Oh wait, that’s being done too…

1. Jesus was misquoted, or misconstrued
2. Jesus never actually existed

I still maintain that if Jesus did actually exist, he would be quite unhappy about how his teachings have been butchered and interpreted today. So in some sense, I still believe the first option is quite likely. I had not, however (until recently) actually seriously considered the possibility that Jesus didn’t actually exist.

The bible talks about people we know existed, right? Various Kings and so forth? So, it’s fair to assume that Jesus also existed? Given that Jesus is such a central part of the Christian mythology, Christianity would fall if it could be demonstrated that Jesus was simply a myth, right (please, correct me if I’m wrong)? Well, this might just be true!

I first came across these two YouTube videos² a while back, and it made me realise that, if true, it would be an amazing coincidence if he actually existed (of course, perhaps that was God’s plan to make Jesus even more difficult to believe, thus requiring more faith). Dionysus (one of the figures discussed in the videos) was supposedly born of a virgin, fathered by the king of heaven, turned water into wine, died and resurrected. Sound familiar? There are, apparently, many other mythical figures who have extraordinarily similar stories – all of which predate Jesus.

There seem to be many others out there who claim similar things, and while there is some criticism of some of these claims, there are, undoubtedly some parts of the Jesus story which were “borrowed” from earlier myths.

I plan to investigate this further, as I don’t believe it’s quite as clear as is suggested, but I wonder – how much of Jesus’ life has to be true for Christianity to remain?

1. I think it might have originally been by C. S. Lewis, although I could be wrong
2. Both videos are short clips from Zeitgeist – The Movie, available in its entirety via BitTorrent (legally!), streamed via Google Video, or for order on DVD

While I don’t think Australia will ever be as dominated by fundamentalist religious dogma as is the case in the USA, it’s scary to see religion and politics closely intertwined in Australia, as it’s certainly possibly that we could head down a similar path. Our two major party leaders, Kevin Rudd, and John Howard are both strong Christians (or, so they claim), as are many of the other Members of Parliament.

Democrats¹ leader Lyn Allison says there are too many federal MPs with strong religious views.

Senator Allison says the separation of church and state is becoming blurred.

“The Prime Minister this morning said that there were a great number of Members of Parliament in Coalition ranks with very strong ties to the Christian church,” she said. “I know this is a Christian country but people with very strong religious views are heavily over-represented, if I can put it that way, in the Parliament,” she said.²

I’ve always been a swinging voter, and I don’t support either major Australian party – my votes in the past have gone to the Greens, the Democrats, or the odd independent (with the unfortunate necessity of nominating both of the major parties somewhere with my preferences). It worries me, however, when I can see the line between politics and religion in Australia getting blurred.

Some claim that comments like those of Lyn Allison are misguided, but I think it’s a legitimate concern. There’s certainly no problem with having a reasonable percentage of Christians represented in parliament (if 64% of the population are Christian, then their views might be well represented if we have 64% Christian MPs). My problem is that politics seems to be becoming more about religion than it should be, and who knows where that will lead? Honestly, I don’t care what religious views our leaders have, as long as they’re able to put their views aside when it counts. I worry that the efforts of our potential Prime Ministers to emphasise their Christianity will push the focus where it doesn’t belong.

(Oh, and sorry this post was late – I try to write one major post each Sunday, but I’ve had a rather busy weekend!)

1. A minor party in Australia
2. Donald, P., Iggulden, T. (August 2007) Howard, Rudd Woo Christians Online, ABC News

For those not familiar with the argument from morality, it basically goes like this¹:

1. If God does not exist, then there are no objective (i.e. independent of human opinion) moral values and duties.

2. There are objective moral values and duties.

3. Therefore God exists.

My gut instinct when I first thought about this argument is that the first point has issues. I’ve asserted before that we can have morality without religion², and I still believe that a moral code independent of religion is superior, but as for where this morality could come from – I have no idea. I seem to remember Dawkins talking about how morality could have evolved, but that wouldn’t be objective morality, would it?

Which as got me thinking about the idea of objective morality as a whole, and I can’t help but ask – do we really have objective morality (point 2)? Zach Moore says that, at least at a debate lecture he attended, the idea the objective morality exists seems to be generally accepted, but I can’t help but feel that there’s something wrong with that, too.

What morals do we have that are objective? “Murder is bad” – Surely there’s some times it’s justified³? “Do no harm” – but what if my survival is at stake? “Do the greatest Good” – but, what IS good? Even the golden rule isn’t objective (although the rule itself seems to be the most universal law of morality) – “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” relies on our own opinions! Perhaps I really wouldn’t care if you stole my girlfriend?⁴

Do we really have objective morals? If so, what?

1. Moore, Zachary (2007) Dr. Craig Meets Dr. Zach
2. See my three part series on morality.
3. or is that just when we don’t call it murder?
4. Try it, and I’ll kill you!

• 7 Proofs That We Live in a Computer Simulation – or Why Proofs of Gods Existance Are Unconvicing
• Why I took so long to accept evolution – a.k.a. Why every christian should read their own bible. “part of what helped me along was actually reading the Bible in high school, being horrified by much of it”
• denialism blog : I can has souls? – There is a god, and it’s a cat.
• Religion and Sexual Ethics – A nice summary of the moral position of various religions. Interesting to compare catholicism and buddhism side by side! (I think I’m with the Buddhists, here)
• LOL cat Bible – Personally, I hate this pathetic LOLspeak crap, although this picture is funny… “In teh beginning, Invisible Man make univerz. Invisible Man say, I can has light. Gots light.”

Let me hear you say “I will empty the contents of my wallet into that little collection plate when it comes around…. hallelujah!”

VIDEO: Hill$ong

Oh, and if you liked that, you might also like this:

VIDEO: What Have We Learned From History?

“I was unhappy … and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels … This time, rather than another letter to another person I imagined to be vicimizing me, I thought I’d go straight to the source; … I decided to write a letter to God.”²

… and, God replies. The book follows with a written dialogue between Walsch and God, talking about prayer, love, divine inspiration and the nature of the bible, and all sorts of potentially controversial topics.

Now, if you haven’t already read these books, you’re probably thinking exactly what I thought when a friend first told me about them – “what kind of nut-job publishes a book claiming he actually had a conversation with God? He’s either nuts, or full of c#@p”. A perfectly valid position to take, but as you read further, you start to understand that it doesn’t matter if Walsch is actually having a conversation with God, if he’s a con artist, or even if he’s nuts – what matters is the book contains some very valid insights.

If God truly did inspire the bible, then why those people? Many of them “never met or saw Jesus in their lives, they lived many years after Jesus left the Earth”³. Some might suggest that the bible as we know it cannot be the word of God unless each of these writers, scribes, translators, etc. were all divinely inspired, which further complicates the issue. Walsch (or, God) suggests the answer to this problem is that the bible is not the only divinely inspired text – “everything in life is holy”⁴, and God’s inspiration is available to anyone who “listens”:

“Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any of these differ from what you’ve been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”⁵

The God portrayed in “Conversations with God” is exactly the kind of higher power I could imagine being behind all the world’s religions. There’s no way any one religion has got it perfectly right, because each rely on the words that have been passed down through generations, which have been translated, changed and misinterpreted. Each “divinely inspired” text may have come from people who were more in touch with this “God”, and therefore came closer to God’s true message, but each writer had their own human flaws as well, and thus no text is perfect. In the later books, he hints at the idea that by being “in touch” with God, one is really in touch with oneself – God is not only “in” each of us, but we are (collectively) God.

The book certainly solves some of the issues with traditional religion, but possibly so much so that it’s incompatible with traditional religions (which is probably a good thing!). I mentioned in my previous post “Soft Atheist, Hard Agnostic”, that I am a “soft” agnostic when it comes to “spiritual” gods or other non-interfering higher powers. Despite the personal connection Walsch claims to have with this god, to me his ideas seem very close to these types of “gods”

The books are certainly a departure from the seemingly popular non-fiction books on religion and atheism today, but if you haven’t read anything like this before, it’s not a bad place to start.

1. While I happily bought the first three books, and I honestly believe they were written with good intentions, I can’t help but feel the multitudes of subsequent books are just an attempt to “cash in” on a franchise, and hence, I haven’t bought or read any of them.
2. Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue – Book 1, p.1
3. Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.67
4. Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.68
5. Walsch, Neale Donald (1999), p.8

• Prince Of Peace – God Of War Gets First Review And A Release Date – A film by John Campea (of The Movie Blog) about Christianity and the war in Iraq. The first five minutes are available in the post.
• Ten reasons why beer is better than Jesus – and #11. Beer tastes better…
• The Ultimate Spoiler… – Don’t click this link if you don’t like finding out how the book ends (but… come on, you know you want to click it)
• The Primate Diaries: Today’s Math Lesson – The differences between fundamentalists and moderate believers and atheists.
• Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica instrument of debaptism – The “Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica” (that document you can use to ask to be “debaptised” from the Catholic Church – NOW IN ENGLISH!
• BibleMap.org – Want to know where all those places the bible talks about actually ARE? Look no further…

Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original texts. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The earliest surviving versions of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the original texts were written. Also, we don’t just have a single version of each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is, none of the versions agree with each other.¹

If you haven’t read the book, I’d highly recommend it. Dawkins even mentions it in his recent “God Delusion” (so, it’s gotta be good, right?). Ehrman details many specific examples of differences between versions of the biblical texts, and also examines how the specific books were chosen and compiled.

Also, if there’s any Christians reading this – please, tell me – how DO you reconcile the problems Ehrman mentions? Were all of the copies of the bible divinely inspired? Was there one particular version that was divinely inspired? Please… I’m dying to know!

1. Brown, Doug (2007) Review of Misquoting Jesus, Powell’s Books

“Christianity is not about a religion… Christianity is about a relationship…” I even recall myself saying, on probably more than one occasion, “I’m not religious, I’m a Christian.”

While “Thinking Ape” claims this person is being dishonest about their religion, I think it is (at least in principle) possible to distinguish between the two. Religion, according to one definition is “an institution to express belief in a divine power”¹. By this definition, perhaps “the church” and “religion” would be synonymous. My major gripe with religion has always been the institution associated along with it – sure, the beliefs are almost certainly delusional as well, but the beliefs alone (in my view) don’t cause any harm. It’s for this same reason that I disagree with organised atheist evangelism.

For me, the first step away from religion (although I was never raised in a particularly religious family) was when I rejected organised religion. I was inclined to think that, while the beliefs may² have been true, the institutionalisation and control from the Church was problematic. An irreligious Christian would, I imagine, reject the various denominations of Christian churches, like I did. They would also not necessarily accept the interpretations of any one denomination, and would (hopefully) be more open to semi-rational thought.

I say, good on them. Sure, it’s not ideal, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Link: I’m not religious, I’m Christian (DeConversion)

1. Princeton WordNet, Religion
2. I never did, and still don’t “believe”