The Bible and The Origin of Species as compasses

The bible is a terrible moral compass, if you think about it. Of course, you can cherry pick the verses that you like, which means the verses that happen to coincide with our modern secular consensus, but then you need to have a rationale for leaving out the ones that say stone people to death if they break the Sabbath, or if they commit adultery. It’s an appalling moral compass.- Richard Dawkins

Dawkins should know better. This is a clear example of the fallacy of composition, the idea that something that is true of some parts of the whole are true of the whole. It is like concluding that an entire barrel of apples is bad because the first three you pull out happen to be bad. He doesn't like the fact that some Christians "cherry pick" their scriptures for the good bits, but doesn't have a problem at all "cherry picking" the bad bits for his own purposes.

I wonder if Dawkins would mind terribly if I applied the same standard to The Origin of Species, about which Stephen J. Gould says:

A few figures in history have been so prescient in their principal contributions, and so acute and broad-ranging in their general perceptions, that they define (or at least intrude upon) almost any major piece of a comprehensive discussion ... Evolutionary biology possesses the great good fortune to embrace such a figure... The Origin of Species exceeds all other scientific "classics" of past centuries in immediate and continued relevance to the basic theoretical formulations and debates of current practitioners. Careful exegesis of Darwin's logic and intentions, through textual analysis of the Origin, therefore assumes unusual importance for the contemporary practice of science. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen J. Gould, pp. 57-58

Oh, really? If I applied Dawkins' logic, I could say this:

The Origin is a terrible scientific compass, if you think about it. Of course, you can cherry pick the verses that you like, which means the verses that happen to coincide with our modern scientific consensus, but then you need to have a rationale for leaving out the ones that says whales evolved from bears or support Lamarckian inheritance. It’s an appalling scientific compass.

I'm being facetious, of course. I believe, as does Gould, that the Origin is a wonderful scientific compass. But the comparison does give us some tools for determining how the bible can serve us as a wonderful moral compass. The reason Dawkins' fallacious argument seems compelling is that so many commit the same fallacy of composition with respect to the bible, whereby they reason that since the bible contains so many wonderful verses, the whole thing must be wonderful. This usually goes in hand with the fallacy of division, whereby it is reasoned that because the bible is a good book, every bit of it must be good.

There is another error in Dawkins' reasoning that I feel compelled to point out. The reason the Origin can be considered the "bible" of biology is that it laid the foundation for the modern version of the whole field. Dawkins either does not realize or ignores how foundational the bible was for our modern view of morality. His quote seems to imply that our modern views of morality just happen to coincide with certain "cherry picked" themes in the bible. But this isn't just happy coincidence. Western civilization was intentionally built upon such themes as forgiveness, love, and the oft neglected but crucially important understanding of debt and usury that are found in the teachings of Jesus, much as the modern scientific consensus was intentionally built upon themes found in The Origin of Species.

Should a pantheist take communion?

When I still self-identified as a Christian, I would, of course, take communion in accordance with the practice of whatever church I attended. In almost every instance, communion was a solemn occasion. I had the feeling that the Lord was there in a special way that He was not during the rest of the service. The air seemed "thicker," if you will. And I knew that we were remembering in a special way both the occasion of Jesus' last meal with His disciples and His crucifixion.

Sometime later after I no longer identified myself as a Christian, I was sitting in a relative's church observing communion, and the words, "This is my body... this is my blood," hit me in a totally different way. I had the immediate thought: "This is cannibalism! Symbolic cannibalism, maybe, but how could I have done this for so many years and not noticed?" I had the sudden impulse to get up and run out of the room.

Since that time I realized that I had fallen into two intellectual traps common to those who have left the church after being long time Christians. One is that I had bought into the belief that there is one core, ideal Christianity which is some sense the authentic Christianity. The other trap is that this authentic Christianity is embodied however imperfectly by the general practice of the Church. Obviously if the former is false, the latter cannot be true. And even if the former is true, it does not follow that the latter is true.

Originally there were several groups of practicing Christians that had a common belief that Jesus was central to their faith, but working out this centrality in different ways. We imagine that the dominant group was the Pauline Christians, because they are over-represented in the Canon. But there are other early Christians, some of whom can be found in the Canon, others who are not. One group is represented by an early Christian text called the Didache (or teaching) of the twelve. It is interesting because it may represent our earliest account of the Eucharist:

Now concerning the Eucharist, give thanks as follows. First, concerning the cup: We give you thanks, our Father, for the holy vine of David your servant, which you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant; to you be the glory forever. And concerning the broken bread: We give you thanks, our Father, for the life and knowledge that you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant; to you be the glory forever. Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever. But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptized into the name of the Lord, for the Lord has also spoken concerning this: “Do not give what is holy to dogs.” (Didache 9:1-5)

Notice how differently these early Christians understood the Eucharist from modern Christians. There is no mention of the bread and wine being (or signifying) Jesus' flesh and blood. Instead the wine represents King David, and the bread represents the Church. What this account does have in common with the modern Eucharist is its exclusivity. It is for Christians only.

The Gospel of John gives yet another differing account of the Eucharist. The other three Gospels make the setting of the Eucharist the last meal that Jesus shares with his disciples. It is the Passover, and Jesus clearly links the wine and bread to his upcoming crucifixion. Thus he institutes the rite of Holy Communion. John's account of Jesus' last meal is totally different. Rather than being Passover, it is the day before. The meal is just a regular meal, and Jesus says nothing about the wine or bread. Instead of instituting a rite of Holy Communion, Jesus institutes a rite of footwashing.

John however clearly remembers Jesus' words about the bread and the wine and believes them very important. But he moves them into an entirely different setting. A crowd of people have hunted Jesus down because he miraculously fed them with bread and fish the day before. There is a conversation that ensues in John 6, from which I have extracted the salient points:

Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world." Then they said to Him, "Lord, always give us this bread." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life ; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst...Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died...Truly, truly, I say to you, unless  you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.

Notice how completely different this is than the synoptic accounts. Jesus draws no parallel between any physical bread and his body. Instead the act of eating signifies coming to Jesus and the act of drinking signifies believing in Jesus (see also John 4:13-14 and 7:38.) Instead of in an intimate gathering of close disciples, Jesus offer his body for very public consumption. As Ekaputra Tupamahu says: [T]he language that John uses is more inclusive and universal. Anybody can come and participate in the body and blood of Jesus. (Eucharist in the Didache and the Gospel of John, 2013).

Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh has shocked Buddhists and angered Christians by participating in the Eucharist. Many have accused him of not understanding Christianity or the Eucharist. I think, perhaps, he understands the message of Jesus more deeply than most Christians. He has this to say about the Eucharist:

The practice of the Eucharist is a practice of awareness. When Jesus broke the bread and shared it with his disciples, he said, 'Eat this. This is my flesh.' He knew that if his disciples would eat one piece of bread with mindfulness, they would have real life. In their daily lives, they may have eaten their bread in forgetfulness, so the bread was not bread at all; it was a ghost. In our daily lives, we may see the people around us, but if we lack mindfulness, they are just phantoms, not real people, and we ourselves are also ghosts. Practicing mindfulness enables us to become a real person. When we are a real person, we see real people around us, and life is present in all its richness. The practice of eating bread, a tangerine, or a cookie is the same.

When we breathe, when we are mindful, when we look deeply at our food, life becomes real at that very moment. To me, the rite of the Eucharist is a wonderful practice of mindfulness. In a drastic way, Jesus tried to wake up his disciples.~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step, pp. 22-23.

Although this interpretation of the Eucharist seems very far from how Christians practice today, I find it very close to the way John understands it. For John, the Eucharist is not so much a ritual as it is a way of life. It is recognizing the divine in the very food we eat, and the wine we drink. There is a line I remember from the old Eucharistic liturgy my priest used to say, "That we may dwell in him and he in us." As a pantheist that seems remarkably similar to what Neil DeGrasse Tyson said: "We are in the universe and the universe is in us." Or, as Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, "Blessed is the lion that a person will eat and the lion will become human."

I know that a pantheist could have considerable objections even to John's interpretation of the Eucharist, because John clearly understands Jesus as Lord of the universe. But as pantheists we need to remember that John's Jesus was the legend, not the man. He has no actual flesh that we can eat. Although we may not take the radical act of Thich Nhat Hanh and actually take communion, we can at least appreciate that within the Christian tradition, there are elements of pantheism to be appreciated.

Is Jesus a conservative or a liberal?

Not very many years ago, the question of whether Jesus was a liberal or a conservative was easy to answer. Back when I was a baby Christian in the late 70s, a fellow at the pizza shop I was working at asked me if I was a Christian. When I answered "yes", he went on to ask, "Ah, so you are a follower of Jerry Falwell?"

I suspect he was being facetious, but the point was obvious. To be a Christian in the U.S. at that time meant that you were a conservative. But things are changing. For young Christians especially, it doesn't seem so obvious that Jesus was a conservative. Lively debate occurs between groups of conservative and liberal Christians as to whether Jesus would support or oppose specific policy decisions such as cutting social services or legalizing marriage equality. Usually such debates tend to center in on specific scriptures that are often used as battering rams to make a point. But I think the more interesting question is whether we have a tool at our disposal for determining whether Jesus fits more broadly into one category or the other.

One possible tool is the Moral Foundations theory proposed by Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph. They have found that there are six major categories which all people find important in making moral decisions. Their research indicates that there are differences between the ways conservatives and liberals sort and view these categories, and that these differences hold true in different countries. Wikipedia gives this list of the six major categories:

1. Care/harm for others, protecting them from harm.
2. Fairness/cheating, Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions, giving them their "just desserts". (He has also referred to this dimension as Proportionality.)
3. Liberty/oppression, characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized.
4. Loyalty/betrayal to your group, family, nation. (He has also referred to this dimension as Ingroup.)
5. Authority/subversion for tradition and legitimate authority. (He has also connected this foundation to a notion of Respect.)
6. Sanctity/degradation, avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. (He has also referred to this as Purity.)

Liberals tend to emphasize 1. and 2. over 4., 5., and 6., whereas conservatives have more of a balance between all six areas. In additions, liberals and conservatives tend to view fairness differently; liberals seeing an egalitarian society as more fair, and conservatives seeing a stratified society as more fair (Jost, Glaser, Kruganski, and Sulloway, 2003). This being the case, we can ask the following questions about Jesus:

• Did Jesus deemphasize 4-6 in his teachings?
• Did Jesus prefer an egalitarian or stratified society?

If we find that in the main the answer to these two questions is yes, then we can conclude that Jesus' teachings were predominantly liberal. On the other hand, if we find that the answer is no, we can conclude that Jesus' teachings were predominantly conservative.

Over the course of my next few blogs, I shall try to answer these questions. I am going to assume that the picture of Jesus in the canonical gospels is the "real" Jesus. This position is not uncomplicated. For one things, even conservative theologians recognize that each gospel writer takes a different position about who Jesus was depending on their theological perspective. I don't think it is controversial to propose that the writer of John presented a more conservative Jesus than the synoptic writers, which is why liberal churches tend to deemphasize that gospel. But since I will be painting a picture of Jesus in broad strokes, hopefully such details will not matter so much.

Exodus 21:22

A controversial Bible verse is drawing my attention once again. Exodus 21:22 has been used by pro-lifers and pro-choicers to support their opposing positions. What you see in the verse all depends on your interpretation of the Hebrew, which to my untrained eye looks rather ambiguous. In the Wycliffe Bible of 1395- the earliest translation to which I have access- the verse reads as follows:

If men chiden, and a man smytith a womman with childe, and sotheli makith the child deed borun, but the womman ouerlyueth, he schal be suget to the harm, as myche as the `hosebonde of the womman axith, and the iugis demen.

A comparable modern translation says, "When there's a fight and in the fight a pregnant woman is hit so that she miscarries but is not otherwise hurt, the one responsible has to pay whatever the husband demands in compensation." (The Message, 2002)

Pro-choicers point to these two translations (which happen to be the earliest and latest translations of the ones I looked at) to make their case that Jewish law does not consider the fetus to have the same rights and protections as a person. If it did, they argue, the penalty for killing the fetus would be death, not a monetary fine. Pro-lifers on the other hand do not believe that these translations are accurate. They argue that the original Hebrew does not indicate a miscarriage, but instead indicates a premature birth. And many translators agree.

But an interesting pattern emerges, as it often does, when you tabulate which option the translator chooses based on the date of the translation:

Bible Version	Publication Date	Interpretation
Wycliffe Bible	1395	Miscarriage
Miles Coverdale  Bible	1535	Miscarriage [*]
Bishop's Bible	1568	Miscarriage
Geneva Bible	1587	Miscarriage
Douay-Rheims	1609	Miscarriage
King James Version	1611	Miscarriage
Webster's Bible	1833	Miscarriage
Young's Literal Translation	1862	Ambiguous
English Revised Version	1885	Miscarriage
Darby Bible	1890	Premature Birth
American Standard Version	1901	Miscarriage
The Emphasized Bible	1902	Miscarriage
Revised Standard Version	1946	Miscarriage
Amplified Version	1954	Miscarriage
New American Standard	1960	Premature Birth
Bible in Basic English	1965	Miscarriage
New Life Bible	1969	Miscarriage
New International Version	1973	Premature Birth
New King James Version	1982	Premature Birth
J. P. Green Literal Translation	1985	Ambiguous
New Century Version	1987	Ambiguous
New Revised Standard Version	1989	Miscarriage
Good News Translation	1992	Miscarriage
Contemporary English Version	1995	Miscarriage
God's Word Version	1995	Premature Birth
New Living Translation	1996	Premature Birth
World English Bible	1997	Premature Birth
The Complete Jewish Bible	1998	Miscarriage
Holman Study Bible	1999	Premature Birth
English Standard Version	2001	Ambiguous
English Revised Version	2001	Premature Birth
The Message	2002	Miscarriage

The first English translation that unambiguously translates this as a live birth is Darby's Bible in 1890. After that, we have to wait until 1960 to find another English translation with this interpretation. The popularity of the premature birth interpretation increases until in the late 1990s through the 21st century, it is clearly the preferred interpretation. Why, I wonder? Is it because modern translators have found new ancient copies of Exodus which shed light on this particular passage, or are they being informed by theologies which they would like to find in Exodus?

[*] This is the earliest English translation in my list that uses language such as "fruit depart," and it clearly indicates a miscarriage. Thus I have judged later translations of the 16th and 17th centuries that use similar language to indicate miscarriages as well.

Who's nastier: Conservatives or Liberals?

The day of President Obama's second inauguration, a liberal friend of mine complained about the number of rude, negative posts he had to delete from his facebook feed. This led to a number of comments about how "some people" (code for "conservatives") can be so nasty. One brave soul who happened to be a conservative pointed out how hypocritical this seemed to her, as liberals can certainly be just as nasty as liberals.

So I got to thinking. Is there any way to tell which is nastier, if either? And I got the brilliant idea of googling insulting phrases to see what the results would be. Here they are:

Phrase	Hits	Ratio
"liberal retards"/"conservative retards"	126,000/15,300	8.2 : 1
"dumb liberals"/"dumb conservatives"	91,000/6,410	14.2 : 1
"stupid liberals"/"stupid conservatives"	81,000/21,200	3.8 : 1
"liberal idiots"/"conservative idiots"	75,800/51,400	1.5 : 1
"liberal morons"/"conservative morons"	37,100/34,700	1.1 : 1
"f***ing liberals"/"f***ing conservatives"	25,500/24,300	1 : 1
"liberal dumbass"/"conservative dumbass"	22,000/9120	2.4 : 1
"liberals baffled"/"conservatives baffled"	9880/1660	6 : 1
"insane liberals"/"insane conservatives"	9660/21,300	1 : 2.2
"clueless liberals"/"clueless conservatives"	8490/15,900	1 : 1.9
TOTAL	486,360/201,290	2.4 : 1

So based on these particular phrases, conservative insults on the 'net outnumber liberal insults by about two and a half to one. Although that may seem like a large margin, we must also remember that about twice as many people self identify as conservatives as liberals. Corrected for this, the margin is only about 1.25 : 1, which really isn't so much. Also, since conservatives outnumber liberals by two to one, liberals are about twice as likely to drop the F bomb as conservatives, at least on the internet.

Creation ex nihilo

Each time before I begin writing about some theological subject, I try to think if I really have anything new to add to the often massive amounts of material already written on the subject. When I started researching ex nihilo creation (creation out of nothing) I was almost overwhelmed at how much has been said. So in this blog I will be very brief in resketching the basic arguments, and take more time to develop some thoughts about theological disputes in general.

Let's start by imagining an imaginary theological dispute about whether the Bible teaches loop quantum gravity or string theory (two contemporary physics theories that basically wonder whether the fabric of reality is "loopy" or "stringy"). One theologian might point out that the heavens and the earth were created "formless and empty." This would indicate that the Bible teaches loop quantum gravity since loops are empty. Another theologian could counter that the Bible also says that God spoke light into existence. Speaking implies sound, which implies vibration, which implies strings. Therefore the Bible teaches string theory.

Just about everybody, I hope, would agree that this is all patent nonsense. The Bible has nothing to say about either theory. But the important point that I want to make is that both theories are compatible with the Bible; there is nothing in the Bible which contradicts either of them. It is perfectly possible to believe either in loop quantum gravity or string theory and the inerrancy of scripture. But nobody believes in both loop quantum theory and string theory because they are known to be incompatible with each other.

Too much of Christian theology, I'm afraid, has consisted of controversies similar to the one above being fought with the Bible being used as an unwitting battleground for huge egos. It is well known that the Bible doesn't explicitly teach Trinitarianism, yet the vast majority of Christians believe that the Trinity must be in there somewhere. So when they read the words of Christ, "I and my Father are one," they simply assume that Jesus must have meant one in substance, as the Nicene creed affirms.Of course, he could have meant nothing more than "I and my Father are best buds," following Psalm 133:1: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity."

When I first started researching creation ex nihilo I was surprised to read somewhere that the Bible does not explicitly teach it. The more I dug, the more I found out that this was true. But I also became aware that behind the scenes there is a fierce theological battle going on between mainstream Christianity, which teaches creation ex nihilo, and Mormonism, which teaches creation ex materia, or creation from preexistent matter. The exchanges can sometimes be quite heated.

The beginning point for creation ex nihilo or creation ex materia is of course Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." In English, the verse leaves us longing for more. If only the author had added the words "from nothing", then we would know for sure that ex nihilo was being described here! However, maybe in the original Hebrew, the author did do something like that. The strongest argument for creation ex nihilo came from a request I put in to Chabad.org, from Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin for clarification of Genesis 1:1. He said, "Many Jewish commentaries explain that implicit in the meaning of the verb bara – which is used in the first verse of Genesis, and is commonly translated as 'create' – is the idea that something totally new and unprecedented has been produced; i.e., creation ex-nihilo. In other words, the use of that word for creating denotes a creation ex-nihilo. (See R. Saadya Gaon, Doctrines and Beliefs, ch. 1; Nachmanides on Genesis 1:1 and 1:21; Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, 2:30.)" Crucially, there is a difference between the words commonly translated "create" (bara) and "make" (asah). The distinction is best seen in Genesis 2:3- "Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made." Create implies ex nihilo, make implies ex materia. So we have a six day creation week described during which the heavens and the earth are created ex nihilo, and the plants, animals, sky, etc. are created ex materia.

All well and good, but a Mormon theologian would no doubt be as unimpressed with this argument as with the arguments for loop quantum gravity in the Bible. He could respond that bara may not mean ex nihilo at all. We are just reading it in because we want to. He might point to scriptures like 2 Peter 3:5 which says, "But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water," indicating that the earth was not created ex nihilo, but out of water.

Neither of these arguments are slam dunks by any means. And I think the lesson we need to take away from this is not just to throw up our hands and say that it is useless to study what the Bible says. Nor is it useless to stand by what we believe. Instead, we need to reformulate our beliefs to ask not so much what Bible teaches (which, frankly, is much less than we would like it to), but if a belief is consistent with the Bible, even if contradictory to the standard beliefs. Then Christians will worry less about their differences and more about their commonalities, such as love for the scriptures.

Rescuing the Bible

• Acts 9:7 And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but beholding no man.

• Acts 22:9 "And they that were with me beheld indeed the light, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."

In my last blog I showed the mess that Bible translators can sometimes create when they read contemporary prejudices into their translations. The scriptures above are taken from the American Standard translation, which dates from 1901. They are an embarrassment to modern sensibilities, because they show a seeming contradiction. They come from two accounts of Paul's conversion, both in the book of Acts. The first account, in Chapter 9, is Luke's recounting of the conversion, while the second account is Paul's recounting of the event. Modern translators, sensitive to the problem, have typically responded by translating the phrase in Acts 22 as giving the sense that the men didn't understand the voice, rather than they didn't hear it. Thus modern readers won't be bothered with the problem of figuring out the two different accounts. There are a lot of problems with this which I don't intend to cover here, since they have been adequately addressed elsewhere.

What bothers me here is not whether or not the Bible has contradicted itself, but Bible translators' tendency to try to "clean up" what can sometimes be a very messy document. The preface to my New International Version of the Bible says that among the goals of the translators was that "(the NIV) would be an accurate translation and one that would have clarity and literary quality." Well, I'm sorry, but these are contradictory goals! The Bible is often unclear and its literary quality often suspect. When you clean these up, your translation becomes by definition inaccurate.

In the case of these particular scriptures in Acts, the efforts at cleanup by the translators reveal a disturbing prejudice. The scriptures can be easily reconciled if we are just willing to admit that Paul made a mistake. Note the quotation marks around Acts 22:9. Luke is simply recounting what Paul said. He is not saying whether Paul's statement is accurate or not. Presumably because Luke contradicted Paul earlier he believes that Paul is mistaken. Why should this be such a big problem? Paul was a fallible human being, and Christians should not be embarrassed by this. Check out this passage from 1st Corinthians:

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say you were baptized in my name. Now I did baptize also the household of Stephanas ; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other.

Did Paul contradict himself? I think it's more fair to say he corrected himself. Thus the Bible reveals itself as having a very human face. I like what the facebook group Unfundamentalist Christians says:

It’s not possible to read Paul’s New Testament writings and remain unmoved by his open heart, intellectual prowess, and staggering bravery. And yet Paul (who, after all, spent years zealously persecuting and having executed untold numbers of Christians) must remain to us a mortal man. More than reasonable, it is incumbent upon those who claim to seek the deepest knowledge of Christ to subject the words of Paul to the same kinds of objective analysis we would the words of any man daring to describe the qualities, purposes, and desires of God.- Unfundamentalist Christians