No Delusion: A Challenge To An Atheist

No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist By Paul Hildreth Second Edition Copyright Paul Hildreth, 2006, 2008

** Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

**

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Contents Chapter

Page 4

The Challenge Science v Religion?

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The problem of pain and suffering

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Evolution and the survival of the fittest

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Wars caused by Religion?

30

Would a good God send people to Hell?

39

What if you haven’t been told? Did Jesus say that the Old Testament Law still applies? Oh no! Not the Spanish Inquisition?!

42 46

A rapist wins millions

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The Appendix

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The embryo

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Miracles

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The Bible: Truth or Myth?

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Evidence for Jesus?

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‘Why is God a Man?’

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‘They could believe anything in those days’

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‘You believe, so you justify yourself’

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‘Christianity copied earlier religions. Christmas is Pagan’ ‘Didn’t early Christians expect Jesus to return in their lifetime?’ Fate and Nature

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What about Slavery?

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Conclusion

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Appendix 1: Would You Adam and Eve it?

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Appendix 2: A quote from Nietzsche

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Appendix 3: A critique of the book ‘Da Vinci Code Decoded’

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Here we are, we’re alone in the universe, there’s no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We’ve only got ourselves. Somehow, we’ve just got to make a go of it. We’ve only ourselves. John Osborne

Not a lot of hope for us then, is there?

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

The challenge

For an Atheist to find God is as difficult as for a thief to find a policeman…and for the same reason (anonymous)

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

I want to issue a challenge. It is addressed primarily to atheists. It can equally apply to agnostics. It can also apply to those people who say they believe in God, but then use the same arguments as the atheists to avoid thinking about the implications of God’s existence. An atheist can be defined as someone who denies that a God exists, or someone who says that they do not believe in the God that is presented to them by a particular religion. There is a difference. An agnostic (‘non-knower’) is someone who says that there is not enough evidence to make a decision either way. The term ‘Fence sitter’ comes to mind here. Well, they might think it’s a comfortable fence, until they fall off into the thorn bushes outside the garden. ** I believe in God. I believe that God exists. If you disagree with me, I would not be so arrogant as to say that anything I say here will definitely convince you otherwise. Still, that does not stop me trying. Note that I am not attempting to ‘prove’ God’s existence, using the many classic arguments that have been made over the centuries (for example, the Ontological argument or the ‘first cause’ argument). I want to show you that, just as I cannot prove God’s existence to you, neither can you prove to me that God does not exist, which is what many atheists tend to claim. Are you an atheist simply because you say religion is rubbish and therefore atheism must be correct? Do you have a logical argument in favour of atheism? Atheism as a belief should be able to stand alone, without the need to refer to the existence of religion as a proof. You ask for evidence of God before you will believe. You say that faith is blind. Where is your evidence that there is no God? You say that God cannot exist because evil exists. This does not prove anything. God might exist, but might not be good. Do you ever ask yourself this question? I would like you to think about what I say, and then explain to yourself why you disagree, as if you were trying to prove me wrong. When you are doing this, please don’t look on me as somehow ‘deluded’, or unintelligent. Being clever does not necessarily mean you are also wise. Knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Be honest with yourself. Have you really thought about it, or are you simply repeating opinions and popular caricatures that you have heard second hand? Do you use these statements to justify your avoidance of God, without really thinking about them? If, on the other hand, you have formed your opinion based on what you consider to be logical thinking, I just ask you to look again at it all with me.

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

*** You sometimes appear to present your arguments as though they are something new, something that has just been discovered and needs to be announced in the brashest way possible. It is as though they are something you have just realised, and you want to shout it from the rooftops. These kinds of arguments have been around for a very long time, as have the answers to them. John Chrysostom (AD 374-407) regarded discrepancies in the Bible as really valuable as proofs of independence on the part of the sacred writers. A comprehensive book, ‘Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible’, trying to answer the critics, was written in the 19th Century. You are not presenting me with one single argument or point of view that is original. You are not being ‘modern’ (which, for a reason that escapes me, is usually equated with being ‘right’). Despite what some atheists may think, they do not have any special insight, and are not cleverer than people who believe in the truth of the Bible.1 Yet they seem to think so, describing Christians sometimes in very patronising, sometimes in very insulting ways. What they do not seem to appreciate is that not all Christians are narrow minded hellfire fundamentalists, religious fanatics or priest-ridden believers in superstitions. All of their arguments appear to be directed at such people. A Christian who reasons in a sensible and logical way is not allowed into their belief system. I know that some Christians quote the Bible as if the words themselves hold some kind of magic, and that those words alone will convince unbelievers. Yes, a particular verse could speak directly to the heart and soul of an individual, if God so willed it, but so could ‘then he went away and hanged himself’ (Judas, in Matthew chapter 27, verse 5). Without a reasoned explanation of the basic message of the Bible, individual verses are less useful than they could be. Christians who are really ready to defend their faith have not simply learned ‘pat responses’, but truly thought it through. We are not all like the typical Christian that is portrayed by many atheists. Sadly, though, there are many like them. The problem with many atheists is that , when confronted with a Christian who really wants to take them on in a lengthy debate (without simply quoting bible verses at them), they tend to resort to their own ‘pat’ answers, throwing one in as the last word before they turn away saying they have had enough. The question I would ask them is, have they really thought through their belief in atheism? Where are their positive propositions in support of it? Unfortunately, ‘positive atheism’ is usually derived from and presented as ‘negative theism’, because that is all they have got.

Is there such a thing as Positive Atheism? 1

It does seem that most atheistic arguments appear to be directed at Christianity. I have a Christian faith, so this book will naturally be based mainly on atheist criticism of the Bible and Christianity.

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Why do atheists sometimes only present material that they claim denies the truth of the Bible? Where is their positive evidence for their belief? Why do they feel they have to negatively criticise others whose evidence for the truth of their faith is their hope, consolation and joy? Are they simply resigned to a life that is destined to end in nothingness and meaninglessness, hoping that they will be remembered? Have they had some kind of bad experience at the hands of Christians? Are they fed up of people trying to convert them? What are atheists trying to do? 1 Do they genuinely want to release others from stupid superstitions? 2 Do they want to justify their unbelief? Why do they feel they have to? 3 Are they just angry, wishing Christians would stop bothering them? 4 Are they simply trying to prove they are cleverer than Christians? Do they reel off the atrocities and contradictions in the Bible in the mistaken belief that all Christians are unaware of them? Where is their positive argument for atheism? Is it that humans are evolving into better creatures? Don’t make me laugh. Did you miss the twentieth century? Is it that science says we are just an animated collection of atoms? Does the future really lie in an evolution that says that an eventual catastrophic drop in population could be a good thing? Does it really matter if I killed you tomorrow? Are you simply part of a struggle for supremacy of your particular gene pool? Does it really matter if the world was destroyed by an atomic war next week? Please tell me. I don’t deny that you can have a system of morals without religion. I do not deny that atheists can be worthy people. But what is the basis of your morality and your justice? Is it your own judgement? Is it just an indefinable moral consensus that can (and does) change over time, according to circumstances and situations? We should not be wasting our time with squabbles over words, dates and numbers, and criticising bad actions that have been used by humans since time began, and are still being used, whether it can be argued that they are justified by God, by circumstances, or not at all. It is not at this level that we should be debating, and not at this level that you should be giving me your point of view. You should be giving me your positive arguments in favour of Atheism, not simply using negative criticism of religion to justify yourself. Is negative criticism all you have got? ** I could list pages and pages of answers to the criticisms made by atheists. All of these are easily available on the internet, some better than others. There is no point, I have seen and heard all of these arguments before, and you will have seen and heard

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answers to them all before. I can find most of the answers credible and plausible because I am coming from the side of belief. You can find them incredible and implausible because you do not believe. Debate at this level is pointless. Some of these Christian answers I am satisfied with, and think that any reasonable person would be, if they thought about it. Others are less credible, and some are downright embarrassing in their tautology, playing into the hands of the critics. But I have yet to find a ‘contradiction’ or criticism that undermines the basic message of the Bible about our human nature and the possibility of salvation from it. Just because many Christians have not fully thought through and reasoned their faith, does not mean it is any less true. Their teaching is sometimes lacking, so atheists come along and throw at them doubts and uncertainties, when their faith has been based on an ‘all you have to do is believe’ conversion. There is too much of this. I believe that the head should be used, not just the heart, and that faith can, and should, be reasoned through. It can be supported by reason. If you wish to get behind the popular opinions and beliefs about Christianity to its real message, my book ‘Pure Christianity’ sets out what I believe this message to be. ** Consider this. Maybe your disbelief in God might be your way of saying that you don’t want anything to interfere with the way you live your life. Maybe you don’t want to be responsible to something that you do not understand. You don’t want to feel as if you are controlled by anything outside yourself. This is all understandable. It’s Human Nature to be like that, isn’t it? You might like to ask yourself what ‘Human Nature’ really is. How many people shrug things off with that statement ‘It’s just Human Nature, isn’t it?’ How many of them have asked themselves what they really mean by this? ** Over and over again, I have heard many of the same arguments against my belief in God, and tried to answer them all with reasoned thinking. I believe that faith does not have to be blind. If faith is said to be blind because of lack of evidence, then to be an atheist is also to have a blind faith. Atheists, like believers in God, have no ultimate evidence to prove their point of view. They might say that they have, but it is not so. They may have lots of evidence for evolution, but none of this can prove that there is not a supreme intelligence that is behind the creation of the universe. Let me say here that I do believe in the evolutionary process. However, if a believer in God wishes to insist on creation in seven days, then they can point out that none of the evidence or theories can prove categorically that evolution is a fact. It is still a theory (a well documented, heavily evidenced theory, but still a theory), and atheists

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choose to believe it because they want to, just as Christians choose to believe what they believe from the personal evidence of experience. Atheists have theories but not facts. They have negatives but no positives. If I ever do get into a discussion of the subject, atheists continue to come out with the same old objections, over and over again. Even respected authors such as Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and other popular atheist books like ‘The Atheists are Revolting’ are doing exactly that. They are giving me nothing that I have not heard before, yet they are very popular because they are giving people what they want to hear. It’s almost as if they have heard these arguments somewhere, and said ‘Hey, that sounds good. Let’s hit them with this one’. Many times (Richard Dawkins possibly excepted) they don’t seem to have given much reasoned thought to why they are saying it. It simply suits their pre-conceived ideas, so it must be right. Professor Dawkins uses extremes to justify his arguments. He uses fundamentalist and superstition-ridden Christian viewpoints in the same way that extreme fundamentalist Moslem views are used to criticise Islam. This is easy to do, but is extremely biased and not a credible approach. Yet people listen to him because that’s what they want to hear. My most sincere wish is that people who make second-hand statements to justify their point of view would take some time and thought to really work something out for themselves. A blind acceptance of a bigoted point of view has led to all sorts of evils, not least by so-called Christians. An example is the centuries-old (and still continuing) persecution of the Jews for the ‘murder’ of Jesus. ** When reading this book, I hope that you will ask yourself questions, and also try to answer them for yourself. All I can do is provide my own opinions. Let’s start with the question that always seems to come up. Can we believe both religion and science? ******

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Science vs. Religion?

The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism. Lord Kelvin

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

I believe that there is no conflict between science and religion. One says how, the other tells us why. Modern science was born out of deep religious conviction that God had ordered His universe by scientific laws that could be discovered by the scientific method of enquiry. For many scientists, that still holds good today. In saying this, I do not want to be seen as simply trying to prop up religious belief by using science. Neither do I want to appear to be unfairly criticising the scientific approach. This being said, there can be ways in which science appears to shut out a religious approach, and there are also ways that scientific facts can be used to show that religious beliefs are not as fanciful as some would have us believe. I am simply trying to point out that science does not and can not deny underlying religious truths, as is sometimes clearly implied by atheists. Science and religion should be complimentary in their search for truth. ** The Earth we live on is remarkable. Dr Hugh Ross (in ‘Big Bang refined by fire’, 1998) lists 68 design features (including required levels of ozone, oxygen and carbon dioxide, in addition to our position in space.) that contribute to the earth as it is, and enable life to develop and thrive. He calculates the probability of them all happening by chance as 1 in 10 to the power of 99. The number of possible planets in the universe (based on 10 per star) is 10 to the power of 23. So, it seems that to say that the earth developed by chance defies probability. (Presumably the well informed atheist will now bring in the ‘multiuniverse’ theory to increase the probability. Note here, the word ‘theory’. There is always a theory to justify the point of view.) Small changes in any of the universal constants in science would produce dramatic changes in the universe, making it unsuitable for life. If the force that binds atoms together was just 5 percent weaker, only hydrogen would exist. Forces combine in just the right way to produce abundance of carbon and oxygen, two elements critical for life as we know it. Everything in the universe suggests the presence of a designer. This is not a statement made just by unintelligent, ‘deluded’ believers. Astronomer Fred Hoyle said that it would be easier to believe that a whirlwind in a junkyard could produce a jumbo jet than to believe that everything happened by chance, and that apparently a ‘super intellect’ had monkeyed with physics’ Physicist Paul Davies says that the universe seems ‘unreasonably suited to the existence of life, almost contrived, one might say, a ‘put up job’’ You say you are an atheist. Ask yourself these questions 11

No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

To help, I give you my suggested answers. •

How much information about the universe does mankind really possess? Answer: not very much.

•

How much do you, as an individual, know of the total of mankind’s knowledge? Answer: not very much

•

If you insist on saying that materialistic philosophy and knowledge of science gives the answers to all you need to know, does this really make you an agnostic, not an atheist? I’m not answering this one. I will leave that to you. **

For some of the following comments about science and the universe I am indebted to Bill Bryson’s marvellous book ‘A short History of Nearly Everything’. I have never read a book that put such complex ideas so simply and entertainingly. I appreciate that Mr Bryson may not come to the same conclusion as I do about the origin of the universe. ** Don’t rely on science. Don’t assume that science knows everything. Don’t let them fool you. As Thomas Edison once put it about our knowledge. ‘We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.’ Yes, we hypothesise and theorise, based on sound deduction and induction, but we don’t really know. We can’t properly compute the age of the universe. We can be relatively sure, but not one hundred percent certain. New estimates are produced on a regular basis, replacing the old ones that had been accepted as ‘fact’. We can’t be sure of the distances between stars. We don’t really understand physical ‘laws’ and why they apply. We don’t really understand the structure of basic matter. Solid things are not really solid. They consist of more space than solids. Particles of matter are only kept apart by negative electrical charges. Without these, all atoms could pass through each other. If you touch something, you are never really in contact.

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

You are very, very close, but kept apart by electricity, otherwise you would just pass through or be absorbed. It is a force that makes things solid; they are not solid in themselves. All matter is a form of energy. You are not really solid, you just appear to be. The electrons in an atom are sometimes like particles, sometimes like waves. In Quantum physics, particles can instantaneously influence other particles, even trillions of miles away. Time is not a concept that means anything in this situation. It’s like they have a common mind, and would not exist without it. So, information can outpace the speed of light, violating Einstein’s relativity theory. No one really understands how. It just happens. Einstein did not like it. He said that God would not create something that was unknowable In the Bible, the writer of Genesis talks of creation from nothing. Up to recent years, science said that this was impossible, so people said that the Biblical account was rubbish. Quantum physics suggests that it is possible. So, not really knowing about how it all works, what did we do? We created the atom bomb. Very wise, wasn’t it? We were interfering with something we don’t really understand. We just knew how to overcome and release the energy force that keeps pieces of matter together. For all we knew at the time, we could have started a chain reaction that destroyed everything. I suppose that if we hadn’t done it first, then Hitler would. Still, a bit of a gamble, you might say. ** We still do not fully understand how time and space are interrelated. I once heard it explained something like the following. It’s an imperfect analogy, of course, but it might help. We live in three dimensions of space, with time as a fourth dimension. To us, time is a line, but we don’t know whether it has a start and a finish. If we were looking at a two dimensional straight line on a piece of paper, we could see the beginning and end of it, and everything in between, all at once. It exists in two dimensional space. For a being living on that line, time would be reflected in the position on the line, but would mean nothing to us. We could see all ‘times’ all at once. We live in three dimensional space. So, if there was something existing outside our dimensions of time and space, what we might call ‘eternity’, why can they not see our beginning and end, our time and space and everything in between, all at the same ‘time’. This is God. ** What is a living organism? The building blocks are proteins. There are several hundred thousand types of them, each one unique. They consist of amino acids strung together in a particular order. For example, the protein Collagen is built from over a thousand amino acids, all in the right order. The chance of this happening without being consciously designed is 1 in 10 to the power of 260. This is a very, very large number. What did the amino acids do before they came together to produce a living organism? They are not ‘alive’ independently.

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Proteins can’t reproduce on their own. For this they need DNA. DNA on its own has no purpose at all. It’s only reason for existence is to assist the creation of proteins. Proteins can’t be made without the presence of DNA. Like ‘Love and Marriage' in the old song, you can’t have one without the other. Well, you could have DNA, but it would appear to be absolutely useless. A protein is not a protein if it is not complete. There are no ‘intermediate’ proteins. So, were the proteins assembled bit by bit in ‘chunks?’ What were these intermediate chunks used for, and where are they now? Was it chance and unimaginable lengths of time, or was it design and unimaginable lengths of time, or was it design and instant creation? Was it evolution? Is evolution part of the design process? Whatever the process, in my opinion it is easier to believe that there was a designer or a creator, rather than in the operation of chance. ** We know very little for sure, even on the earth. On our planet, we don’t know enough about what is in our oceans. We can’t be sure if and when deep ocean currents are changing, something that would have disastrous consequences. We don’t even know much about what lies deep beneath our feet. We can’t forecast accurately when major earthquakes or volcanic eruptions will occur, causing major disasters. We don’t know nearly enough about the world’s weather systems. We can’t forecast accurately when hurricanes will come. We don’t even know when we could be hit by a massive asteroid. We know we have been hit before, but we can only say that the next one seems to be overdue. All of these areas of study are relatively new, and scientists in each of the disciplines related to these areas would, if pressed, be the first to admit it. That is a big reason why they are scientists, for the thrill of discovery. The problem is that many of them offer a new found theory and it is taken by us as if it was the final word. It never is. Yet we still act irresponsibly, as though we have mastery over the world and how it works. Pollution, over-fishing, destruction of the rain forests, extinction of whole species, fresh water shortages, global warming, the list of our follies could be endless. ‘Isn’t that what your God said?’ I hear you say. ’Didn’t God promise this mastery in Genesis?’

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Certainly. But it is a very foolish master that works his slave to death, especially if the slave can’t be replaced. In truth, the rights and insights we have been given are a stewardship, not a right to exploit and destroy. We do not own the earth or any part of the Universe, but we act as though we do. We are only stewards of the resources we have been given. As stewards we should conserve and take care of them. ‘Genesis is a fairy tale’, you say. ‘For a start, creation in seven days is rubbish’ Genesis could never have been a scientific textbook, but why should the language used mean that it is a primitive fairy story? The word that is translated ‘day’ can also mean a very long period of time, in the sense that we use the word ‘day’ in such a statement as ‘the day of the dinosaurs’. Would the writer of Genesis been better to have said that God created a thermonuclear reactor in the sky? But this is effectively what the sun is. Much of Genesis is poetical, allegorical or pictorial language, telling of the process of God’s creation in words that you would not need a string of scientific degrees to fully understand. Why on earth should we expect otherwise, and why on earth should atheists be allowed to write it all off as rubbish simply because it is written in language that even a child could understand? Surely, it should be. The Bible says that all scripture, every word, is ‘God breathed’. Why does this have to be interpreted as saying that every single statement has to be taken literally? If science has suggested or proved that earlier centuries’ interpretations look archaic, why do some insist on holding on to these older views, as if it is a contest? Whether Noah’s family were literally the last humans on earth is surely not critical. In this case, it is the lesson learned from their faith that is important. A fundamentalist approach to every word and description has probably helped the critics. It is open to their ridicule. They would ask how Noah managed to get two of every species on the earth into an ark the size described, and any possible explanations would probably be dismissed without discussion. They would also ask why the dinosaurs aren’t mentioned. Did he leave them behind because they were too big, they ask? (Ho,Ho,Ho!) But much of the Bible is, and has to be, capable of literal interpretation. It is also wrong to say that just because some parts could be pictorial or allegorical, it all has to be. Science, or even rational thought, can never prove that Jesus’ miracles or the ultimate miracle of the Resurrection are impossible, so there is no justification for insisting that they are not literally true. Sceptics, if they are honest, can only say they are improbable, given present scientific knowledge. The Resurrection is the central, critical event for Christian belief, and this can, and will, stand untouched from scientific criticism. Who knows, advances in medical science could well start to prove that it was possible.

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The Bible tells the truth in the sense that it is God’s truth about the world and human nature. It is in this way the Word of God to us, I have no doubt about that. As such, it should always be considered as a higher authority than human-made church traditions, hierarchies and rules. Sadly, in some churches this is not the case. Human interpretation of the Bible can always be flawed, from both the fundamentalist and liberal extremes, because our interpretation can be influenced by our personal wants and needs. I dislike extremes. I am always suspicious of them. We need leaders and teachers to guide us, but we should also be allowed to use our own rational judgement Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a personal belief in the literal truth of every word, if you so wish, because if God is God, nothing is impossible for Him. In the same way, there is nothing wrong with the acceptance of poetical, pictorial or allegorical interpretations, or the belief in God’s use of evolution in creation. If the end result in terms of basic beliefs about what the Bible says is the same, what is the problem? Allegorical or pictorial interpretations do not mean that God is not telling the truth. Why do Christians quibble amongst themselves over these issues, laying them open to more criticism? Having said all of this, even the Biblical accounts cannot be said to be so improbable and incapable of even a poetical interpretation as some religious attempts at a description of the world. Consider the following: "The moon is 50,000 leagues higher than the sun, and shines by its own light; night is caused by the sun's setting behind a huge mountain several thousand feet high, located in the centre of the earth, that this world, flat and triangular is composed of 7 states - one of honey, another of sugar, a third of butter, and still another of wine, and the whole mass is borne on the heads of countless elephants which in shaking produce earthquakes." From the Hindu Vedas. *** The genetic profile of all humans is essentially the same, whatever our ethnic origin. This means that we came from a very small original population. Yes, this could mean that a worldwide disaster reduced the human population to a few thousand, but why does it not also allow the possibility that there were two beings who were the first that could be described as human? But speak of Adam and Eve and you receive another of those looks that suggest you should be locked away somewhere for your own protection. Remember that poetical, pictorial or allegorical language can be used to reinforce literal truths. Think of the story of ‘The Fall’, and Adam’s defiance of God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (no, it wasn’t an apple, another popular misconception). This is simply a poetic way of saying that human free will has made a choice against God. Humans wanted to know everything; they wanted to have God’s knowledge. They wanted to be in control. No one can deny that this is a human characteristic. We discovered the difference between good and evil, and lost our

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innocence. It tells us that we are all subject to this same failing, from the first human all the way down to us. Think how much emphasis is placed sometimes on ‘nature over nurture’. Criminals have criminality in their genes, it is said. Environment and upbringing are a factor, but it is generally recognised and believed that genetics is also critical. So why, when Christians say that we are innately corrupt, do people write it off as wrong? Please do not try to say that it should have been explained to us in this way in the Bible, not by some sort of ‘children’s story’. Understood simply, it tells us what we need to know about ourselves. If you wish to ignore it as a fairy story, you will not understand, and your failure to understand will be deliberate, so you have no excuse. Wisdom and truth can (and possibly should) be presented in simple ways. We have been given logical, reasoning minds, and enough clues in the Bible and in the universe, by which our natural curiosity and need to discover is encouraged. This is how it should be, but why does that need have to exclude metaphysical or religious reasoning? It is for us to discover the details of exactly how it all works, both physically, psychologically, spiritually and metaphysically. This is part of the human journey. Do people really expect that if God exists, He should have dictated every scientific detail for us, as if He was some sort of celestial Open University lecturer? If there was a case in a law court that was brought to deny the existence of God, it would be thrown out because when all of the ‘evidence’ was properly presented, the jury would have cause for ‘reasonable doubt’. So, you can make your choice. I have. Many scientists can still believe in God, so why can’t you? Have you been truly ‘blinded by science’? Are you going to admit that science does not have all the answers, but then assume that it will have them all one day? Are you sure? ********

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The Problem of pain and suffering

The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. Dante Gabriel Rosetti

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What about suffering? Why do children die if there is a God? Why are there so many natural disasters? Surely God would not permit such suffering? These statements are, of course, made with the assumption that death is the end, and nothing follows it. This can never be stated as an absolute fact, but it is assumed that it is by atheists. Given that we all die one day, this must have to be in many different ways, some more horrible than others. Should there be a kind of death that is not allowed unless the person deserves it? What would be the standard by which that is judged? How would you know if you were good enough to avoid a horrible death? Would you want to be able to say ‘I’m a good person, so I can take risks.' I won’t get killed’. That’s absurd. Do you want us all to be able to say ‘Right. I’m going to pop off now. No problem. Goodbye’? What standard should be used to say which way of dying is acceptable? Are we asking God to tell us that we will all die quietly in our sleep? That’s just not logical. We would all be wondering, every time we go to sleep, whether we were going to wake up again in the morning. Every night. In December 2004 there was the worst natural disaster for many, many years, the Indian Ocean Tsunami. The death toll was nearly 300,000. Rather than blame God, it should be a time to throw ourselves on His mercy, because it really does illustrate how helpless we are, and that we are not the masters of nature that we sometimes think we are. There is also a human element to the number of deaths. A warning system could have been installed, but it was too expensive in relation to the estimated chances of such a disaster. The power of the earth’s natural forces was underestimated. It always is. If someone talks of ‘the end of the world’, people tend to ignore them or treat them as harmlessly eccentric, along with ‘flying saucer’ enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists. However much they try to ignore it, the possibility cannot be denied that we could be wiped from the face of the earth in a variety of ways. • • • •

A massive asteroid could collide with the earth. This has happened before, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. We can’t accurately forecast when it might happen again. A Super- Volcano could erupt. There are more than one of these in the world, the best known being the Yellowstone National Park in the USA. No one knows when they could erupt. A nuclear war. Global warming.

If there is a God, any of these could be used if He wished to bring it all to a close for the human race, but people seem to think it is a ridiculous concept, or that it is millions of years off into the future. It could be tomorrow.

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That should not depress us at all. If we are an atheist, it does not really matter anyway, does it? It’s just a natural event or human stupidity, isn’t it? We all have to die some day; it is the only certainty in life. We just don’t know how it will happen, and surely that’s how it should be. Similarly, how could there be an age, before which you would not die, because you are a child? Say it was the age of fifteen. When you neared that age, to say that you and your parents would be worried would be the understatement of the year. Can’t you see how illogical it is to argue that God should not let children die? Take note. I know that you expected the usual answer that ‘God has a purpose that we don’t understand. There is a reason for it’, didn’t you? You didn’t expect an attempt at a sensible argument, not from a person with ‘blind faith’, did you? But yes, it is also true that God does have a purpose, and that we cannot hope to understand it. That is also a sensible thing to say. How could we hope to understand? ** What we do know is that we have free will. We can choose between good and bad. God is like parents who give their children the opportunity to learn from mistakes. Your argument is sometimes like saying that God does not exist because we are allowed to be ourselves. It seems that to believe in God you would prefer one who controls your every thought, word and deed. If God was like that, we would not be having this discussion, and even if we were, you would be saying that you could not believe in a God who did something as pointless as to create humans, only to make them automatons. They would not be humans. You seem to want to ‘have your cake and eat it.’ How do we know what ‘good’ is if we cannot experience ‘bad’? Without evil, how would we know that good was better? Where is the freedom in that? You are likely to say that freedom to choose is a basic human right, but you then imply that the fact that you have the freedom to choose means there cannot be a God. So, if there was a God, He should deny us basic rights, should He? ******

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Evolution and the Survival of the Fittest

An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident Francis Thompson

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

The ‘survival of the fittest’ came from a comment made by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century. It is a common misconception that the phrase originates from Darwin’s theories of evolution, but it does fit nicely with it. It was in relation to economic issues, not biological, and it came as a 'scientific' justification of wealthy people in the presence of mass poverty. He said 'I am simply carrying out the views of Mr Darwin in their application to the human race.........those who do advance..........must be the select of their generation'. Herbert Spencer So, if you are successful, you must be better than others who fail. The Theory of Evolution has taken such a hold in the popular mind that it is now sometimes assumed that everything in life and the universe is subject to its working. There is a reason for this ease of acceptance. ‘Look after Number One’ is the cry. ‘No one else will do it for you’ Natural selection and the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ is a convenient justification for this attitude. It is ‘only natural’ to behave this way. Is it really a good thing to apply ‘the survival of the fittest’ principle to our world today? But this is what we are encouraged to do. But a better part of our nature fights against it. Why? So, when a handicapped child is born, do we practice infanticide? No. We know instinctively that it would be wrong, and yet, if we apply the theory, to allow imperfections to persist in the gene pool is not in the long term interests of the human race. Following evolutionary theory, all the Nazis were doing when they experimented with genetic engineering was discovering how it works, and helping the process along a little. The frightening prospect is that the knowledge and technology now exists to be able to develop and apply such theories. Presumably, if the ultimate goal for the human species is the production of a superior race, free from imperfections, then to help it along would not be a bad thing. I don’t think so, somehow. Do you? Do we consciously say to ourselves that we should allow mass starvation in order to keep the population down, leaving more resources for the survivors? No. We know it is wrong, yet according to the ‘survival of the fittest’, it would be both sensible and natural.

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Most supporters of evolutionary theory would certainly not advocate such extreme views, yet to deny them is to deny the theory. Some evolutionists then try to say that compassion is also a natural evolutionary development, that is for the good of the human race, and that it will lead to more sharing out of resources in the long term, etc, etc. They will never admit that human beings are different from other animals in any way. That would suggest the possibility of Divine intervention. It would bring God into it, and intangible things like love. In evolutionary theory, nothing is allowed to be intangible. All requires a scientific explanation. Even love. Do we only mourn the death of a partner or a blood relative because it means there is less chance of the continuation of our personal gene pool? This is what evolutionary theory would say if you accept its explanation of what love is. Love is a sort of aid to successful procreation and nurturing of the young, it says. How does this explain homosexual love (and I am not referring to the sex act)? Surely the theories should define it as a perversion of the process of evolution, and we can’t say that, can we? I don’t mean that a gay couple are not capable of bringing up a child. However, homosexual love, left to itself, cannot contribute to procreation. So, in terms of evolutionary theory, if it is encouraged to flourish it is detrimental to the survival of the species. As for my opinion on the Christian stance on homosexuality, I have come to realise that the case against homosexuality that is put forward by some fundamentalist Christians is not as clear cut as it seems. There is too much condemnation and not enough understanding, compassion, or detailed examination of what the Bible says. I simply find it sad that many gays feel they have to blatantly promote, express and flaunt their sexuality and lifestyle in order to be recognised. For me, this is just as offensive and unnecessary as the blatant expression in public of heterosexuality. To discuss this in detail would fill another chapter. Some evolutionary theory limits all of the range of human emotional experience to the workings of a self perpetuating machine. Are you really just a machine? If you are, it would not really matter in the great scheme of things if I put a bullet in your head tomorrow. It would be quite a sensible act on my part if you were not a part of my immediate gene pool. It’s one less person to use the world’s resources, one less to compete with my gene pool. ** There is an evolutionist theory that tries to define human nature in evolutionary terms, saying that inequality is unjust, but that its basis is social instincts of primitive human beings. These instincts then evolved into co-operation between humans in small hunter-gatherer societies that shared resources. Their economic structure was based on immediate consumption, with no surplus. But did these hunter-gatherer societies always share? Were there no jealousies, envy or stealing?

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The theory says that because of this, modern humans have been ‘designed’ by evolution to share, through long ages of hunter-gatherer societies. The instincts developed over this long period did not allow dominance, and were satisfied by sharing of resources. The problem is, it says, that the older instincts (those that promoted domination, status seeking and protection of our closest family at the expense of others) came back to the fore as soon as soon as societies began to produce an economic surplus. Apparently, we have not had time to evolve a new approach in the relatively short time (several thousand years) that we have been able to produce a surplus. There therefore remains a sense of injustice when we see inequality. So, instincts from the days before we were truly human create inequality. Early humans shared everything, because they hunted and gathered on a basis of immediate need. When we began to create a surplus, dominant individuals took more than their share and became the powerful elite, driven by pre-human instincts. We have not had enough time to lose the need for sharing that we acquired in the early human ‘huntergatherer’ days, so we are left with a feeling that inequality is wrong. The theory says it is not sure whether evolution will make us get better and start to share again. It says that it is more likely that we could eventually become accustomed to inequality, which implies that we will not care about its effects. I would say that we are nearly like that now. This is because it is assumed that evolution, by natural selection, brings the victory of the strongest over the weakest, and sharing can weaken your personal prospects. What a bleak, sad future in prospect for the human race if this is true. The primitive instincts win through. So, humans will be naturally selfish. We are like this already, and always have been. However we look at this, the theory says that to share goes against the natural inclinations of human nature. It says that natural selection has a tendency to prefer behaviour that ensures survival. This behaviour would include anti social activities such as killing, stealing and cheating, but they could, given suitable circumstances, be defined as ‘good’, because they ensure survival. The idea is that the humans that are not trying to achieve a higher status would, by the process of natural selection, leave fewer descendants. This is by the elimination from the gene pool of those genes held by the people who are contented with a lower social status. In effect, less ambitious humans are weaker. So, poor people would eventually be ‘eliminated from the gene pool’, would they? We are simply ‘weeding out’ the weaker ones, and that has to be good for the human race, doesn’t it? It’s their fault, after all, isn’t it, for not being strong enough to achieve our status What a selfish, depressing and hopeless theory. It’s also very convenient. Rich people are ‘stronger’, which implies that they are somehow better. Self congratulations all round, eh?

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Somewhere in the distant future, are we going to have a race of dominant superhumans, the weaker ones having died out? Of course, they would be happy with that situation, wouldn’t they? Some would still be relatively weak in relation to the others. The process would never end. It would probably never be allowed to end, because we would more likely have wiped ourselves from the face of the earth first. So, why complain if we just let the poor die of starvation? Better still, why don’t we put them out of their misery with mass extermination? We are just animals, after all, and that’s what we do with suffering animals isn’t it? We could speed up the process of evolution a little. Oh dear. I’d better not put these ideas into their heads, had I? They might do it. In some countries it actually takes place. It’s known as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Eugenics It can also be related to the science of ‘Eugenics’, or ‘Genetic Engineering’. Eugenics was a popular area of study in the early 20th Century, before we had our current knowledge of the human genome. It was said that the problems of society could be corrected by selective breeding, by weeding out the inherited traits that contributed to lawlessness and limited intelligence, on the basis that ‘nature’ played a greater part than ‘nurture’. Heredity was stronger than environment. This totally disregarded factors such as educational opportunity, inequality of income and involuntary unemployment. It was thought that we could develop a superior race. Laws were passed under which thousands of ‘sub-standard’ citizens were involuntarily sterilised. It would have been a short step from this to racial prejudice and ethnic cleansing. This was not Nazi Germany. It happened first in the USA. Negative public reaction to it came only with the reaction against the rise of Nazism in Europe. In the late 20th Century the emphasis was placed on changing the environment to improve society. Many are saying that this has failed, and are again looking to Eugenics. The technology now exists to be able to identify and delete ‘regressive’ genes from the human genome. There are massive profits to be made. It is said that the knowledge will bring many benefits in the way of better health, but what is there to stop its use for cosmetic purposes, when commercial interests and vanity are given free play? Who is to say that the Eugenicists who speak of the need for a ‘better’ human race will not be given their opportunity again? Who is to define which genes are ‘regressive’? It would be in the hands of the rich and the powerful to do as they wish. That the powerful might act to eliminate the weak might sound ridiculous, but surely it is logical if we accept evolutionary theory as it is presented. The strong have the power to do it. But it is still wrong. The evolutionists would say that this is because ‘counter-dominance’ still exists. There are enough people ready to resist such actions. Is it really all this simple? Evolutionary theory says that for a society to share resources equally it would require something stronger to fight the prevalence of the instinct to dominate.

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

In other words, for equality, we need a very strong compassion, or socialism, or something like it. We need someone to challenge the established order. The theory suggests that envy can play a part in the struggle against dominance, and can lead to hostile action as an exercise of strength. So, it seems to be saying that any action towards equality can be based on envy. Envy leads to action. So Socialists are just jealous and envious. Very convenient, isn’t it? It gives an excuse for suppressing them, and this is what has happened. ** Some of the reasoning used in this theory could have come straight from the pages of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. It is the ‘survival of the fittest’ taken to its logical extreme, and could also be used, just as Hitler used it, to justify euthanasia, genocide and genetic engineering. The most frightening aspect of this is that Hitler’s theories won a lot of support in a country that had been one of the most cultured in Europe. This is because they had been given what they wanted, economic recovery and a return of self respect after the humiliations following World War One. Can’t the evolutionists see that this is the logical outcome of their theories? They made it ‘acceptable’ to apply the use of force by the strong over the weak, and this gave us a war that devastated much of the world. So, to bring this a little more up to date, it’s fine to fight over food supplies or oil supplies then, is it? As a bonus, a war over natural resources keeps the population down too. Of course it’s not alright, and I believe that most atheistic evolutionists would agree. ** Primitive ‘hunter-gatherer’ societies that still exist today are seen to share their resources and practice hospitality. They only spend a couple of hours a day collecting their food and materials, and have the rest of the time for leisure. They talk, sing and practice their rituals. They live in harmony with their environment and nature. Their lives are virtually stress-free. It is a popular myth that primitive societies live in squalid conditions and have harder lives than ours. Maybe this arises from our need to justify our own ways of living. We perpetuated a myth that indigenous people that we had to ‘civilise’ were all somehow less human than we were. This happened in America, Africa and Australia, and eased consciences when populations were wiped out. This attitude continued well into the twentieth century. They were not really humans. We conveniently forgot that some Native American people lived in towns, or that there had been highly developed civilisations in Africa. Because primitive societies tend to share, it is assumed by some people that this is the natural state of affairs for humans. The evolutionary theory says otherwise. They learned to do it, because it was essential for their survival as a species. The ‘huntergatherer’ culture was a traditional way of life, developed for a reason. Anyone taking more than their fair share would have threatened the survival of them all, because they could have easily over exploited the available resources (does this situation ring any bells?). They would have been suitably admonished and punished. People were forced

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

to share by tradition, and it became an accepted way of life. It does not follow from this that it is natural for humans to share with one another. A lack of stress related diseases kept the death rate down A lack of surplus kept the population down, ensuring that there was always enough to go round. Humans survived happily like this for thousands of years. Some still do, but if you gave them a surplus of food and resources, things would change. For the human race, this surplus came with the knowledge of agriculture. As soon as agriculture created food that was surplus to immediate needs, a minority of dominant humans took control of the surplus and exploited the situation, giving them control over the majority. . More food allowed a bigger population, but the inequalities had been established, so despite the surplus of food and resources, they were not shared equally. The minority maintained their rich lifestyles on the back of the majority’s labours. They kept the surplus for themselves. Things don’t change, do they? So, we began the process of ever lengthening working days, most of the extra labour expended to enrich those higher up the social scale. This is why today’s life is so stressful. We work harder and harder to try to catch up to the minority, and all the time the larger share of the fruits of our labour is going to them. ** So, how can the theory of the survival of the fittest, as part of evolutionary theory, be able to be used to deny the existence of God? It does not and cannot disprove God’s existence, but people assume that it does, because it’s ‘scientific’. The theories do not tell us anything new about our human nature. Two thousand years ago, the Bible had already told us we were like this. This is consistent with the concept of a God that wishes us to know the truth about ourselves. God has been trying to tell us we are like this for thousands of years. The writers of the Bible did not need evolutionary theory. They knew about human nature. In Genesis, we have a story that reflects the move from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, and to ‘civilisation’. It says that increased knowledge brought us increased hard labour. We lost our innocence, looking for more and more all the time. We thought we knew it all. We left the Garden of Eden. We built ‘Babel’, the tower of ‘civilisation’, and it led to confusion and destruction. What a lesson for us today. The Bible is full of reminders that, to survive on a long term basis, a society needs to be egalitarian and resource conscious. Jesus taught this way of living. People must share. In the Old Testament, every fifty years, the Israelites were instructed to cancel

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

debts and share out resources. It was called the year of the ‘Jubilee’. They survive as a nation to this day. The Israelite nation was constructed on a tribal basis. The disasters that they had when they chose to have Kings ruling over them should teach us valuable lessons about the dangers of a hierarchical society, where the rich lord it over their subjects. We don’t seem to learn. Thom Hartmann, in his book ‘The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight’, says that the tribal way of living is the most successful for long term survival. Resources are conserved and shared equally. Humans are closer to nature. There is much leisure time, so none of the stresses that blight ‘modern’ living. We think ‘primitive’ societies are ‘poor’ because they do not have our consumer goods. They say they are rich in the things that really matter. They have the time to be in touch with nature and with God. ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ attempts to show that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and as each level is satisfied, we move on to the next.. • • • • •

First come the physiological needs: air, water, food and sleep. Next are the safety needs: shelter, safe environment, job and finance. Then comes the Social needs: friendship, love, and group membership Next is Esteem: self respect, achievement, attention, reputation and recognition. Finally is ‘Self-Actualisation’. This is the search for truth, justice, wisdom and meaning in life.

We are a supposedly advanced society, but we have not even moved completely beyond the second on the list. We have homeless people, job insecurity, and financial insecurity for many people. We are also beginning to feel physically insecure, our lives at threat from terrorism. All of these cause the breakdown or lack of development of essential social needs, and lack of esteem. The reason we don’t progress is that our ‘consumer society’ leaves us never satisfied with the basic needs. We create more and more ‘needs’ for goods that are not essential. They are intended to make up for our failure to fulfil needs that are higher up the scale. ‘Comfort shopping’ is a good example of this. We spend all our time and resources trying to get hold of these things. But they never satisfy us. Little wonder that we have no time to progress properly up the scale. Little wonder, too, that depressive illnesses are on the increase. How on earth, under the circumstances, could we expect people to even think about the final needs on the list, and look for some sort of meaning in life? How many times do we find people saying that they wish that they could have a more ‘laid back’ lifestyle? There are still many places where the pace of life is not as hectic as ours. Alas, they are becoming fewer and fewer as the all pervasive consumer lifestyle takes over.

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Sitting Bull, probably one of the most famous Native Americans, when in captivity towards the end of his life, said, ‘The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it’. When taking part in Buffalo Bill’s ‘Wild West Show’, Sitting Bull had given a lot of his earnings to the poor children that regularly crowded around him. Thom Hartmann’s book says that tribal living and sharing is the natural way for humans to be. If so, why do we succumb so easily to the temptation to have more than we need to survive? The Bible tells us that when we moved away from the simple way of living, we were lost. The prospect of knowledge that would increase our standard of living, and would buy us the ‘things’ that we ‘need’, was too much of a temptation. The primitive societies that exist today, and are said to have a ‘natural’ human lifestyle, can also succumb very quickly. Most of them, sadly, already have. The younger generations fall first, because they have fewer ties to the traditions and religions that are controlling the natural human inclinations of their elders. Humans are not natural sharers. They have to be forced to share, either by tradition or by legislation. *****

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Wars caused by religion?

An atheist is a man who looks through a telescope and tries to explain all that he can’t see O.A. Battista

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Your logic seems to be this: Death and lasting hatred are the legacy of wars Unnecessary death and hatred are bad. Religion causes war, so religion is bad or false. An atheist makes this statement to justify the belief that religion is a human creation. How many atheists who say this have actually studied the real reasons for all wars in history, or even enough to be able to justify the statement? I have studied enough to come to the conclusion that most wars are, when you look at them more closely, rather to do with very worldly objectives like acquisition of land, power or resources, or to settle dynastic disputes. If religion is invoked at all it is for purposes of conscience, justification and the encouragement of support. Religion is often misused in this way, and consequently gets the blame. Look closely at most wars and you will find this. I believe that the death and lasting hatred that you say is caused by wars is really an inevitable result of fundamental human nature. Wars are a symptom, not a cause of the hatred. You would have to have a basic change in human nature to avoid wars, just as you would have to make the body immune from all disease to avoid cancer. Like communism, pacifism does not succeed, and the reason is that human nature has basic, inbuilt flaws. Call it the animal survival instinct or ‘looking after number one’ if you like, but whatever the flaws are, they make us the self centred creatures we are. It is this self-centredness that causes us to fight for what we believe to be our rights, our property or our very lives. Given enough encouragement, political or religious propaganda and self delusion, the same self-centredness causes us to disregard the rights, the property and the lives of others. Unfortunately, the encouragement sometimes comes from the misuse of religion, hence the statement that religion causes wars. I strongly contend that it is our selfish instincts that use religion as an excuse for our actions, and that even if there was no such concept as religion, we would look for another excuse. No, we would not need one. We would simply be animals trying to survive. But then, that’s what atheists say, isn’t it? But animals do not feel the need to justify their actions. We do. Why? A need to justify our actions comes from a deep sense we have that there is something more powerful than the self. Religion is created by humans, but only in the sense that it is the physical and spiritual manifestation of a universal truth,

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The Crusades are a specific example cited by atheists. ‘Christians’ were guilty of barbarism and atrocity, with the avowed aim of liberating the Holy Land from the Moslems. Moslems still talk of the Crusades when they wish to criticise Christianity. But they have also committed atrocities (not just the recent worldwide terrorism). The ‘Christian’ massacre of Moslems and Jews when taking Jerusalem in 1099 was matched by the ‘Moslem’ massacre of Christians when taking Constantinople in 1453. The Crusades may have had religious motivation to start with, but soon became a very un-religious scramble for wealth, power and land, all justified by the original blessing of the Pope. ‘Christians’ slaughtered ‘Christians’ too. The Crusades are still used by Islam today to justify an enmity to Christianity. It is as bad as if people today were to write off the whole of Islam because some extremists use Jihad (holy war or struggle) to justify their barbarous actions. Yes, I know. They already do. Even a war which apparently included a religious motive, such as the English Civil War, had an undercurrent of economic and social issues. The rising middle classes did not want to pay taxes without being allowed to vote for them in parliament. Many of these parliamentarians also happened to be fundamentalist Christian ‘puritans’ who disagreed with the King’s use of the Anglican and Roman Catholic religion. The King had used his religion to justify a ‘divine right’ to rule as he pleased. The point is that powerful and wealthy people would have developed autocratic rule whether religion had existed to justify it or not, and rebellion against it would have eventually occurred whether the King’s power was based on a religious lie or not. In wars, if you can say that you have a special case for taking someone else’s property or country because God has said it is right to do so, you will do it with a clear conscience. It is also very comforting and reassuring to be told if you have killed someone that it is sanctioned by God. Religion exists, so it is used. If it did not exist, do you think that there would be no wars? If religion was not considered at all, the situation could be much worse. Whether the outcome of a war is genuinely consistent with ultimate justice or even the ‘purposes of God’ is a matter for historical judgement and hindsight. Sometimes, whether we like it or not, war can be the only way to overcome a terrible evil, and may therefore sadly become a necessary lesser of two evils. Given that human nature is as it is, there will always be these evils to overcome. In amongst this, Christians should always practice peaceful opposition to things they disagree with, as an example to the world. This does not imply that Christians should be ‘doormats’. They should express their opposition, but by peaceful means. It is also very difficult to do. I would classify myself as a pacifist, but what if someone was threatening my children with violence, would I stand by and let it happen if I could stop it with a violent act? I would like to believe that I would surrender my life for pacifist principles (turn the other cheek, etc), but in certain extreme circumstances it would be hard. Even Jesus reacted violently to abuse of privilege and position for monetary gain, when He overturned the tables of the moneylenders in the Temple.

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For Jesus to speak of turning the other cheek and then to overturn the tables of the moneylenders is not a contradiction. If you see an injustice being practised on other people, should you stand back and let it happen? Christians are supposed to stand up against injustice, but at the same time they are required to demonstrate their forgiving nature by being submissive in the face of their own enemies, but assertive and compassionate to both the victims of injustice and those guilty of it. Jesus was exactly like this. Indignant when required, then forgiving when needed. ‘Modern’ or more enlightened justice systems practice some of these principles today, but in the name of ‘human rights’. Why, then, is the Bible accused of inconsistency, when ultimately, taken as a whole, it presents the same principles? Would you criticise a secular historical learning process that taught us that sometimes violent action might be a necessary evil, and at the same time showed us that this was as a result of basic human nature, and we were simply practising an instinct for survival? What if it told us that’s what we are like, and we should not be surprised, but we should work to minimise the effects and gradually become better people, would you criticise? No, you would not, because God is not mentioned. Human intelligence is being used to work it out for ourselves. This is the typical humanist approach. But you then give no answer as to why the world does not seem to get better. When God is implicated in the events of history, you criticise. You simply say, as you tend to do, that it was religion that ‘caused’ these atrocities. What about human greed and self interest? Is there not a chance that in most cases ‘religion’ is used as a justification for this greed? Is this not what the Bible is trying to tell us? Show me a secular human philosophy that is actually making the world better without God, and I might think again. The Old Testament on its own would not give us the knowledge we need, but we have the New Testament. We have the example of the actions of God Himself, sweeping away the old and bringing in the new, showing us that, left to ourselves, we have basic faults that we cannot put right by our own efforts. Yes, that includes you. Christians are asked to stand up for justice, but demonstrate self giving love and forgiveness. To do as God does. The Old Testament used the nation of Israel to demonstrate the faults inherent in human nature, to show the forgiving and saving nature of God, and to point to His own sacrifice so that we could be released from ourselves if we so wished. The New Testament gives us this explanation. The two are completely complementary, and not at all inconsistent. Behaviour and rules are now based on love and self sacrifice Why is this message any less ‘true’ because the words and phrases can be picked apart and criticised? Why is it in error? This is what the true ‘inerrancy’ of the Bible is, the truth of an underlying message.

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A Christian is still a human being, subject to all of the flaws of human nature, but they are no longer a slave to the self. They are also no longer a slave to the futility of trying to overcome human nature by obeying a multitude of detailed religious rules and regulations. To be made aware of our faults, and how far we fall short of perfection, leads inexorably to efforts to improve, simply because we are so grateful to our God for showing us the way. Show me a secular philosophy that holds out the possibility of giving such an impetus to improvement. ** If there is a God of the kind that the Christian religion speaks, He would be extremely unfair to demand the kind of self sacrifice that pacifism in the face of violence would need, without offering the same for us. (He already has, of course, but many people do not realise it or want to believe it). Peaceful civil disobedience and passive resistance should always be considered first, but if it is clearly not making a difference, a war or a rebellion may, sadly, be considered necessary. The example of Mahatma Ghandi is usually put forward by those who believe in the power of civil disobedience. The British rulers in India, however, were not bent on ethnic cleansing by mass genocide, and the government in London was becoming more open to changes. Can anyone seriously suggest that civil disobedience would have been successful under the Nazis? It is still wrong to assume that ‘God is on your side’. You should be praying that you are taking the right decision. Both sides can do this, and both cannot be right. It is more appropriate that the protagonists should be asking for the mercy of God, whatever the outcome, and not invoking God as a soldier for their cause. We can be wrong. We are human. It is human beings that cause wars, not God. Christians should be pacifists, but if they are ever totally convinced of a 'just cause', for example the clear threat to humanity posed by Adolf Hitler, then support of some kind should be given. It would have been wonderful if non-violent opposition could have won the day in that war, and in all wars. Maybe within occupied countries in World War II, peaceful non-co-operation was a useful option, but was extremely dangerous and, it could be said, futile where the Nazis were concerned. Is there a 'just war'? The other side may also believe in the justice of their case. People may feel forced into supporting it. They may sometimes be fooled into supporting it. God says ‘You shall not commit murder’. God also says ‘You shall not steal’. If our government has to make decisions on these matters, and to kill or steal in order to save more people than would be killed or dispossessed if they did not make the decisions, does it mean they are hypocritical if they then make laws against their people murdering or stealing? But this is what you are criticising God for, saying that He is allowing the things He is supposed to be forbidding. You then say that if there is a God, He should not allow bad things to happen, but don’t want Him to take action against those who cause them. God is criticised if He acts, and criticised if He doesn’t.

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The Old Testament is often criticised for its violence on behalf of Israel, and critics say that a lot of it was written from a religious motive as simply a justification of barbaric acts. But all acts of warfare can only be properly understood with the benefit of historical hindsight. Even then, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle justifiable actions from historical wishful thinking. What about the instruction in the Bible not to let a witch live? Certainly, the purity of Israel’s religion had to be maintained, but the solution does, to us, seem a little drastic. To criticise the actions used by humans within the context of human nature is fruitless, however cruel they appear to be, or whether they are claimed to be in the name of God or not. The Old Testament is crammed with the whole range of problems and faults that humans are subject to. It ‘tells it like it is’ where human nature is concerned. If the events in the Old Testament are so obviously evil and counter to the professed morality of Christianity, why are they there? Why did the Church include them in the Bible? Atheists sometimes say that the Bible was somehow concocted or re-written by the Church, yet at the same time point out evil deeds in the Bible that are perpetrated in the name of God, saying that this is inconsistent with Christian belief. So, apparently the people who supposedly edited and amended the scriptures to suit themselves were complete idiots. This is to ignore the fact that they were probably better educated (in the sense that education should teach us to think) than many of us today. Surely we should ask ourselves why the evil deeds are there. We should ask what they are telling us about human beings, and interpret this in the light of New Testament teaching. The religion of Islam survives today using harsh laws, and says it is God’s will. If this principle is accepted by much of today’s world, (and whether it is true or not that it is God’s will), there is little wonder that it could have been accepted in ancient Israel. With historical hindsight, ancient Israel was given the task of nurturing and preserving the belief in one God, within a very hostile political and religious environment, and it succeeded. For Israel to then believe that all of the methods used to bring this success had God’s blessing, was an understandable step to take. (Whether Israel should expect to be able to apply the same principles today is, of course, more questionable). Imagine a desperate world. This is not too difficult, given our present knowledge of the possible threats to our environment. Imagine that most land is desert. Water is scarce. Food is scarce. Drastic regulations are issued: • • • • • •

Do not have more than one baby. All surviving babies beyond the first are to be killed. All pregnancies beyond the first are to be terminated. Let millions die so that the few survive. Anyone who wastes water will be killed. Any corporation disobeying environmental rules is to be destroyed. Its leaders are to be killed.

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Hundreds of years later, after humankind has survived, what would the verdict be? Would the regulations be seen as harsh but necessary? All of these measures sound ridiculously harsh, but under certain circumstances they could be absolutely necessary. We could watch a science fiction film that shows these actions, and believe that things could come to such desperation. But when we are told that to survive in a hostile, violent, barbaric and male dominated world, a nation and its monotheistic religion needed to impose harsh rules and regulations, we recoil in disgust and disbelief. How can we judge Israel as too harsh or barbaric, if, in certain circumstances, we would be forced to apply drastic remedies ourselves? Can you truly state that, in all circumstances, and in the context of flawed human nature, the ends can never ever justify the means? It is extremely hard to judge when action is required to fight evil or injustice, especially in the light of ‘turning the other cheek’. We should always question our motives for doing so, and the methods we use. But surely there must be situations where an action can be the lesser of two evils, resulting in more good or less evil than would have been the case without the action. If your children’s lives were being threatened, and the only way to save them was to take the life of their assailant, could you really say that you would not even contemplate doing it? If your family or your nation was threatened by an invader, would you just sit back and let them do it? From a Christian point of view, the Old Testament survival of Israel and the maintenance of the purity of its religion could be looked at as a just cause, in the light of subsequent events and the survival of belief in one God. However harsh some of their actions seemed to be, they could be judged as being desperate measures taken to ensure survival, and as consistent with the direction of history. Remember, the Israelites of the Bible also suffered slavery, defeat, banishment and exile, so the impression that God was always ‘on their side’, whatever they did, is ridiculous, and just another excuse for ridiculing God, the Bible and Christianity. Without the survival of the Israelites, the world would not have had Christianity, or even Islam. If the history is not looked at in this way, some actions can appear to be atrocities, like any other. I know what you are thinking. If you feel like saying that the world would have been a better place without Islam or Christianity, this is the usual convenient ‘throw away’ way of writing off God and religion without really thinking through the implications of a world without them. Think of Soviet Russia in the last century, an atheist regime willing to sacrifice untold millions of its own people for the future of ‘the state’, then think what world history could have looked like without a belief in God. Much, much worse, I am sure. ** What if, for instance (and very much hypothetically, of course), the majority of the world decided that the USA’s economic and military dominance of the world was dangerous to our future survival? What if they then tried to control it? How would they do this? By trade sanctions? Would the USA sit back and accept these? Would they not consider the application of violence or the threat of violence to redress the situation? Any violence against the USA would then become 'official' violence, as

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opposed to terrorist violence, and future generations would see it as trying to save them from disaster. The benefit of historical hindsight is always helpful, even if it does not always give us a satisfactory answer. We have been encouraged to accept the necessity of the destruction by atomic bomb of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the fire bombing and destruction of Dresden in Germany as necessary evils. This mass destruction took countless thousands of innocent lives, and many, many times more than 9/11. It is still claimed that they saved many more lives, by helping to end the war. As another example, Israel's current treatment of the Palestinians is considered as unjust by many, including myself, but Zionists will not agree. Only historical hindsight will reveal the truth and whether it is justified. You don’t believe that there is a God. One of the reasons you don’t is the war and suffering I speak of. There can’t be a God because He would not allow it, let alone condone it. This is denying God the capability of being, you might say, ‘cruel to be kind’. We sometimes say that it is wrong to wrap our children in a cocoon of safety. We have to allow them a little leeway and freedom to learn, and in the meantime they might make mistakes and suffer the consequences. How can we then deny an all powerful God the use of this method? Using suffering and violence as a way of denying the existence of God is not a proof. God does not condone or encourage, He reluctantly allows. Can I please just ask you for a moment to put aside your atheism and imagine that you believe in God and an after-life, at least as a possibility? Believe me; I have tried this exercise the other way round. I have been an atheist before I was a believer, then I have later tried to think like an atheist. All I have found is despair and inconsistency. Human beings fight to satisfy greed, to survive, or to defend themselves and what they see as their rights. This has gone on throughout history. Should God interfere? Ask yourself, if you were God and wanted to show us how much we depend on you, and how much you love us, would you ‘spoil’ us by ensuring peace and prosperity at all times? If you have children, do you do this for them, or do you sometimes allow them to make mistakes? And, as God, if you knew that there is something so much better for them after they have learned the lessons of this life, what would you do? How are wars and suffering an argument against the existence of a good, just God, if this life is not all that there is, and there is something so much better to come? Atheists see nothing but this life. Therefore, to them, all suffering is unnecessary and pointless, particularly when it involves innocent victims. What reason do they give for man-made suffering, then? How do they explain it? Amongst other things, they blame religions. If religion disappeared, would suffering and hatred disappear? Can they really be serious if they believe this? What if the suffering of innocents in this short life is compensated for in some way that we do not know? We have to believe this if we believe in a just God. The

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alternative we have is total despair at the human condition, and we might as well all give up. Show me the evidence that human beings are getting better. If you are an atheist, you have a good excuse. You have religion to blame. ******

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Would a good God send people to Hell?

When all the world dissolves, and every creature shall be purified, all places shall be hell that are not heaven Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

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Although it is a sincerely held belief by many, it could certainly be that the threat of burning forever in Hell has been used by the Church as either a means of control over the masses, or for the compelling of belief through fear of eternal torture. A closer study and a bit of reasoning can suggest that harsh statements about eternal punishment are sometimes not as clear cut as they appear. A more reasonable interpretation of what the Bible says about Hell is that it is the destruction of the world and the wicked by fire at the day of judgement, after the dead (good and bad) have been resurrected and judged. In the meantime, between now and ‘judgement day’, the dead are just dead (again, the good and the bad). The resurrection of the dead takes place when this present world ends. After judgement, the wicked then die a second death. It is the second death that lasts forever, and this is the eternal punishment. They are never again resurrected. They are not tormented eternally, they are simply finally dead, for ever. The righteous go on to eternal life in a different place referred to as Heaven, or Paradise. What if Hell was an eternity of existence on a world like ours, separated from God? For me, that would really be pure Hell. I would certainly wail and ‘gnash’ my teeth, as it says in the Bible, and it would feel like a fire that would not go out. What is certainly true, whatever one interprets the Bible’s view of Hell to be, is that there is a state of permanent separation from God that we can find ourselves in, by neglect or deliberate choice. Hell is the realisation that you were wrong, and to have that hanging over you for however long you have left (whether it is until your final death or for eternity) is, well, it is simply hell. God might forgive you, but you will know you rejected Him. If you were asked who convicts you, you would have to answer, ‘Me’. We also have to seriously consider those who believe that Hell is only a temporary punishment, because the word translated ‘eternal’ could also mean ‘age long’. Also, what about the belief that we are reincarnated over and over again until we ‘see the light’? But then we would need to be conscious that we were the same creature through all lives. The Bible speaks of the dead ‘falling asleep’. I believe that it is reasonable to say that when we die, we are no longer in time and space, and when the judgement comes, it can happen at the same time for everyone who has ever died. If so, there is no waiting. ** I find it terribly difficult to accept that God will send people that could be considered to be good, to an eternity of damnation just because they misunderstood or were not even told properly about Jesus. I have grave difficulty when I seem to be told (by implication of such a belief) that my loved ones who die without belief in Jesus Christ as Saviour are separated from God, and don’t deserve it. See, I have difficulty even calling it Hell2. 2

For a discussion of the idea that if you do not belong to a particular church or if you are not a Christian, then God will send you to Hell, see the next chapter, entitled ‘What if you haven’t been told’ (page 42)

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You see, I cannot believe that I would be full of joy in Heaven when I knew that they were in Hell. Yet God promises to wipe away all tears, and promises me eternal joy. The Mormons hold services for the dead, and concentrate on family genealogy for that purpose. The Roman Catholic Church has purgatory, and the intercession of the saints, masses for the dead, and indulgences. These are attempts to solve the problem, but are imperfect human attempts, based on Church tradition or a particular Biblical interpretation. What about universal salvation, the idea that God accepts everybody? If God saved everyone without question, and we knew that for certain, why bother at all with this life? In any case, there would certainly not be a lot to restrain the worst effects of human nature. We would be free to do what we want, knowing that there was no eternal payback. But that’s the position you, as an atheist, are in now, isn’t it? No eternal justice. But if you believe in eternal justice, surely there has to be some sort of punishment in order for it to be enforced. Where would our legal system be without punishment of offenders? We could forgive, but forgiveness can only come from the wronged party. When breaking God’s rules for living, it is God we offend the most. The question of who takes God’s punishment is answered by Christianity. God Himself takes the punishment, offering us forgiveness and a pardon if we accept what He has done. He is like a judge convicting us and then paying our fine. Is this so difficult to understand? You ask how God can be said to love us when there is so much suffering and so much badness in the world. The Crucifixion and Resurrection give you the answer. Belief in this can enrich our lives. We no longer need to live in fear for our eternal destiny. We are not left in any doubt that we might not be good enough. We have total assurance that we will be saved from God’s punishment. We want to do the best we can, we are not threatened that if we do not, we will be punished. This is God’s gift of love to us. We learn what love is in this life, not in the next. If there is a God, does this not make sense? In the absence of universal salvation, and given that there is an eternal justice, there has to be a punishment for some. This punishment, however we define it, is the permanent separation from God that the wicked are subject to. It is an eternal death. This is Hell. If you are an atheist, what assurance do you have of eternal justice? Life is like that, you say. But don’t you wish it wasn’t? ******

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What if you haven’t been told?

The idea of preaching the gospel to all nations alike, regardless of nationality, of internal divisions as to rank and colour, complexion and religion, constituted the beginning of a new era in history. You cannot preach the gospel in its purity over the world, without proclaiming the doctrine of civil and religious liberty,--without overthrowing the barriers reared between nations and clans and classes of men,--without ultimately undermining the thrones of despots, and breaking off the shackles of slavery,--without making men everywhere free. Albert Barnes

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What about people in this country who have not had real Christianity explained to them? What about isolated societies that Christianity has not reached? Do they go to Hell? That’s ridiculous, you say. Yes, it is. What about children who cannot understand? What about sincere believers in other religions? What about people who insist they don’t want to know? Should we try to tell them? Christians were given a commission by Jesus. ‘He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation”’. Mark, chapter 16, verse 15. Some people ask me, if this is what Jesus wanted, wouldn’t it have been better to wait until global communications technology was available? Why did it happen in Israel two thousand years ago? Today, the mass media could instantly show the happenings in Israel to the world. We could witness miracles, but who would believe them? Technology also allows us the possibility of tricks and manipulation. Israel two thousand years ago was at the hub of civilisation, a meeting point of east and west. The Greeks had spread a common language from Europe across to India, and the Romans had developed a system of roads connecting every point in their empire, from the middle-east to northern Britain. What better place to create a religion that fused eastern and western beliefs and gave it an opportunity to spread? So, what if Christians fail to tell people?

For God does not show favouritism (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) .Romans Chapter 2: v11 and v 14-15 This is saying that those who have never heard or understood God’s law as it is set out in the Bible will be judged according to the law that is written in their hearts, and their conscience. Those who have not heard can be judged fairly. This would, of course, include children, who are too young to understand. There is also no reason why it cannot be applied to sincere believers in other religions.

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If this is so, why tell people anyway? It is because, although we know the difference between right and wrong, we all too often choose wrong, and we look for man made ways of satisfying our consciences, or appeasing God’s displeasure with us. God is offering us His way. God gives us a chance to understand. He helps us along. Since humans first walked the earth, we have had God’s rules for us, given through various religions and ‘written on the heart and conscience’. We have no real excuse for not knowing what is right and what is wrong. To leave it at this, we are in the position of the Moslems. We are not sure of salvation until God judges us. We may think we are good enough, but we might not be. We cannot really know. God also knows that we will fail, so we have a way out that we can take advantage of, to know we are sure of salvation. Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me John chapter 14, verse 6 This means that Jesus will judge us all. No one gets past him. All have to go through his judgement. It says that everyone has to go through Jesus to God the Father. It is not followed by the negative statement that if you do not believe in Jesus in this life, you are damned. To interpret this verse, as some do, to say that if you do not follow Jesus in this life you are automatically damned, is, I believe, not the intention when you put it with passages like Romans Chapter 2. That would also suggest that God is being unfair. What if you have not been told or are incapable of understanding? That is not the sort of God that I could worship. The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." Acts Chapter 16 verses 29 to 31 This not only says what needs to be done to confirm salvation, but also touches on the vicarious effect you can have on your loved ones. Your faith could save them too. Paul says elsewhere that it is possible for a believer’s spouse to be saved in this way.

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All of this does not tell me that we are definitely damned if we do not believe in Jesus, or if we are not members of a particular church or do not fulfil particular rituals, or, for that matter, if we follow another religion. But whether we are to have complete confidence that we will be accepted by God at the day of judgement is up to us, and this complete confidence is found in Christianity. If we do know this, what a better, more peaceful, joyful life we must then have. How much easier we will find it to be better human beings. What a better place the world could be. It is this aspect of being a Christian that should be emphasised, not the threats of a ‘fire and brimstone’ God who condemns people even if they have not had a chance to hear about Jesus or have not been told properly. When some isolated societies have understood the message, they have often said that it is what they were waiting for. It was their release from legalistic religion. Their religions had told them to appease God or the gods, or ‘nature’ with sacrifices or gifts. All they could do was to give offerings and hope. But they were never sure of God’s or nature’s favour. They had thought that natural disasters told them that they had displeased God, and good health and prosperity said God was pleased with them. It is a difficult question to ask. Do we evangelise them or leave them alone? It is very unfortunate that at many times in the past western ‘civilisation’ has partnered missionary work. It does not have to. Knowledge of Jesus does not have to destroy cultures, and the more enlightened missionaries today appreciate this and put it into practice. It is human greed that has destroyed cultures and ‘westernised’ them. It has done this for centuries, sometimes in the name of Christ. Many times, economic exploitation has followed the trail blazed by missionaries, as in Africa. Even David Livingstone promoted the ‘three Cs’: Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. They made the mistake of assuming that the people were poor savages and needed to become ‘civilised’. Our countries would not be like they are today if this had not happened to our ancestors too. ******

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Did Jesus say that the Old Testament Law still applies?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Love your neighbour as yourself… All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Matthew Chapter 22, verses 36-40

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Detailed Old Testament Laws are no longer binding, despite some critics who claim that Jesus said that they are, and despite the use of some of those laws by over-zealous Christians. Unfortunately, some Christians tend to cherry pick the laws they want to still apply, as in the case of the argument against homosexuality. They then safely ignore other laws like those that say that adulterers should be stoned. This kind of selective pedantry does the Christian faith no credit at all, and helps to justify atheists in their unbelief. Some say that statements made by Jesus about Old Testament ‘law’ never passing away contradict the Christian viewpoint that Jesus swept away the slavery to the old detailed religious rules. This is to interpret the words in a way that justifies the argument. It ignores the force of New Testament as a whole, and breaks one of the simplest rules for interpretation of any piece of literature, let alone the Bible. It interprets a literal statement as what it appears to say, but then ignores the overwhelming weight of contrary evidence elsewhere in the Bible that might help to interpret it differently. It also assumes a lot about what it was that Jesus meant when He spoke of the ‘Law’, and consequently what other New Testament writers might have meant by the Law. When he was asked what was the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus replied: (Matthew 22, 36-40) 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’. So, what is the ‘Law’? Is it all of the detailed rules and regulations that ensured that Israel and its religion had survived? Could it be the Ten Commandments? Or it could be the spirit of the Law that is encompassed in these two statements by Jesus? Jesus clearly saw the importance of the spirit of the law, not the letter, so why would he then be saying that the detailed rules and regulations should still apply? To you, this is a simple contradiction. But it is not a contradiction if we look at the New Testament as a whole. Many of Jesus’ statements and actions elsewhere in the New Testament show that he was saying that detailed man made regulations were useless. He also used examples to show that man made laws could be self-contradictory. The Pharisees insisted that all scriptural laws were still binding, yet they made new laws that contradicted the old ones. When Jesus used the example of putting to death children who cursed their parents, he was showing that some more recent man made laws were inconsistent with this, and that this is how ridiculous the application of detailed laws could be. He was certainly not saying the old law was valid and they should still apply it. It was like saying, ‘You say that God said this, but then you say that. How can this be?’ He was ridiculing them for applying detailed rules, as he did on many occasions. So how could he then be accused of supporting detailed Old Testament Law? 47

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As for the passages you quote to say that Jesus said the old law still applies. Look at them with the above in mind, and also include the words and verses that you have conveniently excluded. Luke 16:16-17 says (Jesus speaking) "The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.” You refer only to the second sentence. The first sentence says that the Law was proclaimed until John came. John preached the coming of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. The coming of Jesus was to change things. The Law was hard to keep, but is difficult to replace. But the Law is not being replaced, it is being fulfilled. Look at Matthew 5:16-20 (Jesus speaking). “In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”. What do you think Jesus means by ‘until everything is accomplished? Could this not possibly refer to the accomplishment of His mission on earth? Jesus is preaching to his followers, saying that they need to be seen to be better than the hypocritical Pharisees, as an example to them. But Jesus has come to fulfil the Law, not to abolish it. What do you think he means by ‘fulfilling’ the law? Trying to keep the detailed law was not possible. No one on earth could hope to keep all of it perfectly, so no one could please God. Belief in Jesus and his sacrifice was the answer to this. So Jesus does not replace the laws. His sacrifice fulfils them and sweeps away the legalism practised by the Pharisees. This is the message of the New Testament as a whole. You are free to disbelieve it if you like, but please do not misunderstand it or say it is contradictory and inconsistent. So, the idea that Jesus strongly approved of the law and the prophets, and did not object to the cruelties of the Old Testament is therefore no more than badly interpreted, over dramatised and exaggerated wishful thinking.

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*********

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Oh no! Not the Spanish Inquisition?!

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition George Herbert

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‘What about the Spanish Inquisition?’ You ask. ‘Surely this was barbarism in the name of religion. Torture and agonising death cannot be religious’. Perhaps the motivation behind the Inquisition might, in some misguidedly pious eyes, have been to save souls for the Roman Church. We also have to bear in mind that the immense power base of the Church of Rome was threatened by the Reformation and the growth of Protestantism. When you consider that the secular powers, kings and princes, held much of their wealth and lands in conjunction with the church, you may begin to think again of more worldly motives. To be rid of rivals with the full backing of God must have been a powerful temptation. Henry VIII tried and failed to have the Roman Church’s blessing on the divorce of his wife, and when he failed he created another church and became its head. Before that, the Pope had praised his religion, calling him ‘Defender of the Faith’. ** I don’t want to be seen to be unfairly criticising the Roman Catholic Church. However, the history can’t be overlooked. There have been times when the Roman Church has been very corrupt, sometimes the Popes being heavily implicated. This should not be taken as an excuse for saying that the whole of Christianity is false or that all Roman Catholic Christians are not really Christians, but this is what some people do. As an example of what I am trying to say, just because, when there is a charity appeal, some of the money might not find its way to its intended use, should this lead us to totally write off the principle of charitable giving? There will always be people who take advantage. We are dealing with human beings, with human faults. It is the same with religion. There will always be people to exploit it. What about the seventeenth century witch burnings? These atrocities were done by Protestants. This was mass hysteria of the worst kind, caused by extremists who may have had a sincere but deluded belief. The common people used the hysteria to be rid of many people who were, to them, just strange, out of place or just plain nuisances. The same has happened throughout history when the Jews seemed to be a threat. Humans are strangely susceptible to mass hysteria that can convince them that they have right on their side. Nazi Germany comes to mind here. What about Elizabethan England? Roman Catholicism was not a threat on purely religious grounds. Spain, the enemy, was a Roman Catholic nation but also a commercial rival. There have been two big mistakes made by many people: To equate the sincerity of common believers with the corruption or mistakes of the religious institution to which they are attached. To write off the religion completely because of the corruption of the church’s controlling interests.

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It was seen that the Church of Rome was corrupt (very corrupt), so believers were all called children of the Devil. The Pope was the antichrist. From the other viewpoint Protestantism was false, so believers were lost for ever. This kind of thing still happens today. All Moslems, to some people, are automatically suspect as possible terrorists. In Northern Ireland, the hatred is along religious dividing lines. Protestants called the Pope the antichrist, and all followers of the Pope were written off along with the institution of the Roman Catholic Church. This is the mistake, to condemn and hate sincere believers because of the practices and corruption of the institution. They seem to forget that we should ‘Hate the sin, but love the sinner’. The problems in Northern Ireland can also be given an explanation other than the religious one. The Roman Catholics are mostly descendents of the poorest section of the population, with many grudges to bear against the more prosperous Protestants, descendants of immigrant landowners and tradesmen. So, the struggle can also be very much a social, political and economic one. Even those considered the most famous Christians can make mistakes. They are human. Martin Luther, the founder of much of the Protestant Church, can be said to have been anti-Semitic (against the Jews), and also disregarded the needs of poor peasants in revolt. So, everyone is human. Religion does not give you immunity from mistakes, and mistakes and misuse of religion do not mean that it is false or untrue. This would be like arguing that the theories of equality behind Communism were false and untrue, because Communism was misused. No one would seriously argue that the Communist principle of all people being treated equally is a bad one. They may say it is unsuccessful because of human nature, but can’t then use this to say that communism as a principle is wrong. In the same way, how can they say that religion is rubbish on the basis of human failings? Human nature affects religion too. ** Much has been spoken about the misuse of religion. How often do you hear about its beneficial effects? There is much continuing work for good that is done today by members of religious bodies all over the world. I would contend that if it had not been for religion, things would have been much worse. Just imagine human nature without any moral or religious constraints at all! What would replace it? A belief in the ultimate goodness of human nature? Look around you. You cannot be serious!

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You don’t need to imagine what happens when religion is disregarded. This became a reality in the last century. Fifty million died in World War two, and millions more died at the hands of atheistic communist regimes. Human life became expendable for the purposes of Godless political theories. ******

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A rapist wins millions

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him) George Orwell

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A classic example of an atheistic argument was a letter sent to a newspaper earlier this year (2004). The writer was commenting on the convicted, jailed rapist who had won a fortune on the National Lottery. They said that this meant that there can’t be a God if this is allowed to happen. They say this and sit smugly back, justified in their atheism. They just don’t think. Should God interfere in the Lottery? How would God interfere? If God wanted to control the lottery numbers, then all winners would be deserving cases. Who would be a deserving case? Who defines that? What level of wealth or morality would be the point above which you would have no chance of winning the lottery? You might as well say that God should force us to allocate the world’s resources fairly. How would God do that? Do we really want to be tightly controlled automatons? How would God go about banning or manipulating the lottery without interfering with our free will? The National Lottery is a human institution. It was misguided humans who allowed the rapist to buy a ticket. The fact that God allowed it should really alert us to the moral slackness of having a lottery that suddenly endows unprepared or unworthy people with riches beyond their wildest dreams. But we don’t think like that. We say God should have fixed the numbers to prevent the rapist winning. ******

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The Appendix

I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science….It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaws & holes as sound parts Charles Darwin

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It’s amazing what people will come up with to justify their unbelief. ‘What about the appendix?’ they say. ‘It’s a useless organ, left over from previous evolutionary development’ Some other organs had been claimed as useless, like the pituitary gland and the tonsils. Uses have since been found for these, and also for the appendix (it plays a role in the fighting of disease). If we don’t know the use of an organ, it does not mean that there is not one. Although serious evolutionists seem to have largely abandoned this argument, it is still used by many people as a reason not to believe in creation of human beings by God. ******

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The embryo

The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory Charles Darwin

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Some say that an embryo in the womb shows various evolutionary stages, like gills (fish) and tail (monkeys), for example. It was popularised by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, but the diagrams he used to ‘prove’ his theory were later found to be forged. The so-called ‘gills’ have nothing to do with respiration, but are slits that become germ fighting organs, middle ear canals and parathyroid and thymus glands. The ‘tail’ is just the tip of the spine that becomes the coccyx and is used to assist the human standing and seating positions. In any case, if you believe as some people do, that God could use evolution as part of the creative process, this is all irrelevant. What some of these examples do show is that people can use out of date, discredited arguments to justify their unbelief. *******

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Miracles

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles. George Bernard Shaw

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Richard Crashaw

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What about miracles? Why do people find them so hard to believe? Three hundred years ago, electric lighting would have been a miracle. We just didn’t know enough, and we still don’t. If there is a supreme mind that is behind the universe, are we really saying that He (God) could not temporarily suspend, speed up, reverse or slow down the so called ‘laws’ of nature? The miracles in the New Testament are based on natural processes and phenomena, and there is nothing so fantastic as to be impossible, if we accept the ’laws’ of nature can be manipulated by God. In the Bible, the really fantastic, outlandish happenings are in dreams and visions. A miracle is a natural process that we do not yet understand. For example, water can be turned into wine by adding ingredients and time. The miracle was the speeding up of a natural process. "Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature." Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) You see, you thought that in those days they were all gullible, naively believing in miracles without question, didn’t you? When I was a teenager I watched a TV programme called ‘Catweazle’ He was an eleventh Century magician thrown forward into the 1970s. He called a telephone a ‘telling bone’, and assumed it was sorcery. He was just not aware of the science and technology involved. Healing is a good example of a process we don’t know enough about yet. We seem to be capable in some cases of healing ourselves by the power of positive thought, so, if God is a supreme mind or intelligence, how can we deny that God can do the same for us? There is one example of a miracle in the Bible where the use of modern scientific knowledge strongly suggests that it is true. 'And He came to Bethsaida. And they brought a blind man to Him and begged Him to touch him. And He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town. And when He had spat on his eyes and had put His hands on him, He asked Him if he saw anything. And he looked up and said, 'I see men as trees, walking'. And after that He put His hands again on his eyes and made him look up. And he was restored and saw all clearly' (Mark 8:22-25). This is the only time in the gospels that Jesus heals in two steps. Why? What does the man mean by 'I see men as trees walking'? There is a book called 'An Anthropologist on Mars.' by Oliver Sacks, Professor of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. The book tells a true story of a man called Virgil. He was blind from birth. He had a cataract removed and a lens implanted in one eye in 1991 and he was able to see. He could not make sense of what he saw. His brain could not make sense of what he was seeing, and objects and colours were all mixed up.

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If you are born blind you miss the learning of shapes, colours, movement and forms. If you are then healed later in life, you are like a new born baby, learning afresh. Virgil had difficulty identifying objects and movements. He had a particular problem with trees. The condition is known as 'agnosia'. Jesus healed the man in two steps. The first one gave him back his sight, and the second one cured the agnosia: 'And he was restored and saw all clearly'. In the first century it would have been a very, very rare event for sight to be restored in later life. There were no cataract operations in the first century, and no known cure for blindness. They would have known little or nothing of the symptoms of Agnosia. Mark’s description can’t be just a coincidence. Why would he put this in it if did not happen? He would have had no idea of the medical explanation. Even if he did, how many other people at that time would have? How many people are aware of Agnosia even today? How effective would this have been at the time if he was cleverly using it to justify something that did not happen? The most reasonable explanation is that it actually happened. What about the virgin birth? You say it was impossible. How can a child borne by a girl who has never had sexual intercourse be impossible? Are we saying that God cannot do what a gynaecologist could do today? Yet the virgin birth of Jesus to Mary is used by people as a reason not to believe. Bringing back the dead is hard to believe, but if there is a God, why can’t He do it? It’s a reversal of a natural process. Time and space are relative concepts. To a God outside time and space, surely these things are not impossible. And we are still not one hundred percent in agreement at which point life ends, and when someone can be certified dead. We also don’t fully understand the relationships between time and space. What about the Resurrection of Jesus? Look at the possible explanations offered by non-believers: •

The Jews removed the body to stop the veneration of Jesus’ remains. Why? The production of the dead body of Jesus by Caiphas the High Priest would have stopped any possibility of claiming a resurrection, and killed Christianity before it started. This was not done.

•

The disciples went to the wrong grave. Unlikely, to say the least. 62

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•

The sightings of the risen Jesus were hallucinations. Have you read the Bible descriptions, and seen the diversity of witnesses, at different times and places?

•

The guards fell asleep or were bribed, Jesus wasn’t really dead, and he sneaked away during the night. Why wasn’t this explanation proved at the time and given widespread publicity? Why doesn’t it appear in later Jewish writings as a way of denying the Resurrection? Have you ever read anything of Roman military discipline, and the penalties for laxity? When Paul and Silas escaped from prison (Acts 16), the guard killed himself. He knew what was coming.

•

The disciples stole the body. Why? Many died for their belief that Jesus had risen. Would they die for what they knew was a lie?

•

Grave robbers took the body. So they would steal a body and leave behind precious spices?

•

Jesus did not really die. Roman law put the death penalty on anyone bungling a crucifixion. There were four executioners present to ensure no laxity. To prove death, a soldier pierced Jesus’ side with a spear. They did this to test for death. If pericardial fluid and blood came out, the victim was dead. Witnesses described ‘blood and water’ pouring out. Combined with the whippings prior to the hanging, and the soldiers’ thoroughness, no one could survive a Roman crucifixion.

According to the Bible, there were hundreds of witnesses to Jesus’ Resurrection, many of whom were still alive when Paul wrote his letters that form part of the New Testament. So, He really died, and was seen alive later by hundreds of people. You believe it, or you don’t. You don’t believe in God, so it must be impossible. Like many, you look for the other explanations. I believe in God, so it must be possible. Still, I suppose that when even some church leaders can start to rationalise the Resurrection, describing it as just a story to give us hope of a spiritual regeneration, then how can we expect people to believe it? It’s like the leader of a socialist party deciding that state control of vital services is wrong, and free market economies are right. (I think he’s called Mr Blair). Unbelief in miracles is yet another excuse for not believing in God. As I see it there are only two possibilities: •

God exists, so miracles are possible.

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•

God does not exist, so there are no miracles performed by God. There may be natural phenomena that cannot yet be explained.

Either way, phenomena classed as miracles can happen, so we cannot say •

Miracles do not exist. The Bible talks of miracles, so the Bible is wrong. So what the Bible says about God can also be wrong. So, I am justified in my belief that God does not exist.

But this is what some people do say to themselves, as an excuse not to believe. If miracles are natural phenomena that cannot be explained yet, the explanation that God is behind them cannot be logically discounted. *****

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The Bible: Truth or Myth?

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees the worlds beyond; but if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that. The Bible is a thing to be looked through, to see that which is beyond; but most people only look at it; and so they see only the dead letter. Phillips Brooks

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Isn’t the Bible just a book like any other? Yes, it is great literature, Yes, it is an amazing collection of ancient books and manuscripts. No, it’s not just all ‘thees and ‘thous’ and ‘begats’. There are many versions available in good contemporary language. Why do people say that the King James Version of the Bible (written in the early seventeenth century) should not be replaced? Do they believe that God speaks in seventeenth century English? Apparently, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church must have believed this. The supposed new revelation he received in the mid nineteenth century included passages written in King James English! What did you say? You started to read the Bible once, got half way through Genesis, and got bored? Well, it’s not a Catherine Cookson novel. Think of it more as a reference book. Would you read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from the beginning to the end? You would get half way through ‘A’ and be bored. ** The Bible is a collection of 66 pieces of literature, by a variety of authors ranging from paupers to kings. It was written over a period of almost two thousand years. If the reality ever dawns on you that this ancient collection of historical records, poems, songs, prophecies and letters actually contains a completely consistent message about the state of human nature and the role of Jesus as Saviour from it, your way of looking at the world just has to be turned upside down. It is unavoidable. You would then compare its analysis with the world you look at today, and could not help but come to the conclusion that it must be the truth.3 As with any author striving to get across a message, it is the overall message that needs to be seen as consistent. Criticising words and sentences, means used to achieve ends, pre-scientific creation stories and more than one version of the same events can never disprove a consistent basic message, nor deny that it could come from God, no more than you could take any author’s work apart in this way. The words are the vehicle by which the delivery of the goods is made. They are not the goods themselves. The supposed ‘inconsistencies’ can reasonably be harmonised and reconciled. Some atheists may say that they know the Bible better than many Christians, and they could be right. I can’t help wondering, if they know it so well, why so much of their attention is given to something they believe to be worthless. What they are looking at 3

If you want to see my analysis of today’s world, see my book ‘Mad World’, available on Lulu.com

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is the words, not the Word. Words can be criticised, deconstructed, turned around, misunderstood, misused or misconstrued. God’s Word, the eternal wisdom, the basic message, cannot. The critics have not comprehended the basic message. They have missed the point entirely. The message of the Bible is an explanation of the problem of human nature, and of the solution that is offered by God. The message says that all human beings have basic faults. Yes, that includes you. ** When I started to look into what Christians refer to as the Word of God, I realised that it was strange that I had tried to look at Christianity without studying the Bible. I soon realised that there was more to it than I had thought. Soon an amazing thing happened. I opened the Bible at a book called ‘Ecclesiastes’. It said ‘Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless’ and ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’. When the writer said meaningless, he (it is said to have been Solomon) was referring to a world without God. All man made philosophies and riches were meaningless without God as a reference point. He said that there is nothing new. Mankind has always been like this. This hit me like a bolt from the sky. It was as near to a ‘seeing the light’ experience as you can get. Here was something written between to and three thousand years ago, just saying it all in a couple of lines. I am not saying that I would expect you to get the same from this passage. It just happened to be my ‘Damascus Road experience’, my way into belief. (The great first century evangelist Paul received his revelation of Christ on the road to Damascus). This part of the Bible made sense to me, so what of the rest of it, I asked myself. I looked further, and saw that the people in the Bible had the same problems as us. They had the same arguments over how best to govern society, they had wars for survival, jealousies, envy, greed, exploitation of the poor by the rich, divorces, family problems, cruelty, and arguments and violence over religion Some people write off the Bible, saying that if it is from God, it would not include such terrible things. Why not? It simply ‘tells it like it is’.

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Human beings don’t change. Amidst all of this imperfection, God was in action, delivering His people, preserving them, despite their faults. Here was a story of weak, selfish human nature. There was unbelief and lack of faith, and yet God was there to forgive if they turned to Him. I saw that this was the same message in the Old and New Testaments. The God of the Old and New was the same God with the same message. Don’t listen to the arguments that it was a different God. You may have heard people say that ‘The Old Testament God was vengeful. An eye for and eye, and all that. The NewTestament God was forgiving.’ An eye for an eye teaches us the basic lesson that justice is required. We all want to see justice. The God of the Old Testament was still a forgiving God. If not, the nation of Israel would have been wiped off the face of the earth well before the time of Jesus, let alone surviving to this day. The Old Testament from beginning to end is a story of our unworthiness before God. His special people, with so many advantages and divine deliverances, could not keep the Law. It is a tale of human failure and attempts to come to atonement with God, but never succeeding, and always pointing the way to the Messiah as the answer, through God’s Grace and mercy. For this reason, the Bible should be interpreted by this constant theme. The New Testament God also requires justice for humanity’s sins. The important question it answers is who it is that takes the punishment and pays the price that justice requires. Old Testament instructions for the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish, as a payment for sins, were given to help us understand what was to come. It taught us the vicarious suffering of an innocent, dying for us. (This was not cruelty. The lambs were eaten. Most of us eat animals, including lambs). Why emphasise their innocence, and its sacrifice in expiation of our sins? Without what followed, it could simply be blind cruelty and the exploitation of innocents to ease our consciences, as it is said to be by uncomprehending critics. But it is no longer needed. Think. Who is referred to as the ‘Lamb of God’? ** What many people don’t realise is that the survival of the Bible in its present form, over the past fifteen hundred years or so, is an amazing story in itself. They just make glib statements that it was somehow concocted by a power-mad church as a way of controlling people. A major criterion used for the inclusion of a piece of literature in the ‘canon’ of Holy Scripture was whether it could be verified as authentic. This is why, over the years, some books have been added and taken out at various times and by various branches of the church. The doubtful books have been the ones that could most easily be either classed as unauthentic, or simply added to justify a particular belief. In modern versions of the Bible, footnotes mention where a reading did not appear in the earliest known manuscripts. None of these extra or alternative readings are

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critical, affect the basic message, or cannot be found elsewhere in its pages. There are other references elsewhere in the Bible to the truths of all of the verses that are in dispute. They used to be used as a way of discrediting the Bible. There were accusations of ‘dishonesty’, and ‘intellectual suicide.’ Now, because they are shown and seen not to be critical, they are an asset, demonstrating honesty. Honesty seems to really be the best policy. So, no one sat down and said, ‘Right. This is our view of human nature. Let’s find something that agrees with it’. No one said, ‘Right, let’s lay down some rules to keep these peasants in their place’. It might at times have been used in this way by worldly, unscrupulous church leaders, but so could anything that attempted to lay down a certain way to live. If church leaders ‘edited’ the Bible to suit their interests, they did not do a very good job. Why would they leave in passages that, if interpreted wrongly, lead to grave doubts and discrepancies? There are many of these, often quoted by sceptics. Critics say that the disciple John was not the author of the Gospel in his name. But if not, why would he refer to John the Baptist simply as ‘John’? Because people knew that he was not referring to himself, and did not need a distinction. If it was another writer, they would have to have made it clear that they were referring to the Baptist as opposed to the disciple. This is a little detail that makes it ‘ring true’ that John was the author. The doubters also invent possible alternative lives for Jesus, based on writings that were written much later, possibly to discredit the Christians. The methods used by the ‘gutter press’ of today are nothing new. Early Christians were accused of cannibalism, because one of their ceremonies (the Lord’s Supper, or Communion) mentioned eating flesh and blood. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation does not help here, the ‘mystery’ that communion bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ. I probably don’t need to explain here what I think of this belief. The Lord’s Supper is a communal commemoration, as instructed by Jesus at the last supper, using the bread and wine as symbols of the sacrifice of Jesus. One of the alternative lives that had been proposed for Jesus is that he married Mary Magdalene and had children with her, the descendants of whom are with us somewhere today. It’s like making a statement that Mohammed was gay, based on documents we had found that were written centuries after his death (I must stress here, before I offend our Moslem friends, that this is totally hypothetical). Moslems would immediately say that they were written by an enemy of Islam, and they would be right. If we made the claim that Mohammed was gay, we would, no doubt, be the target of fanatical Moslems and have to hide away to save our lives. No one threatens those who claim alternative lives for Jesus. No, they believe them because they are looking for excuses not to believe in Him, and anyway, it doesn’t matter because it’s only Christians that we are offending. Think. Why on earth give four different versions of Jesus’ life, when one consistent version would have avoided much criticism? Discrepancies between Gospel accounts are often highlighted by doubters. None of them are really crucial or detract from the

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basic message. The gospels are more like four independent descriptions should be. They give the same message using different descriptions, or from a different viewpoint, just like four different versions of any great event would be expected to be, or, for that matter, four different descriptions of a car accident. From a legal point of view, the Biblical narratives could be said to exhibit 'substantial agreement with circumstantial variation'. This would be acceptable to a court of law. If the evidence of four different people agreed in every word and detail, the court would suspect conspiracy, or one single source that could be unreliable. So if there were no circumstantial variations in the Biblical narratives, it could (and would, no doubt), be sensible to suggest that they were fabricated. This is a 'no win' situation' for the defenders of the Bible if someone wishes to criticise (and, of course, many love to criticise because it makes them feel comfortable in their unbelief). The criticism can come from both angles. The inconsistencies in Biblical narratives do not prove that the Bible is true. The point is that they do not prove that it is untrue, as is alleged by the critics. Why should inconsistencies that do not refute a basic message have to ‘prove’ that the Bible was not divinely inspired? ** The New Testament as we know it was not, as some say, compiled at the demand of the Roman Emperor Constantine. There was a great church council at Nicea in 325 AD. It is alleged that this is the Council that ‘fabricated’ the present Bible, and also established central authority in line with the instructions of the Emperor Constantine. The council did help to determine the basic composition of the Bible as we know it. It also stated the orthodox position on Jesus as God and man, in the face of opposition from the ‘Arians’, followers of Arius, who had basically said that Jesus was a created being. It did not establish the Pope as supreme head of the church, neither was it used by Constantine for any plans he might have had to centralise church authority under the control of the Emperor. Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. Council of Nicea, in the year 325. Does this suggest that Rome was always considered to be the central church, and ruler of the others, or that Constantine would control the church? Long deliberations over the authenticity of scriptural documents had taken place over the first few centuries after Christ’s death and Resurrection. Early Christian writers (for example, Ignatius, executed in Rome in 115AD, and Polycarp (martyred about AD160) had quoted from the gospels and Paul’s letters, treating them as authoritative. Clement, writing about AD95, accepts Paul’s letters as being on an equal basis with other scriptures. The New Testament was fixed by the Council of Carthage in AD 400, but had largely been established two hundred years before that date.

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The following is a table that shows the development of the ‘Canon’ of Holy Scripture from the year AD200 onwards:

New Testament used at Rome AD 200

New Testament used by Origen AD 250

New Testament used by Eusebius AD 300

Four gospels Acts Romans 1 & 2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 & 2 Timothy 1 & 2 Thessalonians Titus Philemon

Four gospels Acts Romans 1 & 2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 & 2 Timothy 1 & 2 Thessalonians Titus Philemon

Four gospels Acts Romans 1 & 2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 & 2 Timothy 1 & 2 Thessalonians Titus Philemon

1 Peter 1 John

1 Peter 1 John

Revelation of John

Revelation of John (authorship in doubt)

James 1 & 2 John Jude Revelation of John Revelation of Peter Wisdom of Solomon Others under consideration The Shepherd of Hermas

New Testament fixed for the Western Church by the Council of Carthage AD 400 Four gospels Acts Romans 1 & 2 Corinthians Galatians Ephesians Philippians Colossians 1 & 2 Timothy 1 & 2 Thessalonians Titus Philemon Hebrews James 1 & 2 Peter 1, 2 & 3 John Jude Revelation

Others under consideration Hebrews

Others under consideration James

James 2 Peter 2 & 3 John Jude The Shepherd of Hermas Letter of Barnabas Teaching of the Twelve Apostles Gospel of the Hebrews

2 Peter 2 & 3 John Jude

** As another excuse for disbelief, some people say we have no actual written eyewitness documents dating from the time of Jesus. It is sometimes said that the low life expectancy in Roman times means that letters and gospel sources written in the late first century could not have been by eye witnesses. However, it is probable that nearly a fifth of the population were over fifty, and many lived into at least their eighties, with some reaching the age of 100.

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Someone born in, say the year 5, would be in their twenties when Jesus was crucified, and 75 in the year 80. No, we have not got complete copies of letters or gospels from an early date. We do have evidence that some form of letters and gospels were in existence in AD100, but no way of proving physically that the translations we have now are in line with these. I have no problem with these facts. The New Testament is actually a body of historical evidence of Jesus, from witnesses of the events, but it comes to us in the same way as any other historical evidence we have about that period. The documents we have are from a later period, but there was a time period of events in between when there could have been written evidence that has either not been found, or lost for ever. There are fragments and collections of Biblical evidence that are much earlier than the earliest evidence for other events, yet these other events are easily accepted as historical 'fact'. If we wanted to rely on complete documents from the time that the history took place to give us much of our history of that period (including what we know about the Roman Empire), we would have no history of it at all that we could believe in. We could just as easily say that later generations of the Roman imperial family tampered with documents and invented the glorious deeds of Julius Caesar, to emphasise their right to the title of Emperor, or their claims to be gods. With the New Testament documents, the difference is what we are being asked to believe, and whether we can accept it. We are not now being asked to believe that a Roman Emperor was a god, so we can accept the history. You are still asked to believe that Jesus was God, so you do not accept it. If someone said they had seen a ghost and you didn’t believe them, it is not their experience that is in dispute, it is your belief in ghosts. Much criticism of the New Testament tries to say that the experiences never actually happened. This is like calling the person who really experienced what they saw as a ghost a liar, just because you do not believe in ghosts. This is true dogmatic bigotry, and it is ironic that this is what Christianity is accused of by those very same critics. The dispute should not be not over whether the New Testament documents are genuine historical documents, but over the implications of belief in their content. We need to ask ourselves, ‘What if it is true? What if it really happened?’ We need to look at the durability and credibility of the belief, and also consider the effects of belief or disbelief in the lives of millions upon millions of believers over the centuries. Some of the stories about Jesus may have originally been passed on verbally, and then collected in writing. There is more, and earlier, documentary evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament than there is for any other literature from that period. The minds of the people of the middle and near east were known to be extraordinarily retentive, with stories passed down word for word from generation to generation, unchanged, so even if it was accepted that they were written some time

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after the events from different sources, there is no reason to assume that they were like ‘Chinese whispers’, changing as they were passed on. What we do know is that there was a community of both Jews and gentiles that followed a man called Jesus, who had been crucified by the Romans. If the Jews expected a liberator, but he did not liberate them, and if he simply died, why would they follow a failure? If we can believe that Peter and the other disciples did continue to follow Jesus, why? If we can believe the New Testament, they disowned him at his death, assuming failure. We also know of a Jew called Paul who clearly believed that Jesus was not just a liberator, but a culmination and synthesis of east and west, with a message for all of them. Paul called on his Roman, Greek and Jewish heritages, as his way of showing that Jesus was not just a failed liberator. Imagine Jews talking to gentiles, holding out a Jew as their saviour. Difficult. Then imagine them talking to Jews and telling them that Jesus was not a failure, but he was also for the gentiles. Difficult, again. The two were apparently irreconcilable, yet both Jews (some of them) and Gentiles believed them. Christianity united Jewish and Romano/Greek beliefs. How did Paul and the other apostles convince both sides? It seems to me that it is highly likely that there must have been something very special or unusual that happened, and there must have been enough eye witnesses to make it credible. There may have only been about twenty very close supporters of Jesus at the time of the crucifixion. According to the New Testament, there were very many more witnesses to the appearance of Jesus after his death. Within a couple of generations there were many more followers of Jesus. What happened? Surely something must have happened, and I cannot believe that the growth of Christianity was created by the efforts of one man (Paul) trying to form his own new religion, given the difficulties involved. Something very special must have happened. ***

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Evidence for Jesus?

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life. adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis

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Some say that there is no other historical evidence for Jesus or the miracles he performed other than that contained in the New Testament. Not so. 'On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu [= Jesus]. And an announcer went out in front of him for forty days, saying: 'He is going to be stoned, because he practised sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray. Anyone who knows anything in his favour, let him come and plead in his behalf.' But not having found anything in his favour, they hanged him on the eve of Passover'. (Italics mine) Babylonian Talmud (Jewish), 6th Century. The Christians . . . worship a man to this day--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. . . . [It] was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. Lucian of Samosata, a second century Greek satirist They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food--but food of an ordinary and innocent kind Pliny the Younger, Roman historian Nero fastened the guilt . . . on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of . . . 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. . . Tacitus, Roman historian 'About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, for he was a performer of wonderful deeds, a teacher of such men as are happy to accept the truth. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the leading men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at the first did not forsake him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.' (Italics mine) Josephus, Jewish historian, born 37 AD The Jewish Talmud said that Jesus was a false Messiah and that His power came from Satan. They did not deny that he had the power. If they believed he had not existed, or not really performed miracles, they would surely be saying just that. **

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Jesus of Nazareth? It is said that there is no archaeological evidence of a settlement called Nazareth at the time of Jesus. It was created later, it is claimed. So, it seems to follow that this ‘proves’ that if the gospels say Jesus was from Nazareth, this confirms that they must have been written much later, when Nazareth existed. They are therefore inaccurate and can be said to be false. This argument seems to me to be ‘clutching at straws’ to find criticisms. The lack of archaeological evidence only suggests that Nazareth was not a name used at the time. There does appear to be evidence of some small isolated habitations at the time of Jesus. In any case, if the area was later called Nazareth, why should this be a reason for saying that Jesus could not have lived at ‘Nazareth’. As an example, the town of Huddersfield in England did not exist in its present form before the late 19th Century. The area consisted of isolated hamlets and villages. But if there was a famous person from the area who lived, say, in the 17th Century, we might now easily refer to them as coming from ‘Huddersfield’, or the ‘Huddersfield area’, referring to the most well known place name at the present time. ***

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Why is God a man?

But when feminists suggest that God might be a She without suggesting that the Devil might also be female, they must be opposed. Warren Farrell

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Why do atheists say that religion encourages the persecution of women? Why is there so much emphasis on the representation of God as a man? So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis Chapter 1, verse 27) Genesis says that male and female were created in God’s likeness. It talks of the creation of ‘Man’, and follows this by then speaking, in the same context, of male and female. So ‘Man’ refers to ‘mankind’ in the sense of both male and female. Does this make God a hermaphrodite? ‘Likeness’ here is clearly not meant to be physical. Ancient religions had a ‘Mother Goddess’. Did the men say this was sexist? No, they accepted that women bore children, and that their God was a representation of this creative process. In many ways God is the picture of an ideal parent, not just a father or mother. God is not only portrayed with masculine characteristics. Motherly love is also expressed in many ways, but these are always conveniently ignored by those who say the God of the Bible is portrayed as only masculine, or by men wishing to perpetuate their dominance. For example, the Hebrew word translated 'compassion' or 'show mercy' or 'have pity', when referring to God, is related to the word for the womb, and can be described as 'motherly compassion'. Perhaps if I was a feminist, this could be used to emphasise female attributes for God. Here are two quotes that illustrate the female side of God's nature. In both cases it is God speaking. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem Isaiah chapter 66 verse13: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! Isaiah chapter 49 verse15 Another example in the Bible is the figurative use of shelter beneath God's wings. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings Psalm 17 verse 8 I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed Psalm 57 verse 3 May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." Ruth chapter 2 verse12 This can be a picture of a mother bird protecting her chicks, as in the following:

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The owl will nest there and lay eggs, she will hatch them, and care for her young under the shadow of her wings; Isaiah chapter 34 verse 14. I suppose if there was an interest group that gained an advantage from describing God as having wings, or as a bird, they would interpret this literally. Do you begin to see what I mean? Men have always been ready to emphasise the masculinity of God as a way of maintaining their power. This does not mean that God is masculine. Some feminists have stressed the biblical entries that suggest female characteristics for God. So, God is actually a woman. It all becomes very silly. Yes, it can be argued very justifiably that men have used the Bible in their favour, but, once again, this is just one more confirmation of the corruption of human nature. In any case, I cannot understand the objections. Should the term used have been 'Our Parent in Heaven'? This would not really help We really don't have another word that expresses a father and mother‘s combined personal attributes, one that would combine 'daddy' and 'mummy' in the very personal way needed. There was certainly a paternal bias in society at the time the words were written, and ‘Father’ was chosen, for better or for worse. If they had used ‘Mother’, would we now be seeing ‘Men’s Liberation’, from centuries of female domination? 'Abba', or 'Daddy', was used by Jesus when speaking to God. This was very much frowned upon by the religious leaders of the day, but it was simply used to express a relationship. I know I'm a man, but I see no objection to the use of 'Father' or 'Daddy' for God, in the same way as I do not object to the term 'Mother Nature'. The claim that some New Testament Biblical passages are deliberately written to favour men can be challenged. Male domination was already well established in Middle Eastern and European society, and scripture was, unfortunately, interpreted by men in a way that reinforced this domination. This does not automatically mean that it was written with that in mind. Consider the following: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church– for we are

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members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery– but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 21 to 33 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Colossians chapter 3 verses 18-19 Do these give Christianity’s stamp of approval to male dominance? ‘Of course they do’, you will answer. But look more closely. Many would claim they do, not least those that have used them over the centuries for their own ends. This is what has led to the picture of a woman ‘chained to the kitchen sink’, and to the popular image of men out drinking, leaving the wife at home. Where do the above verses justify this sort of domination? Note that the Greek word used for ‘head’ in these passages is ‘Kephale’, which means source or provider. They used ‘Archon’ when referring to a ruler. The husband is not meant to be a ruler. If we just ‘cherry pick’ a couple of verses about submission, then yes, some of Paul’s writings definitely do appear to advocate domination. But note that he starts by saying ‘submit to one another’, before specifically mentioning submission of a wife to a husband. We also need to bear the following in mind: ‘…there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians chapter 3, verse 28) Here, Paul is clearly not saying that men are superior to women. We are asked to compare a husband and wife to Christ and the Church. If we look even further, we are not looking at a charter for exploitation here. It does not say that wives are forced to obey, just as Christ does not force us to obey him. Wives can choose to obey or refuse, as we can with Christ, but the difference is that we know that Christ will not let us down. What this is saying is that husbands, as an ideal, should not let wives down either. Too often, husbands have let wives down and used the role as an excuse for dominance. Christ does not make us unwilling servants, he is our servant, yet we are free to choose or to reject him. This is how husbands should be with wives. Nowhere is there a mention of superiority or dominance.

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Both have complimentary roles to play in a partnership where two become one, and one should not dominate the other. We are speaking about roles here, clearly defined roles that make the partnership work smoothly. Any submission is therefore voluntary, with much to gain in return if the husband plays the role required. The wife is served, not dominated, just as Christians are served by Christ. Paul’s words do not demean women; they exalt women as Christ exalts his church. Christ died for his church. Christ loves his church, and husbands should love wives in the same way. It is not saying that the man is the boss, but is using Christ’s headship of the church as an example of the relationship of responsibility. We know that Christ is a servantking, not a tyrant. Given a choice between being loved and cared for, and bearing responsibility, which would you choose? Then, if you were truly given the love and care, should you not want to give something in return? In a partnership such as a marriage, there are certain roles to play in the management of the household, irrespective of the male or female issue. If the roles are not clearly defined, confusion and misunderstanding can result. We confuse responsibility with authority, a basic mistake that anyone in a position of management knows that you should not make. Think of arguments you may have had about who should take responsibility for issues that arise in your household. The term ‘husband’ implies responsibility and care. …original senses included steward of a household and farmer: from Old Norse Oxford English Dictionary ….from Old English husbonda master of a house, from Old Norse husbOndi, from hus house + bOndi householder; a frugal manager Merriam Webster Dictionary This is the meaning in the word husbandry, also when relating to the management of livestock. The roles a husband and wife play in the structure of a family have been with us since time immemorial. Traditionally (whether we agree with it or not), throughout history (and not just from the Bible), a husband has been a man, and a wife a woman. As we know, not all men are suited to taking a responsible role, and not all women are suited to a more passive role. But the roles exist, and it can be confusing to try to share them. This is why we have so much difficulty nowadays with the ‘work-life balance’, and we can be stressed out trying to juggle career and home life. Paul has also been criticised for saying that women should be silent in church meetings. Bear in mind that, in synagogues, women had been separated from men and had become used to shouting to be heard if they had a question. This had led to disorder. The separation was a tradition of the time, and there is no reason why the advice could not have been given simply to avoid offence, and not because women were somehow ‘inferior’. It does not imply that they were to continue being separated from men at church meetings. 81

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Also, in Jewish culture, women were not allowed to study, but Paul wanted them to learn, and wanted them to take their time to become mature in the faith. Priscilla was a commended co-worker of Paul’s who taught the preacher Apollos. (Acts Chapter18, verse 26.) Does this suggest that Paul’s advice intended women to be denied positions in the church, or denied them speaking at church meetings? Pliny, the Roman historian, described the torture of female deaconesses in the 2nd century. (Letters 10.96-97). Presumably, in the office of deacon, they would not have been denied the opportunity to speak at church meetings. The idea is absurd. In John 4:9 and 4:27, Jesus’ disciples expressed disbelief and surprise that He would talk to a woman as he did. Jews did not associate with women who were not their wives, but Jesus ministered to prostitutes and adulteresses. Does this sound like Jesus considered women to be inferior? Contrast this with some other religions. The status of women in much of the Moslem world is well known. Buddhism, sometimes considered an ideal way to live, should not escape from this. The Buddha himself seems to have had little respect for women. Before he changed his mind he said that they would not understand his teaching. Why is modern society so stressful? A simple answer is that if two people are both working full time and at the same time trying to run a household, possibly with children, then simple arithmetic says that there is more work overall for both of them than if one went out to a paid job and the other managed the household full time. Unfortunately, the national economy would collapse if we pulled out the spending power of one half of employed couples. What is better? Is it more money and ‘things’ in our lives, or a less stressful way of living? I could leave you to decide, but the chances are that you would choose the money. Have you ever asked yourself why? You want more money to make your life easier, but you just become busier and more stressed in the process. We will leave aside here the issue of whether a woman is better suited to childcare than a man, and whether this necessarily pigeon-holes her into a wifely role. We will also leave aside the psychological issues of whether or not a woman naturally looks for security and homemaking in a relationship. These are other issues, for another day. Your belief on these points will colour your view of who should play which role, and when, or whether the roles can truly be shared. Over the centuries men have certainly abused the position that tradition and their interpretation of religion had given them, and it is really no surprise that women have finally reacted against it.

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It has been said that this has become possible because of a decline in religious belief. A natural assumption from this is that the decline of religion has been a good thing. Very convenient reasoning, isn’t it? There is never a thought that religion had been misinterpreted or misused, or that some of the traditions it encompassed are now simply out of date. It is just assumed that it is one hundred percent wrong. We gladly welcome any excuse to debunk anything that threatens to interfere with our lives. The power granted to leaders of Communist states was misused, but does this mean that the ideal of everyone sharing resources fairly is wrong? Men should no longer use the Bible as a justification for domination, but where religious fundamentalism exists, sexism can still be seen. There are differing viewpoints on this subject within the Christian church even today, but whereas with Christianity the arguments are peripheral to the major beliefs, other religions can have more difficulty claiming this. In Islam, God offers men rewards in paradise. In the Islamic paradise, men are served by maidens, spend their time taking their virginity, and are given strength for sexual marathons. In the Quran there is a clear statement about why men are superior to women. It even appears to sanction wife beating. Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what God would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For God is Most High, great (above you all). Sura An-Nisaa [4:34-34] Regarding Jesus’ attitude to women, Christians are assailed from all angles when someone chooses to criticise. They can say that he only chose men for his disciples, so the conclusion is that he was sexist. Jesus made no attempt to exclude women. Mary Magdalene is one of the women who went with Jesus on his preaching mission. She helped to support him financially (Luke 8:1-3). By including women, Jesus was counter cultural. Mary was a close follower of Jesus, went with him on journeys, learned from him and then was faithful to him even when other disciples disowned him. She was the first to see him after the Resurrection, and the first person to announce that he had risen. Does this sound like Jesus excluded women? In Jesus’ day, Jewish teachers very rarely taught women or involved them. Jesus was exceptional. He included everyone. At the time, it would have been exceptional for Jesus to take a woman with him as a close associate. The criticism at the time and today would doubtless be that he must have been sleeping with them, or married. He is guilty if he did, and guilty if he didn’t.

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There are many theories about Jesus’ relationships with women, one of which is that he was married. The ‘Gnostic gospels’, rejected by the Church, are said to suggest that Christ took Mary Magdalene as his ‘companion’, or his wife. When you analyse them, it is not as obvious as some would have us believe (see appendix 3). There are even suggestions that Jesus has descendents somewhere in the world. It has been said that the Gnostic gospels and possible other documents have been rejected or suppressed to ensure the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, and of men over women., as part of the demonising of the old religions that worshipped a mother goddess. Gnosticism is based on the Greek ‘Gnosis’, or knowledge, and refers to a secret, hidden knowledge that only a few can possess. It developed later than Christianity, using much of the Bible in its development. It combined many religious traditions and ideas with ideas from the Bible, and created a variety of systems that share broad similarities. There is no firm evidence that Gnostic gospels contain material that is more historically reliable than the biblical gospels. ** Before any Christians read the following and are deeply offended, first let me say that I don’t believe that Jesus was married. I have no reason to believe it. If you think about it, if Jesus had been married, why should it be able to detract at all from the fact that his life was without blemish, and that he resisted all temptation? He did not start his ministry until he was about thirty years old. Most of His closest relations and friends were, up to that time, basically unaware of his status and mission. He was fully human, and subject to all of the human feelings and temptations that we are. Marriage is not a sin, neither is the act of sexual intercourse within marriage. Christianity says that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. It says that He was God in human flesh. To say that sex within marriage is a temptation to sin, unless it is used purely for procreation, would lead to the suppression of something that God intended to be the ultimate expression of union between man and woman. This is, of course, what has happened. Contrary to some beliefs that seem to think that Christianity says that sex is taboo, in the Bible the sex act within marriage is celebrated as a physical union. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis Chapter 2, verse 24 If you disagree with my interpretation of this in a sexual context, look at the following: Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." 1 Corinthians Chapter 6, verse 16

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The idea that sex was to be avoided led to the idealisation of the celibate life. When Paul advised against marriage, he was being practical, and promoting a life devoted to God, with no distractions. He qualified this by saying that not all can do it. It is not compulsory, and should not be so. So, we have since seen how enforced celibacy has led to a multitude of problems over the years. For some reason, critics seem to try to use the idea that Jesus was married as a way of de-bunking Christianity. Perhaps the indignant reaction of some of the Church to the suggestion that Jesus was married only serves to reinforce the critics’ position. ** I do not condone male domination, but exploitation is, sadly, to be expected when humans are given the power to do it, and it is not only women who were subject to it. The whole of society was subject to a hierarchical control, given respectability by the church that held the ‘keys to heaven’. It may well be true that the established church misused parts of the Bible to ensure its hierarchical domination, and also cemented the domination of the rich over the poor. Power, riches and control are strong temptations, and male domination over women is only one of the abuses inflicted on the population over the centuries by large scale organised religion. Much of the visible church today was never the intention of its founder. Jesus spoke of poverty, equality and love, not riches, domination and fear. How can we expect non-believers to accept Christianity today, when much of their impression of it comes from looking at a massive, fabulously wealthy organisation whose followers appear to blindly follow obscure superstitions? *****

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‘They could believe anything in those days’

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God Francis Bacon

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Speaking of the times when religions developed, you might say ‘They were simple, superstitious people then. They would believe anything’. That is just not so, and is part of the lie that modern science has all the answers. Intelligence and wisdom has not suddenly improved simply because of scientific progress. If it has, how come we are destroying the world? The thinkers of those days confronted exactly the same human problems as we have, and responded with philosophies that stand as examples to us to this day. Sadly, there is so much widespread ignorance of this. We are indoctrinated with the belief that science will solve everything. Modern science is only a few hundred years old, but it follows that anything before then was just superstitious nonsense believed by gullible people. That is absolute rubbish. In one ignorant assumption, it confines to oblivion many of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. It would completely disregard the Buddha, Confucious, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, Locke and countless others, not to mention Jesus Christ. It would make their thoughts and ideas irrelevant. It is the people holding this view that are un-intelligent and gullible. *******

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‘You believe, so you justify yourself’

Eradicate self-justification. Then alone can you annihilate your ego. Sri Swami Sivanada

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You say ‘Aren’t your arguments based on preconceived ideas? You believe in God, so whatever fits your preconception is right.’ For ‘preconceived’, substitute ‘faith or belief’, then think of your own position too. Countless hours, days, months, years of thought have gone in to the completion of my current view of the world. I have changed my mind on numerous occasions, made myself look foolish on many others, and am willing to go on doing so if my version of the truth is proved to me to be defective. I had sometimes been an agnostic, at some times an atheist, and politically I had swayed from left to right and back again. We can all be wrong and influenced by circumstances, if we do not apply doubt and reason to support belief and faith. ‘It is not as a child that I believe and confess Christ. My hosannah is 'born of a furnace of doubt.' Dostoevsky My faith in my worldview is not blind. Is yours? My mind is not closed. Is yours? I long for a conversation that does not shy away from some of the subject matter. Bring it up in polite conversation, and you are looked at as if you have just walked into the room after climbing out of a cesspit. People seem to have an in-built aversion to discussing anything that might make them feel uncomfortable. A brick wall of apathy appears so quickly, that it is almost as if they are being held back against their will. Perhaps they are. Perhaps God needs to open their eyes. Perhaps they need to ask Him to. But only if they want to, and who wants to feel that they need outside help? It’s like admitting that you have a psychological problem that would benefit from professional help. You will not get that help unless you first admit that you have the problem. Of course, you have free will to believe that you are a good person, and that you are in control of your own destiny, or that your destiny is simply to decompose into the collection of chemicals that you are made from. Without free will you would be a robot. But are you in control? Do you really know your destiny? Free will is not control. It does not make you the master of your destiny. It is simply the availability of a choice. A lot of emphasis is placed on being ‘free to choose’ in today’s society. We are also free to choose whether we believe in God or not. *****

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‘Christianity copied earlier religions. Christmas is Pagan’

In spite of having been pronounced dead even by intelligent skeptics, the  thesis that Judaism and Christianity consist merely of stolen pagan  myths and ideas continues to be promulgated by the uncritical and  accepted by the gullible J.P. Holding, ‘Confronting the Copycat Thesis’

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Christianity is accused of picking up earlier ideas about dying and rising Gods (amongst others, Osiris, Mithras,Tammuz and Adonis), and Buddhist Bodhisattvas, ones committed to delaying their enlightenment for the benefit of mankind, or ‘to save all sentient souls’). There are also similar stories about virgin births and ascensions, amongst other things. Even if we ignore the detailed scholarly arguments that show that these claims are unfounded, inaccurate or exaggerated (for example Osiris, who was ‘rejuvenated’, not resurrected), all I want to say is that it does not really matter. What if earlier religions had an element of eternal truth in them? Why shouldn’t they? They could just as easily be said to be pointing the way to an understanding of Jesus. To write off Christianity by saying it stole ideas from other religions is like saying that someone who finally found a cure for cancer was not an original thinker because some of their work included references to earlier research. Why can’t they be clues, pointers on the way to human understanding of the truth? It is also said that Jesus’ followers falsely deified Him, i.e. made him God, long after his death. As an example of this, the Buddha was deified some 500 years after he died. By contrast, the New Testament letters, agreed by most Biblical scholars as written in the mid to late first century, speak of Jesus as God. This was well within living memory of eye witnesses or their children. It is therefore much more acceptable as the truth, in the form that it was correctly discovered and understood by those witnesses. ** Christmas The minister at a church I once attended seriously suggested that the church should shun the traditional Christmas because of what it had become. He wanted to choose a different date. Many atheists use Christmas as a way of criticising religion. They say that it was originally a pagan festival, taken over by the Church as a way of suppressing pagan celebrations (Yuletide and the Roman Saturnalia). This is true. The very early Church did not establish Christ’s birthday as 25th December, let alone celebrate it. In December in the Holy Land, shepherds would probably not have been out in the fields, it was too cold. While we are on the subject, the Church was wrong with the year, too. Jesus was probably born in about 5 BC, a year or so before the death of King Herod. Also, there was a comet in the Spring of 5BC that can explain the star of Bethlehem. So, what is considered to be a myth by many people can be shown to have a basis in historical fact. It seems that a better date for Christ’s birth would be somewhere in springtime 5BC. That would mean that we should have celebrated the Millennium in 1994/5. How silly, then, were those people who forecast Armageddon for January 1st 2000, on the basis that it was the Millennium! The true Millennium came, and went unnoticed, five years earlier.

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What does it really matter when we celebrate Jesus’ birth? To criticise religion on this basis is not very successful. It was very sensible and practical of a Church that was wishing to convert people to replace a pagan festival with a Christian one. ** There are also fruitless disputes over whether the gospel of Matthew is inconsistent with the gospel of Luke, concerning Jesus’ birth. ** Another dispute over the Christmas story is about the dates of the census mentioned in the Gospel pf Luke, not whether it took place or not. That there was a governor of Syria named Quirinius, as stated by Luke, is verified by the Jewish historian of the time, Josephus, but stated as from 5 to 12 AD. Josephus tells of a census in 7AD. The King Herod mentioned in the Bible by Matthew at the time of Jesus’ birth died in 4BC, so any census related to Jesus’ birth would have to be before that date. There is a dispute as to whether Quirinius had two periods in office. Quirinius was serving in the near east in various capacities at the time of Jesus’ birth in 5BC, and there is no reason to believe that he could not have been involved in a census. It is not definitely known that he served a first period as governor, but it is not impossible. This is all irrelevant if we accept that the Greek used in Luke could be interpreted to say 'This census took place before the one when Quirinius was governor of Syria'. This may sound like it is stretching credibility, but why shouldn’t a governor’s name and a census be mentioned that were nearer to the memory of contemporaries? To give an example, if we did not have a numbered scale of years that everyone would recognise, as was the case at the time Luke was writing, we could say that something happened ten years before Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, knowing that many of our listeners would be able to identify with this time period because she was a well known character in their memories. So, given the inevitable difficulty of trying to date events of these times, even the most hardened sceptics should at least be able to accept Luke’s version as possible historical fact, if they were honest.

******

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‘Didn’t early Christians expect Jesus to return in their lifetime?’

You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Matthew, Chapter 24 verses 6-8

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It is said that Jesus claimed that he was to return in the lifetime of people living when He said it. (In three of the gospels) ‘I tell you the truth; this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened’. One explanation is that the word ‘generation’ can also be translated ‘race’. The Jewish race is still with us today. Others say He was referring to His return to them as a spiritual part of their lives, or that He was referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit. I have difficulty accepting any of these, but I bear in mind that Jesus had also spoken of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (which happened in AD70), and also about looking for the signs of the coming of the ‘end times’. He could have been referring to either or both of these. He said that Christians should always be ready for it to happen, and that no one knows when it will be. He also said that the gospel must be preached to the entire world before the end would come. Could that really be done in one lifetime, even to the known world at that time? I know that if you wanted people to behave as if your return could happen at any time, and wanted people to act as though your return was imminent and so be prepared for it at all times, isn’t this the impression you would create? The disciples did not at that time fully understand what had happened, and what it all meant. If you then let them know that they would be dead before you returned, they could easily despair, and wonder what it had all been for. If Christians today knew exactly when Jesus was to return, and this date was a long time into the future, they would behave accordingly, and not be properly prepared when it happens. They could easily become complacent. Yes, the early Christians did expect the second coming of Jesus to come soon, but Christians must always be so. The apocalypse is not a disaster for Christians, it is something that, in many ways, they wish for, if this is the right way of putting it without making it sound like they want to encourage disasters and wars. It's the end of the tribulations of this world that they wish for. So they will tend to have a certain 'wishful thinking' when confronted with disasters and wars that Jesus said would be signs. (Hence the thoughts of the Jews of those days with what was happening with the Romans and the destruction of Jerusalem). This does not mean that they should make a forecast. This was strictly forbidden by Jesus. No Christian knows when the ‘second coming’ will be. They are asked to look for signs, many of which many people are saying are occurring now. The number of ‘false prophets’ (or false religions), wars and natural disasters that we have been experiencing are used by some to say that the return of Jesus is to happen soon. Jesus did say that these would be some of the signs. But there have been forecasts before, and people have been made to look very foolish. I can’t remember all of the occasions for the return of Jesus that have been given by some organisations, only for them to then have to say that’s not really what they meant.

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We have certainly had more than our share of wars and disasters over the last century. Perhaps the time is near. Perhaps not. But the point is that we should be ready, and the more the wars and disasters come, the more we should be ready. Anyway, if this is such a stumbling block for belief in the words in the Bible, then the early church could have changed the wording, as they are often accused of doing. They left it in. They could not and did not need to change it. ******

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Fate and Nature

We cannot command nature except by obeying her. Francis Bacon

Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other." Edward george Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton

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Why do so many people speak of ‘fate’ (or destiny)? Is there some kind of invisible force, deciding what will happen to you? Isn’t it easier to speak of this as the providence of God? Why can’t God be the force behind ‘fate’? How can you believe in fate and not believe in a God? How can people believe in things such as horoscopes and not believe in a God? Why do so many people speak of ‘nature’ as though it was a personal force, governing us and driving us forward? ‘Nature does this, nature organises that’. Why can’t this nature be a personal God? Isn’t that easier to believe than the personalisation of a blind force that obeys ‘the laws of nature’? ******

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What about Slavery?

As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. Martin Luther King

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Critics of Christianity and the Bible say that slavery was accepted and condoned by the Church. They ask how such an evil could be justified by a belief in a ‘God of Love’. Let’s look at the references to slavery in the New Testament: Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them (Titus Ch2:v9) Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. (1 Peter Ch2:v18) Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord (Colossians 3:22) All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. (1Timothy 6:1) Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him (Ephesians 6:5-9) …no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. (Philemon 1:16) ..for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine (1Timothy 1:10) Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven. (Colossians 4:1) Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all (.Colossians 3:11) There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. (1Corinthians 7:23) Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. (1Corinthians 7:22)

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Of course, many of these verses, if quoted on their own and out of context, could easily be given as examples of Christianity’s agreement with slavery. But look at them all, taken as a whole. Read the full passages that they are taken from. Paul is referring here to slaves and slave owners who are Christians, and when he speaks of Christian slave owners there is nothing but advice to love and care for their slaves. He speaks of slaves gaining freedom if possible, says that there is ‘neither slave nor free in Christ Jesus’, and condemns slave traders alongside liars, perverts, perjurers and adulterers. Taken as a whole, they are in line with the Christian approach to authority. Paul is saying that a position in life should, if possible, be accepted by Christians without rebellion, but that this is not by any means condoning or accepting injustice, or saying that Christians should not protest against it. This was also very practical advice in Roman times, because slave rebellions and runaway slaves were not tolerated, but very violently suppressed. Paul understood that the social order and the injustices of slavery should not be turned over by revolution, but from within by the power and love of Christians living by example, both slaves and slave owners. That this took so long to be understood and to happen in ‘Christian’ Europe is just another sad testimony to the ability of human beings to justify their self interest by misuse of the Bible. ********

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Conclusion

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny. Joseph Addison

The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance. Robert Bork

The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’ Psalm 14, verse 1

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There are many arguments that atheists use to make their point, and I could probably think of more. At the very least, I hope you will see that I have tried to give them proper consideration. Will you consider my answers to them? I can truly say that if anyone can give me good reason to change my point of view, I will change it. I have already done this before, to arrive at where I am now. I have been atheist, agnostic and possibly many shades in between. I never want to be accused of having a closed mind. To say that I am a narrow-minded dogmatic will just not do. Equally, you might not want me to tell you that you are narrow minded. Be fair. It goes both ways. To support my assertions, I am always ready to provide detailed discussion and supporting evidence if required. If you wish to challenge my views, I trust that you too will have the supporting evidence or argument. You can’t just have opinions without being able to back them up with evidence or sensible arguments. Without these, you would simply be dogmatic, self opinionated or bigoted. So, I try to put forward my explanations in an effort to demonstrate that I am not deluded or bigoted, and then you don’t listen because you don’t want to know. I will ask again. Do you say that you do not believe in God, or that you believe that God does not exist? If the first, you are simply using the inconsistencies and failings of the religions of the world as a reason for not believing in the God represented in those religions. This is like saying that love does not exist because you have been rejected by the person you loved. It is not the same as saying that God does not exist. You are presenting the negative statement, so the burden of positive proof is on you, not me. I believe that you simply cannot prove that there is no God. Your continued belief in atheism would therefore be as much of a faith as mine is. If you insist on ‘factual’ proof, you would simply be an agnostic, not an atheist, because there is none. Sometimes, you are saying things like ‘Evolution is a fact, but fundamentalist religious believers don't agree, so religion is rubbish, therefore God does not exist’. Or 'The earth is not the centre of the universe, but this is what the Church believed before Galileo put them right, so therefore religion must be rubbish, so God does not exist. Can’t you see the weakness of this reasoning? Where is there a proof here that God does not exist? All it proves is that human beings can get it wrong. They can make mistakes, and foolishly turn opinions and interpretations into dogma. I can do this,

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and so can you. This failing can never be used to say that God does not exist. At most, it confirms for us that humans are fallible creatures. So, this is the challenge. Answer me. Persuade me that God does not exist, after first proving it to yourself. You have a choice. A choice has to be made by trying to totally abandon preconceptions of either deity or atheism. I try to make a choice without a prejudice towards a belief in God. It is hard to do so, of course, but, trying very hard to be neutral, that choice, made rationally, says to me that an intelligent designer is the more plausible explanation. It should be as straightforward as that, but of course, it isn't. I appreciate that I am likely to have predispositions to my belief, some of which I am probably unaware of the causes of. I know that I have a personal point of view to defend, and it is difficult for me to admit I might be wrong. But I am trying my best to be rational. If an atheist scientist stresses the primacy of scientific procedure and evidence, then is confronted by evidence that supports a hypothesis that intelligent design is involved in evolution, they should weigh that evidence and be honest, or at the very least, be open to the possibility. To be otherwise is to have the closed mind that many of them accuse believers in God as having. The most brilliant minds are still subject to stubborn human nature. If you wish to embrace the concept of a secure universe, subject to universal laws of justice, and created by a supreme intelligence, then you will favour religion. On the other hand, if you prefer to think that you are simply a distant relative of a single cell creature from the primeval sludge, that you arrived here as a result of chance and chaos, and that you can make up your morals and rules as you go along, then you might just want to be an atheist. But please don’t present your views to me as a proven fact. They are not, and, as you correctly point out to me, neither are mine. They are both faith beliefs. (effectively, the certain knowledge of something unseen). But I know which one I would rather have faith in. It is not a blind faith, but a real one supported by reason. And remember. There are no atheists in foxholes. William T Cummings: Sermons on Bataan, March 1942

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Appendix 1: This is included to show how strange the things people believe in can be.

Would you Adam and Eve it? Would all those who believe in telekinesis, please raise my hands? ** It has been said that if someone does not believe in God, it does not mean that they believe in nothing, but that they will believe in anything! If you don’t know where you are going, any direction you take could seem to be the right one. You have no objective, so no guidance. You are taking life’s mystery tour. Do you know where you are going? Why are there so many different beliefs about ‘life, the universe and everything’? We sometimes feel a need inside us for something outside ourselves, something to guide us, something more powerful than us. It’s a sort of spiritual hole inside us that needs to be filled.4 This need expresses itself in a variety of weird and wonderful ways. It has done so since time began. If we don’t believe in God, there are many other things on offer to tickle our fancy. This is what they do. They do not fill the hole, but they help stop us falling into it. What you need to ask yourself is whether this need is something you have created yourself, as a way of finding security and reassurance. If so, as atheists so often point out, religion could be said to be created by humans to fulfil a need. What the atheists do not realise is that their belief is itself their own answer to the question that this inner need has asked them. If the question was not there, it would not need an answer. The question would not arise. It is there inside them, no matter how much they would say that they are simply criticising other people’s answers. They are really answering their own inner question. If a child could be brought up without any human influence at all, I believe that they would ask themselves the same question. If we can fill the hole inside us with something that does not challenge us, then it’s all the better. It’s just another weight off our minds. We can put spiritual needs into the background and get on with the business of life. Sometimes it is filled with a simple self denial of the need. Either way, we can forget it or use it, as long as we are not challenged to change our lives. If you really look at many of these ways of filling the hole, you will see that they are usually a way out of a dilemma. You know that there is more to existence that we can see before us. You don’t want to feel you are controlled by anything outside you, so to be told that there is a God who you should fear as your creator goes distinctly against the grain. 4

Sometimes people try to fill the hole by use of drugs. This might give temporary satisfaction, but never ultimately succeeds, and of course brings with it a host of associated problems for the individual and society.

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It is much easier to believe that you are subject to impersonal forces. As they say in Star Wars, ‘The Force be with you’. A ‘force’ can’t speak to you and tell you what a worm you really are. You are simply subject to its effects. Nice and easy to believe. Easy, that is, unless you really think about what you are asking yourself to believe. Consider the following beliefs: ** Astrology This is dressed up as a science, but at its heart, you are still asked to believe that the position of the planets and stars has an effect on your life and destiny. This is not easy to swallow, if you really think about it, is it? There is supposed to be some kind of impersonal force that seems to be really determined to affect our lives. It’s impersonal, so it does not even know what it is doing to us, so it can’t even be described as being interested in us. Ridiculous, if you think about it, unless it was a scientific law. If it was a scientific law it would be predictable and precise, a rule to apply on every occasion, each cause giving a predictable effect. If this was the case, life’s unpredictability would become certainty, and easy to control. Do you observe that life is like this? Do you think that astrology would ever give you this certainty? It seems to be an unseen natural force that insists on interfering with us. But it is not personal, so it can’t ‘insist’ on anything. Why and how is an impersonal force affecting us? Taking it logically, could we ask it and tell from it what decision we should make at every choice we have in our lives? Would you be more willing to rely on an unseen, unknown force rather than a personal, knowing God to guide you with these decisions? This is what you are doing with astrology. You are treating something as personal when clearly it is not. But ask you to believe in a personal God? No chance. Can it be called a science? Have scientific experiments been set up in a controlled environment? Where is the record of the experiments that can scientifically prove the accuracy of astrology? Yet untold numbers of people over the centuries have used astrology as a guide to their lives. Many people today religiously consult their horoscopes on a daily basis, looking for guidance.5 It seems to be argued by astrology that there is a sort of cosmic biological clock, and if you are born at a particular time and place somewhere along its space/time continuum, then you are endowed with particular personality traits. How this is then used as a way of giving a guide to life’s decision making is beyond most people’s comprehension, and, in my opinion, also very much beyond the realms of credibility. Isn’t it easier to believe in God? Still, I suppose that astrology has its compensations. Without astrology we might not have had the three Magi visiting Jesus (that’s the ‘three wise men, or the ‘three kings’). They are widely thought to have been astrologers, if not astronomers, from areas east of Palestine. Many Babylonians had great belief in astrology. 5

Think about it. General daily horoscopes for each star sign, such as those in newspapers, would mean that one twelfth of the world’s population, that’s 500 million people each day, should all have similar experiences if they followed the horoscope. Somewhat unlikely, you might say.

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This does not lend credence to the practice: It merely shows that a study of the planetary and stellar movements could be used by God to establish a truth. This truth is that Jesus was not just expected as the Messiah for the Jews alone. We still study the stellar and planetary movements in the science of astronomy to establish truth, the truth about the structure and origins of the universe. If you think the visit of the Magi was a myth, study the movements of the stars and planets at that time, and middle-eastern stories told independently of the Bible. You might get a surprise. ** Spiritualists and mediums I recently saw an advertisement in a magazine. ‘Mediums4U’, it announced. It was a chatline, on which you could get spiritual advice. Put ‘mediums’ into the Google internet search engine, and you get 2,700,000 entries. We all seem to know about crystal balls, palm reading, tarot cards, ouija boards and the like. Many people seem to think that they are a harmless pastime, just ‘for a laugh’, but lots of people take them very seriously. At my first job when I was a teenager, there was a woman who offered readings of personal objects, fortune telling based around her contact with your private possessions. She laughed a lot. One of my friends asked me that if he hit her, would he be ‘striking a happy medium’? Sorry. This should be a serious subject. Are these things genuine? Don’t they tell us some things they would never know unless they were really in contact with our deceased friends and relatives? Many people have stories about how they were amazed at the things a medium told them about themselves. First of all, I would say that if it was that easy, there would be no worries for any of us. Surely the spirits would take every chance to get through to us if they could reassure us or tell us that everything is going to be alright. It would be a natural way of living. We would consult the spirits of our dead ancestors every time we had a difficult choice to make, and they would guide us, directly by speaking to us. Why should there only be a select, elite few who can communicate with them? Is something stopping them, or holding them back, if it is so difficult to find someone with the necessary contact? Who or what is holding them back, making them pass on a few choice morsels of information rather than a continuous guidance? Is there an evil force making it difficult for them? Would this be someone or something like the Devil? If you can believe that, why can’t you believe in God? If you believe in God too, why doesn’t God allow more access to this knowledge? Is God playing games with us, and not giving us the whole truth? Do you see my reasoning? It does not make sense to me. However, if an evil force does exist, put yourself in his/her or its shoes. If you could divert attention from the truth by filling people’s heads with the reassurance that everything will be fine ‘on the other side’, so we can just carry on our lives as we are, no problem, wouldn’t you have won a great victory? If there is a God who has given you reasoning powers, is trying to tell you the truth, and is longing for you to ‘wake up and smell the bacon’, then it can start to make sense. You would be seduced by a lie, to prevent you finding out the truth.

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So, there could really be something true about contacts with spirits, but it’s not a good thing. I know that some mediums can be pure charlatans, or be genuinely misled into believing they have powers. Some can use the interpretation of body language, word association or just pure guesswork based on probability, and be either total frauds, or not realise that they are doing it this way. However, if there is an evil power, why can’t some of it be real? If it is real, it certainly is not good. We are not intended to know our destiny by these means, surely not. If so, it would all be too easy, too comfortable, and life is just not like that. We would also not want to know many things. We could become ‘basket cases’ if we knew our future and it was not good. Spiritualism can be a comfort zone. It can tell us that everything is going to be fine. We can contact deceased loved ones and know they are happy, and that we will be with them when we die. All will be ‘hunky-dory’ on ‘the other side’. The irony is that this is what Christians are accused of. The supposedly high proportion of elderly people attending churches is emphasised. They are just there to reassure themselves, you say. ‘They are nearer to death, so they want an insurance policy’. This may well be true for some people, but the statement is yet another excuse for discarding Christianity without thinking and finding out what it is really about. ** Ghosts Do you believe in ghosts? If so, are they the rusty chains version, the poltergeist type, or those that simply ‘go bump in the night’? Do the spirits of the dead come back to haunt us? Do they walk the night until they are freed, to move on to pastures new? Do they wear white sheets with holes for eyes? Have you seen a ghost? Many people claim they have, and there are probably as many plausible explanations offered for the visions as there are to explain and ridicule the sightings of the fabled ‘Loch Ness Monster’. Is it all wishful thinking? Do we really wish that ghosts exist? Does it give us some sort of guarantee that life goes on after death? We have ‘ghost walks’ offered in most old towns. There are numerous TV programmes seeking to thrill us with ‘proof’ that ghosts exist, and there have been a multitude of big screen movies made about ghosts ever since the medium was invented (no pun intended). Ghosts are a special effects technician’s dream. My favourite story of a ghost sighting comes from York. A company of Roman soldiers are seen marching through the cellar of a York public house, complete with legionary standards and colours flying. The strange thing is, they are only seen from the waist upwards, their bottom half below the ground level. This is one story that suggests to me that one of the explanations offered for

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ghosts might be possible. We don’t fully understand how time and space interact. Without getting too technical (because I can’t), there could be a sort of slip in the time/space continuum (of course, I could have been watching too much Doctor Who). We are seeing actual Roman soldiers from almost two thousand years ago. Street level at that time was much lower than ours (due to the accumulation of centuries of building work and rubbish), so it would make perfect sense that we only saw them from the waist upwards. Of course, the pub gets lots of publicity in the process, and this is a widely exploited and well known use for a belief in ghosts. I do believe we have a spirit that survives after death, but I’m not convinced that this spirit can haunt us as ghosts are supposed to do. Many people can believe it, but without trying to have a firm understanding of why and how they should. The ‘paranormal’ or the ‘supernatural’ can be accepted by people, if not understood. Why don’t people try to explain these things for themselves? That would involve thinking and reasoning, and this would lead them to question rather than accept. It is easier to just accept that there are things we cannot explain, so they just go on their merry way, tasting the titillation that the supernatural can give them, but never really digesting. Ghosts are just another example of what people are capable of believing without question, and another thing that, if there is an ‘evil’ power like the Devil, could be used by he, she or it as a distraction from the truth. ** Reincarnation. I like reincarnation. It means you can leave everything to yourself when you die. There is today a widespread belief that we have been here before. Therapists and hypnotists offer ‘regression therapy’, taking us back to a previous life. Do you believe in reincarnation? It can seem very plausible when someone is taken back to a ‘previous life’ by a skilled therapist. They say things that it seems they would never know unless it was true. One explanation offered for this is that our minds can hold information that we do not realise that we are retaining, picked up along the way in our life without noticing it. It could be a forgotten book, or TV programme, conversation or newspaper article. All could give us information that we do not realise we are remembering. You would not be alone in believing in reincarnation. Major religions can have this belief. Buddhists believe that your behaviour in this life affects your next life, through the process of ‘Karma’. You continue from one life to the next, the intention being to make a continual improvement, so that, if you have not achieved ‘enlightenment’ in this life, you can keep trying. To effectively reward a previous life with better conditions in the next life would lead to a complicated discussion as to what one had to do that resulted in a 'promotion'. It is not enough to say that ‘you will simply know’. It might also lead to complacency in some cases, if someone believed that they had done enough. Anyway, who sets the standards? Buddhism is essentially atheistic.

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‘Christians’ sometimes say they believe in reincarnation too, but I cannot fully understand why. I suppose, if they thought about it, they might resolve the difficult issue of 'one life, one judgement' (as it appears to be presented in the Bible), as follows: If there is such a thing as reincarnation of the soul, each life is unknown to the previous one and the next one, so is effectively a separate individual in this world. There would then be one life, one judgement as far as that individual is concerned. It could make sense that we had to act on the basis that we have but one life, one judgement. But if there was another chance in a next life, and if I knew for sure that reincarnation was a fact, I might easily look at myself as being better than some, and might expect rewards for that. But, who would I be to judge whether I should be rewarded? The danger would be complacency, so a warning of 'one life, one judgement' and the fact that I have to act as if this is so, means I am obliged to behave as if it is. So, if there is a God who is going to judge me, it makes sense to me that there will only be one chance. Where are all of the extra souls coming from as population increases? Something must provide them. How can some births be reincarnations, and some ‘new entries’? Where did all the souls come from in the first place? If someone or something is providing the fresh souls, can this not be an outside intelligence, a God? I cannot make sense of reincarnation, yet it is a belief that is widely held. Have people really thought it through? Do people really think through any of their beliefs, or are they simply easier to accept than the truth? ** UFOs According to some UFOlogists (I hate this term), ‘Cosmic intelligences have come via UFOs to guide us into the New Age, teaching us to rise to higher levels of consciousness’ (from ‘Understanding the New Age’, by Russell Chandler, a book written from a Christian viewpoint). Believers in UFOs accuse the government of the USA of covering up the ‘evidence’, suppressing a number of military and space agency investigations that were made in the 1940s through to the 1960s. There are untold numbers of people claiming that they have been abducted by aliens. On their return, they bring warnings that mankind must change their ways or face extinction (why do we need aliens to tell us this?) There are just as many supposed sightings of alien spacecraft. So, are we being visited by beings from another planet? Are we some sort of experiment by a higher intelligence? Was the ‘missing link’ between apes and humans created by alien intervention? If there is a God, why do we have to be His only creations? Are the aliens sent to us to warn us?

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We seem to have a need for a higher being, more intelligent, wiser and more sensible than us, to tell us where we are going wrong. He already has. Isn’t it just as easy to believe in God? What if there were beings on other planets? Aside from the incredible odds against the conditions needed for life (as we know it, at least) occurring more than once, if there were other beings, would this make us any less special in God’s eyes? Why should the possibility of extra terrestrial life forms be used as an argument for there being no God? But it is. It is yet another excuse, yet another belief that fills the hole, yet another ‘let’s all get together and be better before it’s too late’ approach. How many times do we see science fiction stories telling us that humans are ‘different’, with our emotions of love and hate, and sometimes how vulnerable, sometimes how noble, that makes us? Why do the stories usually assume that we will listen to the warnings, and change for the better? Do you see the world doing this? These are just different ways of presenting us with a lesson in self examination as a species, and are crammed with ‘New Age’, humanist thinking. Why on earth (or on Venus, or Alpha Centauri for that matter), do we need aliens to tell us that we are not what we should be, when God has been telling us for thousands of years? ** The New Age What is the ‘New Age’? It seems to be a mixture of ancient eastern religious mysticism and meditation, sociology, physical science, holistic medicine, anthropology and science fiction. It’s not an organisation or a creed. It’s a ‘movement’. It’s the ‘Age of Aquarius’. Everybody get together. All you need is love. There are no absolute truths. All is relative, etc, etc. It bundles together existentialist philosophy, monism (everything in existence is of one essential essence, substance or energy) and a ‘do your own thing’ culture. Freedom is confused with the license to do anything. ‘New Agers’ believe that to be like this will make the world a better place. Once alienated from Christian faith and practice by these and other deceptions (growing secularism, relativism, materialistic consumerism, hedonism), people often commit themselves to passing fads, or to bizarre beliefs that are either shallow or fanatical Pope John Paul II at San Francisco, 1987. The New Age movement has no God to sin against….. It is utopian, thinking we can create a utopia by our own efforts. Douglas Groothius, author of ‘Unmasking the New Age. Reincarnation is the engine that drives much New Age opinion…..-The machine of moral relativism. For example, psychiatrist Helen Wambach uses reincarnationist logic to

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conclude that there’s nothing morally wrong about abortion: it’s only the body, not the soul, that is killed…if a foetus is aborted the soul can choose to enter another foetus. Russell Chandler, in ‘Understanding the New Age’ What about suicide then? OK, so it seems, using the same logic. What about murder? Same logic? The ‘New Age’ is a mish-mash of beliefs, rituals and pure fads. Just two of these will be enough to serve as examples; channelling and the power of crystals. Channelling Channelers are today’s spiritualist mediums. A Californian lawyer once said that she used channelling to create a parking space at the courthouse. In ‘Understanding the New Age’, Russell Chandler suggests that the basic messages of channelling are as follows: • • • • •

Death is unreal All is one in the synergy of deity. Despite being divine beings, we have chosen to live as physical human beings. There are no victims in this life, only opportunities. Reality can be controlled by the power of universal mind.

It’s not simply the contact between us and the spirits of the dead; it’s a contact between all parts of reality. If we can ‘tune in’, we can be in contact with the universal being, of which we are a part. So, we are part of the universal and can harmonise with it. It is not something that controls us. We can harness and control it. We are in charge if we want to be. Nice and easy, isn’t it. The Power of Crystals Put a crystal round your neck. Put a crystal on your fireplace. Put a crystal in your car. Squeeze a crystal. Why? Apparently the molecules of crystals can develop shapes that are in harmony with the internal structure of the human body, helping us amplify and balance our energies. Place quartz or clear crystal balls or a round crystal sphere, with the globe etched on the crystal, on a brass stand on the left hand side (for female) and on the right hand side (for male) of the work table (when seated). Twirl it from time to time to energise the intrinsic earth energy of the crystal. This will help to focus tasks in hand, concentration and memory. www.fengshuitips.co.uk

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Quartz crystals are the most popular. Quartz, when tapped or squeezed, produces a very small electrical charge (hence its use in the old crystal radios, and watches and computers today). So, maybe the quartz could respond to a human being’s electrical energy, with possible beneficial effects. But to then relate this to some of the claims made that it enables wearers to tap into past lives or ‘attune to the vibration field’, saying that it is radiating a ‘psychic vibration’, is another matter. A note about alternative medicine and healing. Of course, I am not decrying all forms of alternative medicine, just because some of them might be related to the ‘New Age’ movement. Natural healing and treatments like homeopathy and acupuncture are becoming more widely accepted, and some may well be genuinely promoting healing. And we can never discount the power of the mind over the body. So why, when Christians claim that God can, and does, still heal the sick, is it said to be unbelievable? Is this not the same in principle as spiritualising an ancient healing process? God’s healing does not have to be some sort of magic, but a perfectly natural process, helped along by the mind of the subject and the power of God. Because it is a natural process, this does not mean God is not involved, supporting and helping it along. It also does not mean that, because certain ancient techniques might now be associated with the ‘New Age’, they are all either evil or false. But to spiritualise them or make them into almost a religion for today’s world is foolish and possibly dangerous. They will not ultimately fill the hole. They will tickle our spiritual fancy for a while, but never completely fulfil our need. ** I could fill another book with the variety of beliefs that exist in our world today. This appendix has simply given a few examples. No doubt you can think of many others that I have not included These are not what would be considered as the mainstream religious beliefs, of which there are also many. ** The next two are examples of organisations that claim to be ‘Christian’, to illustrate that believers in one all powerful God (Monotheists) can also be subject to beliefs that are, let us say, slightly dubious. ** Jehovah’s Witnesses We consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished by the end of AD1914. Charles Taze Russell, a founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from ‘The Time is at Hand’

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time before 1914 Charles Taze Russell, from ‘Studies in the Scriptures’, 1910 issue. (Italics mine)

The deliverance of the saints must take place some time after 1914 Charles Taze Russell, from ‘Studies in the Scriptures, 1923 issue. (Italics mine).

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Reports are heard of brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world’s end. From ‘Our Kingdom Ministry’, May 1974. The JWs had forecast Armageddon for late 1975. I don’t think I need say any more, really. But I will. They have their own translation of the Bible, the ‘New World’ translation. In our standard versions, as the vast majority of scholars of ancient Greek would verify, the first verse of John’s Gospel says ‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God….’ The Jehovah’s Witness (JW) version says ‘And the Word was a god.’ Where they get the ‘a’ from is anybody’s guess, but if it was not there, they would have to admit that it said that Jesus was God, because John 1:14 says ‘the Word became flesh and resided among us’, clearly referring to Jesus. Of course, they don’t believe that Jesus is God, so they change the Bible. In standard versions of the Bible, Titus chapter 2, verse 13 says ‘while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ’ How do the JWs translate it? They say ‘while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of the great God and of the Saviour of us’ The Greek used in the earliest manuscripts did not have the ‘of’. I assume they will say that it was the early church that changed the text, and that they have the true translation, but where did they get it from? Where are the early manuscripts to justify it? They disregard or change the many references to Jesus as God that appear in the Bible, and then say that Jesus was the Archangel Michael, justifying this with one verse and a few tenuous links. ‘While there is no statement in the Bible that categorically identifies Michael the archangel as Jesus, there is one scripture that links Jesus with the office of archangel’ From the JW’s ‘Awake’ magazine, February 2002 The verse is ‘The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice…..’ If this alone justifies belief in Jesus as an archangel, I suppose that makes Charlotte Church a real angel too. (Charlotte was described as having the ‘voice of an angel’). ** Mormons. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) The Mormons seem to be clean living, family orientated people. They refuse to drink alcohol, tea or coffee. On the face of it, very worthy, you might say. What about some of their beliefs? In the Book of Mormon, it is said that Jesus Christ visited the inhabitants of ancient America soon after His Resurrection. These inhabitants, the Native Americans, are said by the Mormons to be Ancient Israelites. About 600 BC God is said to have commanded a prophet,

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Lehi, to lead them to America, where they prospered and became a great civilisation. As you might expect, geneticists say otherwise. So, it seems that, according to the Mormons, America really is God’s country. How convenient for the ‘American Dream’. The early Mormon leaders practiced polygamy, saying that Abraham and Isaac, and others had been commanded by God to do so. Note that the polygamy was only one- way. One man, many wives. What about racism? Cain slew his brother…and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin Brigham Young, the 19th century Mormon prophet, in his Journal of Discourses. And more recently: Negroes in this life are denied the priesthood; under no circumstances can they hold this delegation of authority from the Almighty. The gospel message of salvation is not carried affirmatively to them. Negroes are not equal with other races where the receipt of certain spiritual blessings are concerned. Church leader Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon doctrine, 1958. In 1978, the Mormons finally changed their policy that prevented people of African descent from being ordained to their priesthood. Apparently, God had changed his mind on the subject. In 1827 Joseph Smith had been given the location of a set of golden plates by an angel called Moroni. He translated the plates and produced the ‘Book of Mormon’. He had been told by Jesus that all known churches were wrong, and their doctrines ‘an abomination’. Mormon doctrine says that God the Father was once a man, and still has a body of flesh and bones, albeit an exalted one. It speculates that because Jesus has a father in God, then God could also have had a father. Apparently, God lives on a planet called Kolob. The Garden of Eden was in Missouri. ** Harry Potter Why are the Harry Potter stories so popular, if we don’t have something inside us, a need for something outside our selves, something other worldly, something we can’t explain? Why do we have a fascination for horror stories? Why do we have a sense of good and evil at all, and a sense of, ultimately, what is right and what is wrong? We always want good to triumph over evil, and the stories that we lap up as entertainment more often than not fulfil this need.

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Even if our secular society has managed to fool us into believing that we are just a collection of atoms, we had, from an early age, something inside us that had told us that there is more to the world than meets the eye, making us open to the supernatural and the paranormal. We are surrounded by a multitude of attempts at explaining what is ‘out there’, so it is no surprise that we can embrace one, some, or all of them, particularly if they do not challenge us to change our lives. But you have to admit that some are more believable than others. You might well believe some of them, no matter how outlandish, but then you say to me that you can’t believe in a man who walks on water, or feeds five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and a few fishes. You can’t believe that people return from the dead. I say that if you believed in God, a power so great, so unfathomable, that He could be behind the creation of the universe, then you simply cannot then say that He can no longer interfere with the physical ‘laws’ that govern His universe. You could believe that the stars and planets have an effect on your life, but not believe that God could perform ‘miracles’? You have to ask yourself if you think the way you do because it is easier for you. It fulfils your inner need for the supernatural without the weight of any responsibility for your own reaction to it. It exists, and it might affect you, but you are just passively subject to its effects. You don’t have to do anything at all. Easy, isn’t it? ** So, are you one of the people that can accept at least one of the beliefs that I outlined above? Do you still think that they are credible? But you still can’t believe in a personal power, a mind that is behind the universe, who wishes to communicate and guide us using media that we are all familiar with. We can speak and be heard, and we can read and be guided. This is God, prayer and the Bible. This is the concept that you find so unbelievable. Why? Is it more unbelievable than astrology or ghosts? I think not. But it is more challenging, isn’t it? Astrology does not ask you to change your life. Ghosts don’t tell you that you are not what you should be (unless your name is Ebenezer Scrooge). You can’t think of worshipping and communicating with such a God, yet you will look up to and ‘hero-worship’ celebrities and sports personalities. Look at the reaction to Princess Diana’s death. She was almost deified as a goddess, and the imperfections of her life were swept away by an almost hysterical idealisation of the good works she performed. Inside us all is a need for a personification of an object of worship. God is overlooked and others take His place. But God is there, waiting to be the focus of this need, and you ignore Him and give your worship and praise to mere mortals. Or you worship wealth and status, or ‘nature’ (perhaps as pantheism or paganism), or you might even worship your own ego. You can’t believe in the God portrayed in the Bible. You might have to change your life. *****

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Appendix 2: A quote from Nietzsche. from Daybreak, s.68 All the world still believes in the authorship of the "Holy Spirit" or is at least still affected by this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so for "edification."... That it also tells the story of one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the story of the apostle Paul--who knows this , except a few scholars? Without this strange story, however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul, there would be no Christianity... That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good deal of its Jewish ballast, that it went, and was able to go, among the pagans--that was due to this one man, a very tortured, very pitiful, very unpleasant man, unpleasant even to himself. He suffered from a fixed idea--or more precisely, from a fixed, ever-present, never-resting question: what about the Jewish law? and particularly the fulfilment of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, with a ravenous hunger for this highest distinction which the Jews could conceive - this people who were propelled higher than any other people by the imagination of the ethically sublime, and who alone succeeded in creating a holy god together with the idea of sin as a transgression against this holiness. Paul became the fanatical defender of this god and his law and guardian of his honour; at the same time, in the struggle against the transgressors and doubters, lying in wait for them, he became increasingly harsh and evilly disposed towards them, and inclined towards the most extreme punishments. And now he found that--hot-headed, sensual, melancholy, malignant in his hatred as he was-- he was himself unable to fulfil the law; indeed, and this seemed strangest to him, his extravagant lust to domineer provoked him continually to transgress the law, and he had to yield to this thorn. Is it really his "carnal nature" that makes him transgress again and again? And not rather, as he himself suspected later, behind it the law itself, which must constantly prove itself unfulfillable and which lures him to transgression with irresistible charm? But at that time he did not yet have this way out. He had much on his conscience - he hints at hostility, murder, magic, idolatry, lewdness, drunkenness, and pleasure in dissolute carousing - and... moments came when he said to himself: "It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome."... The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed: how he hated it! how he searched for some means to annihilate it--not to fulfil it any more himself! And finally the saving thought struck him,... "It is unreasonable to persecute this Jesus! Here after all is the way out; here is the perfect revenge; here and nowhere else I have and hold the annihilator of the law!"... Until then the ignominious death had seemed to him the chief argument against the Messianic claim of which the new doctrine spoke: but what if it were necessary to get rid of the law? The tremendous consequences of this idea, of this solution of the riddle, spin before his eyes; at one stroke he becomes the happiest man; the destiny of the Jews--no, of all men-seems to him to be tied to this idea, to this second of its sudden illumination; he has the thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of lights; it is around him that all history must revolve henceforth. For he is from now on the teacher of the annihilation of the law... This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity. Until then there were only a few Jewish sectarians. Why do I include this? Nietzsche was anti-Christianity. I include it because he has an insight into the real message of Christ.

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Nietsche is saying that Paul 'invented' Christianity to salve his own conscience over his underachievement of the Jewish Law. Nietsche's analysis of Paul's concept is correct, but what if the purely personal motive Nietsche claims for Paul is not correct? Either way, it is a very good insight into what Christianity is. What if Paul was right? What if we all should see Paul's point of view and accept that we are in the same position? What if Paul received this realisation and revelation for a purpose? What if Paul was the intended go-between, the unifier of Israel and the gentiles? No one can deny that Paul hit on a powerful message that struck a chord not just with Paul, but with countless millions since. Was the message that changed the world simply one man's personal answer to his own dilemma? In the light of the events of the following two thousand years, and the millions of lives that have been truly transformed by the message, can we really believe that's all it was? ************

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Appendix 3 What follows is my response after reading the book ‘Da vinci Code Decoded’, by Martin Lunn, which claims to be ‘the truth behind the New York Times bestseller’. It is included to illustrate how what may seem self evidently correct (because it is telling you what you wish to hear), is much less so when analysed in more detail. A critique of Martin Lunn’s book, ‘Da Vinci Code Decoded’. ‘Da Vinci Code Decoded’ was published by the Disinformation Company. I quote from their website: The political bias of our staff just happens to be ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’, but that doesn’t mean we close our minds to ideas that are deemed conservative, far from it. How can someone be truly well informed with only half the story? Theirs is a site professing to expose disinformation, in a search for truth. I therefore believe that I am correct in saying that any information coming from the site should also be subject to the possibility of being considered by reasoning, thinking people, to be disinformation, and consequently subject to scrutiny and criticism. I am a firm believer that we are lied to and manipulated by the ‘powers that be’ (wherever and whoever they might be), for their own benefit. I wholeheartedly welcome any well researched information that exposes this. I am also familiar with the methods used to maintain the lies. People are told what they want to hear. Under these circumstances, belief is easy. We are fed information that is easy for us to accept, because it fits with our preconceived ideas and supports our own interests. So, imagine my disappointment when reading ‘Da Vinci Code Decoded’, purporting to be ‘the truth behind the New York Times No 1 Bestseller’. In my opinion, this book contains exactly the kind of dis-information that I find so objectionable. I believe that the book panders to readers with pre-conceived ideas, simply confirming for them what they already believe, and telling them what they want to know. I know what you are thinking. No, I am not an angry Roman Catholic, or a fundamentalist Protestant Christian. If I was, you could well assume I might be an ultra-strict creationist, or a preacher of hell and damnation. These, I am definitely not. You might not believe it, but Christian faith can be more rational than you think. Faith does not have to be a leap in the dark. You do not have to commit ‘intellectual suicide’. I am as much against extreme fundamental Christian beliefs as any of you. I challenge all extreme viewpoints. If a viewpoint is extreme, it immediately suggests to me that it might be biased by preconceived ideas or self interest. Reason is easily sidelined. My search for the truth has led me to disagree with neo-liberal economics, atheists, humanists, fundamental Christians, established traditional Christian institutions and Moslems,

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amongst others. In doing this, I am not claiming that I know everything, and everyone else is wrong. No one on earth can do this. I have my opinion, you have yours. I firmly believe that my belief is based on reason rather than prejudice or self interest. If it was not, I could never be happy with it. If you believe in reason, you must be ready to consider that your cherished beliefs might be lies. That should apply to all of us. **** Let’s return to the book in question. I have a number of issues with what I consider to be this conjectural sensationalism, masquerading as serious historical inquiry. In my opinion it is simply an inconsistent regurgitation of some well-worn points of view. Much of it is pulled straight from the pages of the Da Vinci Code (which is, in turn, gleaned from other well worn sources), and then combined with a few minor corrections to the ‘facts’. As such it is a clear (and cheap) attempt to cash in on the controversy currently surrounding Dan Brown’s book and the recent movie based on it, supported by an apparent personal agenda on the part of Mr Lunn. Before you ask, yes, I have read the ‘Da Vinci Code’ and seen the movie. As it is, the book is a good piece of escapist action, and well worthy of a read. Putting it onto the screen loses something. Perhaps watching it on a screen exposes the inherent absurdity of the story. This is something more easily forgotten as you read a well written book. With a good book you can more easily suspend your disbelief, even if you disagree with its content. Regarding the Roman Catholic Church, yes, I too believe that it has exercised its abusive power and control since the fourth century by using an interpretation of Christianity that has been dedicated to maintaining that power and control, including its dominance by men. As I will try to demonstrate below, this is definitely NOT Paul’s version of Christianity, as Mr Lunn claims. Let me say here that many Roman Catholic Christians have a very sincere faith, and I am not criticising them. They are Christians despite the institution they belong to, not because of it. Having said this, I do believe that many ‘nominal’ believers are also blindly controlled and misled by the Church’s traditions, superstitions and hierarchy. It is not as if criticism of the Roman Catholic Church is anything new. If this was not the case the sixteenth century Reformation would neither have been needed, nor taken place. Where I disagree is over whether there are any deliberate, clandestine motives behind the power the Church has gained over the centuries, as suggested by authors such as Dan Brown and Martin Lunn, and many others, ad nauseum. Why can’t it simply be said that the power, influence and control have been a natural result of the perversity of human nature? Why should the fact that a human institution has, at many times, been led by corrupt human beings, lead to the conclusion that all of the beliefs it was founded on are also corrupt or wrong? Why should this then lead inevitably to the many attempts there have been at finding something that would once and for all discredit all basic Christian beliefs? This is like writing off the whole concept of all charitable giving because some organisations are found to misappropriate their funds. Then again, some people do this, for the same reason as it is done with Christianity. It gives them a convenient excuse for not getting involved.

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We find it very easy to recognise human nature in action in other large human-made organisations, as the reason for their power, control or corruptibility. Why not the Church? Think about it. If you are that way inclined, what better way is there to get away with the exercise of human depravity than from behind the protection of the Church? This is still no reason to write off the basic belief system that was misused to create such a monstrosity. Yes, the Church was given the opportunity to achieve absolute power, as soon as it became the recognised religion of the Roman Empire. The man made institution of the Church on earth is controlled by human beings. Human beings are, by nature, subject to human failings. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Many attacks on the whole concept of Christianity are, and over the centuries have been, based on a criticism of Roman Catholicism and extreme fundamentalist Protestantism (the ‘fundos’). The reasoning for much of the criticism seems to follow these lines: • • • • • • • •

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be God’s Church, with the Pope as God’s representative on earth. We see the Roman Catholic Church, and we assume that this is Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church is corrupt, and some its practices are based on out-dated superstitious nonsense. ‘Fundos’ are right wing, dogmatic, puritanical, self righteous, hypocritical bigots. Therefore, the whole concept of Christianity must be rubbish. So, let’s do all we can to find ways of demonstrating that it is. People need to know. In the process of de-bunking Christianity, we can release millions of people from slavery to it. We can enlighten them. We can show them the lies. Oh, and because this is so controversial, and it is what many people want to hear, we can also possibly make lots of money along the way. *****

Was Jesus married with children? ‘Da-Vinci Code Decoded’ proposes, amongst other things, that Jesus was married and had children. Out of all the issues covered in the da Vinci Code debate, this seems to be the one that excites the most public interest and controversy, because it is the one that strongly suggests to people that Jesus was not God incarnate, but just a human being. This is what they want to hear. The alternative is much harder to accept. First of all, what is all the fuss about? What does it matter if Jesus was married? Firstly, I will say that I believe that Jesus did not have children, and was not married. However, there is nothing sinful about being married, and there is nothing sinful about having sexual relations in marriage. Jesus could have been married and still be considered to be the sinless Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world. In accordance with the Creeds of the Church, the man Jesus was totally God and totally human. Christ had a human nature and a divine nature, but separate. This was the only way that God could experience living as a human, every aspect of it. Procreation is a human function. Any children of Christ would not be gods, just humans. If we think about it, anyone alive today who could truly claim descent from Jesus would have as much right to claim advantage from this as, say, someone descended from Leonardo da Vinci could claim that they were a genius.

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If Jesus was truly God, or even if he just believed himself to be God, I would suggest that he might not have considered it sensible of him to have children, for their sake. It would have opened up the possibility of a future dogged by constant claims made by pretenders to his throne. He also considered his Kingdom to be of Heaven, not earth. Here lies the dilemma. Jesus would not have children if He was God, so if we can prove that he had children, therefore we prove that he was not God. Why should this automatically follow? The bloodline, if there was one, could have died very quickly, even at the first generation. There was always going to be, at some time, speculation over possible descendants of Jesus, it was just a matter of time. The burden of proof lies with those making the claims. **** So, what is the real problem? Here, the Roman Catholic Church rears its head again. It makes celibacy compulsory for its priests, thereby implicitly stating that Jesus, the ‘high priest’, must have been celibate. In the popular mind, the Roman Church equates sex with sin, so if Jesus had sex, or was burdened by a wife, he was not perfect, as claimed. The Pope claims to speak as God’s representative. The fundamentalist Christian position is just as dogmatic, for other reasons. They say that it does not say in the Bible that Jesus was married, so therefore he was not. So, if we can prove that Jesus was married, then we prove that Christianity is rubbish. Why should this follow? Even Paul defended his own right to have a wife (though he seems to have remained unmarried). He uses the marriages of the other apostles, Jesus’ brothers, and Peter to support his point. Why did Paul recommend remaining single? What were the advantages? In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul basically said that for anyone believing that to serve Jesus’ objectives was the most important thing in their life, then to stay single was an advantage. The married person must also care for his or her family, but the unmarried person is not distracted. It was purely practical advice. He also made it clear that this was a choice, not a command, and emphasised that if you married you did not sin. He understood that not everyone was called to be single, nor could everyone manage it. This did not imply that if you married, you could not serve Christ. It can definitely not be thought of as a veiled reference to Christ being married. If it was, Paul would surely not have put it in, if his objective was to hide the fact that Jesus was married. Elsewhere, Paul’s words in his letters have been misinterpreted and misused by the established Church to ensure centuries of religiously justified male domination. To interpret this misuse as a deliberate move to overturn an ancient veneration of the female, and to suppress knowledge of Jesus’ marriage, as presented in the ‘Da Vinci Code’, is over imaginative and sensationalist speculation. For a new religion to prosper, it would have needed an inevitable sweeping away of old beliefs. Advantage was then taken of the wrongly perceived position of men. Human beings placed in a position of power unfortunately tend to do this. It was not a Christian conspiracy to suddenly place men into power. They had held most of the power long before Christ came, and the misinterpreted words of Paul came as a false justification, not a revolution.

**** We now turn to some of the ‘evidence’ given by Mr Lunn to say that Jesus was married.:

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Ancient texts What about the non-Biblical documents that claim to tell of Jesus’ life? We are informed by Mr Lunn that the Da Vinci Code tells us that one of them, the Gospel of Philip, gives us evidence for Jesus being married, and that this was one of the reasons it was excluded from the Bible. Readers could easily be given the impression that there is evidence of Jesus’ marriage in the non Biblical gospels. Mr Lunn makes no attempt to discredit this impression, so the assumption can be that he supports it. Do the non-Biblical gospels really support the Jesus marriage theory? The Gospel of Thomas This is probably the earliest of the non biblical ‘gospels’, possibly first century. Mary is mentioned once, asking Jesus ‘Whom are your disciples like?’ She is then mentioned at the end of the gospel, as follows: Simon Peter said to them, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.". So, it’s Paul that was sexist, and the Church deliberately included writings that ensured male domination, did they? Strange that this one was left out, then. The Gospel of Peter: Second century. This concentrates on the last hours of Jesus, saying he felt no pain when he was crucified. Mary only appears at the tomb of Jesus, and is described as a ‘female disciple’. The Dialogue of the Saviour: Second Century. This is a dialogue between ‘the Saviour’ and some disciples, including Mary. She is said to ‘know the all’, i.e. she has a special knowledge. She is seen as a person with a special insight. There is no mention of a marriage. The Sophia (wisdom) of Jesus Christ (Middle of second century) In this, Mary asks Jesus ‘Holy Lord, where did your disciples come from, and where are they going, and what should they do here?’. She is not considered further. There is no suggestion of her being married to Jesus. The Pistis Sophia (Third Century) This is a Gnostic gospel. In it Mary is a main character, and asks most of the questions. She is praised as one whose ‘heart is more directed to the Kingdom of Heaven than all her brothers’. Jesus says that she is ‘blessed beyond all women upon the earth, because she shall be the pleroma of all pleromas and the completion of all completions’ (Pleroma means the fullness of knowledge of the divine). Jesus is impressed with Mary’s spiritual excellence, and promises not to hide anything from her. In this gospel she is clearly regarded as a source of understanding and revelation, with a close relationship to Jesus. There is nothing that suggests a marriage. Gnosticism valued secret knowledge above all, so emphasis on Mary’s eminence is therefore not surprising. The Gospel of Mary (second century Gnostic)

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In this gospel, Mary’s close relationship to ‘the Saviour’ (the name Jesus is not mentioned) makes her a source of secret revelation. Peter asks her ‘Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember, which you know but we do not or have not heard them’. Mary is said to have received revelations in a vision. The disciples were not too sure about Mary’s supposed insights. Andrew said ‘I at least do not believe that the Saviour said this’. He thought the ideas expressed were strange. Peter asked why they should listen to a woman. Levi defended her, saying that if the Saviour loved her more than them, this is no reason to treat her as an enemy. So, Jesus preferred Mary to the other disciples, and loved her more than them. Clearly, according to some people, this is evidence that he married her. There is nothing in the Gospel of Mary to suggest a sexual or marriage relationship between Jesus and Mary. The Gospel of Philip (mid third century) Finally, we come to the last of the non-Biblical gospels to mention Mary. This is the one that is used the most by those claiming she was married to Jesus. That it is from well into the third century does not seem to matter. It is a collection of Gnostic observations, not all mentioning Jesus. Two passages refer to Mary. ‘There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary his mother and her sister and Magdalene (Mary), the one who was called his companion’(Wesley W Isenberg translation) It is the word ‘companion’ that causes the interest. This word is said to have been used for a marriage companion. The Greek word is ‘koinonos’. The word means ‘partner’, and is used a few times in the New Testament with that meaning (for example Philemon chapter 1 verse 17, where Paul is Philemon’s koinonos). The second passage says: ‘And the companion of the Saviour is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them, 'Why do I not love you like her?' When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. Then the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness’ In the Da Vinci Code, the Saviour’s answer is replaced by a section giving his views on marriage, as though they follow from the comments about Jesus kissing Mary on the mouth. The comments on marriage were made elsewhere in the gospel, and not directly related to the passage on kissing. This is a clear attempt to mislead. Mr Lunn does not point this out, so the assumption can be that he concurs. If we accept that these things were actually said, first of all, if Jesus was married to Mary, or clearly loved her with a view to marriage, why were the disciples offended? If it had been prior to a marriage, their worries could have been dispelled by a simple explanation of Jesus and Mary’s future intent. Are we suggesting that they were all gay and therefore sexually jealous? Note also, that there is no mention of an actual sexual relationship. Jesus explains the relationship by saying she has an ability to see the light. This, they could have been jealous of. Note also that what is said about kissing elsewhere in the Gospel of Philip may shed a light on Jesus’ kissing of Mary. ‘Grace comes forth by him from the mouth, the place where the Logos came forth; (one) was to be nourished from the mouth to become perfect. The perfect are conceived thru a kiss and

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they are born. Therefore we also are motivated to kiss one another— to receive conception from within our mutual grace’. From this passage, kissing on the mouth could therefore conceivably be a symbol for the passing on of knowledge. The disciples are, in other non-Biblical gospels too, seen to be jealous of Mary’s knowledge. They could, therefore easily have been offended in this way by Jesus’ kissing of Mary. If this seems to stretch credibility, I ask again, where can you find a reference to a definite sexual relationship? So, there we have it. That's the best non-Biblical evidence for the marriage of Jesus and Mary. Anyone can take ‘evidence’ such as this and concoct a theory, and imagine a conspiracy to cover up ‘the truth’. I could suggest that Jesus was an alien, because he appeared on a mountain surrounded by glowing beings which were obviously aliens, and that he was taken up into the sky. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s been done before. And it was believed. It was yet another attempt to discredit the truth about Jesus, just like the one we are discussing. The texts quoted above simply do not support the idea that Jesus was married. It is much more reasonable to accept that Mary was a close disciple of Jesus, and someone who had a special understanding of the message of Jesus. The Bible makes no attempt to exclude Mary Magdalene. In the Bible, Mary is one of the women who went with Jesus on his preaching mission. She helped to support him financially (Luke 8:1-3). By including women, Jesus was counter cultural. Mary was a close follower of Jesus, went with him on journeys, learned from him and then was faithful to him even when other disciples disowned him. She was the first to see him after the Resurrection, and the first person to announce that he had risen. Does this sound like the Bible had been re-written to exclude women? Why does it have to suggest that he was married to her? Surely these passages would have been taken out if the church was deliberately stressing male domination, or hiding Jesus’ marriage. In Jesus’ day, Jewish teachers very rarely taught women or involved them. Jesus was exceptional. He included everyone. He said ‘Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’. The ‘da Vinci Code’ is a fictional novel that has been taken as historical truth, convincing people, amongst other things, that the non-Biblical gospels are full of evidence about Jesus’ marriage, and that this is a major reason why they were suppressed. Seriously, after looking at them in detail, can we really, truly say that this is the truth? I don’t think so, do you? Other ‘evidence’ for Jesus being married Jesus as a ‘Rabbi’. It is suggested that because Jesus was a teacher and the disciples called him ‘Rabbi’, that he would have been married, because that was the Jewish custom for Rabbis. Firstly, Jesus was not officially a Rabbi, and never claimed to be. The disciples called him Rabbi because they accepted him as their teacher. He never held any Jewish office of Rabbi. He was asked by the Jews by what authority he did the things he did, such as preach within the Temple. Social decorum and duty

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This is said to have forbade a Jewish man to stay single, especially one of the royal line of David. It is claimed that celibacy was condemned, but there is evidence that some Jewish men chose to be unmarried, and were actually praised by leading Jewish thinkers Philo, an early Jewish historian, described celibacy as ‘an enviable system’, and that it was admired by ordinary people and by royalty, i.e. by all levels of society. Josephus, another early Jewish historian, says about the Jewish Essene Community (they provided us with the Dead Sea Scrolls), who practiced celibacy, that ‘It also deserves our admiration how much they exceed other men that addict themselves to virtue’. Paul, in the New Testament, said that celibacy was useful in order to avoid distractions from God’s work. With such a mission as Jesus perceived for himself, it can be easily accepted that he chose not to marry, whether it was against social convention or not. When it is also considered that he saw his Kingdom as of Heaven, not this earth, it is reasonable to assume that he could see no need for another heir in the Davidic royal line. This would apply even if you believe Jesus was deluded or just plain crazy, as some people do. Any children of Jesus would have been pursued to their graves, in the search for his successor. I find it difficult to believe that they could have been kept secret. Christianity as it developed would never have got off the ground. It would have been simply ‘The King is dead. Long live the King (or even Queen)’. A successor would have been the first thing people would have looked for. It would not have taken more than a hundred years for such claims to have been made. It was not until the late 2nd century that a Christian leader is seen to deny that Jesus Christ was married (implying that claims had been made that he was). Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria said that a married Jesus was inconsistent with His role as the Savior of the world. They did not say that marriage would make him sinful, but that His mission had been related to Heaven, and too demanding to allow Him the opportunity for marriage. There is then a gap of another eight or nine hundred years before there is any sign of a visible organization being associated directly with the idea that Jesus was married, as the Templars and the Cathars (Albigensians) have been claimed to be, and despite what is claimed for the Merovingian dynasty in 5th to 7th century France (see below). First show me the evidence of a search for Jesus’ successor in first century Palestine. From the centuries in between, find me some documentary evidence for a marriage, and descendents of Jesus, that matches the amount that we have for mainstream Christian beliefs. ‘But it was a secret’, you will say, so naturally there is none, or it is hidden somewhere until ‘the time is right’. If it is a secret, it’s not been kept very well recently, has it? The wedding feast at Cana The following is John’s account in the Bible of the wedding feast at Cana. John, Chapter 2, verses 1 to 11: On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine." "Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied, "My time has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

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Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now." This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him. Mr Lunn says that in June, 30AD, Mary anointed Jesus with spikenard at this wedding feast. Can anyone find any reference to this? Where does Mr Lunn get it from that Jesus was anointed at the wedding feast? So, this was Jesus’ wedding, was it? Why was he just ‘invited’? Why is Jesus mentioned by name six times, but it is ‘the bridegroom’ that is called aside by the master of the banquet? Yet, according to Mr Lunn, they are one and the same. Why would Jesus ask his mother why he is being involved, if he was responsible for the supplies, as Mr Lunn says? Mary says ‘They have no more wine’. Would she not say ‘We have no more wine’, if the wedding feast was for her son? I’m sorry, but the theory that this was Jesus’ marriage is pure conjecture that ignores the simple probability that Jesus, his mother and the disciples were just wedding guests. Why can’t it more easily be assumed that it might be the wedding feast of another of Mary’s children, so therefore Jesus and his mother would be honoured guests?

Anointing with perfume. Mr Lunn says that the anointing with spikenard (nard) must surely indicate a wife or prospective wife, as part of a wedding ceremony. The concept that anointing with perfume could also be used for the recognition of a King, or for the dead or dying, has been completely ignored by Mr Lunn. Regarding the three anointings of Jesus by a woman, spikenard is only mentioned twice. For the passage that does not mention spikenard, it does not say specifically that the woman was Mary, or even a prostitute, as is claimed by many. The woman is simply called ‘a woman that had led a sinful life’. Luke 7:36-50 Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner." Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you." "Tell me, teacher," he said. "Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he cancelled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?" Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt cancelled." "You have judged correctly," Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for

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my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little." Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." The other guests began to say among themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." This seems to me (and would to most reasonable people) to say that the woman had come to Jesus for forgiveness of her sins, believing that Jesus was the Messiah, and a great King, so an anointing was appropriate. To a Jew, only God could forgive sins. Is that not a more sensible interpretation? Let’s now look at the other two episodes, sometimes said to be two different descriptions of the same event. Mark 14, 1-9 Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. "But not during the Feast," they said, "or the people may riot." While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly. "Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." There was no mention of a marriage ceremony, just criticism of the use of expensive perfume, and Jesus pointed out that it was in relation to his death. This version does not even say that the woman was Mary. John 12 1-10 Six days before the Passover, Jesus arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, "Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year's wages.]" He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. “Leave her alone," Jesus replied. "It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me." This one does say that it was Mary, but Jesus once again relates the anointing to his death, and the same comment was made about use of expensive perfume. I see no absolutely no need at all to imagine a marriage ceremony in any of these accounts. To do so is pure conjecture and wishful thinking. Then, if it was ever suggested that the passages had been ‘doctored’ to take out references to marriage and to give them a different meaning, wouldn’t it have been easier to leave them out altogether, to avoid controversy?

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**** Mr Lunn also proposes the following: •

Paul (or Saul) basically wrote (or re-wrote) the New Testament to create his own version of Christianity, and it is this version that was taken up by the Church of Rome. and

•

In the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine ensured the victory of Paul’s version of Christianity, and gave the Church its dominant position, suppressing all other views.

According to Mr Lunn, Paul wrote or re-wrote the four Gospels, the book of Acts and the letters of Peter, James, John and Jude, and the letter to the Hebrews in Rome, in addition to his own letters, all to suit his own version of Christianity and, presumably, his own ambitions. A friend of mine has said that, having read the New Testament, he considers that Paul’s letters seem to give a message that is inconsistent with the gospels. I have heard this said before. Apparently Paul did not do a very good job. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That Paul’s life was fraught with the very real possibility of being killed for his beliefs seems to be overlooked. He could not always rely on his Roman citizenship to save him. According to people like Mr Lunn, Paul must have been some kind of first century social climber. Apparently, about three hundred years later, ‘Paul’s version’ of Christianity also suited the ambitions of the Emperor Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church. It seems that ‘Paul’s version’ was determined to be the New Testament, by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This ignores the long deliberations over the authenticity of scriptural documents that had gone on for the previous few hundred years. Early Christian writers (for example, Ignatius, executed in Rome in 115AD, and Polycarp (martyred about AD160) had quoted from the gospels and Paul’s letters, treating them as authoritative. Clement, writing about AD95, accepts Paul’s letters as being on an equal basis with other scriptures. The New Testament as we know it was fixed by the Council of Carthage in AD 400, but had largely been established two hundred years before that date. Let’s now consider the Emperor Constantine. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Constantine may have presided over the proceedings, and may have even thought of himself as a god, but there is no indication that he controlled the Council, or had a hand in the determination of the contents of the New Testament. The council did help to confirm the basic composition of the Bible as we know it, but its main purpose was to state the orthodox position on Jesus as God and man, in the face of opposition from the ‘Arians’, followers of Arius, who had basically said that Jesus was a created being. It did not establish the Pope as supreme head of the church, neither was it used by Constantine for any plans he might have had to centralise church authority under the control of the Emperor. Look at the following, a conclusion from the Council.

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Let the ancient customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail, that the Bishop of Alexandria have jurisdiction in all these, since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also. Likewise in Antioch and the other provinces, let the Churches retain their privileges. Council of Nicea, in the year 325. Does this suggest that Rome was always considered to be the central church, and ruler of the others, or that Constantine would control the church? Does it justify the primacy of Rome? Constantine had bowed to popular pressure. Christianity had grown to be a major religion, and there were political advantages to be gained from its official recognition. Rome had always supported the most popular religions, part of their attempt to keep the masses happy. It is not sure whether Constantine himself was truly converted to Christianity. From this point on, however, the Church in Rome did begin to develop its power and control, and as the Empire crumbled, so the Roman Church grew in power, maintaining the illusion of a united Christendom, and as the heir of the Roman Empire. The Roman Catholic claim that the primacy of the Pope goes back in an unbroken line to Peter as the first Bishop of Rome is stretching credibility, to say the least. **** To say that it would not have been allowed to take down Jesus’ body from the cross ignores the possible status of Joseph of Aramathea. All four gospels mention him as the authority for the taking down of Jesus’ body. He is said to have consulted with Pilate, and is called a rich man and a ‘council member’, probably of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Pilate would not have wanted any more trouble with the Jews over Jesus, so agreeing to the burial of his body (after ensuring that he was dead) seems a reasonable thing to do. **** When Mr Lunn talks about the addition of some verses at the end of the gospel of Mark, and the exclusion of some others, he is clearly implying that the Bible has been manipulated over the years. He does not mention that this addition is recognised in modern translations of the Bible, e.g. the New International Version, which is honest and says ‘The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.’ He also does not say that its omission would not make a shred of difference to a belief in the story of the Resurrection, as given in Mark’s gospel and elsewhere in the New Testament. Neither would it discredit the basic message of the New Testament. Without the verses that are in doubt, the gospel ends with: When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' " Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

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Regarding the exclusion of a section of Mark saying that Lazarus was not dead: First of all, the letter found by Morton Smith, from Clement to Theodore, has been challenged as a fraud. Whether it is or not, the passage concerned does not even mention Lazarus by name, just the young brother of an unnamed woman. And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and says to him, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.' But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near, Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightaway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb, they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan." *** I can understand it when people say that there have been many great leaders who have later been considered to be Gods, so why should this make Jesus special? These theories have usually been developed by later generations. Paul lived at the time of Jesus. Could anyone really have made these claims at that time and got away with it if there had not been the evidence of the Resurrection, fresh in people’s minds? Some say that the belief in Jesus as God came later. If Jesus was not claimed to be God at that time, how did the new religion succeed as it did? It would just have been another story of a failed Messiah, amongst the many others that circulated at that time. **** Has Mr Lunn actually read the New Testament? What are his other sources that substantiate some of his opinions about the dispute between Paul and the Jerusalem church? Are they also second hand, unoriginal opinions? Why does he not quote them, if his work purports to be a valid piece of historical research? In the first century, there was a definite dispute between Paul and the Jerusalem church over the issues of Jewish circumcision and ritual law. To transform this into the version of the ‘facts’ that Mr Lunn purports to present us with requires a fertile, over active imagination and an embarrassingly biased interpretation of the wording of the New Testament. Mr Lunn says that Paul called James one of his ‘enemies in the church’. Where does he make the link between Paul’s comments about false practices in the widespread churches he was writing to, and James in Jerusalem? Paul and James certainly had disagreements, but this is pure embellishment of the facts for dramatic effect. He says that James ‘angrily’ summons Paul to Jerusalem’. Where is this from? It seems to be Mr Lunn creating the dramatic effect he requires. Paul was warmly welcomed. Where does he get it from that James considered that Paul was destroying the good inherent in the message? By this, does he think that ‘Paul’s version’ annoyed the Jews because it was considered to allow freedom to break the old Jewish laws? It allowed a release from unnecessary ritual laws, not freedom to break them, and this is essentially what the dispute was over. There is a difference, as I will attempt to explain below. Mr Lunn is completely missing the point.

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Where is the conflict between Paul and James about Jesus’ birth and whether he was divine? Any disputes with established Christian congregations that Paul was trying to solve in his letters do not mention James, and any disputes with James do not question the person of Jesus. Many of these disputes amongst Christians came later, as the generations went by and the eye-witnesses to the truth about the life of Jesus passed away. Mr Lunn seems to be making a very big assumption for his own purposes. Paul’s letters do include much advice and correction of disputes within the early Christian Church. They illustrate that Christians are by no means perfect, but have natural human failings. No one tried to hide this. In the following centuries there were many alternative viewpoints, for example Manicheans (from the late 3rd century), Montanists (late 2nd century), Novatian (late 3rd century), Marcion (2nd century), Gnosticism (2nd century onwards) and Arianism (4th century). All were well known, recognised and criticised. We are now asked to believe that there was another one, but it was secret. We are supposed to believe that, in a widespread church with no real central control at that time, and amongst many conflicting views that were given a wide circulation, one particular viewpoint about Jesus, that he was married and had children, was deliberately kept hidden away. **** As for the accusation that Paul was a ‘manipulative liar’, the passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 that Mr Lunn is referring to is as follows: Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. This is not manipulative deceit. It is diplomacy. He says he is under Christ’s law, so it is not a licence to do as he pleases. To take an extreme example, he is not saying that you should become a prostitute to evangelise prostitutes. The objective was to share what he saw as the ‘Good News’. To antagonise, for example, Jews, by abruptly distancing himself from his heritage, would not have achieved the objective. Neither would it do to antagonise non Christians by appearing as a self righteous do-gooder. We see this today, and some modern day would-be evangelists would do well to take Paul’s advice. As for Paul coming ‘well prepared with a sizeable financial contribution’, is this what Mr Lunn is referring to? I can’t find anything else. The money was for famine relief.

Acts 7, 26-30 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.

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If Paul was in the process of re-writing the gospels for his own benefit, and passing this off to the ‘Gentiles’ (non-Jews) as the truth, why did he return to Jerusalem at all? There would have been many there who knew Jesus at first hand. Why on earth would he try to change their opinions? How could he hope to? Any dispute would not have been over the basic facts of Jesus’ life, and any changes he was making to the written or oral records would have been easily apparent. To have returned to Jerusalem, he must have most certainly believed in his idea of the truth. His life was threatened, a great risk, even given that he could ask for Roman protection. At every opportunity, he wished to speak to Jewish authorities, never shying away from the danger. Many Jews at that time would have found it very difficult to accept that the man who was claimed to be their Messiah should be much more than a deliverer from their present troubles with the Romans. There is no indication of a dispute over whether the message of the gospel should be given to non- Jews. In Acts 15, Peter (himself a Jew, and close disciple of Jesus, and who first recognised Jesus as the Messiah) said that the gentiles would hear the message of the gospel from his own lips. He questioned whether the gentiles should be asked to accept a burden they could not bear (Jewish ritual law). In the same chapter, James said that it was his judgement that they should not make it difficult for the gentiles to believe. The gospel of Jesus Christ became, very clearly, accepted by Jewish Christians as a message that was by no means exclusively for Jews. It was the role, not the person of Jesus that had been in dispute at that time. This is naturally so, because there had always been disagreements amongst Jews as to the role of their Messiah. Disputes over the person of Jesus, such as the Arian controversies, came later. Mr Lunn says that ‘Paul did not recognise that Jesus’ role was to liberate from the Romans’ Paul was a Jew, and had been an ‘ultra- Jew’, you might say. To suggest that it did not cross Paul’s mind that part of the expected role of a Messiah was to liberate the nation from Roman rule is downright unbelievable. Paul’s persecution of Christians before his conversion would have come from a belief that Jesus was a false Messiah, partly because Jesus did not act primarily as a liberator, and also because of the extreme claims he was making about himself, which would have been considered blasphemous. Once it is accepted that it was established by Jewish Christians that Jesus was the Messiah, and for the whole world, not just the Jews, it seems eminently much more reasonable to assume that the dispute was exactly as it is presented in the New Testament, and that the only dispute related to Jewish ritual law, including circumcision and food regulations. The Jewish Christians wanted to hold on to these time honoured rituals, and Paul wanted not to burden non-Jewish Christians with unnecessary laws. This is the crux of the matter. The Jewish laws were now unnecessary for salvation. Jesus himself had said this, and believers such as Paul realised it. Salvation was not earned by human efforts. It was a gift of Grace from God, given by virtue of Jesus’ sacrifice, and if they all realised it, it made sense. No one on earth could, all of the time, perfectly keep all of the laws given to the Jews, so no one could, by these laws, earn their salvation. This interpretation of the disputes at Jerusalem is surely more reasonable than the extreme claims made by people such as Mr Lunn. It is also the interpretation that sets out Christianity as distinct from other religions. Christianity says we cannot earn our own salvation, by good works, rituals, or any efforts we make. If we all look closely at ourselves, we know this is true.

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To say that the Roman Church was the beneficiary of ‘Paul’s version’ of Christianity is made all the more ridiculous when this is realised. The Roman Catholic Church is built on a hierarchy of ritual and rules designed to earn merit, exactly the Pharisaic slavery to the law that Paul said Jesus had swept away. **** Mr Lunn also says that there is no evidence for the census mentioned in the gospel of Luke, causing Joseph and Mary to have to go to Bethlehem. He does not attempt to explain that the dispute is over the dates of censuses, not whether they took place or not, so is misrepresenting known facts to his own advantage. That there was a governor of Syria named Quirinius, as stated by Luke, is verified by the Jewish historian of the time, Josephus, but stated as from 5 to 12 AD. Josephus tells of a census in 7AD. The King Herod mentioned in the Bible by Matthew at the time of Jesus’ birth died in 4BC, so any census related to Jesus’ birth would have to be before that date. There is a dispute as to whether Quirinius had two periods in office. Quirinius was serving in the near east in various capacities at the time of Jesus’ birth in 5BC, and there is no reason to believe that he could not have been involved in a census. It is not definitely known that he served a first period as governor, but it is not impossible. This is all irrelevant if we accept that the Greek used in Luke could be interpreted to say 'This census took place before the one when Quirinius was governor of Syria'. This may sound like it is stretching credibility, but why shouldn’t a governor’s name and a census be mentioned that were nearer to the memory of contemporaries? To give an example, if we did not have a numbered scale of years that everyone would recognise, as was the case at the time Luke was writing, we could say that something happened ten years before Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, knowing that many of our listeners would be able to identify with this time period because she was a well known character in their memories. So, given the inevitable difficulty of trying to date events of these times, and applying less freedom for assumption and speculation than Mr Lunn applies on a regular basis in his book, any sensible person could reasonably accept Luke’s version as possible historical fact, and not write it off because it does not agree with their ideas. The dispute can become a fruitless argument, depending on one’s point of view. Think about it. If whoever wrote the gospel of Luke (even if it was Paul!), was trying to establish that Jesus was born in Bethlehem yet lived in Nazareth, if he was fabricating it surely it would have been simpler to just say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and the family moved to Nazareth. If Paul wrote or re-wrote Luke’s gospel, as Mr Lunn suggests, are we now adding the additional insult that Paul was an idiot for not being consistent when compiling Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels? Luke was recording as many known facts as he could. Why take the chance of putting this information in if he knew it was false, and consequently laying himself open to possible criticism? At the time the words were written, it would have been much easier to discredit them than it is for us today. It is reasonable to believe that Luke was telling the truth as he knew it. There seems to be an assumption that current human knowledge can always explain everything. There is another assumption that it is the Bible that is always in error. For example, we are told that the story of the visit of the Magi (the ‘wise men’) to Jesus is improbable and therefore a myth. When it is said that there are other similar stories or actual

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historical events, as there are for such visits, we are told that it is too much like these others, and was obviously based on them. On the other hand, if the Bible seems to be disagreeing with other sources of history, it must have been invented. This is a typical ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation, based on self justification of pre-conceived ideas. It is easy to stop your search for explanations when you have already arrived at the conclusion you wanted. **** To be fair, Mr Lunn gives as much historical evidence as possible relating to the other claims made in the Da Vinci code. He is reasonably objective here, simply setting out what is known, in an attempt to explain where the theories come from. He does not, however, seem to give a definite opinion of his own, so, in view of his support of the Jesus marriage theory, it can easily be assumed by readers that he concurs with the other claims. These claims are about the descendants of Jesus, and the organisations charged with the keeping of the secret.

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The Merovingian Dynasty in 5th to 7th Century France was descended from Jesus.

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The Templars discovered the secret of Jesus’ marriage and descendants by excavations at the Temple in Jerusalem, and prospered from their ownership of this ‘treasure’. This is why the Church destroyed the Templars.

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The Priory of Sion continues to protect the ‘treasure’, supposedly secret documents that would confirm the secret knowledge of Jesus’ marriage and descendants, and the truth about the female aspect of the divine. The treasure is the ‘Holy Grail’ of legend, and has been suppressed over the centuries by a Church anxious to maintain its male dominated control.

Here is my interpretation of the history of these organisations. The Templars were heavily influenced by Gnosticism, and their successors are secret organisations such as the Priory of Sion and the Freemasons. Gnostics claimed to own a knowledge that others did not possess. They said that people could be saved by possession of this secret knowledge (Gnosis). The ownership of a secret knowledge that others do not possess can be a great attraction. ‘I know what you do not. That makes me special’. This was the original appeal of Gnosticism. If Leonardo da Vinci was a part of this supposed preservation of secret knowledge, he could have given us cryptic clues, yes. However, it is just as reasonable to suggest, given his own reputed tendencies, that in his painting of the Last Supper, he depicted the disciple John as being gay. If you add to this a possible advantage to be had from membership of such secret organisations, especially a possible financial gain, you are pandering to basic human greed. The Templars certainly seemed to take advantage of this. They prospered financially. It can just as easily be assumed that the ‘treasure’ of the Holy Grail was an actual treasure trove of ancient riches. What better way to hold on to riches than by suggesting that they are not really riches, but a secret knowledge? Why are people who are associated with the ‘secret’ suddenly found to be wealthy?

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

If you can also use the knowledge to justify yourself as the heirs to a ruling family, then all the better. You rule by God’s will. What better way to get people to sit back and accept their oppression and your riches? This was the original source of the ‘divine right’ of Kings to rule their subjects. It was the basis of the Holy Roman Empire, and consequent ruling houses in Europe down until the early twentieth century. It was the root cause of the disputes between the Roman Catholic Church and temporal rulers, from the Merovingian dynasty until the Reformation. It had led directly to the need for fraudulent claims such as the ‘Donation of Constantine’, to establish the power of the Church, and to the idea of a ‘secret’ about descent from Jesus, to justify royal rule and the divine right of Kings. The search for this secret became associated by some with the romanticised and chivalric stories of the search for the Holy Grail, originally simply the cup that Christ used at the Last Supper. Human greed led to the consolidation of the powers and control exercised by the Church, in direct competition with the temporal rulers. In the context of human greed and ambition, why can’t all of this be seen as perfectly understandable? None of it should automatically lead to the conclusion that basic Christian beliefs are invalid, or that it was ‘Paul’s version’ of Christianity that allowed it all to take place, or that the Church has deliberately suppressed the knowledge of Jesus’ marriage and descendants, and there is a secret organisation that knows ‘the truth’. Neither does it justify the claim that there was a deliberate plan to discredit earlier worship of female deities in order to ensure male domination. Yes, this can also be surmised from an interpretation of history that suits the theory, but I ask you, what is the more reasonable interpretation? If we disregard the very real possibility that much of the Church actually believed it was simply defending the true faith, can’t the domination of the Church simply be accepted as the inevitable result of basic greedy human nature? Can’t we say that part of it has also been a misinterpreted and misused justification of a long standing tendency for domination of men over women? We could just as easily say that the Quran was written deliberately with male domination in mind. Think what trouble we would have if we went around making our views known to Moslems. Male domination in Arab society was a long standing tradition. No one says that Mohammed was trying to overturn an ancient worship of the female. No, it is Christianity that has been blamed for this. This is similar to the charge levelled at Christianity that it has created the ecological nightmare we are coming towards. The Bible, in Genesis, gave us dominion over the world, they say, so we dominated. This ignores the other passages in the Bible that speak of stewardship of God’s creation. It would surely be foolish of a master of a slave to work him to death if he did not have a replacement. These people do not comprehend that it is human nature that is destroying our world, the same human nature that the Bible continually tells us is the real problem. But then, it is their human nature too, and they do not want to admit to that, so they attach the blame elsewhere.

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No Delusion: A Challenge to an Atheist

Is it really likely that there is a secret that is being held ‘until the time is right to release it’? When will this be? Why hasn’t it been released before? What good is it in this day and age to have descent from Jesus if Christian beliefs are discredited? Why should it even be needed in today’s world to defend women’s rights, if that was to be one of it’s perceived uses? To say that it might shake the foundations of the Church and bring it down could well prove to be correct. If this was the Roman Catholic Church, there are quite a lot of Christians who would not lose a lot of sleep. Some Christians might say that if such a secret is to be released at some time in the future, it would just be part of the ‘end days’, the coming of a ‘false prophet’, as forecast in the Bible. It might easily convince many people to ignore or forsake Christianity. What it would not succeed in doing is shake the faith of believers whose faith is based on a rational study and consideration of the real facts. It would also give a real opportunity for these facts to be presented and believed. Many people might just start to look behind the hype, sensationalism and fanaticism, start to use reason, and try to find the truth. ********

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