James C. Peterson, the Chair of the Ethics division at McMaster University has an essay titled "Is a Human Embryo a Human Being?" in which he answers "no"). And it cannot be shown to be true by science. You assume without argument that 1 is true.

(Me)
Nice syllogism. If premise #1 is incorrect please show it. Appealing to authority won’t cut it, especially a professional in ethics and not one in biology. Just out of curiosity if he is correct and the embryo is not a human being what exactly is it? Is it a dog or a goat or a dolphin? Having read these arguments before I can only assume your point will be that it is different because of it’s developmental state. If so, I think there might be a categorical error. For example, a puppy is a dog at a different development stage not a different species. Both puppy and dog are Canis lupus familiaris. My argument is an embryo is a human being at a different developmental stage. A human being and a human embryo are both Homo sapiens.

My point has been we should not determine human rights based upon a subjective definition of personhood but rather on the concrete definition of let’s say Homo sapiens. This seems to be the safest approach.

I do appreciate your patience in explaining your point so that I can understand where you are coming from. I think I am still stuck because I am not sure why you object to my definition or how it is exactly different from yours. If Human being does not equal Homo sapiens, something I think is scientifically determinable at any stage of development, then what is a human being?

(OP)
I'm not appealing to authority to prove premise 1 is incorrect; I'm demonstrating that premise 1 is precisely the question being debated. Saying his opinion doesn't matter because he is not a biologist presumably discredits your opinion as well, in addition to being absurd. On the other hand, I do have advanced training in human biology; I'll have an M.D. from Johns Hopkins in a few months. Does that mean I'm right and you are wrong?

The question under debate here is: Does the embryo belong to a category--whether you call it person or human being is irrelevant--that gives it moral value? You enter the debate assuming without argument that it does and then proceeding with your argument on the basis of that assumption, thus engaging in circular reasoning. Your definition of human being is just as subjective as any definition of person is. And here's one problem with it: if your criteria for human being is "living, human, and possessing unique DNA from the mother and father," a definition you agreed with, then Hydatidaform moles--tumors that form from embryos--are human beings. And homo sapiens is just another word for human being, so substituting that word in does nothing to solve the problem.

(Me)
One of my points has been that we disagree on definitions, I don’t believe that human being = person. I believe the definition of human being is self evident and I use DNA to prove scientifically one point that it is unique human from the mother. I think the DNA can confirm the self evident nature of my premise and gives us a concrete way to confirm and thus not circular.

However, you avoid answer the question, what do you think a human embryo is if it is not a human being?

(OP)
Well that settles it then! Here we have this enormous debate raging among philosophers as to whether the embryo is a human being and here you come, with what credentials I'm not sure, saying the answer is self-evident! Because it has human DNA!

There's really no more to discuss at that point, other than noting that by that criterion every cell in the human body is a human being. I personally think the embryo is human life (as are all cells in the human body) but that it is special because it has the potential to become a human being, giving it an increasing amount of moral value as development proceeds in the womb.

 It should be noted though that the majority of embryos (over 50%) spontaneously miscarry and are passed with the monthly menstrual flow. Since you believe embryos have the same moral worth as children, I'd be curious to know what you think about the fact that those who share your position, and presumably you yourself, evince no concern at all about studying and trying to address what would be the number 1 killer in history.

Or to pose another question--your position that embryos are humans requires you to believe that abortion in America is an atrocity with nearly ten times the lives lost as the Holocaust. And you think voting for Republicans and debating people online is a proportional and adequate response to a holocaust that has continued unabated for 40 years? To the slaughter of tens of millions of people?

(Me)
Obviously the question is not settled. There are philosophers, ethicist, biologists and medical doctors on both sides of this debate. I have read from both sides and I think we should be able to follow the logic to the most rational conclusion simply based on the logic and not the credentials of the proponent of the view.

We are going in circles on the DNA issue. If I cut my finger off, I would not call the finger a human being. Yes it would have Human DNA but it is only a part of a Human being, or was if I cut it off. By self-evident I mean no one in their right mind would look at the finger and say look at the human being.

Here is a better explanation of the categorical error. When I use the term human being I mean to differentiate the being from a dog, cat, elephant or even dolphin. The term then seeks to differentiate an animal by the category of species. When I use the word embryo, adult, child, adolescent, or senior I mean to differentiate by the category of development of the being. You seem to be using the species category term of human being to apply it to a development level of a being to come up with moral worth definition.

I mentioned dolphin’s because there are those today who argue that dolphins are persons such as Thomas White, philosopher at Loyola Marymount University, who made the argument that dolphins aren't merely like people; they may actually be people, or he calls them, "nonhuman persons." His use of the term "nonhuman persons," seems to indicate the same categorical understanding I have and yet he would agree with you on the moral worth distinction for “person.”

Sorry, I am not a Republican and I don’t vote party line. I am curious where I could find your definition of person in the Bible. The Bible address philosophy and you say human being (person) is a philosophical question, so there must be something there. Even more curious to me is, do you think that God finds abortion morally good, bad or neutral?

(Chuck)
Autobiographical point: I became pro-life in the 1970's before it was the consensus among evangelicals, and it was a Catholic who convinced me. I had not read Schaeffer. My point is that evangelicals entered the pro-life fold for a variety of reasons -- including philosophical. Perhaps several leaders on the Right joined the fold for the reasons mentioned in this article, but that is a historic curiosity and doesn't address the merits of the argument. The statement "with what credentials I'm not sure" strikes me as strange at best. We don't need credentials to render an opinion on this subject. No matter what his credentials are, Donald Hester's argument that the embryo is composed of human DNA is powerful. It seems to me that any doubt should favor the preservation of the embryonic life. Concerning the reference to the spontaneous miscarriage of 50% of all embryos, we should remind ourselves that a similar figure applied to the death of children in previous centuries. No reasonable person used that as justification for taking their life.

(OP)
Yes but they would use that as a justification to try to save those lives, something which those who believe life begins at conception show no concern about. And again, if simply having human DNA makes something a human being, then every cell in our bodies is a human being. I only bring up credentials because Dinald had earlier summarily dismissed the opinion of a respected bioethicist because that person was not a biologist.

(Me)
I am not sure how you know I have no concern for miscarriages. My wife and I lost our first child to a miscarriage, while not as emotionally taxing as having lost a child of let say a 10 year old, it was still a loss we mourned. That being said there is a difference between miscarriage and abortion in that one is intentional (a moral decision is made) verse something that is accidental.

My argument is NOT that DNA = human being. My argument is DNA can show the embryo is a human being without the need to appeal to philosophy. With DNA we can determine that 1.) An embryo is a human being and 2.) Distinct from the mother.

My other argument is the term ‘Human Being’ does not mean a development stage or moral value judgment on a life. Human being in the colloquial use and technical definition is a determination of species of animal.

It may have seemed like I was dismissing the credential, for that I apologize. What I was attempting to do was demonstrate the ‘appeal to authority’ fallacy. In my subsequent comments I clarified that no matter what an expert says we should be able to follow the logic of their arguments to determine the rationality of their claim.

BTW OP I appreciate your time in explaining your position. Through this discussion I think I better clarified my position. I also think it is important for people on both sides of this issue to discuss it without the tempers, accusations, malice, or divisiveness.

Recently, I was listening to a Greg Koukl on a Stand To Reason podcast. He was relating an article entitled, “Struggle for Smarts? How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning” by Alix Spiegel.

In summary the article says that Westerners see intelligence as something you have or don’t, while Eastern cultures see intelligence as something you build. This is demonstrated by how Eastern and Western parents and teachers talk to children.

Ever since I heard Greg talk about this on his podcast, I have been thinking about this concept. I have always thought of intelligence as being something that you can build. Much like muscles, your intelligence grows the more you use it. The problem is I really didn't communicate that to my children. I feel bad that as a parent I have always reinforced the Western notion by telling my kids how smart they were when they got good grades. I really should have been telling them that their hard work paid off.

The funny thing is I have taken classes on child development and on how to teach. I don't ever recall getting any advice that was this practical. Do we realize what we are telling our children when we say, "Look how smart you are?" What would they think if they got bad grades? They will think and feel that they are not smart so why try. How would they feel if we told them the reason they got good grades was because of their hard work? And when they got bad grades they would feel like they must have not worked hard enough at it. They would have hope because they could try harder next time, instead of feeling like they just "are" not smart. How easily we fail to see the implications of our actions and words.

The Christian Crusades

Dispelling Prevalent Myths About the Crusades

Abstract: The term paper will cover some of the popular myths being used about the crusader era and will shed light on those myths. The popular myths are taken from recent atheist books and blogs along with some additional commonly held myths. The rebuttals I use for these myths are often taken from academic works that predate the use of these myths and yet the myths continue to be used.

Popular myths about the Crusades

Many popular myths about the Crusades pervade popular books and skeptics websites today even though many of the myths have been debunked.  The myths continue to grow and, in popular works, the myths are considered the gospel truth.  In this essay, I will first explore some of the popular myths.  Then, I will provide a brief response to those myths.

Recent articles on the Crusades claim that the goal of the crusades was a quest for new lands[1] and was the first round of European colonialism[2].   Popular atheists, such as Dawkins and Hitchens, claim the motivation for the crusades was to convert the pagans or to kill them.  Hitchens, in his bestselling book God is not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything, claims that religion can’t help itself. “It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths.”[3] In The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins makes the outrageous claim, “Christianity, too, was spread by the sword, wielded first by Roman hands after the Emperor Constantine raised it from eccentric cult to official religion, then by the Crusaders, and later by the conquistadores and other European invaders and colonists, with missionary accompaniment.”[4]

Another popular claim is that the crusades were much more barbaric than typical warfare at that time.  Hitchens cites one event, “However, this made no difference during the Crusades, when a papal army set out to recapture Bethlehem and Jerusalem from the Muslims, incidentally destroying many Jewish communities and sacking heretical Christian Byzantium along the way, and inflicted a massacre in the narrow streets of Jerusalem, where, according to the hysterical and gleeful chroniclers, the spilled blood reached up to the bridles of the horses.”[5]  Atheist blogger Austin Cline claims, “The Crusades were an incredibly violent undertaking, even by medieval standards.”[6]

The crusades are often cited as an example of religion being the cause of violence.  Sam Harris claims religion is a well-spring of violence[7] Cline claims the crusades were, “Hardly a noble quest in foreign lands, the Crusades represented the worst in religion generally and in Christianity specifically.”[8]  Atheist Massimo Pigliucci blogs that religion is the cause of violence and cites the crusades as an example, “Just look at the history of all three Abrahamic faiths: Jews used to go around pillaging, raping and merrily engaging in (god-sanctioned) genocide; we owe to Christians the invention of the words crusade and inquisition.”[9]  Sam Harris goes so far as to claim “There is no telling what our world would now be like had some great kingdom of reason emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the credulous multitudes of Europe and the Middle East.”[10]

The crusades are often claimed to be the worst violence ever.  Hitchens questions, “When the worst has been said about the…Crusades…is it not true that secular and atheist regimes have committed crimes and massacres that are, in the scale of things, at least as bad if not worse?”[11]  The answer he gives to his question is no.  Pigliucci, goes further and claims that religions, other than Christianity, Islam and Judaism, are far more peaceful.[12]

These claims about the crusades have led the word ‘crusade’ to become taboo.  One helpful atheist advises, “Churches should not use the word Crusade because it turns people off because of it’s negative connotations.”[13]  Some Christians have accepted the claims and have tried to distance their friendlier version of Christianity from the, “…intolerant, politicized, ugly, right-wing…”[14] Christianity.  Anonymous atheist blogger “vjack” agrees with the negative connotations of the word ‘crusade’ and cautions other atheist not to forget the crusades or stop using the word.  His conspiracy laden fear is that if they forget the crusades happened they will happen again because, “The consolidation of political power, military strength, and massive wealth into Christian extremist hands is something that should terrify every atheist.”[15]

Dispelling myths about the Crusades

Words have meaning and some words have emotional baggage that gives them more persuasion power when used. Think about it; when you hear the word ‘crusade’ what images are conjured up in your mind?  Do you think of greedy nobles looking to grab lands from the peaceful Muslims and other Christians?  Do you think of an unprovoked and extraordinary brutal war?  Do you see another episode of Jewish genocide?  Do you imagine being given the choice to convert or die?  Do you think of the worst episode of violence in human history?  Misconceptions about the crusades have given this word the emotional baggage that is often used as a coercive rhetorical device for anti-Christian arguments.

There is a subtle and underlining claim with all of these statements against the Crusades that implies that Christianity is falsified somehow.  Christianity obviously can’t be true because of all the violence it causes is the unspoken claim.  No rational argument is now needed; one simply needs to remind the Christian of the crusades and that should be the end of the argument.  However, a word with emotional baggage and an implied refutation is not rational discourse.  It simply is coercive and vacuous rhetoric designed to influence rather than inform.

As with any investigation into history, we run the risk of oversimplifying the issues involved or looking at the events from one side only, either seeing only the good actions or only the bad actions.  The crusades are no different.  My attempt here is not to dismiss any of the wrongs committed by crusades and only look at what could be called the good.  I instead intend to look at both sides equitably.

Now, in order to dispel these myths, we need to start with a good definition of what exactly is a crusade.  Jonathan Riley-Smith defines the crusades as, “a…expedition authorized by the pope on Christ’s behalf, the leading participants in which took vows and consequently wore crosses and enjoyed the privileges of protection at home and the indulgence, which, when the campaign was not destined for the East, was equated with that granted to crusaders to the Holy Land.”[16] Knowing what the crusades were does not, necessarily, tell us anything about the motivations.  For that we must dig into history and the situations that were prevalent at the time. 

It is important to note that, before the rise of Islam, the Christian world covered from Britton to the Middle East, along the North coast of Africa, along the Nile all the way to Axum, areas in the Arabian Peninsula, and from modern day Turkey to Baghdad. In 700 AD Christianity covered more area than the Roman Empire. By 850, over 100 years after the Death of Mohammad, the Muslims had conquered the Middle East from India to Turkey, and across North Africa and into most of Spain.  It is no small fact that over half of the Christian world was then under Muslim control.  The rapid rise of Islam would not have gone unnoticed and without concern.  Thomas Madden makes the point, “It is important to remember that in the Middle Ages the West was not a powerful, dominant culture venturing into a primitive or backward region. It was the Muslim East that was powerful, wealthy and opulent. Europe was the Third World.”[17]

By the time of the first crusade the Seljuk Turks had made their way across Anatolian peninsula and threated Constantinople.  With no other alternative, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comneus, sent a letter to Pope Urban II requesting help from the Western Empire.[18]  Pope Urban II headed the call and preached the first crusade at the Council of Clermont on November 27, 1095.[19]  Urban II asked those there to come to the aid of their fellow Christians against the atrocities of the Turks. Concerning the Turks he spoke, “They have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for a while with impurity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them.”[20]  Clearly the concern was that if they did not push back the Turks they would continue on into Europe.  The impetus was to prevent further encroachment and to regain lost lands, not for themselves but for the Byzantines.  In short, the crusades were provoked.

The charge is often given that the crusades were the first round of European colonialism.  Again this charge is meritless.  Thomas F. Madden, chair of St. Louis University's history department, crusade expert and author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," agrees that the Crusaders were a defensive force that did not intend profit from their ventures by earthly riches or land.  Some may suggest that it was the motivation of Bohemond I, Prince of Taranto, during the first crusade when he refused to relinquish Antioch to Byzantine control.  Bohemond refused to relinquish Antioch to Alexius and the Byzantines because he felt they had forfeited their rights to Antioch when they turned their back on it and did not assist the crusader army when they needed it most.[21]  Of course not all crusaders agreed with Bohemond.  Raymond IV of Count of Toulouse, stressed that “no crusader should be allowed to renounce that sacred vow for temporal gain.”[22] In fact, when the crusades were complete most of the crusades went home with very few remaining to govern their newly acquired lands.[23]

James Ludlow relates the required motivation that was adopted by the Council of Clermont, “As already indicated, one very important privilege is to be found in the list of canons adopted by the Council of Clermont, namely, that an indulgence was to be granted to all who should go to liberate Jerusalem, provided they were motivated not by desire for honor or money, but by devotion only.”[24]  Simply put, the motivation of a very small minority of crusaders may have been for temporal gain while most of them considered it a duty and devotion.

You might agree about the motivation but still take exception to the brutal means the crusaders used.  Often cited is the massacre of Jerusalem in 1099. Unfortunately a chronicler at the time used hyperbole to greatly exaggerate the claims of the bloodshed.  Often this account is read as literal gospel truth and not the exaggeration that it clearly is.  There wasn’t enough people in the entire Middle East to fill the City with blood up to the horses’ bridal. It is important to remember the use of hyperbole in warfare and the context of warfare in the period.     The exaggerated claim of blood up to a horse’s bridal, an obvious reference to Revelation 14:19-20, may have served as fodder for psychological warfare. 

Putting fear into the hearts of your enemy is a well-known psychological warfare tactic. Terrorizing and horrifying your enemy as a means of demoralizing them is part and parcel of any tactical warfare.  Grandiose claims of Spartan brutality would put such fear into any opposing army that often when the Spartans took the field the opposing forces would flee in fear leaving the Spartans with a victory without the need for further bloodshed.  One of the best examples in history was Vlad III Dracula that earned him the title Vlad the Impaler.  “According to historical accounts, when the Shah-in Shah's forces encountered the massive field of impaled soldiers captured from previous encounters with Vlad's army, he turned back.”[25]  This allowed the outnumbered forces of Vlad to withstand the overwhelming Turkish and Ottoman forces.  Exaggerated claims have been utilized in warfare as a means to inspire troops to continue on and to put fear into the hearts of the enemy in an attempt to limit further bloodshed.

The rules of war for the time would have seen it a justified if the whole city was put to death for resisting a besieging army.  Madden puts it this way,

“The accepted moral standard in all pre-modern European and Asian civilizations was that a city that resisted capture and was taken by force belonged to the victorious forces. That included not just the buildings and goods, but the people as well. That is why every city or fortress had to weigh carefully whether it could hold out against besiegers. If not, it was wise to negotiate terms of surrender.  In the case of Jerusalem, the defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the Crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free.”[26]

By today’s standards we may think of this tactic as being unnecessarily brutal.  Is it really more brutal than the warfare today?  One need not look farther than the justification of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  As terrible as those events were, the number of casualties were far less than would have been had the United States had to invade mainland Japan.  As terrific as the bombs were the result was a speedy conclusion to the war.

Madden concludes, “It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the Crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely.”[27]  Simply put, incentives for non-resistance were used to lower casualties in ancient times and this practice is still in use today. I t is also worthy to note that often a single atrocious act is often cited as an example of the normal behavior of the crusaders instead of for the abnormal behavior that it is.  For example, Atheist Austin Cline says, “When Muslim cities were captured by Christian crusaders, it was standard operating procedure for all inhabitants – no matter what their age – to be summarily killed.” [Emphasis added][28]  This was not the standard operating procedure for crusaders and irresponsible to make such an outrageous claim. 

These are common warfare tactics, not religious or secular practices.  Richard Dawkins rightly notes, “Cruel and evil people can be found in every century and of every persuasion.”[29]  If true, he has no legitimate reason to lay the charge of brutality because of religion at the feet of Christianity.  It wasn’t religious purposes for any so called brutal tactics, it was simply the accepted art of war.  William Cavanaugh has recently made the argument that the religious violence is a myth because it simplifies a complex set of social, economic and political factors that lead to violence.  Indeed it seems bias for an Atheist to claim all violence is caused by religion as if institutionalized atheism is innocent.  Cavanaugh theorizes that this is an attempt to perpetuate the myth that religion creates violence while making the atheists out to be the rational and peaceful people. Cavanaugh states, “The myth of religious violence helps to construct and marginalize a religious Other, prone to fanaticism, to contrast with the rational, peace-making, secular subject.”[30] Further he states, “These arguments are part of a broader Enlightenment narrative that has invented a dichotomy between the religious and the secular and constructed the former as an irrational and dangerous impulse that must give way in public to rational, secular forms of power.”[31]

It is also important to note that nowhere did Jesus Christ condone such actions.  If Christians did involve themselves in the practices of warfare that we think are not very Christian, like maybe it is precisely because they are not acting like Christians and not that secularism is more enlightened.  Cavanaugh makes the point that, “it may be the case that the Crusader has misappropriated the true message of Christ, but one cannot therefore excuse Christianity of all responsibility.”[32] It is one of the doctrines of Christianity that all people sin, even Christians.  Although Christians sinning is consistent with Christian doctrine it does not excuse or condone such behavior. 

It is also important to note that the Crusader army was not made up of all Christians.  The reformer Martin Luther raises this objection in his work Vom Kriege wider die Türken (On War Against the Turk).   Luther claims, “It is against [Christ’s] name, because in such an army there are scarcely five Christians, and perhaps worse people in the eyes of God than are the Turks; and yet they would all bear the name of Christ.”[33]  In a way Luther is objecting to the religious labeling for this war.  The crusades being a defensive war need not drag Christ’s name into it in order to justify the call to war.

What about Christians who sought to eliminate the enemy at home like Count Emicho Leiningen in the first crusade or Radulf during the second crusade?  Dan Cohn-Shebok author of The Crucified Jew, wrote, “The Crusades and their aftermath thus brought into focus Christian contempt for the Jews who stubbornly clung to their ancestral Faith.”[34]  The crusades are often viewed as part of an ongoing genocide of Jews by Christians.

First it is important to note that the crusade was never called against the Jew.  Jonathan Riley Smith notes, “No crusade was actually proclaimed against the Jews, although crusade preaching unleashed feelings that the Church could not control.”[35]  Second they attempted to stop rogue crusaders from harming the Jews.  During the second crusade Bernard of Clairvaux set off to stop Radulf’s attacks against the Jews.  “Repeatedly, Barnard stressed that the Jews were not to be persecuted.”[36]  In short, the church never called for a crusade against the Jew and they sought to stop those who did.

Conclusion

In this essay I have examined some of the more popular myths about the crusades and have attempted to shed new light on the truth about the subject.  I think Stark sums up my conclusions best when he writes, “The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God’s battalions.”[37] I would add to his conclusion that the crusades were never called against the Jew.

As for Christian morality, Christians sometimes sin, and this in no way excuses any sinful actions.  And if a Christian does not follow the teachings of Christ then he/she may be a hypocrite but that does not mean Christianity causes violence or somehow falsify the Christian worldview.  If I were a smoker who smoked 5 packs of cigarettes a day and I told you that smoking was harmful to your health it would make me a pretty big hypocrite.  My hypocrisy would in no way falsify my claim that smoking is harmful to your health.

It is my hope that I have shed some light on the issue of the crusades and some of the popular claims and implications that are taken for granted in our popular culture today.  With that I also hope people will evaluate explore those claims as they carefully consider and weigh multiple sides of this issue.

Endnotes

 

A Different Perspective on the 3 Wise Men

The 3 wise men, or Magi as they were called, were a priestly class that had existed in various empires in the Middle East. They were astrologers, magicians and king makers. They had been around throughout the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire.

The Roman Empire had been at war with the Parthians for some time and Judea was the buffer state between the two empires. Rome backed Herod as governor of Judea, a move the Jewish Sanhedrin did not like because Herod was not a Jew, he was an Edomite.

Herod and the Romans fled in 40 BC when Antigonus, with the help of the Parthians, took the throne as king. In Rome the Roman Senate elected him as king of Judea and in 37 BC he returned to claim the throne. Herod exiled his wife and child to take a new bride that was Jewish in order to gain favor amongst the Jews. After capturing Jerusalem Antigonus was put to death.

Herod did not gain much acceptance from the Jews as he claimed to be Jewish but lived a very decadent and hedonistic lifestyle. He even expanded the Temple complex in order to foster the lagging support of the Jewish population.

Herod was a foreign non-Jewish king, claiming to follow the Jewish law while living a sin filled lifestyle. He was appointed by Rome, an Empire Jews did not care one bit for. Add to that he had been sent packing by the Parthians once before. Add to that, at that time the Jews were looking for a Messiah savior who would over through Rome and Herod and restore the Davidic Kingdom.

Now image you were Herod and along comes a military envoy with Parthian Magi looking for the King of the Jews. Mind you, the enemies of the Romans, the ones who put you on the throne, are asking to see the legitimate king. The Bible records Herod’s reaction, Matthew records that he was “disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3). The Greek word translated “disturbed” is etarachtha which means “to shake violently.” I think I might react the same way.

Knowing this I think you will get a different appreciation for the historical context of the biblical account and perhaps see how historical context makes the story deeper and richer. I think we now have an idea of why Herod felt threatened enough to kill all the children under two in Bethlehem.

Note: Legend has it that there were 3 wise men, but there is not historical record of how many. It is often offered that the number of 3 comes from the number of gifts they brought.

I had a long dialogue with an Atheist here in PDF form. I did change the names of the participants for privacy reasons. The conversation started with a post from a friend of mine that turned into an interesting dialogue. I have kept all of the posts even the ‘Troll’ posts, to preserve the feel and flow of the conversation.

The conversation takes some time to get going, but, the bulk of the 23,000 plus words of the conversation is Sam’s objections to Christianity and his support for Atheism. Normally I would not take the time to try and address the numerous assertions he made. However, a number of people were interested and in asynchronous conversation more time can be spent addressing them.

Some interesting comments by Sam included

• Christianity barrowed from Paganism, implied is that this disproves Christianity
• Science and Religion are at odds (specific example of Galileo)
• He wants scientific evidence for God
• Christians are trying to force their beliefs on others
• The Bible is hopelessly corrupt
• Judeo-Christian ethnics are bad for society
• God should show Himself
• Free will is a myth
• America's Founding Fathers were Deists

I addressed all of these and others. If I did not refute his claims, I gave him at least an alternate explanations that should raise some doubts on his positions.

Click here for PDF

Have you see the National Debt lately? Over $16 trillion (16,000,000,000,000). By the way the problem is far worse for us tax payers because this $16 trillion does not include the State and Local government debt. Local governments have already started filing bankruptcy.

“We are rapidly approaching the tipping point. Our greatest threat to our future is our own fiscal irresponsibility. We are not exempt from the laws of prudent finance. If we don’t put our finances in order, then the opportunities for our children and grandchildren will be less and their standard of living we be less.” - David Walker United States Comptroller General 1998-2008

The Comptroller Generals is the Auditor General for the United States. Walker says we are two years from being at the point that Greece was when it collapsed. He says because the US dollar is still the favored reserve currency, we will last a bit longer but not indefinitely. He says that the national debt has been increasing at an increasing rate since William Jefferson Clinton was in the White House.

Seriously, if the chief auditor of the United States tells you that we are going fail and it is going to be big and felt around the world, and that there will be nowhere to hide, you should probably listen. Why is it that no one listens to auditors when the sound the alarm?

Another question is why voters don’t do their due diligence. Our government is a participatory form of government that each citizen has the right to decide the direction of the nation. Seems like people should be better informed and look at what the media is telling you with a critical eye. Just because you have the right for something does not mean that you should exercise your right irresponsibly.

Hope and Change? Seriously? We are in for a big change and we are about to get a lesson in failed expectations.

My hope is that this open, honest and civil dialogue about the issue of abortion will benefit people who struggle with this issue as they carefully consider and weigh both sides of this issue.

Original post: What issues are people basing their vote on? Social, economic or foreign policy? Which one is more important?

P1: Economic

Me: Seems like it should be economic. I think without a strong economy social matters won’t matter much and foreign policy would be unenforceable without a strong economy.

P2: Social. Without strong social policies, you can't have a strong economy.

Me: I guess it depends on what you mean by social issues, I can make the case that without strong ethics a strong economy is not possible. Sure you can pass all kinds of laws but if people can’t self-govern they then need to be governed. That has always led to impoverished conditions. If you go beyond ethics to specific contemporary issues, I would not agree. Not that the contemporary issues don’t have an ethical aspect. However, economically we were fine before those issues arose. That leads me to believe those issues don’t have a large influence on economics.

P3: I don't believe for one moment that Republicans spend less or have smaller government than Democrats. So, if we're just choosing between D and R, and both sides continue to send us deeper into the shitter economically, I vote based on social and foreign policy issues. If we were to throw in some third-party candidates, I would have to actually give some thought to who I would vote for, but I don't see any third-party candidates being a real contender under our current political setup. :(

Me: What type of foreign policy would you propose?

P2: My main social issues here are schools and abortion rights. I would argue that children who receive a good education are less likely to end up in prison or on government assistance, and pay more into taxes because they have higher paying jobs. So decent schools for everyone is a social issue that we should fund better than we do. Abortion rights are important, because if a woman doesn't have the right to determine whether she wants to have more children, then not only do we have a lot more unwanted children, many born into homes without adequate funds, we also have women who cannot go to school or get jobs, because they are home taking care of children. One could argue that that's contraception, not abortion, but I think that the same government that wants to deny one, wants to deny the other.

P3: Me? I align much more with the Libertarians when it comes to foreign policy.

Me: P2, sorry I don't see how abortion rights helps or hinders the economy. Maybe I am missing something there. I also don’t see schools as a social issue especially if you feel they need more funding. Education is important for Jobs I agree but if we think it is a funding issue then it is economic. If you think the schools teaching philosophy is wrong or needs to change then I would see it as a social issue.

P2: http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/new-roosevelt/access-contraception-economic-issue

Me: P3, in theory as a libertarian I tend to agree, however, I don’t know if it is a tenable position anymore. If we retreat into our boarders and pretend the rest of the world does not exist what would happen? Would Iran wipe Israel off the face of the Earth? Would China continue to exploit 3rd world countries and drain natural resources from those countries? The issue about foreign policy is about stability in the world. Given history and human nature 100% peace and stability is impossible. Without a strong economy and some reasonably decent treatment of foreign countries there would be war around the world. Some may say the United States is imperialistic. That may be true but do you think if we weren’t no other country would fill the void? Pax Romana. This is the reason why Obama broke his promise to get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He couldn’t do it with creating massive instability in the region.

P2: http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/200604dickenssawhill.pdf

P3: Don, think of it like this: There are over a million abortions performed each year (a sad statistic, and proof that we need more reproductive education and cheap, easy access to all forms of birth control). If every one of those children had been born, many of them to poor families, that's just that many more children being taken care of by welfare, food stamps, and medicaid -- a huge drain on the economy. I think our best bet to end abortions is not to make them illegal (which does little to reduce the number of abortions performed, and greatly increases the number of dead women AND fetuses), but to make them unneeded through education, affordable health care, and adequate social programs.

Me: Not to poison the well but didn’t the Roosevelt’s fund Margret Sanger’s eugenics here in the United States?

P2: I'm not sure what that has to do with the discussion, though...

P3: Iraq and Afghanistan are a different beast now because we did so much to create instability in the region. However, I would like to see the US do a lot less invading and a lot more diplomacy wherever possible. I think there is a huge area between "police of the world" and "hunkering down ignoring the world."

Me: P2, your right, I just not sure I would consider them to be unbiased.

P3: *cough* you're *cough* :P

Me: P3 who should be the police of the world then? Or should we let Iran do what they want with Israel?

Me: P3 your idea of ending abortion by education does not seem to be rational. Do you really think education would end it? I don’t think it would. I think it is a stretch. The only real question is when is ok to take the life of an innocent human being. Is being poor a reason?

P3: There shouldn't be just one "police of the world" at all. It should be a group of nations, such as the UN or something similar.

Me: The UN has not troops or money. They have to borrow from us.

P3: Education alone? Not at all. You have to look at all the reasons a woman chooses to have an abortion and then find solutions to those. Just making it illegal accomplishes nothing other than killing women. If your goal is killing off the whores who opened their legs, then making it illegal is a great solution. If your goal is to protect ALL stages of life, then reducing abortion can only be brought about through comprehensive education policies, accessible and affordable health care (prenatal, psychiatric, etc.), and social programs.

Me: The UN has sanctions but often they don’t produce the desired results. Plus China and Russia veto any action.

Me: P3, you didn't answer my questions. When is ok to take the life of an innocent human being?

P3: I personally don't think it's ever okay. But I realize that not everyone shares my views on when a fetus is a human and when not. I think that's a decision that should be left between a woman and her doctor. At the same time, I think that we need to work hard to reduce the reasons women make that choice in the first place. Think about this practically. The way things are now, there are a lot of abortions. Making it illegal would have little impact on the number of abortions performed, but a great impact on the number of dead women. So approaching this from a legal standpoint, we need to keep it legal while at the same time working hard to reduce the need for abortions. THAT is how I can help to save innocent lives.

Me: If it is never ok then why would we allow it?

Me: Isn’t the point of law to protect the innocent?

P3: You're talking in ideals. I'm looking at reality. The reality of the situation is that making abortion illegal will just result in more dead women, with little affect on the number of dead fetuses. What has that accomplished, aside from MORE death? I feel like a broken record here. If you want to protect innocent unborn children, you have to reduce the CAUSE of abortions. You have to make women not WANT to get one and not feel so desperate that they NEED one. You need to educate women about their bodies so they don't get pregnant in the first place. You need to provide women (and men) with as much contraception as they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy. If your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, this is the only way. I value ALL life, and I'm not into slut-shaming. I want to be realistic and create laws that ACTUALLY protect the innocent by reducing the number of abortions.

Me: What proof do you have that there will be more dead woman? It sounds like you are saying it is ok to take an innocent human life if the perpetrator might hurt or kill them themself. If we apply that logic to other crimes we would not make bank robbery illegal because banks robbers might get hurt. We should really just focus on the cause of them being a bank robber instead of making it against the law. What is sounds like to me is it IS alright to take the life of an innocent human being if it what a person thinks is best for them.

P3: No, what I'm saying is that no one should get an abortion because I believe it's killing an innocent life. And in order to achieve the goal of no abortions, I support social programs, education, and access to healthcare that will lead to a great decrease in the number performed. Where are you getting that I think it's okay to take a life? I'm only arguing for what is PROVEN to work (see Europe) at reducing abortions. Again, if you want fewer abortions, you reduce the reasons that women seek them in the first place. If you just make them illegal, all you're saying is that women dying in alleys and from drinking lysol somehow deserve it (slut-shaming).

P3: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/12/4/gpr120402.html

Me: Does Europe still have abortions? Is one human life worth less than two? Maybe you won’t hurt or kill an innocent human being but other people would. Shouldn’t we do something to stop them from killing an innocent human being beyond just trying to low the numbers of killing?

P3: Many European countries have a much lower per-capita abortion rate than the US. Again, making abortion illegal will not stop it. How do you propose to make the abortion rate 0? Aside from waving a magic wand, the next best bet is to reduce the need for abortions by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, and increasing the support for women who want to CTT but don't feel they can (emotionally, financially, etc).

Me: I am not saying that woman deserve to die (slut-shamming).

P3: That's what happens when abortions are illegal. Then you have two dead instead of one. I am "pro-life" in the sense that I place value on ALL life and want to decrease the number of deaths of all living people (born and unborn).

Me: Do we create laws and really think crime will be zero? No we don’t but it is not a reason not to have a law.

Me: Who will speak for the innocent? Who will stand up for their right to life? If you are “pro-life” why would you support the only one who has a choice of life and death for the other?

P3: I support reducing abortions in the only way that works. Again, if you want to save lives, you reduce the REASONS women get abortions. If you actually care about saving lives (women and unborn children), you would do everything in your power to decrease the deaths. Making abortion illegal is not the way you accomplish that. Hundreds of years of history shows this. If you want to bury your head in the sand and just hope that it will "go away" if you wish hard enough, be my guest. But it won't do squat. You have to educate and support these women if you want to reduce abortions (and deaths via back-alley and at-home abortions).

P3: I support the rights of the unborn by supporting policies that are proven to decrease abortions. It won't happen overnight, but perhaps in a few decades or a century, by continuing to support women and their reproductive health and knowledge, we can come to a point where it isn't needed any more.

Me: So it is ok to take the life of an innocent human being if we have not addressed the reasons why woman want to take the life of an innocent human being that they conceived?

P3: /sigh. Where on earth are you getting that from?

P3: If I thought it was "ok" why on earth would I be fighting for reducing the number of abortions?

P2: Personally, I believe that the issue in the abortion debate is whose rights are paramount, the unborn child's, or the mother's? The child's right to life vs. the mother's right to control her own body and reproduction. Innocent vs. guilty shouldn't be a part of it. To tell a fully grown and developed person that her rights are subservient to those of the child developing inside of her is to say that she is less than the child. If it were possible to beam that baby out, and put it in the uterus of a woman who wanted a child, we'd live in a perfect world. But we don't. I do agree with Sarah that education is key, and even more important is access to free or at least affordable contraception. When people have access to these things, abortion rates and teen pregnancies go down. But so many people focus on the teen pregnancy, they ignore a woman who has 3 kids already, her birth control fails, and she doesn't want another child. Should the family be forced to have an unwanted child? I don't think so. The only 100% effective form of birth control is abstinence. My great grandmother resorted to that after 6 pregnancies in 7 years. I don't think either she or her husband were too thrilled about that solution, but it's the only one that was available to them.

Me: I am not burying my head in the sand hundreds of years of history has shown that laws and punishments ARE a deterrent. Plus your argument keeps coming around to the idea that it is ok to take the life of an innocent human being because it is a practical way to reduce abortions. Maybe the keep word is innocent. An INNOCENT human life is killed.

Me: I am not saying we should not do what we can to give woman reasons not to have abortions or prevent pregnancy. Why not have a law as well? A law to protect the innocent.

P3: Where did I say that it's okay to take a life because it's a way to reduce abortions? I don't believe those words have ever come from my fingers. I said that the way to reduce abortions is to educate, empower, and support women so that there is no NEED for abortions. Where are you getting that I think it's all fine and dandy to get an abortion? Am I being misunderstood? I cannot even comprehend where you are getting that.

P3: Because reality, history, and evidence suggest that just making abortion illegal across the board only has a small affect on the number of abortions, while having a huge affect on the number of dead women. If you're cool with more death, that's fine. I, on the other hand, would like to reduce the death.

Me: P2, how do we determine whose rights are paramount? Who should determine that? So you agree the child has rights? And the mothers right to… (whatever reason she comes up with) over rides the child’s right to life?

Me: P3, I am just following your conclusions to their logical ends. If there is no excuse for taking the life of an innocent human being why do you keep saying there is a reason mainly the possibility the mother might harm herself in an illegal abortion? So it is OK in your worldview for someone else to take the life of an innocent human being.

P2: Yes. A fully formed human being who can survive on her own has rights that override those of an unborn child. That is how we determine whose rights are paramount. If there were a way to separate them, that would be awesome. But we can't, so someone has to decide. You decide the rights of the child are more important than the rights of the mother. I disagree.

Me: P2, what about a child of 6 months? Does the mother have the right to take that life? It is not fully formed and can't live on its own either.

Me: P2, I do not think that any all rights are equal. Do you? I do think the right to life is greater than the right to more disposable income. Mother’s or child’s right to life should be equal unless we want to define a child as something less than human.

P3: That is not at all the logical end to my argument. My point is that we need to reduce the number of abortions. Period. Full stop. Now, looking at this objectively, whether or not abortion remains legal or illegal has little affect on the rate of abortions performed. By saying that I wish them to remain legal is NOT saying that I support them or think it's okay to have one. I just know, from facts and research, that illegal = more deaths, while legal = fewer deaths. Looking at it from an "all life is sacred" point of view, I support the side the results in the fewest deaths. Again, that does not mean I like abortions or think they are okay. In fact, I support policies that would actually have an affect on reducing, and possibly eventually ending, abortions. Isn't that the goal we all have? Why choose a method that will never get us to our goal, when there is one that can and will?

P2: No, not a baby that has been born. The mother's right to her body is no longer the issue. When the baby is 6 months old, then the child's right to life doesn't come into direct conflict with the mother's rights.

Me: P3, if that is true why not do both? Education and giving woman reasons not to get pregnant and a law? Wouldn’t that give us the best results?

P2: Disposable income? What about being able to feed the children you have first? What about being able to attend college and work? What about not being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth? You make it sound like a flippant decision that loose women make lightly. I would disagree, and I think that above all, a woman has the right to decide if she is going to go through all of that or not. No matter her reasons, be they noble or foolish.

Me: P2, why does or how does the location of a child increase or decrease the Child’s right to life? This is actually interesting article on this topic http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2012/03/01/medethics-2011-100411 Basically The Journal of Medical Ethics has an article that states that the reason given for an abortion are no different than the arguments for after-birth abortions.

P3: As it stands right now, making it illegal would do more harm than good. But if we ever get to the point where all women have the financial and mental support to carry a pregnancy to term, and pregnancy was never a life-threatening condition, I might be able to get behind that. I just think that's still a long way off. In the meantime, I am coming at this from a purely practical perspective: the goal is fewer deaths, so I support the policies that achieve that result. Period.

P2: I think that's a ridiculous argument, actually. The mother has the right to decide whether she wants to have a baby or not. The state should not be able to decide that for her. The very real right to life of the baby are not made less real, it's just that the very real right of the mother are in direct opposition. The right of the mother to not have children is not in opposition to her child's right to life once it is born. Then she can put it up for adoption, have it raised by her parents (if they're willing), etc. It is ONLY when the child is still within her body, and there is NO way for both people's rights to be honored, that, sadly, hers take precedence.

Me: P2, I don’t know what mothers are make flippant decisions. I don’t know what they are thinking, but I can’t conceive of a reason why a mother should be able to kill her child. Nor do I think it is good policy of the government to make umpteen exceptions for a mother to take the life of her child.

P2: Well, I'll agree that exceptions are trying to have it both ways. If it's murder when you conceived consensually, it's still murder when rape or incest were the cause. But I do think, if a mother does not want to have a child, she should not be forced to do so.

Me: P2, but why does the location matter? You said it is her child. Is it an innocent life? We shouldn’t protect an innocent life simple based upon its location. Am I missing something?

P2: Yes. You are missing that the child's right to life is in direct opposition to the mother's right to her own body and future. Period. They are both very valid rights. It's a tragic situation. But they cannot, CAN NOT, both be satisfied. If she does not want to give birth, and the baby wants to be born, there is no way for them both to have their rights. Once the baby is out, there are many, many ways for them both to have their rights.

Me: P3, I think you are making my point, you are not pro-life. You are equivocating the term to mean something less than someone who is pro-life. You do think it is ok to take the life of an innocent human so long as it reduces the number of deaths. So, if we apply that logic we should have just given Germans more reasons not to kill Jews instead of stopping them with force? Because that would have worked. BTW lots of American men and woman died to protect the Jews right to life.

Me: P2, “child's right to life is in direct opposition to the mother's right to her own body and future.” I get that, I just don’t see the mother’s right to her body or future is greater than the life of her child. Being a parent is about sacrifice. I should ask what you mean buy future. Is that a nice way to wrap what is essential greed with a nice bow? I mean more disposable income over the life of another child, that seems selfish and greed based to me. I am not saying that all woman have that as a reason but I think greed will account for most of them. It is not mother’s right to life and her child’s right to life it is a mothers “future” verse the life of her child. I hate to call it greed because that sounds terrible on the mother’s part but I really seems to be correct.

P2: I don't think it's greed to want to have control over your own life, your own body, and your own reproduction. Perhaps you do. Her future? By that I mean, she doesn't want (more) children. (I put more in parenthesis because some women who have abortions already have children, others do not, and I want to acknowledge both possibilities.) I don't think it's greed to want to have some control over your life and your future. Being a parent is indeed about sacrifice. What if you do not want that sacrifice? What if you do not want to be a parent? You have that right. It's a complicated, sticky issue. But to use the term 'innocent' every time you talk about the child, and the term 'greed' when you talk about the mother, brings a level of blame into it that I do not think belongs here. There is no need to blame a woman for getting pregnant, which is a pretty bow for what I'm hearing. But when it comes down to it, at a very base level, I think that a woman's greed when it comes to how she is going to live her own life takes precedent over the right of her unborn child to be born. Anything we can do to make abortions less common is a good thing, short of denying women the right to have control over their bodies and their reproductive life.

Me: P2, I don’t have problems with woman having control over their lives, bodies or reproductive provided it does not take the life of an innocent child. The reasons you gave above all seem to be selfish (a border and better term than greed). You are trying to change the terms you use to make it sound better. “Reproductive life” sounds better than killing her “child”. You are the one who call it a child. That’s call it what it is and stop trying to whitewash what we are talking about. I think a child’s right to life supersedes any right of the mother short of the mother’s right to life.

P2: So we agree that it's a matter of rights. We just disagree about whose rights are paramount. I think it's the mother's rights, you think it's the child's. That's fine. So, to your original question, what issue is most important to you? This discussion was mainly about social issues, but I'm not sure you ever had the chance to say what was most important to you. Social, economic, or foreign?

P2 (And I don't think I've whitewashed anything...I called it a child, I said I think that exceptions are just politics. I think ending a life is tragic. But I think forcing a woman to carry an unwanted child to term and go through labor is tragic as well.)

Me: I am grateful that you are so candid about your position. I am just surprised that you don’t see something wrong with the idea that the rights of some people supersede the right to life to an innocent child. I appreciate your stance, but I feel it is important that someone stand up for those innocent children that cannot exercise their rights.

Me: I don’t think the killing of a child as tragic, I think it is wrong or even evil. Life is full of choices and all choices have consequences. Taking the life of a child should not be an alternative to avoid the consequences of our choices.

P2: What about rape and incest, where the consequences have no relation to the mother's choice? I've said what I think, but you're saying that abortion is an alternative to consequences of choices.

P2: And I feel very strongly about this issue, and I do appreciate your passion towards your view. I wish there were a way to bring our views in line with each other. Alas, it can not be. Women cannot have the full right to control their bodies if abortion is illegal. The lives of unborn children cannot have the full right to be born if women have the right to control their bodies. That's the tragic part, to me, that there is truly no good answer. At the end of it all, I am absolutely unwilling to say that a woman who has had an abortion is evil.

Me: I was wondering why that had not come up yet. Fist this is a logical fallacy taking a minority event as justification for all. Logic issues aside. Do you think it right to punish a child for the crimes of the father?

P2: I didn't bring it up because I don't think it's a real issue. As I said before, I think it's politics. But you brought the matter of choices, and consequences of those choices up, so I wondered what you felt.

Me: So, do you think it right to punish a child for the crimes of the father?

Me: P2, you are right everyone can’t have every right because it will infringe on the rights of others. Our country was founded on the principle that you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness provided it does not infringe on the right s of others. This is the essence of the libertarian platform. The child’s rights are being infringed. This is the most basic of all rights and it can’t be superseded otherwise all other rights are meaningless. If you could see that it is the most basic and necessary right I think you would see that it should not be superseded.

P2: I see your point, but I disagree with your conclusions. I was raised in a libertarian, pro-choice household. The majority of libertarians are pro choice, because they value individual rights. I don't consider myself libertarian any more, and haven't for a long time. But I cut my teeth on the principles of it, and I understand it. I'm not saying you don't, just that I do understand the issues and the politics involved. Thanks for a spirited discussion tonight, it's been a lot more reasoned than that on the TV, that's for sure. :)

Me: I know many Libertarians live a contradiction. They have not followed their stated ideals to their logical conclusion.

P2: Well, your interpretation of the logical conclusion. Not theirs. I don't think all logical conclusions are the same.

Me: Without the right to life no other right matter. We can just kill people and they never have an opportunity to practice any other right. What is tragic is there is a war against women, especially the unborn women who never get any rights.

Me: Please tell me how my logical conclusion is wrong. I am a rational person, I can handle it. If libertarians believe that we have the right to do as we wish provided we don’t infringe upon the rights of others, how does the pro-life position not follow? The only way that follows is if all rights are viewed as equal. However, other than in this discussion I have never had anyone make the claim that the right to buy a car supersedes the right of a life. Or a less drastic example of the right to free speech supersedes the right to life. In fact, our government recognizes you don’t have the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater because someone might get hurt or killed. In other words, their right to life and safety (Basic human needs) supersedes the free speech rights of the individual yelling “fire”.

Me: To clarify and put it as plainly as possible. If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a child, no justification for abortion is adequate.

P2: I didn't say your logical conclusion was wrong, so much as that it does not agree with mine or that of the pro-choice libertarians. I don't think anyone said the right to buy a car, or the right to free speech, superseded the right to life, though certainly people have died for the right to free speech, as you well know, as you have served our country in the military, which I have not. I do think you're rational and can handle it, I just think that one person's logical conclusion is not the same as another person's. In my opinion, the right to liberty over my own body supersedes the right of the UNBORN child. A woman should not be forced to carry a life inside of her that she does not want. That is the argument. The right to life of the unborn child does NOT supersede the woman's right to freedom. The definition of unborn child = person is mostly semantics, and I don't like to get pulled into that argument, because I can see both sides. That unborn child, fetus, embryo, would be a person if they were allowed to be born, and to pretend otherwise is fallacious. But to say that the unborn child has the same rights as the woman carrying it is wrong. I understand that you do not agree on this, but that is how I feel.

Me: I don’t think logic is not the issue it is the presuppositions that are different. Logic is not opinion based where presuppositions are. Logic is just the tool.

Me: I think we are going back in a circle now, but maybe we did not explore the depth of this issue. I don’t see the location of the child as an adequate justification for taking the life of a child. Giubilini and Minerva make a convincing argument that any argument for abortion is valid for what they call “after birth abortion”. Their argument is valid and logically flows even if it is disturbing. I don’t see a difference of location to be compelling and neither do they. So why is it different for you?

P2: See, we're never going to agree. You do not see the location of the child as being the crux of the issue, and I see it as the entire issue. I disagree with their argument and find it silly. It is different because a woman is being forced to carry a life form inside of her body that she does. not. want. That's liberty. That's privacy. That is the entire issue.

P4: Interesting discussion. So if a baby is aborted at 7 months it does not have the right to life. But if it is born prematurely at 7 months it does? Isn't that rather arbitrary?

P2: Not arbitrary. At 7 months pregnancy, it is still inside the mother, and her rights take precedent. If it is born, her rights are no longer infringed by the baby's rights. But abortions of 7 month old fetuses are extremely rare, and generally involve cases when the baby would not survive, or the mother would not survive, or both. They are not generally done because a woman has decided that she doesn't want to have a baby.

P4: The rarity of something is irrelevant to whether it is right or wrong. The same sustainable baby still lives or dies at the whim of the mother for any reason. By definition - arbitrary. And what I get from this discussion is that women get abortions not because of what is happening inside their bodies but of the consequences of what happens outside their bodies i.e.being responsible for the baby. So the right being claimed is not really about their bodies but about the ability to decide whether to be a mother or not. Which I think is a different discussion.

Me: P2, it has gone from a child to a “life form" now. Either way it is a distinct life form or human being than the mother. It is not the mothers body that is being killed it is a child. This is a biological fact.

Me: P2, so let me see if I can sum up your position. It is ok for a mother to take the life of her child only when it is in her uterus. Any other time or place is wrong. Because any right of the mother outweighs the life of her child only in utero. After the child is born the right of the child to life supersedes all of the mother’s rights. Is that your position?

P2: Yes, that is my position.

Me: It seems in your position a great amount of rights transfer only after birth. The child has no rights until it is born?

P2: Not if the child's rights are in violation with the mother's. It's not that I don't think the child has any rights...it's that when the choice has to be made between hers and the baby's, hers take precedence.

Me: What kinds of rights does the unborn child have then?

Me: What I don’t get is how you or anyone justifies that birth is the critical factor. Who’s to say Giubilini and Minerva are wrong? You pick birth they pick a few months after and Alex Sanger even longer after birth. All three use the same arguments. So picking the time i.e. birth, seems arbitrary to me. How are your arguments different from Giubilini and Minerva or Sanger?

P2: Sigh. Can we agree to disagree here? It seems to me like you are a man who really enjoys political arguments, and I am a woman who really, really does not. I have tried to make my point, which is that I think the woman has rights while she is carrying the baby. Her rights come first. That is all. Giubilini and Minerva are arguing a stupid point, trying to trap people who believe in a woman's right to choose into saying that abortion is murder, and therefore, murder of anyone who is dependent upon them is fine. And how is my arguing that a woman has the right to control her body the same as someone arguing that it's ok to kill a 6 month old baby? It's not the same at all. The critical factor is, it's HER BODY, HER CHOICE.

Me: P2, I think we agree that we disagree. BTW I appreciate your taking the time to discuss this frankly and honestly without malice. I like to discuss issues because that is how we learn and avoid counterproductive conflicts. I would like to add one final point if I could. Your last statement is just simple not accurate. It is not HER BODY that is the issue here, it is the CHILD’S BODY that is. Second, her choice for what? Choice sounds so noble and liberty affirming. Well until you realize the CHOCIE is to take the life of an INNOCENT CHILD. HER CHOICE is meaningless without what the CHOICE is really about. This becomes a misleading shell game of words. I guess you are right we will just disagree, hopefully someone else finds these posts helpful as they carefully consider and weigh both side of this issue.

Me: “Slavery consists in being subject to the will of another…” Thomas Paine

A photo posted on facebook showing gay activists hold a sign that says, “With the divorce rate as 50% worry about your own marriage.”

What follows is the comments to this post. Notice Deuteronomy 22:28–29 comes up in the discussion.

The Poster commented:

For the life of me, I cannot understand this argument. The argument seems to go:
A: A lot of marriages end unhappily therefore:
B: The definition of marriage ought to be altered so as to include relationships which do not involve a wife.
Sort of like the argument, "Some people abandon their dogs or abuse them. Therefore, nobody should object to the definition of "dog" being altered such that Burmese pythons are included as dogs." I mite protest "there is absolutely no way pythons are dogs"

Me

If 50% of marriages end in devoice, why do they want to get married? Do they like paying lawyer’s fees? Dissolutions of same-sex relationship are actually higher than 50%.

Person 1

"Nobody has the right to properly define any sort of contract between two people unless they're part of that contract"
More libertarian nonsense. What about unconscionable contracts? What about when intense pressure has been exerted? What about contracts with minors?

What about orphaned or abandoned children whose parents have no will about them?

Me

Nothing stops same-sex people from having a marriage. The only laws in place simply do not recognize them. However, some states recognize civil unions. In short there is nothing to legalize, they can do it now if they want. The real agenda is force religious and conservatives into acceptance of their lifestyle and to bring lawsuits because they want it defined as a civil right. Pro-gay groups have already filed lawsuits against Churches and in Canada speaking at Church, as if it is a sin, is considered a hate crime. Good bye 1st amendment and hello to the fashionable police state.

BTW the government does not recognize marriages between siblings, 1st cousins, adults and minors, mothers or fathers and their children, or marriages of more than two people. All the arguments for same-sex marriage apply equally to these other forms of marriage as well. Should we allow them too?

Person 1

I'm about to throw in the towel and say it doesn't matter. To steal from Edward Peters's quip on a related subject, flawed arguments for gay marriage persist, perhaps because good arguments don't exist. The premises they are built on are so deeply ingrained and so far out of whack it's pulling teeth just to have a discussion on the subject. #nohopeformankind

Person 2

While the far-left gay marriage crusaders certainly do want to force societal acceptance of not just their lifestyle, but their marriages, more reasonable gay marriage advocates think it's reasonable for two consenting adults to enter into any contract, provided it isn't done through coercion, wasn't reached while one or both parties was intoxicated, or a slew of other things that apply to literally every other contract. I don't really think churches should be forced to accept gay marriages, but I think the government should recognize it like any other contract-- one that it will enforce.

Person 3

Any contract is between two consenting parties, and, with individuals, two persons which have reached an age of consent, and that consent must be proven to be authentic, and not obtained by force or threat of force/repercussions. If a party wishes to prove, in a court, that their consent was gained after use of force or threat of force, then the contract is void.

As to relations between relatives, I think that it's unethical just because, in most situations where it occurs with siblings or with parents/spawn, it was obtained through force, established by threat of force and maintained by threat of force, or is replete with the same psychological guilt/shame games employed by salesmen, cult missionaries, etc, and is questionable for that purpose.
And, so, those are also void.

But, I can't find any religious justification for any ban on inbreeding, pedophilia, or cousin-banging... Especially not in the Book of Genesis, or anywhere in the Bible that forms a major part of Christian theology as a whole.

Person 4

Most of the talk against gays comes from the part of the Bible that also teaches us not to get tattoos, not to let women on their periods back into the house, not to eat pork and other stuff. As soon as you stop doing all of these things, we can concentrate on what two adults want to do to prove their love.

Me

You can find prohibitions in the Bible. The principles are all there plus Jesus outlines in Matthew 19 God's view on marriage which is strictly one man, one woman, for life. In addition, for the entire 2000 years of church history this traditional marriage has been upheld, uncontested I might add. Judaism before and after has upheld the same view as well, plus every other culture and religion. Even the homosexual Spartans still kept marriage between a man and a woman. If religion and culture do not provide enough reason just remember that any same-sex relationships are evolutionary dead ends. Why should the government now overturn all that? For what 2% of the population at the most? Just so they can force their lifestyle on everyone. Zach Wahls even betrayed his true intentions in his speech when he said the government cannot define his family. A family which, by the way, he already had. The government didn’t stop his mothers from having a family. So why does he want the government to recognize it, especially since in his own words the government can’t define his family?

Traditional marriage has not been done for a long period of time for illogical reasons. Don’t misrepresent people’s position. Marriage is the solid foundation for any society. It was done to protect children, to acclimate children to people of both sexes while they are being raised in their formative years and it was to procreate and create the next generation. PS I am not saying gays can’t have whatever they want to call a family as a family.

Person 2

What makes a religious justification for opposing gay marriage different than a religious justification from doing something else that's way worse and prescribed in the Bible, like marrying rape victims? As Santorum said (rather eloquently) in his opposition to gay marriage (the only halfway intellectual one I've ever heard), if gay marriage advocates are going to say gay marriage is OK using the "people who love eachother" argument, they have to show why gay people loving eachother is different from siblings loving eachother or a group of people loving eachother; likewise, if you use a religious justification for opposing gay marriage, you have to show why the opposition to gay marriage is an OK thing to pull from the Bible, but Deuteronomy 22:28–29 isn't.

The government shouldn't be in the business of dealing with evolutionary dead-ends. If it was, it'd be totally legit to abort kids with Tay-Sachs without the more serious ethical discussion that it deserves, not to mention a series of other problems, mostly abortion-related. The government even touching what makes something evolutionarily sound with a 10 foot pole is a nice recipe for tyrannical government, something that both conservatives and liberals ostensibly agree is not a good thing.
Because something has been done for a long time is a completely illogical reason to continue doing it (though it tends to be the most consistent conservative refrain with regards to social issues). I'm sure I don't have to give examples.

Person 5

Marriage is not a contract. It is supposed to be a covenant. Contracts are based on distrust.

Me

Actually, I don't have to justify a Bible passage that is taken out of context.

Person 2

How about Deuteronomy 22:22. That's actually completely *in* context. I mean, I've read the Bible, and I do my best not to bloviate about it absent any kind of knowledge. Thankfully, I can find the full text of the King James online, and I can also read it in original Greek. Please, tell me how I took Deuteronomy 22 out of context. It seems pretty clear in context to me.

Person 3

Let's compare this to the duck test: If it looks like a family, and it acts like a family, and it lives like a family, then it's probably a family. And if it's probably a family, they might as well receive the same legal recognition as a family, and the same tax breaks.
If it looks like a marriage, or could be a marriage by common-law, or could even be a religious marriage depending on what religion you're a part of, then it might as well be a marriage.

Also, Donald... It's a book whereupon a series of sects and new religious movements have been formed based on differing interpretation. You don't have to justify any Bible passage that you feel is taken out of context, because, in the eyes of someone else, they don't always feel the need to interpret the text in the same manner you've been interpreting it in.

Person 2

All's I'm saying is that not everything in the Bible is defensible. If you're going to take it as a justification for doing something, you are, by logic, required to disambiguate it from other acts that rely solely upon the same justification. That requires using more logic, not avoiding the actual issue by calling my verse as being taken out of context.

Me

Ok Deuteronomy is not originally in Greek. Deuteronomy was a civil code for Israel that was a theocracy. Are we Israel? Are we a theocracy? Is it 3500 years ago? NO, NO. NO. Context.

Person 3, there is a science to interpreting the text. We have to go back to the author’s original intent and take the text in context. What you propose is that meaning comes from the hearer and not the speaker. This relativistic understanding decays to the point that I can interpret your post as your intent to give me one million dollars.

Person 3, Tax breaks? What tax breaks? There has actually a marriage penalty tax that is scheduled to return in 2013.

Person 2

Derp, yeah it's in Hebrew. I meant the New Testament in Greek.
"Are we Israel? Are we a theocracy? Is it [2000] years ago? NO, NO. NO. Context."
I mean...unless you're referring to Rome with regards to context.
EDIT: But I'm glad you used that choice of response-- that's kind of what I was trying to get at.

Me

Deuteronomy was written by Moses 3500 years ago. Jesus explains that God original intend was for one man and one woman for life. He even says God made provision for divorce in the law, to protect woman, because people were doing it anyway. Same thing with marriage of rape victim. It was not to promote it but as any law goes it was to deter and punish. You rape someone you are going to have to support her for the rest of your life. Deterrent and punishment. Context yet again.

Person 2

Are you taking the New Testament, then, to be more applicable due to it's creation either between 0-32 AD or 325 AD (Council of Nicea)? I guess the base question at play here is: If the Old Testament is less applicable due to its historic context, then what religious sources (other than general "tradition") do you use to bolster your argument against gay marriage?

Me

Provisions in the law to protect woman and punish and deter wrong doers does not mean God wanted or condoned such behavior. This is evidenced by Jesus explanation of Old Testament divorce in Matthew 19. In context Jesus explains in Matthew 19 that the original and only intent God had for marriage and he gets that from Genesis. God’s intent, in context of the Bible as a whole and explained to us by Jesus in Matthew 19 and understood by the church for 2000 years. Not to mention all the other logical reasons they had during that time as well.

It is all applicable in context. Jesus was kind enough to explain it as well.

Person 6

Dang...love who ever you want. Just don't try to force the world to approve of your choices.

Me

They can love who they want and I will defend their right to do so. I don’t think that myself or the State should be involved in their relationship. The state should neither deny nor endorse same-sex marriage. Personally, I will not be bullied into calling the sin homosexuality something it is not. Truth is not built on consensus or popularity. At the same time, as a Christian, I will love homosexuals in accordance to 1 Corinthians 13. Calling an action sin and still loving the sinner is not contradictory. In fact, if I truly do love them I will not hold back vital information.

Person 7

I don't think marriages ending unhappily has anything to do with wanted equal rights.
Also marriage is not definitionally between one man and one woman. That's silly and is made up.

Me

What do you mean? They do have equal rights! They can marry anyone they want and live as a family. They have the exact same rights that I do. For example I can’t marry my first cousin and neither can they. The only laws out there are by states that have passed laws prohibiting states from recognizing same-sex marriage. Nothing in any law stops them from entering into a contract or civil union etc.

It is funny how everyone wants to call it a civil rights issue. I guess they hope people don’t actually think about it. I admit many people are intimidated by it because it implies bigotry or intolerance. It is a great way for people to feel like they have won an argument, however, it is intellectually shallow.

This summer I took a work related trip to New York City.  This was my first trip to New York City and kept some notes about my experience outside of work.

The Sunday before I had work I was traveling to New York and my layover in Denver went from 2 to 5 hours and almost ended in staying the night in Denver.  Luckily with only 20 minutes to spare we were able to leave Denver before it was too late to leave.  I guess there was severe weather on the East Coast and a few earlier flights were diverted.  I did see an Orthodox Jewish family on my flight to New Jersey.  What seemed funny to me was the men were dressed in traditional black and white and their wives were dressed like they were on Jersey Shore.  It was a stark contrast.

Monday after work I went to see the top of the Empire State Building. I  Bought tickets on the sidewalk that gave us a free tour of the bay as well.  The ‘front of the line’ tickets were not worth the extra bucks, it only gave us front of the line privilege through security.  Which is the first of many lines I waited in.  I recommend going hear it has one of the best views of the City.  I finished the day off with dinner at a restaurant at the bottom of the Empire State building called Heartland Brewery.  I had a great gazpacho soup there. 

Tuesday for lunch I had Chipotle.  It was located at the base of the Empire State Building.  It was raining like crazy that day and I got soaked just going one block for lunch.

After work Tuesday, I went for a ride on a boat to see New York and Statue of Liberty. Turns out the Statue of Liberty is closed for repairs now, so I could not go actually see it up close.  Our boat did go right next to it for us to get some pictures.  It was nearly sunset, so I did get a few good pictures. 

Then I went to see things people don’t want to see at time square. (Trust me you don’t want to see it) 

Finally, made my way to Rockefeller Center and had a late dinner at the Rockefeller café.  I sat outside in the area where the ice rink normally is in the winter.  I had gazpacho soup here as well and liked it better than the one from Heartland Brewery.  But both were excellent.  On way back went to the hotel I went through Grand Central Station. All in all it was a good opportunity to see much of New York.

Wednesday I had lunch at Kunjip a Korean restaurant on 32st.  Great little hole in the wall that was packed.

Wednesday, after work I went down to see the 9/11 memorial and pay my respects.  It was unlike other monuments I have gone to. Different in that people were very respectful and quite like it was a spiritual thing.  It seemed more like a pilgrimage than a tourist site.  It was a humbling and emotional experience.

After than I went by Trinity Church, Wall Street, the Bull at Bowling Green and the WWII memorial. Then I took the ferry to Staten Island and back.

Then I went to 30 Rock again and went to Top of the Rock and took some great night time photos.  The city that never sleeps; what a sight.

Finally, I had New York pizza for a late dinner at some café along the way to my hotel.  Somewhere along the line I lost my hotel key.  Their keys are actually keys and not cards.  I think when I had to go through security at the 9/11 memorial or at 30 rock.  (Turns out I found the key in my camera back two months later.)  Got to the hotel and told them I lost my key and they promptly gave me a spare, no questions asked, they didn’t even check my ID.

Thursday I had lunch at Jamba Juice and bought a pedometer.  I figured I could start tracking my steps since I have been walking a lot this week.

Thursday, after work, on the suggestion of locals, I went to China town, found what looked to be a clean restaurant to eat at when just as I walked up to the door, it was being closed by the health department.  Bummer.  However, I did dodge a bullet. 

After that I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and saw padlocks locked to the bridge. Turns out lovers will lock their lock to the bridge as a symbol of their commitment to one another and toss the key into the river.   I proceeded to checked out Dumbo and had Spaghetti and meatballs at Front Street Pizza.  It was great.  Then I took the East river ferry back to Manhattan, just made the last crossing to Wall Street.  Then I took a look at south street seaport, a mall on pier 17.  Then I called it a night.  Total, with walking to work and back was 17,000 steps.

Friday I walked down to 30 Rock again.  This was the third time on my trip to go down there.  I was going to stop by shops that were closed on the two other times I went.  I stopped by Coach and bout my wife something.  She loves Coach.  Then I went into the Lego store to check it out.  I walked back near my hotel and trough Grand Central Station again. 

I had a scheduled flight for early in the morning that was delayed for 4 hours causing me to miss me connector flight.  I ended up getting home that day but my bag didn’t make it until the next day.  All in all it was a great trip I really enjoyed New York, well other than the smell on the street.

You can see more pictures from my trip on: flickr.com

Naturalistic Worldview Discussion on Facebook

This is a discussion I had with a friend on facebook. I found that we had a good discussion and that I found the experience to be enlightening. My hope is that you will find it enlightening as well.

My Post:
I am at airport reading Scientific American, and came across an article that says that studies show sex for men can be life-prolonging. However, extramarital sex increases risk of sudden coital death. Apart from STDs man die from cardiovascular issues. Get this, the article says, guilt may play a role. Really, you think? Study confirms what we should know. I wonder how the naturalistic worldview explains this.

AC Comment:
Lol. I'm going to make a point with my wife that she needs to help save my life!
‎"Naturalistic worldview"??

Me:
A worldview that really has no basis for morality and thus guilt. I guess they feel it is a social construct. I don't know that is why I ask.

AC:
I think you mean a "nonreligious" worldview. If that's the case, then it's not that they don't utilize morality or ethics, it's just that they don't believe it's derived from a supernatural source. e.g. Take Yahwey out of the equation, and people don't suddenly think it's fine to then murder, rape, or cheat on their spouse. Humans evolved with a sense of cooperation and fair play, and it's a part of the reason why we made it to the top of the food chain.

Me:
There are Deist and Atheists that are naturalists. The naturalist worldview is really just how people answer the question of the boundary of the universe. In other words, there is nothing beyond the material of this Universe. Deists that are naturalists would hold that God is part of the fabric of the Universe.

The question I have is how does random chance and luck result in morals? Why and how does my DNA care about other people’s feelings? Morals are needed for our society but not for survival. This is what puzzles me.
Ok if they are created by man then they really are just subjective preferences on behavior. Why should I feel guilty if I don’t share a particular preference in behavior? Why is this are universal phenomenon?

AC:
It's not random. It's naturally selected among social animals. People who "play nice" with others had an easier time than those who didn't. Also, there are other primates who demonstrate cooperation and morals. I also read an article sometime ago that stated that children have a better survivial/developmental rate with monogamous parents.

Also, read "Superfreakonomics". Human altruism only goes so far. If this were divinely created, then there's a flaw.

Me:
Where is the flaw?

AC:
We're not more altruistic on things that wouldn't determine our destination in an afterlife.
Here's another question out of the blue: would Joe Pa's actions/inactions be held against him biblically?

Me:
AC there is a lot going on in your last comment. Let me see if I can unpack it a little. I don’t know if we can equate morality with altruistic behavior. Much of what animals do is based on reciprocity and can be attributed to being advantageous for survival. However, acts like that of a Japanese nuclear reactor working going in to fix a reactor are not based on reciprocity, especially when death is the known outcome.

I agree with you and think many (but not all) religious people are doing altruistic or good behavior in order to gain merit from an ultimate being or in an attempt to position themselves for the afterlife. I can only speak for myself as a Christian. I don’t do what is right because of a reward system. I do what is right because I know and understand how wrong, wrong is. Because I do believe there is evil and because I hate it, I avoid it. Have you ever notice what animals do with sick and lame animals or animals with birth defects? They let them die. Why as humans do we do everything in our power to prolong the life of a child with downs syndrome or other genetic defects? How is it in any way advantageous for society or the survival of the human species? As a Christian I see them as God sees them, valued and loved. A better definition of altruistic behavior is taking care of them at great expense, work and possibly suffering for me or society without reciprocity. I just don’t see animals doing this. I just don’t see picking fleas off the back of another primate as even close to similar.

As for Joe Pa I am not familiar with him. I will have to look him up and get back to you.

Oh you mean Joe Paterno? Biblically, just as in our legal system, things can be wrong based upon action or inaction.
I have not read what his alleged actions or inactions were. So I can’t speak to specifics. What do you think?

AC:

I wasn't touching on a "reward motive" for religious people; that's a completely different discussion. I was just referencing a chaper in "Superfreakonomics" whereby people will mostly avoid sharing fairly with others if given a chance. Nothing serious, as it's not against the 10 Comnandments, etc, but if an omnipotent god gave us our system of right and wrong/morality, wouldn't that aspect have been addressed? I guess you can say it's part of the golden rule, but breaking it won't keep you out of heaven, so it doesn't seem a needed aspect for the whole free will calculation of where you go after death. (Karma addresses this though, but that's a different belief system.)

As for taking care of the geneticly less fortunate, humans aren't perfect, but do we do a better job compared to other animals because of desire, or does it play more to ability/intelligence/technology? I think we do more because we're able to do more. Animals aren't slouches though. There's a YouTube video which shows a dog risking it's life to rescue another dog stuck on a freeway. There are also reported incidents of one dog leading another blind dog with a stick, a dog rescuing a human child from a house fire, or a police dog stepping in to save it's vulnerable human against an armed attacker. Dogs can't be "saved" religiously, so why do they do that? Dogs are a social pack animal however, and are similar in that regard to humans. It's part of the reason why the two species get along so well. There are also primates who will help feed their sick, etc., so it looks like it's less of a human only trait.

As for Joe Pa, I'm not an expert on the bible, and I don't know of any passages off hand that would condemn his choosing to look the other way. I was just curious and thought you might be a source to ask. It also seems relevant to the current discussion since people uniformly feel he acted badly. (I do remember Lot(?) offering up his daughters to be ravaged by a crowd in order to protect an angel though. Not exactly father of the year material, or a condemnation of rape. Joe Pa could theoretically argue with St. Peter that the school was his equivalent of the angel...)

Dog Rescue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXXaRECHHT4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rWP1O3HbAs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.wndu.com/hometop/headlines/98083109.html

Dolphins support sick or injured animals, swimming under them for hours at a time and pushing them to the surface so they can breathe. - Davidson College, biology department (2001) Bottlenose Dolphins - Altruism, article retrieved March 11, 2009.
Bonobos have been observed aiding injured or handicapped bonobos. - October 7, 2005, Hour Two.

Humans, like animals, are also influenced by kin selection, so we would also have to look at nonrelated morality/altruism. Are we profoundly better than other animals? Perhaps, but look at a homeless shelter or orphanage. Also, when money's tight, what's the first thing to go in budget cuts: social services for the vulnerable or needy.

Me:

We can argue all day that the examples of possible animal morality. I still see them at a level different than that of human self-sacrifice, with known outcomes. I can see we could argue either way ad naseum. So let’s take it from the angle of gratuitous evil. Do animal act immorally to the same magnitude as do humans? I mean like, Pol Pot, Vlad Tepes, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ted Bundy, etc… Animal don’t kill for ideological reasons. They kill to eat or protect. Lions don’t decide one day that all the monkeys must die because they are different. Only moral agents do this level of evil.

About sins of omission for Joe Pa see James 4:17 "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."
I should clarify what I mean by moral agent. That being when one can choose to do or not, what one ought. This means one can choose self-sacrifice (altruistic) or gratuitous evil, either of which goes beyond normal animal behavior.

AC:
Good versus evil in animals isn't much of a distinction as it still runs up against the same problem of ability/intelligence/technology. e.g. In order to have an "animal Hitler" you'd need a verbal form of communication, a written language, and a system of economics, etc. It's like saying (erroneously) that humans are the only species that can use tools because no other animal has built a suspension bridge. We're at the top of the food chain for a reason, but you need to set your sights lower with other species and focus on what's within their capabilities.

With that being said, animals do demonstrate their propensity for "evil". For instance, let's look at chimps:
"'Demonic Males' (1997) discusses new evidence that killer instincts are not unique to humans, but rather shared with our nearest relative, the common chimpanzee. [...] Besides killing of conspecifics, Wrangham 'includes infanticide, rape, and regular battering of females by males' as a part of this inherited legacy of violent behaviors shared by humans and chimpanzees." (1997:108).

Also researchers have shown that there are "cultural" differences between different groups of chimps and that this has been a source of conflict, as resource scarcity and female availability have been ruled out in specific instances:
"Research in recent years (2006) has focused on chimpanzees and other monkeys who murder their own. Field studies in Tanzania have demonstrated that chimpanzees will attack and kill other chimpanzees, and brutally so.
In one study (that took place over a five-year period), a group of male chimpanzees directed attacks on a splinter group of chimps that had broken away from the larger group.

Each member of this splinter group was beaten and subsequently died. Young male chimps initiated these attacks, usually using their hands, feet and teeth, though sometimes stones were thrown, as well."
Lastly, self sacrifice requires knowledge that something will definitely kill you. Since animals have only a comparatively rudimentary knowledge of risk, we're back to the suspension bridge argument. Even so, you have to admit that the dog in the video rescuing another on the freeway is at the very least knowingly jeopardizing his life to save another. (Otherwise, why go through the effort of pulling the other dog off?)

With these types of observations, I think you can see how someone with a "naturalistic worldview" can posit that our sense of morality evolved along with us, like our culture and technology, and could still harbor guilt about cheating on a spouse. Our culture places value on fidelity, and that can exist outside of religion.

Me:
A dog on its own trying to save another dog is easily explained in self-serving terms. Dogs, for protection, always hunt in packs. A lone dog would try to keep members of the pack alive, if the pack is low in numbers as it aids in survival. If there was a pack of ten dogs we don’t know that any of them would have saved the wounded dog, especially if saving the dog would be a detriment to the pack and by extension individual survivability. This is a plausible explanation and really does not advance the argument in either direction.

I agree that humans are different. However, our ability to choose to go against our fight or flight response is different not in magnitude but in kind. What happens when a fire fighter runs into a building to save someone? The chemicals in his body tell him or her to run the other way. Yet, in his or her mind they think about another person possibly dying, compassion or sense of duty overrides their natural and physiological reaction. He or she then makes a choice to run into the burning building; into harm’s way. As far as we know no animal contemplates the ramification of their actions and chooses actions that in some instances will be a detriment to themselves and other times a benefit. Sometimes it is a benefit or a determinate the specious as a whole. The point is animals don’t need technology or culture; they need moralistic thinking that goes above and beyond mere survival.

Another example: Are primate brutal, yes, but not the same kind as humans. I am not talking about technological advancement either. Humans not only are brutal but often make sport of it and in some cases enjoy causing pain on other humans. Humans do unspeakable things that go well beyond the brutality of anything in the animal kingdom. This is how I know we humans are different in kind and not in magnitude from animals. Animals have the ability to harm others for fun but don’t. When food is plentiful you won’t see apes killing young primates because they are an imposition or because they want more bananas than they need. Apparently only humans do those sorts of things.

A materialistic worldview would say genetics causes our morals. However, genetics can’t be the cause of our morals if we can choose to suppress them. This ends in a very nice mess of determinism making any moral code immoral. It would be cruel to impose punishment when it is not possible for a person to react in a different way than as dictated by their genetic makeup. The naturalistic worldview however does not suffer from this contradiction; they have cultural evolution as the alternative. Memes instead of genes become the carrier of moral codes. However, this really deteriorates into moral relativism. In which case, whose rules should we follow? The cultural norm? Which culture? Do different cultures evolve different morality? We can’t justify killing Nazi’s if they were following their own moral code. We all know it was wrong and they even seemed to know they were wrong. What is more intriguing to me is that we seem to agree what is good behavior and what is bad behavior, across all cultures. I wonder if we would evolve with these definitions apart from our religious heritage. If it is a meme that has served us well, why deny it? If not, why are we in a hurry to cast off the shackles? The only worldview that makes sense of the world we live in is the theistic worldview. It posits a moral code that is above us. A code that tells us that people are valuable and that if we can do go we have a responsibility to do it. For the theist it was their duty to stop the Nazi’s even at the cost of thousands of lives. For the evolutionist there is no logical reason to fight the Nazi’s and every reason to join them. Why not? Nazi’s sought to take random chance out of the evolutionary equation and take control of our next evolutionary steps. Why leave our evolution to chance? We do this all the time when we breed animals. After all what are humans in the naturalistic or materialistic worldview? We are only animals or a random selection of atoms.

AC:
I'm not in agreement that an "evolutionist" would refrain from wanting to stop the Nazis, (Welcome back from the east coast, BTW ;-P) as religion isn't needed to place value on the individual. E.g. To be extreme, I don't see Richard Dawkins reported as a serial killer or holding values contrary to your own. Also, I think you're paying too much deference to the theist view. Without a theist view, why would the nazi's hate the christ-killing jews, etc. Also, why were Republicans against Bill Clinton intervening in the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia? (Aren't republicans supposed to be the party of religious values which place morality over base politics?) Also, not all gods agree on values. The west has (slowly) come to welcome women as equal actors, but in Saudi Arabia the female Olympic athletes were forced to walk behind the men and were referred to back home as prostitutes. While a lack of ethnocentrism is good for anthropology, a person who commits an honor killing in the west demonstrates the limitations of tolerance as we will not sanction it, even if their religion/culture does. Nor do we allow the killing of "abominable" homosexuals, etc.

Going back to animals, I agree that we'll just spin our wheels if we simply go back and forth over particular animal examples. So rather than narrow the issue (examples of good or evil), let's broaden it instead. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I understand your position to be that humans have something (morality/altruism) that animals don't, and this seemingly appeared on it's own. My position, on the otherhand, is that animals do have that and that humans can better express it because of particular evolutionary advances to the species. If your view is correct for the sake of argument, then that would appear to be the only example of it, and (to me) its status as an outlier should raise some red flags. Take language for example. Humans have an elaborate spoken language due to changes to our vocal cords that primates did not develop. We can sing, recite poetry, etc. Does that then mean that humans are the only species that have language? No. Animals can still communicate with one another even though they can't form words. Primates can and do communicate to each other, the same with whales, dolphins, dogs, etc. Primates can even be taught to communicate with each other and humans through sign language. Can humans communicate better than animals? Yes. Are animals incapable of getting their point across? No. (Just ask any dog owner.) However no man, nor any species, is an island. Traits don't suddenly appear out of the blue, and you can always trace its development from some earlier species, or its codevelopment in others. I don't see altruism any different than language; humans are better at expressing it, but it's a tall order to show that it's uniquely human.

Me:
I am not saying an atheist like Dawkins can’t have morals. Obviously he does. In reality, Dawkins has just accepted the morals of the culture he is in, which happens to have strong Judeo–Christian roots. However, that is not what I don’t understand. My question really centers around the grounding of those morals. There seems to be two choices, one where morality is a product of evolution and is genetically coded in us or it is a product of individual’s preferences. (Unless you know of another source?) It seems the atheist/naturalist is on the horns of a dilemma. The source or grounding of morality is either deterministic or relativistic. If deterministic, then everyone is born the way they are, which makes for a great criminal defense but practically leaves us devoid of true justice. The other horn of the dilemma leaves us with a relative sea of morals with no solid ground to base anything on. Not to pay too much pay too much deference to a theistic approach but it does not suffer for this particular dilemma. As you have indicated the theistic position suffers from inconsistencies and hypocrisy, however that is another debate.

BTW thanks for the debate I have found it enlightening and am glad people can still discuss things civilly.

About the animals, I think my hang-up is on choice. We obviously have choice where I don’t know we can prove that animals are capable of thinking out their actions and the impact of those choices. While I will admit your explanation is possible, the need for choice in any moral system seems to be a stumbling block for me to think it is probable. Who knows, maybe someday science will be able to tell us what dogs think. At least we seem to agree there is a difference, the question is it a difference in kind or degree.

Lecture Notes Skeptics and Believers Part 1

Skeptics and Believers, The Great Courses

I am embarking on a study of the religious debate in the Western intellectual tradition. The course is called, ‘Skeptics and Believers,’ the professor is Tyler Roberts of Grinnell College and is produced by The Great Courses. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4670

As I go through this course, I plan to take notes, including questions and comments on the material. I will post them here to my blog.

Lecture 1 Religion and Modernity
Before I began listening to the lectures, I reviewed the professor’s notes and additional materials. I did notice a number of omissions. Notable Christian minds have been left from the debate, such as G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, William Lane Craig, and Alvin Plantinga.

Notes:
Professor Roberts explains that the scope of his lectures spans from the 1600’s to today. He plans to talk about those who defend religion and the skeptics who seek to attack religion. Roberts goes on to explain that starting in the 1600’s, there was a movement to view religion as a separate sphere of life from the public sphere. Over the last 400 years religion has move slowly into the private sphere and slowly out of the public sphere. This decline of religion in the west is called the Secularization Theory. Some believe it is an inevitable outcome of modernity and some people feel modernity has failed. According to Roberts most prominent intellectuals of the mid-20th century they would say that modernity was progressing the slow decline of religion. Fifty years later, most would say that religion is now at the center of the ‘culture wars’ today. Roberts gives two examples of the culture wars; separation of church and state and stem cell research. Roberts explains that Evangelicals feel that religion is not simply a personal matter but plays a role in public life. I think I may have misunderstood Roberts. It sounds as if he feels that Evangelicals are parting from the Christian tradition by saying faith plays a part in public life as if history has Christian faith as a personal matter. I think it is the other way around, since the rise of modernity some Christians have slipped more and more into the idea that faith is something personal.

One aspect that I wish Roberts would have spent more time on how people’s worldview dictates they way they think and act. Most people don’t understand that worldviews are at the core of people’s belief systems and that it dictates how they see and interpret the world. Everything in your public or private life in intimately tied to your worldview. It really can’t be separated. A separate personal and public life is a lie and an illusion.

Questions

• Is religion an anti-reason hold-over from the past? Some people maybe even the majority of the anti-intellectual Christians might be. That does not mean religion is anti-reason.
• What is modern religious thought?
• Is faith based on revelation rational? Revelation is a type of evidence and the more creditable the revelation the more rational the faith.
• Is religious faith fleeing from reality or is courageously embracing reality? Faith is not the issue; someone can have faith for emotional or rational reasons.

New Atheism
To sum up the New Atheism; religion is irrational and dangerous and fundamentalism is the most dangerous form of religion. Fundamentalist read scriptures literally and are intolerant. Moderates are misinformed by treating faith and reason equally.

• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006)
• Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007)
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004)

Modernity

• Modernity starts in the west and traces its intellectual heritage form Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman intellectual thought.
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Dare to know. Use your reason.
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) often called the father of modern thought. His work Meditations (1641) sets the ground work. He thinks we should show God and souls exist from natural reason and not from faith.
• David Hume (1711-1776) sees reason as a means to criticize religious beliefs.
• Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) writes satires of philosophers who try to defend religion by reason. Kierkegaard supports defending religion by faith and revelation.
• Marx, Nietzsche and Freud

Definitions

• The enlightenment hoped that, because reason was common to all men, traditions of the past could be thrown off and all humanity could unite under reason.
• Modernism is a worldview that originates in western cultures that emphasizes reason, progress and universality. Post Modern is the view that the claims of modernity are too limited for the real world.
• Religious thought is the broad topic of thinking about religion. It can be subdivided into two parts. Thought from within religion it is theology and from the outside it is philosophy.

Same-sex Marriage Debate on Facebook

This is the discussion I had with Matt (not his or her real name) on Facebook on the issue of same-sex marriage. Matt had commented on a meme (info graphic that ridicules) that mischaracterized the Christian perspective and had commented that Christians had been PWND (owned). What follows is our discussion minus the other random comments from others not invested in the discussion.

My Comment:
“I have to admit it is a good rhetorical strategy to take things out of context and misrepresent the other view. Although I would not say anyone is PWND simply with empty rhetoric.”

Matt’s Comment:
“@Donald - As an honest, non-rhetorical question, what's being taken out of context here? The root of this photo (and similar items like it) seems to be that some fundamentalist Christians are selectively choosing what parts of scripture they will ignore, and which parts they will not. When I was growing up my family was stricter than most (we would not eat anything with cloven hoofs or shells, and let's just say that the sunset to sunset observation of the Sabbath was rough on the kids) but we never made our womenfolk cover their heads, and we never stoned anyone for adultery. In the US today it is not uncommon for politicians and religious leaders to use the Bible as a justification for denying rights and legal protection to homosexuals. If this part of the Bible is appropriate for modern times, what makes it different from the parts which those same politicians and religious leaders choose to ignore?”

My Reply:
“@Matt - I am not a Christina Fundamentalist nor do I play one on TV, so I really can’t speak for them. However, I see that context is the problem. People take texts from the Bible out of context and assume either that Christians support crazy ideas like those portrayed by graphics like this or they are ignoring certain texts. Careful Christian scholars are not selectively ignoring passages in the Bible, they are taking into account the broader context. (e.g. historical, socio-political, geographical, cultural, linguistic / grammatical, theological, and broader biblical context). My point is the graphic misrepresent their position, thereby creating a straw man they can call a hypocrite. (I didn’t even mentioning the problems with the first post or the logical contradictions in the reply. Note that there are problems on both sides. I even take issues with the original post.)

The Christian fundamentalist may very well be wrong, but this line of shallow rhetoric only deepens the divide. I think a better and more reasonable argument for replier can be made from the framework of the fundamentalist position without the need for emotional appeals. This would then create meaningful dialogue instead of hostility. Of course people on both sides of the debate would have to do their homework and discuss the issues with mutual respect and tolerance. (Note: tolerance means respecting someone’s opinion without acceptance; to disagree without being disagreeable) I guess it is easier to cast the proverbial stone then to take time to understand the complexities of the issue from both sides.

Unfortunately, well thought out ideas cannot fit into a sound bite and most people can’t focus long enough or are unwilling to spend the time to understand them. Obviously if you have read this far, then this would not be a criticism of you (the reader). ;-)
Coincidentally, I often call BS on both sides. Either the reaction is “don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up” or it is the far better “yes we need more civil discourse on this issue.”

To PWN someone with an emotional argument or attacking a straw man is not really a great victory. To defeating their arguments with sound reasons may not be as ostentatious as with empty rhetoric, but it is much more intellectually satisfying.”

Matt:
“Well said, and thank you for the thoughtful response. I would love to see deeper and more meaningful discourse all around here. When I look at the public discourse I see the conversation shown here on a micro scale, simply expanded to the macro scale. I have homosexual friends who have been in loving, committed relationships for longer than my wife and I have (we've been together for 20 years, and married for 16) and I have seen those friends suffer and struggle because our laws deny them the benefits and protections that my wife and I have been able to take for granted. When I see Christian scripture used to justify this inequality and discrimination, it baffles, saddens and angers me.

I'm interested in your take on whether "careful Christian scholars" are those who want to perpetuate the status quo. My interpretation is that the strictures against homosexuality are made as invalid by changes in the factors you list as are the dietary and/or fashion strictures, but I don't claim to be either careful or a scholar.”

Me:
We are in agreement, we need more thoughtful discourse. I would say that a carful Christian scholar is one that reads the Bible applies the appropriate interpretation methodology (hermeneutics) and from there derives their theology. What can happen is the theology is presupposed and applied to the text. This would then take passages out of context.

I can’t say that a carful Christian scholar will not see homosexuality as morally wrong. There are those who do debate this within the Church. Some see it as morally wrong and others that it is no different from the dietary restrictions and cleanliness laws of the Old Testament that were later removed in the New. (I want to be careful to limit this to a Christian view of the Old Testament; a Jewish view would be quite different.) I don’t know that I am careful enough to make a theologically sound argument either way.

What I can say is this, that some Christians treat homosexuality as the greatest of all abominations. I would argue that they are wrong (this would be more of an in-house debate between Christians). Even if it is morally wrong there is a much more complex issue at hand.

1. What role should Christian’s or anyone else’s moralities play in a participative government in a pluralistic society?
2. Whose morality should be used as the basis for law? Many people don’t know that not only can you legislate morality but it is actually the only thing you can legislate.
3. How do we protect people’s right to practice their beliefs? Don’t force your beliefs on me but I am going to force mine on you.
4. What role does and should the government play in marriage? Why have the Government involved at all?
5. Is this a civil rights issue? The government sees marriage is a licensed privilege not a right even in current legal marriages. This then gets into the issue of genetics, polygamy etc…
6. Domestic partnerships and equivalency
7. For the Christians, if government recognizes the marriage does that mean God has too or does?

The list goes on. I hope my point is clear that it is much more complex than most people get.

If we had to distill it down to one issue I would say the issue come down to acceptance. If you boil it all down to the real reasons I think homosexuals want acceptance and they won’t feel accepted until everyone accepts them the way they want to be accepted. (Good luck with that emotional desire.) I think everything else is smoke and mirrors for what is seen as a good cause. I admit I could be wrong. On the other side I think Christians fear they will be forced to accept something that is morally wrong for them and that homosexuals will cause their children to be homosexual. I don’t know that the fear is unfounded or not. Unfounded or not, I don’t think the current response of some Christians is helpful.

I went with my brothers and children to see The Amazing Spider-Man, this 4th of July. If you remember that Marvel/Stan Lee has done a number of reinterpretations of Spider-Man over the years, you won’t be surprised with this movie. This movie is not Spider-Man 4. It is much like the alternate timeline in the new Star Trek movies or the new Batman series. (Although the new Star Trek does have continuity with the old as an alternate time line that Batman and Spider-Man do not have.) This Spider-Man is a bit cockier than his alternate and he has mechanical webs (as in cartoon and comics) and not biological webs (as in the last 3 movies and some comics). Most people tell me they prefer the mechanical web. I like either type of web; in fact, I liked the previous movies and this one as well.

The moral of the movie was a bit different than the previous movies; however, the theme is still responsibility. If you remember form the previous movies the moral was “With great power comes great responsibility.” In this movie it is “If you can do good, it is not a choice, it is your responsibility.” There are subtle and interesting differences between the two. The movie plays heavy on the ethics of Transhumanism as well. This movie is a treasure trove to draw upon for philosophical, moral, and ethical discussions.

Finally, the cinematography was outstanding. There were a number of times, more than in most movies, where a still of the screen would be an awesome and powerful picture. We saw the movie in IMAX 3-D and it was well done. I give this movie 5 out of 5.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/

I was listening to a fascinating lecture on Therapeutic Apologetics by Dr. John Coe at Biola. The summary of the lecture is people either believe in something because of reason or emotions. This is my summary and does not do the philosophical, theological, or psychological explanations of Dr. Coe justice. He did not call them emotional baggage, although that is what I would call them, he called them causes.

People either have reasons or cause for the belief or unbelief in any particular thing. Most often it is a cause and not a reason. This is true for most people on most things. You can tell if someone holds a belief based on a cause and not reason by their avoidance or unwillingness to freely examine alternative explanations.

Here are a few definitions he gave. Wrap you mind around this!

Reasons for belief/disbelief
"(Q) is a reason for person (S) to belief that (P), when (Q) freely moves (S) mind to assent (P) and not based on prior psychological causes."

Causes of belief/disbelief
"When explanation for person (S) to believing (P) is due to some prior psychological experience resulting in desires and passions that then move the mind to assent, without reason or contrary to reason."

Dispositional knowledge
“Dispositional knowledge is suppressed knowledge that when given proper stimulus (S) will become consciously aware of (P).”

Reason gives us freedom and causes leave us in bondage to our psychological hang ups.

I would have said reason and emotion and not reason and causes are foundations of our belief or disbelief. Or I think you could say rational or irrational. Maybe that makes it to simplistic. This is one of those topics where you sort of understand the concept from a basic understanding but once you start digging into the complexities it seems to get deep fast.

Buddhism and Christianity On Pain and Suffering

Introduction

There are many religions and many views of what life is like in the world today. Some of the differences in these views of the meaning and purpose of life make it difficult to find common ground in which a person can communicate with people who hold views that are different from our own. The cultural divide can be, especially, wide between Eastern and Western religions. Any common ground between these religions or philosophical systems becomes a bridge of understanding and aids in communication between people of different religions. Now, there is one universal experience for all humans and that is pain and suffering. The idea of pain and suffering is, universally, understood to be a part of life. This seems, to me, to be a great bridge between different religions, cultures or views of life.

In this paper, I plan to compare Buddhist and Christian worldviews on the question of pain and suffering. My hope is this will lead to great dialogue between Christians and Buddhists and, hopefully, will lead to great understanding of Buddhism for Christians and Christianity for Buddhists. I will describe the Buddhist worldview answers to the questions of pain and suffering, its source, and its solution. I will then describe the Christian worldview answers to the questions of pain and suffering, its source, and its solution. Finally, I will compare the two worldviews and see if I can draw out any similarities or differences.

Before we begin such a task as comparing two different worldviews,[1] it is important to remember that there is a danger of distorting or oversimplifying a worldview by unreflectively importing assumptions, frameworks, and biases.[2] This is especially true for Buddhism. As David Wong Professor of Philosophy at Duke University put it, “However, Buddhism may have especially challenging implications for Western ethics in its special emphasis on the elimination of suffering and on the way it explains suffering by referring to the human attachment to self as fixed ego entity.”[3] Because we have all seen and experienced pain and suffering in our lives, I think this is a worthwhile area of study. Challenges aside, there is much to be gained by this endeavor. If we do not explore the ‘possibility space’, how can we, truly, have an appreciation for the depth of the question of pain and suffering? I however, do see some similarities and some key differences. The question I find most useful is; which worldview has the best explanatory power for the world we live in?

Buddhism and Pain and Suffering

Before I begin to explain how Buddhism views pain and suffering (dukkha), I first must note that there are many schools of thought within Buddhism and it is beyond the scope of this paper to call out all the nuances within Buddhism on this question. Second, it is important to understand that that the problem of pain and suffering in Buddhism is rooted in the teaching of karma (kamma) that is shared in various forms with other eastern religions such as Hinduism and Jainism. The concept of karma has also made its way to the west in various fashions and belief systems. Finally, please note that, in order to make the best representation of Buddhism, I have relied upon Buddhist authors. This will help develop an accurate picture of Buddhist thought.

Buddhism is a worldview of liberation from pain and suffering. In fact, Buddhism’s central teaching, the Four Noble Truths, is about pain and suffering. The Dalai Lama explains the Four Noble truths this way, “As most of you might know, these Four Truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path leading to this cessation.”[4]

The first of the Four Noble Truths tells us that pain and suffering exist. This is something that we sense in our lives. We know something is wrong, amiss or not in harmony. To compound the problem, we know there is a problem but we really don’t know what it is or what we should do about it.[5] The first Noble Truth, "The noble truth that is suffering",[6] tells us that we long for something; we feel pain, loss and suffering. This ongoing and profound dissatisfaction is the first truth.[7] For Buddhism, ignorance is the root cause of our cyclic existence[8]. In the first Noble truth we have a realization of our problem. This realization begins our journey from ignorance to enlightenment or self-awakening.

The second Noble Truth, "The noble truth that is the arising of suffering,”[9] means that it is imperative for us to recognize that our dissatisfaction originates with us.[10] In Buddhism, evil or suffering is not something external to us;[11] it is in us and originates in us.

Our own ignorance…gives rise to attachment; an attitude that exaggerates the good qualities of people and things or superimposes good qualities that are not there and then clings to those people or things, thinking they will bring us real happiness. When things do not work out as we expected or wished they would, or when something interferes with our happiness, we become angry.[12]

It is our desire or attachment that originates in our mind that is the root cause of our pain and suffering. For Buddhists, the root cause is our own ignorant and undisciplined state of mind.[13]

The Third Noble Truth, "The noble truth that is the end of suffering,” recognizes there is a cessation of suffering. The Dalai Lama puts it this way: “The happiness we seek, a genuine lasting peace and happiness can be attained only through the purification of our minds. This is possible if we cut the root cause of all suffering and misery – our fundamental ignorance. This freedom from suffering.”

The Fourth Noble Truth is the path that we need to follow to end suffering. This path is called the Eightfold Path. The goal of the Eightfold path helps us to clarify our mind by developing insight into the true nature of phenomena (or reality) and to eradicate greed, aversion (hatred), and delusion. The Eightfold Path or eight factors are divided into three divisions as seen in the diagram below.

The Dalia Lama explains the three divisions in this way:

When we engage in the practice of morality, we lay the foundation for mental and spiritual development. When we engage in the complementary practice of concentration, we make the mind serviceable for and receptive to this higher purpose and prepare the mind for subsequent higher training in insight, or wisdom. …Then, on the basis of a very stable mind, you can generate genuine insight into the ultimate nature of reality.[14]

Our existance is a cycle of life, death, rebirth or reincarnation until we reach a state of true happiness called Nirvana (Nibbana). “This repetitious process goes on endlessly unless one arrives at 'Right View' and makes a firm resolve to follow the Noble Path which produces the ultimate happiness of Nibbana.”[15]

The cycle of rebirth is governed by the law of Karma (kamma). In the Western world, karma is often seen as a universal justice system or even as fate. However, this is a crude approximation of the law of karma. In Buddhism, there is no God to direct karma to reward some people and punish others. It is just cause and effect. Thich Nhat Hanh puts it this way, “Every time you produce a thought, that thought is a continuation. That thought will have effects on us, on our body, our mind, and on the world. The effect of that thought is our continuation. Producing a thought is the cause; the effect is how that thought impacts us and the world.”[16] As you can see, the seeds of karma start with our thoughts and those thoughts affect the world we live in. Hanh continues, “That thought will have an effect on our mental and physical health and on the health of the world. And that health, good or bad, is the fruit of the karma, the fruit of the thought.”[17]

Because Buddhism in concerned with our thoughts, it is important that the motivation of our actions is much more important than the actions themselves. Intention is the essence of the law of karma; it is the motivating force behind karma.[18] Our thoughts are the root of our actions and they are the root of greed, aversion (hatred), and delusion.

Our thoughts and actions will create karma. Karma is best understood as the law of cause and effect. In the west, we will often talk about good and bad karma; however, it is not that simple. In the terms of karma our actions are either kusala (skillful) or akusala (unskillful).[19] Kusala is often translated as “good”, but a better translation would be skillful, beneficial, wholesome or more precisely ‘that which removes affliction’. Akusala which is often translated as “evil” is better translated unskillful, unintelligent or more precisely ‘that which invites affliction’. Both kusala and akusala arise in the mind and then become eternalized by action.[20] In a way, the best understanding is kusala thoughts start a chain of cause and effect that move you away from pain and suffering and toward nirvana while akusala thoughts start a chain of cause and effect move you toward pain and suffering and away from nirvana.

In Buddhism, karma is a natural law that governs the cycle of rebirth. Ultimately, there is just action and reaction; cause and effect. Simply put, the law of cause and effect will govern how you progress toward or away from pain and suffering. People who understand this natural law of cause and effect are often called a "dhammic" person, which is often translated as "righteous". Now, the result may seem like "reward" and "punishment" however, it is simply the fruit of our volitional actions.[21]

"By oneself, indeed, is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself, indeed, is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one purifies another." (Dhammapada, chapter 12, verse 165)

Christianity and Pain and Suffering

Like Buddhism, the answer to why we have pain and suffering in the world varies amongst Christians. Volumes have been written on the differences between Christian understandings to this question. For this paper, however, I am limiting this to the most often cited answers.

To start with some background, a Christian person’s life is to love God. Freedom to love necessitates a choice. Man was created to have a choice to love and serve God; sin (evil) is a rejection of this. The choices we make not to love and serve God then are the source of our pain and suffering. This wrong choice then, is the source of the problem of pain and suffering for Christians.

Form the Christian point of view, pain and suffering is caused by evil; either directly or indirectly. Moral evil, or evil performed by other moral beings, would be direct evil. This evil is when another person causes the pain and suffering of another. Indirect evil is like natural evil. Natural evil is pain and suffering caused without volitional intent, such as an earthquake or tsunami. The Christian view is this evil is indirect in that its root cause is from the fall (initial choice) of mankind.

The Christian view of evil is that “evil does not just exist, it happens.”[22] Augustine, in Confessions, defined evil as “a privation of good, even to the point of complete non-entity.”[23] What this means is that “evil is not a being, thing, substance or entity…evil is real, but not a real thing.”[24] It is as if good was light and evil was darkness. Darkness is not a thing but, rather, it is the absence of light. In the same way, evil is the absence of true good. If evil is the source of pain and suffering, what is then the source of evil?

Because evil is the absence of good, the source of evil is our free will to choose evil over good. From the Christian view, God created man and woman and gave them a free will, or the ability to choose. Often, critics would counter with, why did God give them a choice if they could choose evil? The counter-question is how could anyone love if it were not possible not to love? How could people love God if they did not have a choice to not love? C. S. Lewis put it this way, “their freedom is simply that of making a single choice - of loving God more than self or the self more than God.”[25] Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga sums up the situation this way, “to create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He [God] must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.”[26] Without this freedom to do evil we would no longer be human. Kreeft and Tacelli explain what would happen if we didn’t have freedom to choose, “free will is part of our essence. There can be no human being without it. The alternative to free will is not being a human but an animal or machine.”[27]

Pain and suffering then originate with our free will and our choices. However, freedom to choose is not the problem; the problem is when we choose the evil over the good, when we choose hate over love. With this freedom of choice we can choose to love. James Spiegel describes the benefits of our freedom this way, “The ultimate good for which such autonomy is a critical means in genuine loving relationships between persons, whether between humans or between God and humans.”[28] Without choice it would be impossible to understand or know love. “Even omnipotence could not have created a world in which there was genuine human freedom and yet no possibility of sin, for our freedom incudes the possibility of sin within its own meaning.”[29]

Christians will agree that just as it is logically impossible for God to create a square circle likewise, He cannot create the possibility of good and love without the possibility of evil and hatred. This seems like a difficult situation for God. God had to give us a freedom but that freedom means that we can choose poorly. However, God is not left in a difficult situation; He can use the evil in the world to bring about good. Spiegel observes, “There are greater moral goods to be achieved in this way than could ever be achieved by God’s simply giving them to us in creation.”[30] This may not make sense until you consider how you would learn forgiveness, a good, without having been wrong. Spiegel notes, “There are numerous moral virtues that cannot be achieved except by struggling against or in the midst of evil. These ‘second-order’ goods include patience, courage, sympathy, forgiveness, mercy, perseverance, overcoming temptation, and much greater versions of faith, hope, love and friendship.”[31] This view that God teaches us through our experiences is called soul-making.

The Christian view of pain and suffering includes the concept that we do not suffer alone, nor does God avoid pain and suffering for Himself. Kenneth Sample relates his experience with pain and suffering like this:

My experiences with suffering have caused me to appreciate even more the great historic Christian truth-claim that Jesus Christ took on human flesh in order to suffer with human beings and for us receptively on the cross. God, therefore, is acquainted with evil, pain, and suffering and has a greater good to accomplish through them.[32]

In the Christian view, God takes pain and suffering in the world, a necessary consequence for love, and uses it for good. C. S. Lewis sees this as a means for God to speak to us through or pain. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."[33] For C. S. Lewis, pain and suffering is a means to an end.

For Christians, there is an end to pain and suffering. The end does not come in this life, but in the life to come. However, in this life, Christians can start to view their life’s experiences from a new perspective. For Christians, the life we live now is but a temporary ‘boot camp’ where we learn valuable lessons like how to forgive and how to love. It is not until the boot camp is over do we truly appreciate the difficult and often painful lessons we learned. Christians often call this an eternal perspective, the view from outside of our current time and lives, looking in from our future homes. The future home for Christians is with God in heaven a state of liberation from pain and suffering.

For those who do not choose heaven, a gift from God, they will receive their desire as well. C. S. Lewis puts it this way, “They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free”[34] In summary, for Christians hell is liberation from God and heaven is liberation from pain and suffering.

Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity on Pain and Suffering

In researching this paper, I have found a number of similarities or bridges of understanding between the Buddhist and Christian worldviews. First, I noticed that both worldviews recognize that things are not the way they ought to be. They both understand that pain and suffering is not the ideal or true existence. For Buddhists, the ultimate end, Nirvana, is liberation of pain and suffering. Likewise for Christians, the ultimate end, heaven, is also liberation from pain and suffering.

Another similarity I found was in the concept that the source of our pain and suffering starts within us. I found it curious that many Buddhists believe Christians see evil as an external force.[35] The Christian view is, evil ultimately comes from us and any perceived external force of evil is coming from within other moral agents. It seems that Buddhism and Christianity both see that the source of pain and suffering in this life come from within us and from our choices.

In life, we seem to experience that our thoughts often lead to actions and those actions often cause pain and suffering. Both Buddhism and Christianity agree that much of the pain and suffering we experience in life come from thoughts that lead to actions. Those actions then cause us or others pain and suffering. I think that it is significant that Christianity and Buddhism, in concept, see us and our choices as one of the causes of pain and suffering.

We often experience pain and suffering that is not a result of another person or our choices. Often, people have pain and suffering from external natural events such as hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. Thus, in life, it seems that all pain and suffering is a result of our choices; some pain and suffering seems to be, in one way or another, not related to our direct choices. According to the Pali Canon, there are overt and covert dangers. Overt dangers, which seem to equate to natural causes of pain and suffering, are not based upon people’s individual choices. Covert dangers are those that equate to choices made by the individual.[36] The Christian worldview recognizes the same phenomena and divides the source of pain and suffering into moral evil and natural evil.[37] Moral evil is rooted in the direct actions or inactions of ourselves or others. Natural evil is seen as the consequence of indirect moral evil.[38] This concept starts with the Bible’s account of how people chose to disobey God and then man and creation then entered into a fallen state.[39] This fall was a fall from the perfection in which it was created.

In these two worldviews, there are similarities and differences in pain and suffering that afflicts the seemingly innocent from events outside of their control. For Buddhism, these events are dangers that may lead you to have akusala thoughts. For Buddhism, it is important to not let bad things that happen to you control your thoughts and rob you of an inner happiness. Our reaction to negative events in our lives is seen in much the same light for the Christian worldview. Christian theologian Chuck Swindoll said it best:

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.[40]

Where these two world views take a deep departure is in the solution or how we can reach an end to pain and suffering. Simply put, for the Buddhist, the end of suffering and pain comes from as the Dalai Lama puts it, “freedom and liberation can only be achieved when our fundamental ignorance, our habitual misapprehension of the nature of reality, is totally overcome.”[41] For Buddhists, overcoming ignorance is not an easy task. “You must bear in mind that the attainment of enlightenment is not an easy task. It requires time, will, and perseverance.”[42]

To summarize, when we engage in the practice of morality, we lay the foundation for mental and spiritual development. When we engage in the complementary practice of concentration, we make the mind serviceable for and receptive to this higher purpose and prepare the mind for subsequent higher training in insight, or wisdom. With the faculty of single-pointedness that arises from concentration, we are able to channel all of our attention and mental energy towards a chosen object. Then, on the basis of a very stable state of mind, you can generate genuine insight into the ultimate nature of reality.[43]

As you can see the, Buddhist solution is to clear our minds to allow ourselves to become enlightened. Herein lies the biggest difference between the Buddhist and Christian worldviews.

The Christian worldview differs in that it claims we cannot reach liberation from pain and suffering on our own. The Christian worldview claims that man has fallen and cannot do anything to regain what we have lost. God, therefore, had to provide a solution for man. God’s love was demonstrated when He became a man and took on our pain and suffering for us; to provide a way for us to choose, once again, to follow God and reciprocate His love. Ultimately, the Christian view rests on choice. A wrong choice lead to the evil, pain, and suffering we all currently experience. God has given us a type of second chance, however, unlike the Buddhist, view we don’t get endless “do-overs”. We have this life to make our choice. Either we chose to follow and love God and be with Him forever or we chose eternal separation from God.

Conclusion

What we see here with these two worldviews is a bit of agreement that pain and suffering are caused by us. We see that when our thoughts, choices and actions are out of sync with what they should be, we create pain and suffering. These worldviews even agree that our attitude and how we react to events in our lives plays an important role. Finally, both agree that our ultimate end, either Heaven or Nirvana, will be liberation from pain and suffering. I see these areas of commonality as a great opportunity to create dialogue between two very different worldviews. I think greater understanding for those with either worldview of the other worldview will benefit.

Where these worldviews disagree sharply is how one reaches that end. We all want an end to pain and suffering. Ultimately, we all must choose an answer to the question. Knowing how others find answers to life’s pain and suffering and being able to see which worldview has the best explanation for what we know from our experiences in life and in our hearts, becomes an opportunity for dialogue about how one finally solves the issue of pain and suffering.

End Notes
1 Note here that I did not use the word “religion.” Alan Watts a British philosopher, best known for popularizing Eastern philosophy for a Western audience criticizes Westerners for calling Buddhism a religion and then trying to compare it to the Christian religion. While we may not be able to compare them as religions we can compare them as worldviews. Alan Watts, Buddhism And Christianity, YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV7FLlRmuf0 (accessed May 19, 2012).
2 David Wong. “Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (October 1, 2009). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comparphil-chiwes/ (accessed May 3, 2012).
3 David Wong. “Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (October 1, 2009). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comparphil-chiwes/ (accessed May 3, 2012).
4 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) location 220.
5 Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain and Simple, Kindle edition (Tokyo, Broadway Books, 1998) location 210.
6 Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One ed. Robert E. Buswell (New York, Gale/Cengage Learning Macmillan, 2004) p. 296.
7 Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain and Simple, Kindle edition (Tokyo, Broadway Books, 1998) location 212.
8 Thubten Chodron. Buddhism for Beginners, Kindle edition (Ithaca, New York, Snow Lion Publications, 2001) location 73.
9 Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One ed. Robert E. Buswell (New York, Gale/Cengage Learning Macmillan, 2004) p. 296.
10 Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain and Simple, Kindle edition (Tokyo, Broadway Books, 1998) location 257.
11 Taigen Leighton. Evil in Buddhism. Mountain Source Sangha (October 6, 2001). http://www.mtsource.org/talks/evil.htm (accessed May, 3 2012).
12 Thubten Chodron. Buddhism for Beginners, Kindle edition (Ithaca, New York, Snow Lion Publications, 2001) location 75.
13 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) location 240.
14 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) location 294-296.
15 K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera. The Buddhist Concept of Heaven and Hell. BuddhaSasana. http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/whatbudbeliev/303.htm (accessed May, 20 2012).
16 Thich Nhat Hanh. Karma, Continuation, and the Noble Eightfold Path. Mindfulness Bell Magazine (August 5, 2005). http://www.mindfulnessbell.org/articles/karma1.php (accessed May, 20 2012).
17 Thich Nhat Hanh. Karma, Continuation, and the Noble Eightfold Path. Mindfulness Bell Magazine (August 5, 2005). http://www.mindfulnessbell.org/articles/karma1.php (accessed May, 20 2012).
18 Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto. Good and Evil in Buddhism. UrbanDharma.org. http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/goodevil.html (accessed May 3, 2012).
19 Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto. Good and Evil in Buddhism. UrbanDharma.org http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/goodevil.html (accessed May 3, 2012).
20 Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto. Good and Evil in Buddhism. UrbanDharma.org. http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/goodevil.html (accessed May 3, 2012).
21 Barbara O’Brien. Evil, Karma and Buddhism, About.com. http://buddhism.about.com/od/basicbuddhistteachings/a/evil.htm (accessed May 3, 2012).
22 Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994) p. 126.
23 Doug Powell. Holman Quicksource Guide to Christian Apologetics, (Nashville, Holman Reference, 2006) p. 334.
24 Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994) p. 132-33.
25 C. S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain, (London, Harper Collins Publishers, 1940) p. 20.
26 Alvin Plantinga. God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001) Kindle Locations 342-343.
27 Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994) p. 138.
28 James S. Spiegel. “On Free Will and Soul Making, Complementary Approaches to the Problem of Evil,” Philisophia Christi vol. 13, no. 2 (2011): 407.
29 Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics, (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1994) p. 138.
30 James S. Spiegel. “On Free Will and Soul Making, Complementary Approaches to the Problem of Evil,” Philisophia Christi vol. 13, no. 2 (2011): 407.
31 James S. Spiegel. “On Free Will and Soul Making, Complementary Approaches to the Problem of Evil,” Philisophia Christi vol. 13, no. 2 (2011): 407.
32 Kenneth R. Samples. 7 Truths That Changed the World. (Grand Rapids, BakerBooks, 2012) p. 193.
33 C. S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain, (London, Harper Collins Publishers, 1940) p. 90-91.
34 C. S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain, (London, Harper Collins Publishers, 1940) p. 130.
35 Taigen Leighton. Evil in Buddhism. Mountain Source Sangha (October 6, 2001). http://www.mtsource.org/talks/evil.htm (accessed May, 3 2012).
36 Bhikkhu P. A. Payutto. Good and Evil in Buddhism. UrbanDharma.org. http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma5/goodevil.html (accessed May 3, 2012).
37 Note that not all Christians want to call natural evil as evil. Some reserve the term evil only for moral actions or inactions. I use the term natural evil here based upon common understanding and usage.
38 Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. (Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 1994) p. 384.
39 Or the initial choice of Adam and Eve.
40 This quote was taken from one of Chuck Swindoll’s books. I can’t seem to locate my copy to properly reference however, this is a well know quote of his.
41 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) Kindle Location 158-9.
42 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) Kindle Locations 204-205.
43 His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The World of Tibetan Buddhism: An Overview of Its Philosophy and Practice, trans. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kindle edition (Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1995) Kindle Locations 293-297.
�

Was Jesus a Historical Person?
An open letter to Stephen Van Eck

Introduction

There is a myth about a man named Francis Hester, who in 1650, supposedly took a trip from Southwart, England and landed in New Kent County, Virginia. The problem with this man is we really have no reliable historical evidence for his existence. Also, there are so many similar stories from that time period that one might conclude that his life is a complete fabrication. At most there are only two pieces of evidence for his existence. One is a religious document, a baptismal record, and the other a ship’s manifest listing him as a passenger. Since the baptismal record is a religious document, as good naturalists, we must reject it out of hand. As for the ship’s manifest, upon careful examination, the name on the manifest is Francis Hestor, not Francis Hester. Obviously this is a completely different person and not a misspelling or misreading of the original document. Without evidence, we must conclude that this man is a myth, even if he is my 16th great-grandfather. Similarly, some skeptics, such as yourself,[1] argue that Jesus did not exist because there is a lack of secular evidence. In this paper I will demonstrate that there is solid extrabiblical evidence that Jesus did, in fact, exist.

Non-Christian Evidence for the Person of Jesus

On CNN TV’s Larry King Live, Ellen Johnson, president of the American Atheists, limits permissible evidence to “secular” evidence. Further, she makes the grandiose claim that there are no such sources of evidence: “Well, I'm here to give the reality point of view, I guess. Because the reality is there is not one shred of secular evidence there ever was a Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and Christianity is a modern religion… There is no secular evidence that JC, Jesus Christ, ever existed.”[2] This statement might excite the Atheist with exuberance, but it is completely fallacious. According to one scholar, there are over 20 ancient (from first to mid-second century) non-Christian witnesses to the public life of Jesus.[3] Limiting the debate to only non-Christian records does not strengthen the claim that Jesus was a myth. In this section we will examine three of the abundant secular evidences. In the next section we will address issues regarding this approach to historical research.

We will discuss three historians from the corresponding periods: Cornelius Tacitus (55 – 120 AD), Flavius Josephus (37 – 97 AD), and Gaius Suetonius Tranquillas (69/75 – 130 AD). It is first worth noting a few common observations of these men before addressing them individually. They were educated, professional historians, and they all worked for the government. For example, Suetonius was the chief secretary for Emperor Hadrian and had access to the imperial records.[4] Josephus was educated in Rome and his benefactor was Titus.[5] Finally, Tacitus is considered to be the greatest historian of ancient Rome.[6] None of these men show any indication of bias toward Christianity. In fact, it is safe to say any bias would have likely been against Christians because they were writing during the time when Christians where being persecuted.[7] In addition, each account was written within 100 years of the life of Jesus.

First, Tacitus relates a story of the burning of Rome by Nero. In his account he explains that Nero places blame on the Christians for the burning of Rome. In that report he adds details about Christus, the founder, who was from Judaea and was crucified, “the extreme penalty,” by Pontius Pilatus:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular…[8]

This quote may seem like it does not provide us much information about the life of Christ. Certainly this is true; there is not much said here. One would not expect a Roman historian to elaborate on the life of a peasant who was executed. However, Cambridge lecturer Markus Bockmuehl states the importance of this quotation: “That might not seem like much, but it is actually surprisingly useful in discounting two different theories which are still sometimes advanced: first, that Jesus of Nazareth never existed; and secondly, that he did not die by the duly administered Roman death penalty.”[9]

You can raise the objection that Tacitus did not write this section, that it was a later addition of Christians. However, simply raising an objection is not sufficient grounds to discount the authenticity of the quotation. What evidence is there of tampering? None. Even the highly skeptical non-Christian New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman commenting on this issue states, “But surely the best way to deal with evidence is not simply to dismiss it when it happens to be inconvenient.”[10]

Suetonius’ comments provide fewer details of Jesus’ life than Tacitus, yet they are revealing. First, his accounts demonstrate Christians were in Rome and expelled in 49 AD during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD). “He [Claudius] banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.”[11] This is within 16 years of the death of Christ, and far too short a time span for a mythical person to develop. Some scholars may take issue with Suetonius’ spelling of Christ casting doubt on who Suetonius was writing about. However, spelling mistakes of this kind are common.[12] In addition, there is an interesting corroboration in Acts 18:2. “And he [Paul] found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.” The most likely explanation of these references seems to reference Christians in Rome by 49 AD.

Another account by Suetonius demonstrates that Christians were punished by Nero. “He [Nero] likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition.”[13] Suetonius corroborates Tacitus’ accounts of Christian persecution although Tacitus gives us far more information on Nero’s punishments and executions for the alleged fire on July 18, 64 AD [14]. Suetonius gives us very little details, but what he does give us are extremely early references to Christians. His latest reference is within 30 years of the death of Jesus Christ which is still far too short a time for a myth to have developed.

Of the three historians, Josephus’ comments give us the most detailed information about Jesus Christ. Josephus, a Jewish historian for the imperial family, wrote four different works detailing Jewish history from Genesis to his lifetime. In these works, Josephus mentions many people who are also discussed in the gospels, including James, the brother of Jesus, Annas, Caiaphas, Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate, Felix and Festus.[15] Of Jesus he writes:

At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. He was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. He gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. When Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.[16]

He [Ananus] convened the council of judges and brought before it the brother of Jesus – the one called “Christ”- whose name was James, and certain others. Accusing them of transgressing the law he delivered them up for stoning. But those of the city considered the most fair-minded and strict concerning the laws were offended at this and sent to the king secretly urging him to order Ananus to take such actions no longer.[17]

In these quotations Josephus confirms that Jesus was called Christ and was crucified by Pontius Pilate. Tacitus and Josephus are in agreement that Jesus Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate. Skeptics once claimed that there was no evidence that Pontius Pilate ever existed. However, in 1961, archaeologists led by Dr. Frova discovered a limestone block with Pontius Pilate’s name inscribed on it. "Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea."[18] This archaeological evidence further corroborates the accounts of Tacitus and Josephus.

Critics often raise the issue that the quotations of Josephus were either added or tampered with by later Christians. However, a majority of scholars agree that the majority of the text is genuine.[19] In fact, the quote from Josephus above was taken to be the most likely rendition by the skeptic Bart Ehrman.

Scholars have also examined an Arabic translation of Josephus, found by Shlomo Pines,[20] that further corroborates that the majority of the text is genuine. You can see from this version of Josephus there appears to be no interpolation of the text that seems to be in the versions in the West.

At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wonders.[21]

James Charlesworth sums it up like this, “We can now be as certain as historical research will presently allow that Josephus did refer to Jesus,” providing “corroboration of the gospel account.”[22]

Ellen Johnson’s position that there is no “secular” evidence for Jesus is patently false. We have seen a number of secular sources for Jesus’ life. In particular, we have three accounts of historians who wrote within 100 years of the life of Jesus. Further, Josephus was born within a decade of Jesus. I grant that these are not primary sources of Jesus life. There are no secular primary sources of his life. This is true about 99.99% of people alive at the time.[23] However, these secular secondary accounts do corroborate the primary eyewitness accounts of the gospels.

In conclusion, using early non-Christian sources, I have shown that there is solid historical evidence to prove that Jesus was an historical figure. Furthermore, the sources cited were historians who were writing within 100 years of Jesus Christ. Also, aspects of their testimony have been corroborated by recent archaeological finds. Finally, the majority of scholars, including Bart Ehrman, agree that Jesus Christ was a historical person.

Interpreting Evidence

Mr. Van Eck, in your article you claim there is a lack of historical evidence. However, the gospels are historical documents and date closer to the events in question than any other records of Jesus. I assume that what you mean by the lack of historical evidence is closer to Ellen Johnson’s or Jim Walker’s comments. Johnson carefully limits the debate to secular evidence,[24] while Walker cleverly dismisses any secondary sources as hearsay. However, historians do not limit evidence to just secular or eyewitness accounts.

One of the problems with historical research is that we have no direct evidence to anything historical,[25] nor can we conduct experiments. Bart Ehrman put the problem in perspective: “This makes historical evidence different from the kinds of evidence used in the hard sciences.”[26] Historians like to have primary sources, such as eyewitness accounts, whenever possible. Even with primary sources, historians gather as many sources as possible, weigh each individually and develop theories based on all of the available evidence, giving preference to primary, then secondary, sources, all the while taking into account any known biases of the sources.[27]

Walker wishes us to limit our knowledge to direct evidence such as eyewitness accounts. However, he does not allow for the gospels. This is not a practice used by historians as they piece together the past. Historians rely upon all the available evidence, including secondary sources. Each piece of evidence is weighed based upon its proximity to the actual events. Greater weight is given to primary sources, taking any extraneous circumstances such as bias into account. Less weight is given to secondary sources, and even less the further the author is from the events.

Setting a standard of interpretation for historical events based upon this hyper-skeptical criticism is unwarranted. It sets the bar so high that it cannot be attained. We cannot prove anything happened in history given this high standard. Academic scholars understand the unique science of putting the past into perspective by using all available evidence. There is no reason for requiring evidence for Jesus to meet a higher standard than we do to any other historical figure. To do so is revealingly disingenuous. It does not portray intellectual rigor; rather, it sacrifices intellectual integrity for a naïve approach to history.

Conclusion

“But for us the conclusion is inescapable. Jesus never existed.”[28] This is a bold claim, indeed, but it is not supported by the recommended reading you cite. You recommend Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms to help support your bold assertion. However, his thesis is that Jesus is an historical figure. Helms writes, “my thesis – [is the gospels] are largely fictional accounts concerning an historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth…”[29] Your argument that Jesus never existed because there is no historical evidence is betrayed by the very sources you cite.

Gary Habermas states, “The Claim that we cannot know the historical Jesus is not true. Jesus’ life is one of the most substantiated in ancient history,”[30] and according to Clay Jones “…the notion that Jesus never existed is preached only by the loony fringe.”[31] Even the highly skeptical Bart Erhman agrees the evidence shows that Jesus was a real person. And finally, atheist historian Michael Grant sums it up nicely, “…modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars.”[32]

Endnotes

1. This paper is an open letter to Stephen Van Eck and his position in: Stephen Van Eck. Was Jesus Real? World Union of Deists. http://www.deism.com/jesusexist.htm (accessed March 12, 2012).
2. Ellen Johnson and Larry King, “What Happens After We Die?” Larry King Live, CNN, April 14, 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0504/14/lkl.01.html (accessed March 22, 2012).
3. Gary R. Habermas. “Was Jesus Real,” InterVarsity.org, August 8, 2008. http://www.intervarsity.org/studentsoul/item/was-jesus-real (accessed March 13, 2012).
4. Robert Graves, “Introduction” to Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, transl. by Robert Graves (Baltimore. Penguin, 1957) 7 as quoted in Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. (Joplin, MO, College Press, 1999) 190.
5. Craig A. Evens. Fabricating Jesus, How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2006) 158.
6. Tacitus, Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/579997/Tacitus (accessed March 22, 2012).
7. “Persecution in the Early Church” ReligionFacts.com. http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/history/persecution.htm (accessed March 22, 2012).
8. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals. Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Tacitus/TacitusAnnals15.html (accessed March 26, 2012).
9. Markus Bockmuehl, This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah. (Edinburgh. T & T Clark Ltd. 1994) 10-11 as quoted in Josh McDowell. The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. (Nashville. Thomas Nelson Publishers. 1999) 121.
10. Bart D. Erhman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (New York, HarperOne, 2012) 55.
11. Suetonius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 05: Claudius. Kindle Edition. (Public Domain Books) Kindle Locations 292-293.
12. Bart D. Erhman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (New York, HarperOne, 2012) 52.
13. Suetonius. The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 06: Nero. Kindle Edition. (Public Domain Books) Kindle Location 151.
14. "The Burning of Rome, 64 AD," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1999). http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/rome.htm (accessed March 28, 2012).
15. Craig A. Evens. Fabricating Jesus, How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2006) 159.
16. Josephus, Antiquities 18.3.3. Quoted by Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (New York, HarperOne, 2012) 61.
17. Josephus, Antiquities 20.200-201 as quoted by Craig A. Evens. Fabricating Jesus, How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2006) 161.
18. Pontius Pilate Inscription. Great Archaeology. http://www.greatarchaeology.com/Pontius.php (accessed March 28, 2012).
19. Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO, College Press Publishing Company, 1996) 193.
20. James D. Tabor. Josephus on Jesus. The Jewish Roman World of Jesus. http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/people/jtabor/josephus-jesus.html (accessed April 12, 2012)
21. James D. Tabor. Josephus on Jesus. The Jewish Roman World of Jesus. http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/people/jtabor/josephus-jesus.html (accessed April 12, 2012)
22. James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism, New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries. (SPCK Publishing, 1989) 96-97 as quoted by Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO, College Press Publishing Company, 1996) 195.
23. Bart D. Erhman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (New York, HarperOne, 2012) 43.
24. Ellen Johnson and Larry King, “What Happens After We Die?” Larry King Live, CNN, April 14, 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0504/14/lkl.01.html (accessed March 22, 2012).
25. Ruth A. Palmquist, The Historical Approach to Research. The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~palmquis/courses/historical.htm (accessed March 16, 2012).
26. Bart D. Erhman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (New York, HarperOne, 2012) 37.
27. Ruth A. Palmquist, The Historical Approach to Research. The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~palmquis/courses/historical.htm (accessed March 16, 2012).
28. Stephen Van Eck. Was Jesus Real? World Union of Deists. http://www.deism.com/jesusexist.htm (accessed March 12, 2012).
29. Randel McCraw Helms, Gospel Fictions (Amherst, New York, Prometheus Books, 1988) 10.
30. Habermas, Gary R., “Was Jesus Real,” InterVarsity.org, August 8, 2008. http://www.intervarsity.org/studentsoul/item/was-jesus-real (accessed March 13, 2012).
31. Clay Jones. Jesus Wasn’t a Real Person? That’s Dumb! Clay Jones’ Blog (August 24, 2010). http://www.clayjones.net/2010/08/jesus-wasnt-a-real-person-thats-dumb/ (accessed March 20, 2012).
32. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (London: Rigel, 2004) 200 as quoted by Born Identity: Was Jesus a real person?. Y-Jesus.com. http://www.y-jesus.com/bornid_1.php (accessed March 2012).

 

Was Jefferson a Christian, Atheist, or Deist?

Email from a student:

Sorry to bother you with yet another article, but I have come across several over the last few days that I think are germane to things that have been discussed in your Tuesday night class.

I take everything with a grain of salt these days and am admittedly not a Glenn Beck groupie. However, I do believe that much of his information regarding the Founding Fathers has been fairly accurate.

But to cut to the chase ... I have heard for years the story about Thomas Jefferson cutting up his Bible to accommodate his own beliefs and I heard you again mention it in class the other night.

The following article seems to shed new light (at least for me) on that story:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/do-you-know-the-real-story-behind-the-jefferson-bible-david-barton-shared-it-with-beck/

I'd like to hear your take on this.
Thanks,

My return email:

For a period of time, Thomas Jefferson was known as a Deist. Not because he had affiliation with any Deist organization, but because his Theology was Deist. Deism is, in reality, a catch-all for many beliefs of God. Recently, Atheists have claimed that Jefferson was an Atheist. This theory is making-the-rounds online. I just debated with an Atheist on Facebook about this. Finally, some Christians claim Jefferson was a protestant Christian. What we do know for sure is that Jefferson was raised as an Episcopalian/Anglican. Later in life, he wrote that he would like to join a Unitarian church, but he could not because there were none in Virginia at the time.

I think it is import to make a distinction between attendance or membership in an organization and what a person actually holds or believes. People can often claim to be one thing while holding a different worldview or theology. Certainly, we would not put it past a politician to “be all things to all men.”

David Burton has recently claimed that he is a Christian in an attempt to bolster or recover the view that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. His comments, however, have sparked some sharp criticism. I think it would be a good idea to look up David Barton. Check out the controversy over his misquotations to see it the criticism is legit.

You can find references to most of it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barton_(author)
Look under Criticism and Unconfirmed Quotations.

The question is whether or not the criticism of Burton is correct and if it is material to his assertions.

So what do we think were Jefferson’s actual beliefs? He wrote that the teachings of Jesus contain the "outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man." Sounds Christian, for sure. To take a lesson from Greg Koukl, I would ask, what did Jefferson mean by Jesus? That is, who would Jefferson say He is?

Here are some quotes from Jefferson that might shed some light on this:

About Science and Religion
The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

About the Gospels
We find in the writings of his biographers ... a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, August 4, 1822, referring to Jesus's biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

About the God of the Old Testament
That sect had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.
-- Thomas Jefferson, referring to the god of the Jews under Moses, in his letter to William Short (August 4, 1822)

It would appear that Jefferson thought Science trumps religion, that the gospel accounts were lies and the god of the Old Testament we cruel and capricious.

In addition, I have a copy of the Jefferson Bible and in the forward there are comments about Jefferson’s dislike of the supernatural references.

With comments like this, one would think he is in the New Atheist crowd other than the fact he did believe in a god. We just aren’t certain which version of god (theology) that would be. But who can really know the heart of a man? I think it is safe to say he was a Deist or Unitarian. To say he was a Bible believing Christian or an atheist, while certainly possible, I don’t think it is probable.

Either way, what does his worldview have to do with anything today?

As for Burton, I don’t know if the criticism is sound or not, or whether it was intentional or unintentional. If he has misrepresented the facts, then he has done a great disservice to the Christian community (Body of Christ). Even if our intentions are noble, we should never misrepresent or bare false witness to anyone.