More Christian Nonsense
or, Silly Things People Say and Believe
Everyone has a right to believe whatever they want to. Everyone deserves respect. However, not every belief deserves respect. Bat-shit-crazy, indefensible beliefs are not limited to Christianity, but given the large presence of Christians in the United States, Christian nonsense is much easier to find. Here are some of the latest jaw droppers I’ve come across.
God on our side
After the U.S. women defeated the French women to win the Olympic gold medal in basketball, one of the stars was interviewed on TV. At one point she said something to the effect that “god was really at work here today.” Was she saying that god wanted the U.S. to win, or even worse, that god manipulated the game so that the U.S. would win? Was god mad at the French for the Last Supper debacle during the opening ceremonies? Does god just not like the French for some other reason? Did god count up the number of “true believers” on the U.S. and French teams, and determine that there were more devout Christians on the U.S. team, thereby making them more worthy of victory?
If one were to accept the unprovable assertion that there is a god, one might be justified, in certain circumstances, to think that god would favor one side or the other. One such circumstance might be World War II, where Hitler’s plan to cleanse the world of Jews and other “inferior” groups might have swayed god to prefer the other side (although the deaths of 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews in the Holocaust call that speculation into question). But in a sports contest?
The Teachings of Jesus
Arguments based on what Jesus “really” said pop up all the time. Accepting, for the sake of argument, the unprovable assumption that the Jesus depicted in the bible was a real person, the idea that the lines of dialog assigned to Jesus in the Gospels are transcriptions of his actual words is nothing short of ridiculous. There’s no suggestion in the bible that Jesus had someone following him everywhere and writing down, word for word, everything he said. Whether the words in quotation marks (or, even better, red letters) are the author’s best recollection of what Jesus said or are dialog made up to get a point across, there is no basis for treating those words as the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Neither is there any basis for the claim that these “quotations” are more valid expressions of Jesus’ teaching than the rest of the bible. If you’re going to buy Christianity, the whole bible comes with it.
Biblical Scholarship
Speaking of the bible, a recent Medium article discussed how instrumental Christianity was in solidifying the male-dominant hierarchy. The author quoted some of the letters of Paul to illustrate their point. A commenter countered that biblical scholars generally agree that some of the letters attributed to Paul were written by someone else.
How do scholars reach such a conclusion? There’s no direct evidence. It’s my understanding that they look at things like sentence structure, word selection, and consistency of message. If I compared my recent articles to some I wrote ten or twenty years ago, I’m confident there would be differences in sentence structure, word selection, and beliefs/opinions. I expect the same would be true for almost anyone. This would be even more likely if what I had written had been transcribed repeatedly, and translated into other languages.
The pronouncements of biblical scholars, regardless of the letters behind their names, are NOT facts — they are speculation. They may be right, they may be wrong, but there is no way to know. Also, as with the previous example, whether Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians was written by Paul or Fred or Charlie, it’s part of the bible, and therefore, part of Christian doctrine. Saying it wasn’t written by Paul doesn’t mean it can be disavowed in an attempt to make Christian doctrine more palatable.
How Does It Happen?
In each of the above cases, the person in question seemed to be reasonably intelligent, not unbalanced or mentally fragile. I’ve never understood how religion makes smart people stupid, but that seems to happen a lot. It happened to me when I was a Christian. John 8:31–32 says “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” [ESV — English Standard Version] I guess that sounds better than what I think would be a more accurate statement: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will lose the ability to use reason or common sense, and you will believe whatever the church tells you.” [ESV — Erica’s satirical version]
