The more use one has for communicating ideas and comparisons and contrasts, the more use one has for language. Those who do not learn their own languages to a high degree are those who have no use for it at that level. That is, they simply don’t care to learn how to use the language fully because they’re not interested in doing all the things that the language can do.
In fact, Continue reading
In the entire history of the Planet Earth, not once has any person done an impossible thing.
The truth of that statement should be self evident. The real trick is in figuring out what it should mean for us. For one thing, it tends to rob of us our common excuses, for other people sometimes do things that we have told ourselves are impossible to do. Continue reading
Everybody knows that Joseph Stalin was infamous as “the Butcher” who directed the slaughter of 25 million people during his reign, but who knows that he would regularly and lovingly spend hour after hour with his daughter, Svetlana, listening to German art songs on the Victrola?
Everybody knows that George Washington was the heroic “Father of Our Country” who led the United States to independence from British rule, but who knows that he willfully violated the Constitution in 1791 by signing off on the founding of the First Bank of the United States—making the regular work of the government into an enterprise from which private bankers could make a profit? Continue reading
Sure, loads of folks think they like God, but do they know him well enough to be sure? And some folks don’t like God, but do they know him well enough to be sure?
Here are some things that a lot of folks don’t know about God—things that might change someone’s mind, one way or the other.
God Hates Injustice
Before God established the Earth, Continue reading
Here’s a philosophical question for your pondering: When the US Government has abandoned obedience to the Constitution, are you and I still obligated to obey it?
Our nation’s government was designed in the document we call our Constitution. While the ink was still wet on its pages, there were plans afoot to violate it. Indeed, the first Congress violated it severely by forming the First Bank of the United States in 1791—an act for which it had zero constitutional authority—an act that would turn the business of government into a money-making business for the owners of that private bank. In other words, the governance of the United States was turned immediately into a money-making venture, even though no such purpose for government is listed in the Constitution.
Since then, governmental obedience to the Constitution has become the rare exception, while disobedience to it has become the rule. Everyone knows this—as much as they are willing to know it—yet almost everyone chooses to do absolutely nothing about it, except for the occasional complaint made to friends.
So here’s a question for you: If our nation has been taken over by a mercantilist oligarchy—a ruling class of business-driven people who use it for their own profit—then are you and I obligated to abide by the Constitution ourselves?
I happen to be a skilled craftsman who could make a good living by teaching my trade in a state where funds are made available to people who want to learn new skills. The problem, however, is that these funds come from tax dollars collected by both the state and federal governments, and that no such use for these funds is authorized in the US Constitution. Being a supporter and promoter of the Rule of Law, I have refrained from making a living by subverting the Constitution.
But is the Constitution really the “supreme law of the land” anymore? No, it’s not; it’s just a figurehead, a platitude, an empty boast of people clinging to freedoms that are long-since lost. Why, then, do I continue to behave as if it were not long ago subverted in favor of our de facto government, this mercantilist oligarchy that merely masquerades as a “constitutional republic”? I’m standing on principle, of course, but one wonders why. Does my obedience force others to obey? No. Does my obedience nullify the de facto government and restore that government that was set in print in 1789? Of course it doesn’t.
It becomes harder and harder, therefore, to defend my refusal to suckle at the teats of the great mother sow, along with so very many others. Millions work as employees of unconstitutional federal departments, or of departments who use them to do unconstitutional things. Others work in the private sector for companies who have federal contracts that are not authorized by the Constitution. Others take handouts from unconstitutional governmental programs. Indeed, this is the situation that our current rulers have patently designed; it’s how they want it to be.
Why, then, do I resist?
It’s interesting—the unintended consequences that occur when a piece of one’s religious foundation is laid in the wrong way. It causes all manner of predicaments and there’s really no way to correct for them all unless you strip down to the foundation and set things aright. Many people can attest to this truism as it plays out in our physical world. When the foundation for a house is faulty, the house itself pays the price for it. When a mathematical solution is attempted by use of the wrong formula, the answer pays the price. When the wrong kind of fuel is used in a car, it ruins the motor’s function.
Well, this principle holds true in religion, too. When you get the foundational ideas wrong, you should expect to have trouble making the rest of your religion add up properly.
Once upon a time, God created humankind and promised an eternal afterlife for those among them who were righteous. Again and again he stressed to them that they should live righteously and repent of their sins. He assured them repeatedly that they would be judged in this fashion:
2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
He even stressed to them that not even the angels were exempt from judgment for their bad behavior, and that the humans wouldn’t be, either:
2 Peter 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into tartarus and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked 8 (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
A great many such passages were written to warn and encourage the believers to “overcome” and to “endure to the end”, lest their faith should be in vain and their eternal destiny lost.
But then came the modern church business and the rush to get tithe payers in the door. It was necessary to modify the doctrinal foundation such as to make for a “bigger tent” into which more people would be attracted. Now the promise of eternal life isn’t just for the faithful who would endure righteously to the end; it is extended to anybody who would join the church and say he believed in Jesus. The focus of what is called “salvation” shifted from living a successful life as a servant and student of Yahweh and Yeshua to merely accomplishing some small number of initiatory steps, such as, for instance, reciting “The Sinner’s Prayer” and/or being baptized. Those who would do so are assured that their “salvation” has been secured, more or less. The doctrine of once-saved-always-saved-but-keeping-coming-to-church was invented to keep them coming with those tithes.
Arguments about the specifics of doctrine kept arising and endangered the church business, so the churches began to attack reason and logic and evidence-based thinking as an unspiritual activity that is to be avoided in deference to what was called “faith”—not the original faith of the Bible, mind you, for that was a matter of reliance on and obedience to God and Jesus. No, this new kind of faith called for them to hold fast, not to the actual words of God and Jesus, but to what they were being told that the Bible means. It was necessary to give them ways to deal with the cognitive dissonance that would result from the conflict between their new traditions and the original texts, so another interesting thing evolved in the churches: Things that had been explained by Jesus and his apostles were re-explained as still being mysterious and a great deal of effort was put into mystifying the religion. “God moves in a mysterious way” became a favorite, and the idea that one can somehow magically “know” things apart from having actual knowledge of them—this would prove essential. This is how a member can “know” that his eternal life is secured, even though the Bible warns him that his particular pattern of sins are a certain impediment to his invitation into the Holy City. He “knows” it because he has trained himself to “feel it in his heart”. What he has imagined in his own mind, he attributes to the very presence and affirmation of God therein.
In this system, “belief” is everything. Once a person claims to believe in Jesus, the rest of the details are more or less dispensable. So whether the rush is to get them to the altar or the baptistry, the goal of that rush is to get them to say “I believe”.
But there’s a huge problem with this: One can say “I believe” in a second, without ever answering the question as to what they believe in. Sure, the big prize in view is to confess that they believe “in Jesus”, but there’s more to this than meets the eye. The Bible has 1,000+ pages of information, and there’s no way a person can quickly survey all that information in order to decide whether he believes it all—and certainly not to decide whether he is willing and able to obey it all. Even so, they’re expected to state a belief in the Bible—a belief that they are in no position to declare responsibly. But this is not seen to be a problem.
In actuality, however, it’s a huge problem. In the rush to belief (and “membership”) many are taught to make such claims prematurely, and then they find themselves in several predicaments. Among them are these:
All these issues, however, are considered to be inconsequential because the really important goal has been accomplished: endorsement of and membership in the local church business.
This is why churches boil down the 1,000+ pages into a few bullet points of “What We Believe”: it makes it simpler for the initiate to sign off on.
And what do you get from this business scheme? You get millions and millions of “members” who are not qualified to understand the very Bible they endorse. Yet you teach them an air of adamancy and dogmatism about those few bullet points of doctrine, and you call their acceptance of it “faithfulness”, rewarding them with praise every time they do it. This teaches them to be incurious and irresponsible about their beliefs as they keep those tithe dollars coming.
You also get a considerable deemphasizing of matters of morality, as questions of morality tend to split groups and diminish membership. And this means you’ll find more and more church organizations where corruption takes hold among the leadership, for the members are desensitized to it and are ill-equipped to do much about it. Where the original Christians were instructed thus: Ephesians 5:11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them, the modern believer has been trained to keep his focus on the first two words of Matthew 7:
Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. 6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Never mind that Jesus expected his followers to be able to judge between a speck and a log, what is holy and what is unholy, who is a pig, etc., this modern church generation has got it whittled down to just the first two words, “Judge not.” This is their new gospel. And to this, it was necessary for them to redefine “grace” from something that caused the original Christians to work hard and to so “no” to ungodliness into something that continually exempts them from such works!
Even the churches that claim not to do this are doing it consistently. They let their leaders get away with habitual ungodliness. They disregard passages of scripture that are problematic for their preferred version of the religion. They will run off anyone who asks too many questions and raises too many objections, for it rocks their boat too much and endangers the continual success of the business venture. But of course, this is all done in the name of Jesus, and not in the name of business.
This all puts the sincere believer in quite a predicament—catching him between the facts of the Bible and the cold realities of the church business in which he has found himself entangled. If his curiosity over the texts prevails—and if his sense of obedience to God trumps his sense of obedience to the church—he will neither be welcome in time, nor wish to remain. He will discover that the church is not what it was advertised to be. And then he will have to struggle over what should be done about that. Most will simply move on to some other church, where they will be less likely to rock the boat again, even though it will need rocking.
A few, however, will come to understand in time that the Bible presents a vast network of facts that must be carefully considered and analyzed in order to understand just what happened and what was taught. In time, they will understand that what actually happened in Bible times bears little resemblance to what is practiced today in the churches. They will see that the modern church business is like most other businesses—-giving in to the typical temptations of over-promising and under-delivering, of skimping on quality to save on overhead while exaggerating the benefits of its products and services.
I do not know of a single church that is not guilty of this. Not one. And there’s a reason it is like it is—but nobody wants to know the reason. No, they’d rather make up reasons than to find out the real answer. That is the predicament that comes with the rush to belief. Here is what church members are trained to do:
As it happens, these qualities make for terrible students of the Bible.
I hear it practically every day—someone confidently affirming that “the Bible is literal” or that “the Bible is figurative”.
Let me go ahead and state quite unapologetically that both are rather ignorant positions that bring this passage of scripture strongly to mind:
1 Timothy 1:5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
This ongoing debate is an excellent example of how mindless so many are about their religion, for it doesn’t take much thinking at all to see how both sides are quite ignorant. Let me spell it out for you.
First of all, please be advised that I am not talking about whether some certain passage of scripture is being used figuratively or literally. No, that sort of investigation is quite appropriate and apt. Rather, I’m talking about people who want to size up the entire Bible as either “figurative” or “literal”—one or the other. The fact of the matter is that it contains a great deal of both types of language. We can settle this very quickly in the few excerpts below.
Figurative Passages
At the last supper, Jesus gave a lengthy discourse on many topics to his apostles. In one place, he said this:
John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. …
Those who want to insist that “The Bible is literal” would have to interpret this passage in such a way as to believe that Jesus was a plant. Interestingly, however, to my knowledge, I have never met anyone who believes that Jesus was a plant—even among those who insist that “The Bible is literal”. So those who say such things are accustomed to frequent exceptions, it appears. One wonders, therefore, why they won’t quit saying it in deference to something more defensible.
Literal Passages
When Jesus was born, he was laid in a manger. This fact is mentioned three times in Luke’s gospel:
Luke 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
Luke 2:16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
If someone wanted to insist that “The Bible is figurative”, then he would have to come up with a plausible figurative interpretation of this manger business.
Now, let me stop right here and define just what it means to be “figurative”. When we use the word to refer to language, this is the most common definition:
expressing one thing in terms normally denoting another with which it may be regarded as analogous : metaphorical <figurative language>
(From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
We all use metaphors, both in our language and even in the way we think and learn. We constantly compare this to that, understanding a new thing by use of our existing understanding of something else that is similar in a way.
So, if the “manger” is a figurative device—a metaphor—then we would have to answer the question, “a metaphor for what?”. For example, in the common metaphor, “an 800-pound gorilla” is used to speak of rather obvious matters that are being ignored by people, and not an actual gorilla. Similarly, “a heart of stone” does not refer to a sculpture of a heart, but to a mind that is hardened to common kindness.
With this in mind, therefore, the figurativist would have to come up with some metaphorical meaning of “manger” or “laid in a manger” in order to keep to the (erroneous) rule that “the Bible is figurative”. What then, shall he declare to be the real meaning of manger?
Yes, I’m scratching my head, too, for no ideas are coming to mind. I’m going to go out on a limb here, therefore, and declare that Jesus was literally laid in a literal manger.
So, Let’s Be Done With It, Then.
Let’s do away with this childish bent toward describing the entire Bible as either figurative or literal. Since we can see that it has both literal and figurative passages, then we should take the more informed view.
It won’t stop, of course, for cognitive misers are always about the business of oversimplifying what is not that simple. For example, there will always be someone describing the entire Bible as “the blueprint for the church” or as “life’s instruction manual” (or some similarly-inaccurate description) because it is easier for them to latch onto an inaccurate idea than to ferret out an accurate one. And there will always be people who want to insist that “the Bible is written to us“, even though not one sentence in it appears to have been addressed to any person or persons living after the First Century AD. Some of them will reluctantly admit it when pressed; they roll their eyes and sigh in irritation—and these are good indications of someone cranking up the algorithmic mind to do calculations he’d rather not do. Others, however, will dig in their heels even deeper when pressed on the question, and will insist quite stupidly that the Bible is indeed “explicitly addressed to them”. One friend, whom I’ll call John Smith, even gave a “yes” answer to the question, “Is any passage in the Bible addressed explicitly to ‘John Smith’?” When he said “Yes”, he showed that he is not operating inside the realm of reality. And of course, when I asked him to cite a reference to that passage for me, he simply neglected to answer one way or the other.
Such people are more interested in beliefs than in facts. They are taught that the faithful thing to do is to maintain one’s beliefs no matter what, and that they should beware of those who purport to contradict those beliefs with facts. Their grand ignorance is shown in debates such as the one in the title of this article. It doesn’t take much thinking at all to expose the ignorance of it, which is a strong evidence of just how ignorant a religion Christianity is for many. For many, it has taken on a persona that is downright stupid compared to the actual ideas and paradigms of the scriptures. I know this because I have forced myself to work through that stupidity in a grand effort to test my beliefs against scripture and to correct myself where I was wrong. I’m still doing this, mind you, but the track record of actual corrections to date is lengthy and concrete. It is no ethereal matter of moods, but a documentable trail of evidence showing that I have had one stupid belief after another that was in need of being brought into line with the reality of the scriptures.
And where did I get those beliefs? Many of them I got from church—from one of the three brands to which I had joined myself. And the rest I got from my own free-wheeling methods of interpreting the Bible. (Which methods I learned at church!) For me, it wasn’t possible to make many significant corrections until I was finally fed up enough with church to leave it. Then I started learning quite a lot from the actual texts of the Bible.
Those who haven’t yet figured out that labeling the entire Bible as either “figurative” or “literal” is a fool’s errand have not even crossed the threshold into the reasonable examination of scripture. Yes, that’s a blunt assertion, but it’s quite defensible—and somebody needs to say it.
You can tell a lot about people by observing the patterns of their behavior. You can figure out what they think about things, and even how they do that thinking.
What is surprising is to discover what things people don’t think about. Would it surprise you, for instance, to find a bomb squad technician who never thinks to check a bomb for hidden, secondary triggering devices? Or what about a doctor Continue reading
I’ve been studying cognitive science for the last three years or so, trying to understand why it’s so hard for people to correct their beliefs when those beliefs are demonstrated to be wrong. It is fairly obvious from the research that there are three particular reasons that people get things wrong:
Perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve done routinely in my life is to try to argue the facts with people who do not care about the facts. To this very day, I still find myself surprised at how someone can be corrected irrefutably, and still insist that he has not been wrong—and at how his reasoning can be demonstrated to be inconsistent, and he doesn’t care. Continue reading
