atheism

This Month in Photo of the Day: Travel Photos

A lone shikara boat slices through the peace and tranquility of Dal Lake, the oarsman reflecting on a better tomorrow to come.

(This photo and caption were submitted to Your Shot. Have a great shot? Send it to us for possible publication in National Geographic magazine.)

See more pictures of India shot by our readers » See more pictures of reflections »

Doonesbury: Always fun in an election year. (Click to enlarge)

Yesterday, Richard Wade got people thinking about how angry people would get at an atheist group’s billboard even if it were completely inoffensive.

Well, Katie Hartman of Skepticon is taking the idea one step further.

She wants to put up a cute, inoffensive billboard. All she needs are your donations and suggestions. Here’s a template of her idea:

We’ve priced billboards in the Springfield area and think it can be done for as little as $2,000 –- and if we end with more? We’ll put it on buses in St. Louis and Kansas City.

They need to figure out what image should go in the empty space and that’s where your votes could help them out. So please vote and please chip in if you find the idea entertaining

Hip-hop singer Toby Ganger just released an EP called “Evolutionary” and the title track sounds pretty awesome:

An excerpt from the lyrics:

…the other side interested in scaring the rest of us here with a message of fear so todays questions appear through the lens of yesterday’s perception of fair and the prejudice clear whenever they’re debating on who gets to be married always saying to protect the kids really they’re afraid we’ll reject their myths

The entire album or just the single can be found on his site.

Apocalypse of Peter

Continuing the series archived at Couchoud: The Creation of Christ – - – (Couchoud argues that our “editor” – Clement? – compiled 28 books, one more than our current 27 that make up our New Testament and this post concludes the section where Couchoud discusses the origin of our New Testament books.)

The perfect balance of the New Testament still stood in need of a counterweight. Just as the tale of Peter counter-balanced that of Paul in Acts, so the letters of Paul required as counterpoise letters from the Twelve.  There were already in existence a letter by James and three by John.  To make up seven, our editor produced two letters by Peter and one by Jude, John’s brother. (p. 305)

I don’t know if Couchoud here means to suggest “the editor” wrote these epistles himself. I find it difficult to accept the two letters attributed to Peter are by the same hand given what I have come to understand of their strikingly different styles, but let’s leave that question aside for now and cover what Couchoud’s views were as published in English 1939.

1 Peter

This epistle is said to have been a warrant for the Gospel of Mark. (Maybe, but some have suggested the name of Mark for the gospel was taken from this epistle. If it were a warrant for Mark one might be led to call to mind the unusual character of that Gospel. Its reputation had been tinged with “heretical” associations.) In the epistle Peter calls Mark “my son” and is supposed to be in his company in Rome, biblically called “Babylon”. The inference this leads to is that Mark wrote of the life and death of Jesus as learned from the eyewitness Peter. This coheres with Justin’s own naming of the Gospel “Recollections of Peter” in his Dialogue, section 106.

The letter is “a homily addressed to baptized heathen of Asia Minor at the time of a persecution.” Its teachings can be seen to be of the same category as those addressed in the earlier discussions by Couchoud – typical of Clement and anti-Marcionite . . .

• the Jewish prophecies were meant solely for Christians
• imperial authorities needed to be greatly respected — (Couchoud says that the epistle refers to Pilate as one who judges righteously in 1 Peter 2:23, but I always took that phrase as a reference to God.)
• the answer is given to the question of the fate of those pagans who had died before having a chance to be saved by the Blood of the Lamb: Marcion had taught that all the sinners of old were saved by Jesus when he went down to hell; this epistle was not to be outdone by Marcion’s teaching.
• Women should not plait their hair: 1 Peter 3:3. This links with the Pastoral prohibition of the same: 1 Timothy 2:9. “This plaiting of the hair was the fashion in the time of the Antonine dynasty — that is second century.
• Charity covers a multitude of sins, found in 1 Peter 4:8, is also found in 1 Clement 49:5

Jude

The brief Epistle of Jude is an affirmation that the Christian faith has been given “once for all” by the Apostles, and a violent condemnation of all who “in their dreamings defile the flesh and set at nought dominion and rail at dignities,” and those who would classify people into psychics and spirituals and have not themselves the Spirit. We can recognize in these the Alexandrian Gnostics, Basilides, Carpocrates, who sought the way of salvation in the freedom of the flesh, and Valentinus in particular. The latter came to Rome shortly before Marcion and attempted to force himself into the Roman episcopacy. His astonishing Gospel of Truth and his sacrilegious and disorderly theology stunned the faithful. (pp. 306-307)

2 Peter

This is said to be the most coherent of the three letters. It presents itself as a witness of Peter. Its middle section is mostly a repetition of Jude. And it has three particular aims:

1. It addresses those disillusioned Christians whose hopes for the Coming of the Lord failed to materialize after their great expectations around the year 135, the second destruction of Jerusalem. (In support of this time-frame see my earlier post Identifying the “Man of Sin” in 2 Thessalonians.) Peter assures his readers that a day of the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. “So we have the impatient Christians put off to the year One Thousand.” We find Clement answering the same question with the same idea in 1 Clement 49:5.
2. This epistle has Peter approve the “right edition” of Paul’s epistles — the ones doctored by Clement and co — and disapprove of the Marcionite interpretation. 3:15-16 warns that there are those who fail to understand Paul’s letters, and that “the ignorant and the unsteadfast falsify them, as also the other scriptures, to their destruction.”
3. Peter also draws special attention to a book he is about to write so that after he is dead the faithful can recall certain things to their memories, for he had been with Jesus himself on the “holy mount” and heard a voice from the “excellent glory” speaking of His Beloved Son. “Evidently he had in mind a Revelation “more sure” than any other, including the Revelation of St. John: Go to 1 Peter 1:15-19. In this passage note μεγαλοπρεποῦς (and forms of this word = “majesty”) applied to God — “it is a favourite with Clement, appearing seven times in the Epistle to the Corinthians.”

And the work or scripture that “Peter” had in mind in point #3?

Probably . . . the Apocalypse of Peter. This work was intended by our editor to be the completion and perfection of the New Testament, doubling the older Revelation of St. John which was too hard for the Gentile and not over-edifying. Peter’s Revelation was used in the Roman Church till the end of the second century, but then lost ground before its powerful rival. (p. 308)

The Apocalypse of Peter

This Apocalypse or Revelation was listed as part of the canon by the Muratorian fragment and Clement of Alexandria quoted it as part of the New Testament according to Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, vi. 14. 1.

Couchoud suggests that Acts 1:3 (speaking of many proofs Christ gave the apostles after his resurrection and speaking of the Kingdom of God) was inserted as a lead up to Peter’s Revelation.

This Revelation is presented as one of the “many proofs” Christ gave to his disciples during the first 40 days after his resurrection:

Jesus is with his apostles on the Mount of Olives, the “holy mount”.

They ask him of the Great Judgment which is to be preceded by the destruction of the fig tree.

Peter wants to know what fig-tree and the answer is the fig-tree in the parable in Luke — that is, the Jews and the false Jew Messiah who persecuted Christians (Bar-Kochba).

Then there would be false prophets teaching destructive doctrines (e.g. Marcion)

They pray with him (note that prayer is a characteristic of Luke) then ask to be shown the face of one of the elect.

Two glorious men appear before them (snow white, rose pink, rainbow hair, etc)

Peter sees a beautiful flower carpeted land with high priests living like angels on one side, and a fowl, slimy, putrid place where 14 kinds of criminals are being tortured. Aborted babies shoot forth flames of fire into the eyes of their blood-soaked tormented mothers.

The Elect are privileged to see these tortures and to obtain some remission for their loved ones in that place.

Jesus prophecies that Peter will die in “a great city of the West”.

Jesus then takes his disciples up to the top of the holy mount and re-enacts the Transfiguration

Jesus is enveloped in a cloud, thus giving a third account of the Ascension (cf. Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:6-12) and the apostles go down the mountain praising God who has written the names of the Elect in a Book of Life.

Couchoud’s assessment of this work:

What is lacking in this literary vision, which is in spirit more pagan than Biblical, is sincerity, power, emotion, spontaneity, glamour, and the mighty sweep of the lofty vision of the seer of Patmos. The age of the prophets had surely heard its last hour strike. (p. 309)

Thus completed the New Testament

This collection thus counted 28 books, four groups of seven. Later the Revelation of Peter was suppressed.

The first 14 Scriptures came from the Twelve Apostles and their authorized interpreters.

The first group of 7

• 4 Gospels
• Acts
• 2 Revelations

Their authors

• Matthew, John, Peter (apostles)
• Mark, Peter’s “son”
• The dedicator to Theophilus who had carefully collected the traditions of the apostles

The second group of 7

• 7 “Catholic” epistles — i.e. those addressed generally.

Their authors

• James, Peter. Jude, John (apostles)

The second set of 14 Scriptures are from the second group of apostles — Paul and Barnabas (assigning the Epistle to the Hebrews to Barnabas)

Between these two groups there is no conflict; on the contrary, harmony reigns. Peter approved Paul’s Epistles, and so the Twelve walk hand in hand with Paul and Barnabas. The link between them is that writer to Theophilus who was such a diligent historian of the whole brigade of Apostles. There were no other Apostles than those fourteen, and they wrote nothing beyond the twenty-eight Scriptures. Hermas’s prophecy cannot be accepted, as it is not by an Apostle. [The Muratorian fragment makes this explicit.] Such was the compact and numerous Bible, closely linked with the Bible of the Jews, which the great Church henceforward opposed to the Scriptures of Marcion.

This ingenious, bold, liberal, and prudent builder has a right to applause, for he constructed out of a hotch-potch of writings a coherent and durable whole, strong to resist and powerful to prevail. In it all spiritual needs are satisfied. Its preservation is entrusted to the colleges for whose authority it is itself the foundation. Not a source of riches has been neglected in its compilation. Books sown and ripened in differing climates find in it a common strength in which all are strong in the support of their fellows. The four Gospels in this association appear as four independent testimonies which mutually corroborate and complete one another. The critical historian may reproach the architect with building wings under false names, with repairs, renovations, and false windows. Still he will admit that the architect was driven by necessity, and that without him the most ancient Christian documents might have been lost or dispersed.  (p. 310)

I began this latest series of Couchoud posts from half way through The Creation of Christ. After the first few chapters that I made available as pdf downloads I skipped the chapters where Couchoud discusses his views on how the Christian faith emerged and picked up his arguments for the creation of the New Testament. Before posting Couchoud’s final chapter I’ll backtrack and outline the gist of those earlier chapters.

In a few of my recent comments I have made reference to my being away from serious internet land at the moment. I am on holidays in Bali but had been a busy boy before leaving and prepared and scheduled a few posts in advance. So if someone was wondering about that apparent contradiction — that I am not on top of comments etc but am still “posting at regularly at 3:00 am each morning — that is the explanation. I’m sure lots of people were really worried and curious about that but now all those folks can sleep soundly at night knowing everything has a rhyme and reason.

So, this happened.

Screencap via atheists.org

That’s kicker Jake Russell of the Ohio State Buckeyes. His bio says that he’s a freshman. When I first came to college, I was still extremely religious, having grown up in an almost exclusively Catholic environment. Meeting people with radically different worldviews was a shock. But it takes a special kind of person, even assuming that sort of background, to wish hate on someone else.

Then again, if you ask Jessica Ahlquist, maybe folks like Russell aren’t so rare.

Greg Lammers, the Missouri State Director for American Atheists, notified the OSU administration of the tweet and was assured that they would investigate immediately.

There is a fine, but crucial, line between hating ideas and hating the person who espouses them. There’s also an important distinction between hating or being disgusted by a person, and acting out of malice toward that person. In a pluralistic society that encourages discourse, those lines need to be crystal clear. From the American Atheists article:

As for Mr. Russell, we hope sir that no one ever asks anyone else to show you some hate. We hope that one day you will learn the pluralism that exists at your school and in your future places of employment and residence [...] Mr. Russell has brought dishonor to his team and to his school. He has disgraced himself by displaying his bigotry in public.

Hear, hear.

Incidentally, a couple of nights ago, Hemant sent a message to roommate-in-question Max Rouse asking for his side of the story. There’s no response yet, but we’ll provide an update if/when we hear back.

It wouldn't be the internet anymore if we didn't have blogs, would it? There are a lot of great atheist and agnostic blogs out there exploring all facets of religion, belief, and living without gods. Which blogs do you read the most and recommend the most? Nominate your favorite atheist blog or blogs for the 2012 About.com Readers' Choice Awards!

Submit Your Nomination: Favorite Agnostic / Atheist Blog of 2011

According to Manal Abul Hassan, a female leader in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), it is an "affront" to women's "dignity" when women march in defense of their own rights. Since Egyptian women wouldn't voluntarily do that to themselves, then the marches done by women must have been funded and instigated from abroad. It all makes so much sense, right?

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Manal Abul Hassan: Undignified for Women to March for Woman's Rights originally appeared on About.com Agnosticism / Atheism on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 12:00:24.

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Dennis Kruse, the same Indiana State Senator who wants public school students to recite the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of every day, is now sponsoring a bill that would promote Creationism in science class… and he’s getting much farther than he should be:

The Senate Education Committee voted 8-2 in favor of the bill despite experts and some senators saying teaching creationism likely would be ruled unconstitutional if challenged in court.

According to an article from the Associated Press, Purdue University science education professor John Staver told the committee that teaching Creationism could lead to a lawsuit since it’s a violation of church-state separation — and federal courts have agreed in the past.

Staver said he believed any school district that started teaching creationism would face lawsuits they would likely lose.

“All that the citizens of Indiana are going to get from this bill are wasted legal efforts, lawyer fees and penalties,” Staver said.

Sen. Scott Schneider (R-Indianapolis) didn’t care for that logic, though:

“What are we afraid of? Allowing an option for students including creation science as opposed to limiting their exposure?”

No, we aren’t afraid to expose children to other ideologies (false as they may be). We are worried — outside of the inherent falsehood — that by teaching a religious ideology as scientific fact, we run the risk of teaching our children that by simply pretending hard enough, any magical apparition can become the truth.

Creation Science is NOT science.

When looking for answers to scientific questions, there are scads of information detailing experiments, observations, conclusions, hypothesis, peer-reviews, successes, and failures. When looking for answers to a religious (read: Christian) based “theory,” you have one collection of books; with spurious authorship; each part written dozens to hundreds of years after any of the supposed characters were supposed to have lived; giving conflicting accounts of events, lineage, history, and people; later edited, redacted, and recompiled by groups of people with several political agendas; has no universally agreed-upon translation; and is not interpreted the same way by any two people.

If Creationism is to be taught as science, then what is preventing these beliefs from also being taught the same way?

1. Astrology
2. Pyramid power
3. Divining rod technology
4. The toxemia theory and Christian Science “negative thinking” theory of disease
5. The flat earth theory

If Creationism is to be taught as science, can we allow ALL Creation Stories? For example:

1. In China, the story of of P’an Ku, hatched from a cosmic egg. Half the shell is above him as the sky, the other half below him as the earth. Growing taller each day for 18,000 years, he gradually pushes them apart until they reach their appointed places. Then P’an Ku falls to pieces. His limbs become mountains, his blood the rivers, his breath the wind and his voice the thunder. His two eyes are the sun and the moon. And the parasites on his body are mankind.
2. Greece, begins with a gaping emptiness, Chaos. Within this there emerges Gaea, the earth. Gaea gives birth to a son, Uranus, who is the sky. Gaea and Uranus populate the earth with their children.
3. Japan, the story of creation leads not to the first man but to the first emperor. Beginning with a floating amorphous mass, emerges a reed-like object, which produces eight generations of brother-and-sister gods.
4. Mesopotamia, the creation story survives on clay tablets found in Ashurbanipal’s library, in the saga known as Enuma elish(named from its first two words, meaning ‘When on high’). It begins with two watery beings, one male, Apsu (sweet water), and one female, Tiamat (salt water). They create a variety of sea monsters and gods. Marduk, the god of Babylon, kills Tiamat and her accomplice, Kingu. Marduk splits the corpse of Tiamat into two parts. He creates the heaven with half of her, and the earth with the other. In heaven he constructs a dwelling place for his colleagues, the gods. Needing a race of servants, he uses the blood of Kingu to create the first man, followed by the creation of rivers, plants and animals.*

If and when Creationism (any creation story) can be tested, verified, put through the rigors of the scientific method, peer-reviewed, and accepted by rational thinking scientists and people everywhere as a legitimate explanation for the creation of the universe — when Creationism can be placed next to Evolution and the Big Bang without looking like a two-year-old’s marker scribbles hanging on the gallery wall next to a Da Vinci masterpiece — then we can start teaching it in schools. When this ancient campfire story becomes more than the sum of its flawed and mutable parts, I will be among the first in line to sign a petition to get it taught as science.

Until that day (and I won’t be holding my breath), in any states that are considering breaking science, I hope that reason — and the future of education in our country — wins out over the teaching of just-so stories.**

*Thank you, interwebs, and apologies to any details that might have been glossed over

**Not that I have any problem with just-so stories. They’re fun… like Dr. Suess books.

RALPH Shortey is an Oklahoma state senator who this week got himself branded as “hilariously delusional” after he tabled bill that would ban the use of aborted human foetuses in food products.

According to this report, the ridiculous Republican and ardent Christian pro-lifer said he filed the bill after reading that an anti-abortion group – Children of God for Life – had called on the public to boycott products of several major food companies.

Wingnut Sen Ralph Shortey is 'hilariously delusional'

COGFL claimed that the companies had partnered with a biotech enterprise that produces artificial flavour enhancers. One corporation, PepsiCo did partner with food product development company Senomyx to develop a new low-calorie sweetener, but Pepsico denied using foetal tissue in its research in an April 2011 email to Children of God for Life.

In this report, Shortey was quoted as saying:

As a pro-life advocate, it kind of disturbed me that we would use aborted embryos or aborted human fetuses to extract stem cells and use them for research to basically make things taste better.

He admitted that he had never heard of any instances of this happening, but decided that his bill would, at the very least, give any food companies toying with the idea an “ultimatum.”

The legislation, known as SB 1418, states:

No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.

Federal food safety officials have never heard of such a thing happening. A US Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said that the agency has never received any reports of foetuses being used in food production.

Shortey, elected in 2010, has introduced a spate of dottyl bills including denying Oklahoma citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in the state. Another bill he concocted would have allowed police to confiscate the homes and cars of illegal immigrants. He also tried to advance a bill that would have required presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed on Oklahoma’s primary ballot.

None of Shortey’s controversial bills have become law.

As news began circulating of his latest legislative priority, the Twitterverse erupted with disbelief and amusement.

One person wrote:

This may conflict with my dream of eating aborted fetus dumplings, but Sen Ralph Shortey is hilariously delusional.

Another said:

Today in Oklahoma crazy: Sen Ralph Shortey (R) proposes banning ‘human fetuses in food’. Didn’t know it was a thing.

Hat tip: Buffy

The Book of Joshua depicts a genocidal campaign against the people of Canaan. These Canaanites never attacked any Israelites, never enslaved any Israelites, and aren't shown ever doing anything to justify their mistreatment. The only "crime" they committed was living in the wrong place at the wrong time. They occupied land promised to the Israelites by God at a time when God decided to finally make good on that promise.

Read Article: Joshua & Genocide - Book of Joshua as a Manual for Genocide

A mere 12.5 million light-years from Earth, irregular

This Month in Photo of the Day: Travel Photos

For generations people in the region have marked cave walls with stenciled handprints. These prints were made with clay-based paint, but in other caves, crimson stains tell the story of a bloody initiation ritual for young men.

See more pictures from the February 2012 feature story "Last of the Cave People."

The New York Times‘ Abby Goodnough has a summary of Jessica Ahlquist‘s lawsuit in Friday’s paper and Jessica comes out of it looking exactly like the hero she is. (Her opponents, not so much.)

Atheists don’t always get positive coverage in the media, so it’s an encouraging sign, especially after everything Jessica’s been going through:

Jessica Ahlquist (Gretchen Ertl - The New York Times)

She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

…

Brittany Lanni, who graduated from Cranston West in 2009, said that no one had ever been forced to recite the prayer and called Jessica “an idiot.”

“If you don’t believe in that,” she said, “take all the money out of your pocket, because every dollar bill says, ‘In God We Trust.’ ”

Compare that ignorant soundbyte to Jessica’s pitch-perfect line at the end of the story:

Does [Jessica] empathize in any way with members of her community who want the prayer to stay?

“I’ve never been asked this before,” she said. A pause, and then: “It’s almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good. I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I’m defending their Constitution, too.”

What a great analogy.

I’ve been asked a few times over the past couple of weeks if I’m surprised at the amount of money people are donating toward her scholarship fund.

My response has been the same: I’m not surprised at all. Of course people want to chip in to her future success. Jessica embodies our movement at its best — she’s brave, she defends the separation of church and state, she’s eloquent when speaking about the lawsuit and her beliefs, and she’s not letting the religious majority in her community keep her down.

This article just reinforces everything we already knew about her.

…