Hausdorff's Bible Blog

Try to understand their perspective

2016-07-11T13:30:00.001-04:00

Hello everyone,

Sorry I have been away for so long. I'm not planning on giving up blogging entirely, but I likely won't be writing regularly for at least another year. I do plan on writing the occasional post like today's.

Although I have not had very much time to write in the last couple of years I still try to keep up with things by listening to podcasts. My goal is to listen to both atheist and Christian podcast in order to keep my finger on the pulse of the other perspective. I must admit I listen to more atheist podcast than Christian ones so if anybody knows a good Christian podcast that they would recommend I would very much appreciate it.

Back when I was writing regularly one of the things that always concerned me was that I might be accidentally strawmanning the other side. I always did my best to try to correctly describe the Christian perspective but looking back there are definitely a few times that come to mind where I think I did a poor job. When something strikes me as incorrect it is easy to want to just jump in and start ripping it apart. However I think the more important thing to do is first really try to understand the other person's perspective and try to understand why they think this thing that I see is incorrect. It does nobody any good if I'm proving wrong some idea that nobody actually thinks in reality. For my own blog when I get back to looking at the Bible what I would like to do is try to seek out answers to my objections. Now I tried this before with mixed results but ithink I can do better. In particular there are a few things from Genesis that have really stuck in the back of my brain for the last couple of years that I would like to revisit. If I can find some Christian who has addressed it I think it would be much more valuable than me simply trying to imagine what I would have thought when I was a Christian. I think this is especially important since I was a Christian when I was a child and teenager and even if I'm being accurate about how I would have approached it I might be giving a poor answer simply because I was a Christian when I was young and fairly uninformed.

I think we would have a much better dialogue between the two camps if each side was constantly trying to really understand the other side. Although I thought about this kind of thing many times in the past what got me on this line of thinking today is a Christian podcast I was listening to. They were addressing several atheist lines of thinking and then turning them down from their side but their description of the atheist perspective was terrible. As I mentioned above I listen to quite a few atheist podcast and I have never seen a single time them having the particular perspective that this podcast was using. Now they weren't super far off on a surface level but there were key details that completely changed the form of the arguments.

For instance they were constantly trying to claim that we as atheist worship various things. I think the reason they were doing this is that they worship God and they can't help but view our perspective from their own lens. As a result most of the things that they were refuting were not really my position or the position of any other atheists. They would highly benefit from trying to go the extra mile to really see things the way we see things rather than taking our position on a surface level and understanding it from their own instincts. Doing it right is of course extremely difficult but I think it is the only way to get valuable dialogue between two disagreeing sides. When I do eventually start blogging on a regular basis this is going to be something that I focus on a lot. It does no good for Christians to put out content that says that we atheist worship science or the universe or ourselves. Any atheist that comes across these arguments is not going to be moved. Instead they will probably just dismiss it out of hand. no worthwhile dialogue will be had. On the same token it does no good for atheists to come out and say that all Christians are bigots. Is does nothing but shut down the conversation before it gets started. If we can really try to see things the way the other side we can perhaps get through to each other.

Just Believe

2015-12-27T06:55:00.001-05:00

My oldest son is now 2 and a half. This is the first Christmas where he has had some idea of what is going on. He understands what presents are, he can enjoy some of the food, and he loves having rarely seen family members travel out to see us. Watching him experience this stuff is great, probably my best Christmas ever.

It's also the first Christmas he had watched any Christmas movies. I haven't paid any attention to Christmas movies in years, but all of the ones we watched had a theme of one character doubting and being encouraged to just believe.

When he's older I like the idea of using Santa as a critical thinking exercise, but for now I wish he wouldn't be exposed to this way of thinking. Why even bring up the idea of someone not believing?

It got me thinking about how this would look from a Christian perspective though. Repeatedly send the message that their kids should believe in Santa, portray that as a virtue, and yet ultimately they will stop believing in Santa some day. They will eventually see the belief they were encouraged so hard to believe is false. You would think they would be afraid that their religious beliefs would be next in line for questioning.

I know for myself growing up, questioning my religious beliefs even a little was not tolerated, why was stuff like this allowed? My best guess is that since Santa isn't real it was seem by my parents as completely different from Jesus, but I definitely find the whole thing curious.

The Bible is a Masterpiece

2015-10-22T00:29:00.001-04:00

This is something that I hear Christians say a lot, and Atheists will say it a lot as well. They will say that the bible is this amazing book, Christians will urge you to just read it and you will believe, atheists will often say that while it isn't true or anything, they will often concede that it is a great book.

This is so often repeated, I just assumed it was true for years. When I was a Christian I was still a kid and I hated reading in general, so I obviously hated reading the bible. I would read a verse here and there for sunday school, but I never read through the book. I would hear how wonderful it was and just took it for granted. I assumed it was true for years, and I even remember having a touch of trepidation when I started this blog and my bible reading project. I "knew" that the bible was this amazing book and I was afraid that I wouldn't have much to say about it. I really didn't want to just skip over the good bits and harp on the bad. I really wanted to highlight both the good and bad and just see how things stack up. But what if there is hardly any bad to write about?

This fear was allayed pretty much immediately. I very quickly found myself worried that I was being too negative and I was having trouble finding much good stuff to talk about. I wanted to be fair, but I could barely find anything good to talk about. Even the things that people usually found as a good thing, I had something bad to say about it. A lot of the things that I recall being praised when I was in church were based on the idea that we should be obedient and faithful, both of which I consider a negative rather than a positive.

For a while, I figured that most people who talk about the virtues of this book are like I used to be, they take for granted that it is good because everyone tells them it is, but they haven't read it themselves. This makes sense for your average Christian, at least for the Christians I have known in my life, very few of them ever actually read their bibles (beyond a few verses here or there). But there are obviously some people who have studied the book intensely and still find it an amazing book. What is the deal with them?

Ever since I started reading Genesis this thought has been in the back of my mind. I know that this book has been studied and revered for thousands of years, and yet I find it to be really terrible. I try to look at it from every angle I can think of, but I really find it awful. I really have trouble understanding how anyone can actually read this thing and find anything redeeming about it, let along call it a masterpiece. But I know people do, so I would like to get in their head and see how they see the book and how they can possibly see it as a good thing.

So I was very happy recently to see an episode of atheistically speaking on my podcast app where Thomas is talking to a Christian about biblical interpretation. They spent some time talking about how the bible is a "literary masterpiece". I was very excited when they started talking about it, and yet I thought the Christian's arguments fell completely flat. It really seemed like he had decided it was a great book ahead of time because he is a Christian and then he was trying to justify it. He even said that he didn't think he expressed himself very well and did an episode of his own podcast to clarify, but I still didn't think his argument was very good.

I still really do want to find a good explanation as to how someone can see this book as good. I have so far failed to find something that I really find acceptable. Don't get me wrong, I doubt I will agree in the end, but I have a hard time even seeing how someone else can even think that. I'd be happier if I could say "I see your point but I disagree" rather than what I have now which is just confusion. To be fair, I have been very busy with work and family for a while so this whole project is on the back burner and I haven't done a proper look for various justifications, but I have definitely been on the lookout.

Hopefully once I have some time to get back into this stuff, I can find some interesting arguments.

Desperation, Prayer, and the Lottery

2015-10-01T00:25:00.000-04:00

I was recently listening to a podcast about the power of prayer (It was geeks without god if I recall correctly). One of the things they said that stuck in my brain is that a lot of people pray as an act of desperation. They feel like they have no other options and praying at least feels like they are doing something. Perhaps they are stuck in a situation that they don't like and they don't see a way out of it, so they pray that things will get better.

source: wikimedia

Often when I see atheists talk about this kind of thing they will say things like "why waste your time praying, why not do something useful instead?" While I agree with this sentiment at times, there are also times when I don't think it is appropriate. Let's say for example someone is working a lot of hours and still just barely getting by. They are trying to get themselves out of the situation, but they are just treading water. If they do a little praying before they go to bed, or while they are commuting, or whatever, I don't see the harm in that. And it could give them a little hope to get them through the day. As long as they are also trying to get things better as well, why not? (If they are instead "leaving it up to God" and just sitting back waiting for things to get better I see it as destructive, but let's assume this is someone not in that situation)

I was thinking about my own current situation, I am currently working a ridiculous number of hours. I work most nights after my son goes to bed until about midnight, and I am pretty sure I haven't had a single day where I didn't work at all in about 6 weeks. I'm probably hovering at about 80 hours a week with no end in sight. If I'm being honest with myself, it will probably pretty similar to this until June. (next year will be better as I can reuse a lot of my teaching materials, but this year I'm building 2 classes from scratch on my own and another with a team of 3 others). I really love my job, but this workload is fucking nuts.

Sometimes I feel pretty pushed to the limit and it can be a bit depressing. As a mathematician, I feel somewhat embarrassed about this, but I will occasionally buy a lottery ticket. I have calculated the odds, I know I am not going to win, but it is fun to think "what if?" As I said, I love my job I'm just overworked. I would love to work half-time, so I could still do it but I could do other things that I enjoy as well. The point is, I see a parallel with the prayer, it really is a fantasy I am allowing myself to have as an act of desperation. In the case of prayer, they are imagining that God is going to make things better, he is going to help them into a better situation. In my case, I'm just imagining being able to buy myself into a better situation. I think the parallel is interesting.

Feeling the Holy Spirit

2015-08-31T00:15:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned in ~~last week's~~ my post from 2 weeks ago, I currently work at a high school and school has just started up again. The week before school starts we have to spend a lot of time in various meetings, which include meeting the new hires, a lot of random administrative stuff, pep talks, whatever new initiative the higher ups in the district want to roll out this year, and if there is any time left we can actually plan our lessons.

from wikimedia

To kick off the week, all of the teachers in the whole district got together in a local church (have I mentioned that I'm really glad I decided to use a pseudonym for this blog?). The event started with a musical number. I was expecting it to be okay at best, but to my surprise it was absolutely fantastic. The whole crowd was getting into it, there was a real energy in the room. One of my former students was even playing the drums, so that got me more excited about the whole thing, one more connection to it. It was very enjoyable, and actually quite an emotional experience.

Given that we were in a church (and that I recently started writing this blog again), my mind wandered to the idea of feeling the holy spirit inside of you. I'm sure that weekly there are many people get that feeling in the same building I was in (sometimes probably that exact seat). I'm have no doubt that they see it as evidence of God. If they were confronted with the fact that I, an atheist, felt the same thing, I wonder how they would react. I have come up with 2 guesses.

1. God lets me feel the holy spirit even though I'm an atheist in the hopes of showing me what it is like to worship him. Thereby ultimately converting me to his religion.

2. Denial that we are feeling similar things. We might use some of the same words to describe the sensations, but qualitatively there is really no comparison.

I of course would argue that this is evidence that this is not a supernatural experience, but instead just our brain chemistry at work. We are social and emotional creatures. Music really strikes an emotional nerve, and when it is good and you are surrounded by other people who enjoy it as well it just enhances the experience. And like I said, one of the performers was a former student of mine which made me proud of him that he was doing so well, and happy that he was being successful in what he's doing. Just more positive emotions to enhance the whole thing. The point being, there is no reason to bring the supernatural into it.

An old amazon review of mine, I'm currently reading book 4 in the series: Koban [5 star]

Should We Credit God or Simply Change Our Perspective?

2015-08-18T23:05:00.000-04:00

Parkside High School
(I don't work here, it's just a nice picture of a high school)

I work at a high school, and school is about to start up again so we are doing our in-service days leading up to next week when the kids return. Part of the first day of this is meeting the new teachers, hearing their stories and telling them ours. One of the new teachers was telling the story about how she got her job. Basically, a series of very unlikely events led to her meeting the superintendent of our district and he encouraged her to apply for the job and she ultimately got it.

She then was telling us she had several potential career paths in front of her and she was having trouble deciding which way she should go and before that fateful meeting she had asked God to open whatever doors he wanted her to follow and close any others. As it turned out, interviewers for 2 other jobs had left messages on her phone asking her to follow up on their application process, somehow she had missed those calls and didn't see those messages until after she had accepted this job.

I've left out any identifying details so the story has lost most of its impact, but it was quite emotional and impressive the way she told it. I can totally see how a religious person would hear this story and think that it is amazing that God has worked in this woman's life to lead her to where she needs to be. There are 2 problems I can see with this point of view though, one is that it is jumping from a coincidence to God, and the other is that she would have attributed any outcome to God.

One thing that is interesting about probably is that really rare things happen all the time. I've written about this kind of thing before, but basically if you have enough people doing stuff some of those things will look extremely unlikely on their own. Hell, people win the lottery all the time. A powerball ticket has about 1 in 175,000,000 chance of winning, so if you buy a ticket you shouldn't expect to win. But if we know that 200,000,000 people are playing, you shouldn't be surprised if someone wins.

So what about this woman? How unlikely was this meeting really? It certain seems like a bit of a long shot. But what about from the perspective of the superintendent? He's a pretty outgoing guy, I bet he talks to people out in public quite often when he is out and about. He was also aware of the unfilled position and it was on his mind, it doesn't seem too unlikely that he would bring it up in a conversation. If he hadn't met her he could very well have run into someone else, or maybe in another week they would have gotten some applications just from it being posted online. From this perspective it doesn't seem too unlikely that he would run into some qualified person and encourage them to apply.

The other thing I was thinking about was that no matter what happened to her, she would have attributed it to God. The fact that he was so impressed with her shows that she's well qualified and would likely have landed another job if she hadn't met the superintendent. She even has some other very promising leads based on those voice mails she told us about. If she hadn't gotten this job she probably would have been telling a different group of people about how she initially missed the call from HR, but God led her to see her missed voicemail messages which ultimately led to her getting that job. It really boils down to one of those situations where God just can't lose no matter what happens in the end.

My Most recent amazon review: Equal Rites (Discworld Book 3) [4 stars]

Giving Credit to God

2015-08-10T01:50:00.000-04:00

James 1:17

My birthday is coming up and I recently got a birthday card from one of my extremely religious relatives. I noticed the verse James 1:17 was in the bottom corner, which said "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above...".

This verse highlights one of those ideas that atheists complain about all the time. The problem is that it takes the good that people do for each other and gives the credit to God. Often you see this with medical interventions, people will get a surgery and then say "thank God the surgery went well". It steals the credit from the people who performed the surgery as well as the entire medical system supporting them. (I'll be using the example of a surgery for the remainder of the post for simplicity, but this applies equally well to many other situations)

But is that how Christians would think about this? I can say that it isn't the case for my religious friends and family. They don't see it as taking credit away from someone else, but rather crediting God as well. They would genuinely thank God for a successful surgery, but they would also of course thank the surgeons and nurses and the myriad of other people who helped them along the way. So what is the harm in that?

In my opinion, the difficulty is that the harm is somewhat subtle. When they thank God, what are they saying exactly? I have heard many times that God is working through the person, but again, what does this mean? I can think of two ways to interpret it, both of which I think are believed by some Christians.

God is literally working through the surgeon, directing their actions in a very hands-on way.
God's presence has influenced the surgeon over their lifetime, perhaps helping them along in subtle ways, helping them get their degree and obtain the training necessary to help you (as well as all of their other patients), even giving them their very morality that caused them to want to help others in the first place.

No one is saying "fuck the doctor, God did it", but if we look at these 2 possibilities, it is hard to not see some of the credit being taken away from the doctor to give it to God. Certainly in the first case, but even in the second, it minimizes the years of work and hardship that the doctor has gone through to get to the place they are today.

Especially as a non-religious person, it is very annoying to see this happen. Our gut reaction can be "hell no, God didn't help me, I worked my ass off to get to where I am with no help from Him!" Sometimes I see atheists respond in this way and Christians are completely taken aback by this response. I think the reason is that for the most part they don't really think about the implications of what they are saying from our perspective. They see the world as God having his hands in everything and helping us out at every turn. They wouldn't take exception to God being credited as helping their work (they would actually probably see it as an honor) so it is hard for them to understand why we wouldn't see it in the same way.

Originally, my next thought was going to be that we should not come out so strongly and alienate Christians, but should instead try to explain our side of things. The problem with this is exactly what I said in the above paragraph, many Christians don't even really think about the implications of what they are saying. Merely pushing back a little bit is often seen as an attack. Couple this with the fact that if they are in a position to be thanking God for something, they are probably going through some difficulty and don't really need our lecture (if we flip the situation we certainly wouldn't want them preaching at us).

So what do we do instead? I have a few ideas, first, make sure that in addition to thanking God, they explicitly thank the doctors as well. With my family, I think for the most part they would do this on their own, but they would also think that by thanking God the doctor's thank you is implied and it might get overlooked. Secondly, when these types of things come up in the media, when somebody on the news is in this situation and thanks God, that is the time for us to have the conversation. When no one in the conversation is actually personally involved, then at least with some distance hopefully some of the emotion will be left out of it and they will be able to see our point of view.

Noah's Ark Revisited

2015-08-02T23:54:00.000-04:00

Edward Hicks
Wikimedia Commons

I have a toddler, which means that for the last ~~year and a half~~ two years (wow, this has been in my drafts for that long?) I have seen a lot of kids toys and books. One thing that has really stuck me is that Noah's ark shows up a lot. I always find this striking as, by my reading, the Noah's ark story is really horrible. God decides to murder almost every person and animal on the planet, and the person he decides to save almost instantly shows himself to not be that great of a person. It's amazing to me that anyone would want to expose their children to such a story.

But then I started asking myself what I was missing. I look at this story and see a violent, maniacal God attacking his own creation, but clearly a great number of parents see something else. They see something that they value and want to share with their children. I want to find out what they see.

This kind of thing has been scratching at the back of my brain for a while. As I have read through Genesis I see very little of value. Much of it is nonsensical, God is often very violent, and his chosen people seem to be very shady indeed. And yet, this has been people's holy book for thousands of years. What am I missing? What would it take to see this story in a positive light? In an attempt to explore this angle, I have looked around at a few sermons online to see what positive messages they get out of the story, I will start by listing a few of these from their perspective. (I will respond to each point below).

1. Cleansing Evil

As one sermon put it "Mankind had become unbelievably evil... so much so that God was grieved and filled with pain and decided to send a flood to destroy all of mankind".

I can understand this view of things, it is pretty easy to look around the world today and see many evils. There seem to be evil people everywhere and I can certainly imagine a world where things are even worse than they are today. A few references to Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer can easily get us imagining a world full of people we might want to wipe out. Plus, God is doing this to get the world to a place where good can thrive. God is pained to have to go to such extreme measures, but ultimately he is getting rid of the bad to make way for the good.

(This first point is really the big one for this story. The remaining points below are interesting and worth talking about, but honestly, #1 is it. You have to fully accept this point or the story becomes pretty awful.)

2. Noah was Saved

As this sermon puts it, Noah was saved by the grace of God.

3. Noah was Obedient

God asked Noah to build the ark and Noah obeyed. By obeying God good things happen to him. If we also obey God good things should happen to us as well

4. Noah was Faithful

Noah had faith in God, that he would follow through with his word and cleans the world of evil by drowning. He also had faith that God would spare him and his family if he followed his commands

5. Noah was Fearful

Noah obeyed God out of fear. He was afraid of what would happen to him if he did not obey.

My Responses

1. Are the people who drowned in the flood irredeemably evil? To me, this is the crux of the story. If someone is rotten to the core and there is just nothing that can be done to make them a good person, then killing them seems like a reasonable thing to do. If we know that someone has committed a serious crime (say murder), and we also know that no matter what we do they will do it again given the opportunity, then the death penalty seems like a reasonable option.

However, what if they can be redeemed and made to see that what they have been doing is wrong? What if they can be changed in some meaningful way so that they will never commit such evil acts again? In this case, the evil has been cleansed without killing that person, and from the perspective of a loving God this seems like a much better solution. For the "cleansing evil" narrative to hold water, we must believe that every evil person who is going to be drowned in the flood is irredeemably evil. Are there some people in this category? Perhaps. Is everybody on the planet (including children) in this category? That's hard to believe.

When I look out in the world today, I see that most people are good. There are also many people who do bad things, but are really just in a bad situation. I think that for most of those people, if they could get dug out of whatever hole they are in and get a decent support system they would be much less likely to continue doing those bad things (I even saw a "documentary" about this). So in theory, if we really set our minds to it we could help most "bad" people to improve. Of course, there are some people who are rotten to the core, sociopaths and such that we really don't know how to get through to. For this story to make sense, everyone in the world (except Noah and his family) must be in this category. Furthermore, it has to be beyond God's power (not just ours) to improve them.

I just find this outside the realm of possibility and this seems to be the disconnect between most atheists and Christians on this topic. If the planet is full of people who are rotten to the core, who are so far gone that even God himself can't fix them, then it makes sense for him to kill everyone to make way for good people. But if people are not quite that bad, then the flood story is a tale of mass murder on an unimaginable scale. When I was a Christian I took for granted the idea that the world was full of evil, but that was mostly because I hadn't really thought about it. When I started questioning things this was definitely something that bothered me.

2. My first thought when I hear "Noah was saved" is that God is simply saving him from a death caused by God himself. If I almost killed you then stopped at the last second, you wouldn't exactly be giving me high-fives. The fact that God saved Noah from his own wrath does not earn him any brownie points from me.

But then I thought that perhaps the point was that God was saving Noah (and his lineage) from an evil world. If this is what is meant, I suppose I can grant that point. God is making the world a better place for Noah.

3. Obedience is one of those things that comes up in the bible a lot as a virtue. There is certainly a time and a place for it, obedience is really important in some circumstances. But there are also times when it is a bad thing. If someone commands you to do something awful (like murder your children) you shouldn't do it. Although I suppose in this story obedience is fine. If someone tells me they are going to murder everyone around me and they give me a way to avoid their wrath, I would probably do it too.

4. Noah has faith that God would follow through with his plan to murder nearly everyone on the planet and that if he built the ark he would be saved. I suppose that is a demonstration of faith, if Noah hadn't believed God he just wouldn't have done anything and died along with everyone else. Faith worked out for Noah in this story, but in general is it really a virtue?

5. This is one of those things that really confuses me. The whole idea of it being a good thing to be "God fearing". I should probably devote a whole post to this later on, but the idea of being God fearing seem antithetical to a loving God. Why is it a virtue to be fearful of a loving God? It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Work, Parenting, Blogging, and Time Management

2015-07-27T23:39:00.001-04:00

It's been almost a year since I have posted anything, and over a year since I've posted anything of substance. I have been trying to spend as much time as possible with my son (who recently turned 2) and pretty much all of the rest of my time goes to my job. That combined with some horrible times management skills means that pretty much everything else in my life has fallen by the wayside. I've been trying to find ways lately to be better about time management both in work and at home and I'm really hoping to be able to add a little bit more balance to my life.

When it comes to blogging, for the most part I haven't thought about it, but it does sit in the back of my mind and I miss it. I really enjoy fleshing out an idea through the process of writing a blog post. It's still surprises me that some idea which I thought was completely solid and put together is actually very vague and nebulous once I try to put "pen" to "paper". I also really enjoy interacting with commentors and other bloggers.

I very much want to get back into things. I have a few ideas for the blog which I have been slowly forming over the past year or so. Of course I want to get back to the bible posts, although I think I have somewhat of a format change. I started writing a post reflecting on Noah's ark (which I never quite finished) and I really like how parts of it worked. I am planning on going back and finishing that post, and probably integrating parts of the style into the regular bible posts.

I also have some ideas on counter apologetics that I would like to explore. Of course, tons of atheist bloggers have done such posts, and since apologetics don't really seem to change in any interesting ways, we are all just treading the same ground for the most part. What I am mostly interested in is how to organize that information. My ideas on this are nebulous, but once I can really get back into the swing of things I would really like to pursue this and hopefully I can grow it into something useful.

I'd love to set some kind of a schedule, to post once a week or something, but I probably would just immediately fall behind (even this post sat in my drafts for a month). It's probably going to be somewhat erratic, but if I can get my feet under me a little bit at work I really do hope to be able to spend some time on the blog in the near future. If anyone is still watching this blog, I look forward to chatting with you in the near future. And stay tuned for that Noah's ark post, as I recall, it was almost done and just needed a little bit of editing, but it has been since around Christmas since I looked at it, so who knows :)

Busy Summer

2014-08-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those of you who have stuck with me through the last year even though I haven't been posting very often might have noticed that my posts have dropped off even more as of late. Well, it has been a pretty crazy summer. Since my last post we have

Moved across the country (2 and a half day drive with dog and 1 year old baby in tow)
Bought a house
Bought a car
My wife started her job (which was the impetus for the move)
I got a job in our new location

It's been nuts! It's awesome, but we are fucking busy. I just wanted to poke my head out and say that I haven't gone away. I love blogging and I do intend to come back to it when I can. I miss it. When I get things under control I hope to get back to doing at least 1 post a week, hopefully more. Realistically though, I doubt I'm going to get a real post out in the next month or so. I am definitely going to continue with the bible posts, I have another long term project I want to get going when I have time for it (hahaha), and I think my new job will give me some material.

Those of you still following me, thanks for sticking around, I'll have a real post up as soon as I can manage it.

Exodus 14: Moses Parts the Red Sea

2014-06-14T09:39:00.001-04:00

Scripture summary is in black
My comments and questions are in purple and numbered
Christian commentaries and my responses to those are in blue. Unless otherwise stated, these are from Guzik's commentary
(Note: I've changed my format a bit with this post, let me know if you like/dislike the changes)

Today's Podcast

Previously:

The Israelites are enslaved by the Egyptians, so God tells Moses to go rescue them. Moses proves to Pharaoh that God is on his side, but God hardens his heart so he won't let the people free. Then God sends plague after plague upon the Egyptians so Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites go.

Crossing the Red Sea (v. 1-31)

God tells the Israelites to go to a particular spot and set up camp where they will be trapped by the sea. Then God will harden Pharaoh's heart to make him pursue the Israelites. Then God will "get glory over Pharaoh" and the Egyptians will know he is the lord. The king of Egypt was told that the Israelites had fled and his mind and the mind of his people was changed toward the people. They pursued the people of Israel as they had gone out defiantly.

1. Free Will: Once again, God has taken away Pharaoh's free will. He didn't simply make Pharaoh aware of the Israelite's apparent poor tactical position, he hardened his heart.

Even after the horror of the death of the firstborn, the change in Pharaoh's heart was only temporary. He was quick to strike at Israel when he had the chance.

Wow, if Pharaoh was so quick to strike whenever he had the chance, then why did God have to harden his heart?

2. God's Motivation: The reason that God has done this is to "get glory over Pharaoh" and so "the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD". It really does appear that God is doing this just for his own ego, how does him getting glory help his people?

3. Do the Egyptians Know God is Powerful? God does this in part so that the Egyptians will know that God is the LORD. Why is this necessary? God just plagued the shit out of Egypt to convey this message. And the message was apparently received earlier when the people of Egypt insisted that the Israelites leave, have they forgotten the plagues already? It just doesn't make sense.

i. This demonstrates how we are often quick to forget what God has done and what He has shown us. It is easy to quickly move from walking in the spirit to walking in the flesh.

ii. Perhaps Pharaoh thought that the LORD had shot all His arrows and had no more "ammunition" against Egypt. After all, no more died after the plague of the firstborn; but God isn't short on resources. He had plenty of ammunition left.

ii doesn't make much sense to me, if Pharaoh thought that then he wouldn't have let them leave in the first place, right? i though, is exactly the kind of thing I remember hearing from church all the time. Seems like a good way to relate the story to our lives "don't be forgetful, don't fall into your old ways" etc. Seems good for that purpose I suppose, still though, for the story itself it doesn't make a lot of sense. Are you really going to forget so fast with so much death and destruction around you?

4. Pharaoh and the King of Egypt: I was actually a bit confused on whether Pharaoh and the king are the same person. Verse 8 seems to suggest they are the same person. However, in verse 5 seems to suggest that the king is surprised that they Israelites have been set free even though in chapter 12 Pharaoh was the one who let them go in the first place. It's possibly a minor point, but the story doesn't really make sense if they are the same person. I wonder if this is a case of two different stories being merged into one. This would also explain why he has two different titles for no apparent reason.

5. Defiance: Verse 8 says that the people of Israel "were going out defiantly", but that makes no sense as they were told to leave Egypt. In fact, they were pushed out of Egypt so fast they weren't able to finish their bread, which is supposedly the origin of the unleavened bread at passover. Am I missing something here?

6. My Previous Christian Perspective: I often like to think about how I would justify things back when I was a Christian. I'm pretty sure that in this case I would have said that the Egyptians would chase the Israelites at some point in time no matter what God does. Therefore God is only manipulating the timetable of things rather than actually changing Pharaoh's ultimate actions. I'm fairly certain this would have satisfied me back then, but the problem is it is not supported by the text at all. If that's what God was doing why not say it? Instead he says he's doing it to get glory. I suppose it doesn't contradict the text, but if that was really the reason it seems like it should have been stated.When the Egyptians got near to the cornered Israelites they were very afraid and complained to Moses. They even said that they would rather have stayed in Egypt as slaves than to be killed out here. Moses said that God would fight for them and save them out here.

7. Should they be afraid? I've seen atheists complain about the reactions of the Israelite slaves in the past. "They have an all powerful God helping them, why would they be afraid?". And while that might play in a bit here, I can totally understand them being afraid anyway. Imagine yourself in the same situation, even if there is a really powerful being who can save you, are you sure he will? Hell, even if you were convinced that he was going to save you, it would still be scary seeing that army close in on you.

God complains that the people are crying to him. He tells the people to walk forward and for Moses to lift his staff in order to divide the sea so the Israelites can walk on dry ground there. God will then harden the hearts of the Egyptians to ensure that they will follow, then they will know that god is the LORD once he "gets glory" over them.

8. God's Attitude: I don't really understand why God is complaining about these people. He's put them in a very scary position with no apparent way out and they are asking him for help. He seems to be put off by it, like they should have known that Moses could part the sea for them. It kind of reminds me of the stereotypical douchebag IT guy from the 90s.

The children of Israel cried out to the LORD: This was a good thing to do. When we find ourselves in dangerous places with no easy escape, we must cry out to God, because God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1)

This I find interesting, he says that crying out to God was a good thing, and yet it seems to me that God is saying they shouldn't have done it. In verse 15 God says "Why do you cry out to me?" I was thinking perhaps I was reading too much into it, but then Guzik says

Their fear could be understood and their cry to the LORD made sense. Yet their words to Moses show a great lack of faith and loss of confidence in God.

So it's good to cry out to God, but you shouldn't need to if you have faith? I dunno, seems a bit mixed up to me. And one final comment along these lines

The children of Israel were not yet a week out of Egypt and they were already distorting the past, thinking that it was better for them in Egypt than it really was.

This just made me laugh. Yes, they were slaves in Egypt and the conditions were terrible. But they are comparing it to the fact that they think they're about to die.

9. Free Will Again: Seriously, is there any part of this plan where God isn't manipulating the Egyptians to do what he needs them to do?

parting the red sea (Photo credit: amboo who?)

The pillar of cloud moved to be between the Israelites and the Egyptians and the two groups stays separated throughout the night. Moses raised his staff and there was a strong east wind all night that made the sea part like walls so the men could walk on dry land. The Israelites went onto the path and the Egyptians followed. In the morning God looked down from the pillar of cloud and fire and threw the Egyptians into a panic by clogging the chariot wheels so they would be slow. God had Moses hold his staff toward the Egyptians and the water rushed over them, yet the Israelites still were able to walk on dry land, having walls of water on both sides of them. The Israelites saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore, so they feared the LORD because of the great power he used against the Egyptians, and they believed Moses.

10. How Long Did This Take? It's funny, my mental picture of this story has the water turning into walls pretty much instantaneously, yet in the actual story it takes all night. I suppose it's from a smattering of popular culture references that my impression is wrong here.

11. Omniscience? I find it interesting that God was looking down from the pillar of cloud and fire. This appears to be describing a powerful being in a specific physical place rather than an omniscient God.

12. Fear: I find the very concept of being "god fearing" and odd, it certainly seems to fly in the face of an omnibenevolent God

13. Violence: Once again, we see extreme violence from God, he kills tons of Egyptians apparently to prove a point to his people.

An oppressed people are slow to believe they are free while their tyrant still lives. God wanted Israel to know that their oppressors were dead

I guess that is a decent explanation as to why God would go to these extremes. Really seems like a fucked up route to go though.

Verses of Note:

--Fear--

Exodus 14:31 The Israelites fear God, which seems to largely be the point of this story

"Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses."

--Free Will--

Exodus 14:4,8,17 God takes away Pharaoh's free will again

"And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD." And they did so."

"And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly."

"And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them..."

--God's Ego--

Exodus 14:4,18 God's motivation seems to be stroking his ego

"And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD." And they did so."

"And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen."

--Violence--

Exodus 14:27-30 God killed all of the Egyptians in this story (through Moses)

"the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea....and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore"

How Hard is it to Follow My Bible Posts?

2014-06-10T10:56:00.000-04:00

It's really interesting how being away from something for a while can give you a new perspective on it. The last bible post I did was about 3 months ago and I'm currently working on my Exodus 14 post. I went digging through an older post looking for something and I found the style of my bible posts kind of annoying. I do my summary in normal text, my reactions in italicized text, and Christian commentary in blue text. The italicized text doesn't look different enough from the normal text, so at a glance it's not always clear what is what. Further, I don't explain this scheme anywhere on the blog, so a newcomer won't know what the hell I'm doing (this is an easy fix with a quick explanation at the top, but god dammit man).

So I'm thinking the easiest fix will be to replace the italics with another color. I want something that is different enough from the black regular text to be easily identifiable, yet not to bright to be annoying to look at long enough to read the post. Yellows and reds seems to be out, I don't think I like those too much. I thought I would hate orange too, but now that I write it, maybe it's not so bad. There's also that green I used for other things. That looks fine, but like I said I have used it elsewhere. This purple looks alright as well. I dunno though, I kinda suck at colors (just ask my wife). I think I like all of the colorized versions (demonstrated below) better than the old italicized version, I'm just not sure which to go with. Also, if anyone is reading this and is actually good at this type of thing I'd love to hear other suggestions, either of different colors or just something else that I haven't thought of. The easy color options are shown below. Of course, I can use any color I want with a hex value, but doing it that was is much more of a pain in the ass, so I'd rather use one of these unless something else would look much better

Another thought I have is that I've been going back and forth between the story summary and the responses too fast. Sometimes a single line of story then a paragraph of responses. Feels really disjointed. I think a good fix to that will be to do much more summary at a time and then reply to multiple things at once in a reply section.

I have a few examples of the colors I'm toying with below. I think I'm leaning toward the purple, the orange seems a touch jarring to me and I've used the green for other things.

I know a number of you guys are bloggers yourselves and have probably had to think of these types of things before, what do you guys think?

Old style

Pillars of Cloud and Fire (v. 17-22)

When the people left Egypt, God didn't send them via the most direct route (through the land of the Philistines) because they might see war and return to Egypt.

Wait, what!?! They were slaves in Egypt, they would return to that voluntarily because they see war? Do they have to fight in this war if they pass through this land? I looked through other translations, and some indicate that they would have to fight to get through the land. Even still, fighting to get through a country would be different than actually taking a direct part in the war right? Especially with 600,000 men, you would think they can pass through without getting too terrible involved with the fighting.

But that's irrelevant anyway, they were cast out of Egypt so fast they had to take their bread without finishing it, and they didn't have other provisions ready. They wouldn't be allowed to return if they wanted to. It just doesn't make sense.

From Guzik:

It would have been easy for the Israelites to think that the Via Maris was the way to go; it had good, easy roads, the shortest distance, it was a trade route so food and water could be bought. But the dangers of the way were too great, even though they could not see them. The same is true of our walk with God; a way that seems right to us may turn out to be full of danger we can't even think of.

New Style with three color options

It would have been easy for the Israelites to think that the Via Maris was the way to go; it had good, easy roads, the shortest distance, it was a trade route so food and water could be bought. But the dangers of the way were too great, even though they could not see them. The same is true of our walk with God; a way that seems right to us may turn out to be full of danger we can't even think of.

This is an interesting way to use this passage as a connection to our lives I suppose. I remember hearing this kind of thing in church all the time. It still doesn't solve the problem of the inherent ridiculousness of the passage itself. Even Guzik points out that if they go that way the people would see war and might return to Egypt. That makes no sense.

Pillars of Cloud and Fire (v. 17-22)

When the people left Egypt, God didn't send them via the most direct route (through the land of the Philistines) because they might see war and return to Egypt.

Wait, what!?! They were slaves in Egypt, they would return to that voluntarily because they see war? Do they have to fight in this war if they pass through this land? I looked through other translations, and some indicate that they would have to fight to get through the land. Even still, fighting to get through a country would be different than actually taking a direct part in the war right? Especially with 600,000 men, you would think they can pass through without getting too terrible involved with the fighting.

But that's irrelevant anyway, they were cast out of Egypt so fast they had to take their bread without finishing it, and they didn't have other provisions ready. They wouldn't be allowed to return if they wanted to. It just doesn't make sense.

From Guzik:

It would have been easy for the Israelites to think that the Via Maris was the way to go; it had good, easy roads, the shortest distance, it was a trade route so food and water could be bought. But the dangers of the way were too great, even though they could not see them. The same is true of our walk with God; a way that seems right to us may turn out to be full of danger we can't even think of.

Prison, Hell, and Child Abuse

2014-06-03T10:37:00.000-04:00

(Photo credit: Chris.Gray)

Today's Podcast

Prison is a scary place and no parent wants their child to end up there. As part of teaching your children about the world, it is a good idea to tell them about prison and the kinds of things that people can do to end up there. If you think your children are particularly at risk for going to prison, you might spend a fair amount of time warning your kids about the kinds of activities that land them there. If you see them engaging in dangerous behavior, a prudent course of action would be to warn them against those behaviors.

However, suppose you obsess about the possibility of your kids going to prison and talk about it all the time. Perhaps even with the intention of scaring them to keep them safe. Your children could easily suffer some psychological issues from this and we might want to call this child abuse.

Now, suppose we hear about a parent who is teaching their child about prison, do we assume that the action is child abuse? I would argue that such an assumption would be irresponsible of us. Sure, it is possible that the parent could be obsessing about prison and causing their child to live in a world of fear. But it is also possible that they are teaching their children about prison in a reasonable way.

For my purposes, prison is just an analogy for hell. The point here is that I "recently" (damn, more than a month ago) wrote about my dislike of the common atheist meme that indoctrination is child abuse. A very brief summary of my argument was that since the Christians truly believe that hell is real we shouldn't call it abuse when they tell their children about it. In the comments, Cephus pointed out that some NAMBLA members really believe that having sex with young boys is good for the boys, by my logic we couldn't call this abuse either*. Clearly with this example at hand it is clear my logic was flawed. The beliefs of a person committing an act does not affect whether or not their action is abuse.

So I thought back about what had been annoying me in the first place that motivated me to write that post. What I don't like is the wholesale statement that indoctrination is child abuse. Teaching your children your religion does not necessarily constitute child abuse, it depends on how you do it. Replace "prison" with "hell" in my first 3 paragraphs and we can see an example of this. Teaching your children about hell can be very damaging psychologically, but it doesn't have to be. If it is mentioned briefly and never emphasized it probably won't cause any issues (my wife grew up in this type of environment).

In my first post I focused on the wrong detail. Whether the parents believe in hell or not is irrelevant. If they teach their kids about hell in an abusive way then it is abuse. If they teach their kids about hell in a responsible way it is not. Whether or not hell is a real place is irrelevant to the discussion (although it does add a dimension of disgust for atheists to think the kids are being subjected to psychological torture for nothing).

So is indoctrination child abuse? I think the only reasonable answer is "sometimes". Certainly some denominations are worse than others. I would say that fundamentalists fit this category more often than other churches. But even that is not universal. If you want to talk about religion as child abuse, I think the only reasonable thing to do is focus on a particular behavior and identify why you see it as abusive. This could spark an interesting discussion, who knows, you might even convince someone of your point of view. But making the broad statement that all religion is child abuse will just turn off any religious people who are listening.

(*note: I am in no way saying that the actions of NAMBLA members are equivalent to teaching your child about hell. In fact, the whole point is that they are significantly different, and yet my logic applied to both indicating that the logic is flawed)

Indoctrination and Child Abuse

2014-04-19T11:08:00.001-04:00

Today's Podcast

It is not terribly uncommon to see atheists make the claim that raising someone with religion is tantamount to child abuse. Recently (say, over the past year or so) this has really irked me when I hear it. I wish atheists would stop using the argument as it seems quite hyperbolic to me. Statements like this have huge potential to alienate exactly the types of Christians that I would like to engage with. On the other hand, I have to admit that when I was going through the early stages of my atheism this type of statement resonated with me big time. In this post I am going to explore these two conflicting thoughts on this common statement.

Why does this stuff resonate so well with many atheists?

I first heard the "religion is child abuse" meme when I was new to atheism. At the time I was very angry at religion, I see it as responsible for a lot of the pain I experienced as a child. The fear of hell and thought-crimes were the biggest offenders, but there were a great many things about the religion that affected my childhood in a negative way. I was terrified of hell a lot during my childhood, there were plenty of nights where I was unable to sleep as I had these fears running through my head. I was afraid to try new things unless I was certain it was acceptable from the church's perspective. I was afraid to ask questions as the answers might lead me to losing my faith. Being mired in fear is a really shitty way to grow up.

The fear was instilled so deeply that there was even a couple of years when I didn't believe in any of it anymore and yet I was still afraid of hell. I definitely wasn't a Christian and I was pretty sure I didn't believe in God anymore, and yet I just assumed this meant I was going to hell. I had some pretty serious struggles with depression during this time. I have heard similar things from quite a few atheists, it really shows how strong indoctrination can be. Many atheists say that the reason this kind of fear is instilled in people is so the church can keep members, although I would guess that the causation is the other way around, the church still exists because it instills this kind of fear but they don't subject people to fear for that reason.

Source

But details aside, the point is that I look back at my childhood and I see that the indoctrination I experienced as a child definitely caused me years of unnecessary anguish. In this state I heard people say that religion is child abuse and it really resonated. Furthermore, pictures like this will pop up from time to time and I find them creepy as hell. I feel really sorry for those kids, it seems to me that they will either be Christians for life or they will experience the kind of pain I did when they leave the church. I really wish there was something I could do to make that not happen.

But is it appropriate to call this child abuse?

What makes something abuse? Is it simply that it causes someone distress? Imagine my son is playing in our front yard and I scream at him, which makes him stop what he's doing, sit down, and cry. If I'm doing this just to fuck with him I'm a horrible father and we might want to call it abuse (especially if it is a regular occurrence). If I just stopped him from running in front of a car then perhaps I just saved his life.

So where does indoctrination fall? Let's focus on the doctrine of hell for a moment, is it abuse or not? I think many atheists see it as causing pain for no good reason. Hell doesn't exist and yet they were tormented for years because of the thought of going there after they die. Being tortured for eternity is terrifying, and the made up threat is designed to keep them in line. From this perspective it definitely feels like abuse.

But what if hell were real? Whether or not it scares them is beside the point, you must warn your children about hell and in so doing help them avoid it. If hell were real it would be your duty to tell your children about it, a little fear is a small price to pay compared to an eternity of torture. If my son was running in front of a moving car and I sat back and did nothing I would be a negligent father, if hell were real and I said nothing the same logic would apply.

So what is the real situation? Does hell exist and the Christian parents are doing their due diligence by telling their children about it, or is hell made up nonsense and they are causing their children undue pain? This is the disconnect, Christians think we are in the first situation and atheists think we are in the second. Many atheists see the unnecessary pain and call it child abuse, but the Christian parents think they are saving their children's souls. Even if we are right, I think child abuse is an unfair charge.

Return to my analogy with my son running out in front of a car. Suppose that after I scare him I realize that the car was parked. He was never in any danger, it turns out I scared him for no good reason. Does this make me a bad father? Does it make my actions child abuse? Hell no! I should probably pay more attention to my surroundings and those of my son, but an abuser I am not.

The Christians see a car aimed at their children and they are trying to keep them from getting run over. It is up to us to convince them that the car is parked. We need to work to convince them that hell is not real. We should tell them that we think they are wrong and more importantly tell them why. But we should not call them monsters for doing what logically makes sense based on the beliefs that they hold. All that does is make us look like dicks and gives them a reason to dismiss us.

**edit 27 April 2014** I have been reconsidering my thoughts on this topic. I am still working through some of and I am planning on writing another post on the topic soon (probably in a couple weeks, this week and next weekend will be very busy for me). If you have anything to add please throw a comment in. I'd love to hear more perspectives on this.

2nd edit: I finally wrote a follow up post

Getting Baptized Today

2014-04-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sure my regular readers have noticed my lack of posts this past year. As I have mentioned quite a few times, having a baby has kept me quite busy and blogging always winds up pretty low on the list of things to do. But in addition to this, I have been on an extraordinary spiritual journey that is culminating today. I'm getting baptized!

An evangelical Protestant Baptism by submersion in a river (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know this might seem crazy, but trust me, having a child changes your perspective on everything. It's one thing to risk my soul ending up in an eternal state of torment and torture, but how can I risk my son's? What if he winds up in hell and it's my fault? I'll feel pretty bad then! I just couldn't let that happen.

burn in hell (Photo credit: tacit requiem (joanneQEscober ))

But it's not just wishful thinking, or fire insurance, I have very good reasons for this. The reasons have been there all along, somewhere deep down in my soul I knew it, I just knew, but some part of me was holding back. My atheists readers know this feeling, God is real, you know it, you just don't want it to be true and you suppress it. But God has single-handedly reached into my heart and taken this block away. I can now really see the truth (which again, on some level I saw it all the time). God is real, and he loves me, and all he wants in return is for me to acknowledge this love so he won't be forced to let me be tortured for all eternity.

So what are these reasons? How do I know for certain that God is real? It's such and easy question that I could go on and on for days about it. I have so many good answers that it's hard to even know where to start. In fact, putting it in writing doesn't seem to be the right medium as it really downplays the magnitude of what I am saying. I have decided that I will instead summarize my thoughts in a youtube video. Please go watch this video and you will be convinced! It's unimaginable that someone could see this amazing evidence and not become a Christian. If you are an atheist and you are afraid of changing your position, then by all means avoid my video, but if you have the slightest bit of courage go have a look.

Exodus 13: A Pillar of Fire? Cool!

2014-03-08T00:02:00.003-05:00

today's podcast

Previously:

After a swath of plagues from God, the Egyptians finally kicked the Israelites out of Egypt.

Consecration of the Firstborn (v. 1-2)

God says to consecrate the first born (among men and beasts) to him.

I'll be honest, I didn't know what the hell "consecrate" means. I had to look it up. Apparently it is just declaring something sacred. So in this case we are saying the firstborn is the most sacred and they belong to God, or they are to be used for a holy purpose...or something like that I guess. We saw this before with Esau and Jacob, it appears that the social convention was that the older one was preferred, but in Genesis 25 God demonstrated a willingness to go against the convention and favor the younger at times. That appears to be over now, God wants to consecrate the firstborn which seems to say that the preference to the younger won't happen again. (BTW, if anyone thinks I'm way off base here let me know, I am sorta shooting from the hip on this one).

From Guzik:

Consecrate to Me: The idea is that the firstborn was to be set apart to God, whether of man or beast - the firstborn belonged to God.

I still don't really understand what that means. So the firstborn son "belongs to God", does that mean he has work for the church? or serve the spiritual leaders? Or what? Perhaps this is obvious and I'm just being thick, but I really don't understand what is being said here.

Also, I don't understand the preferential treatment for the firstborn at all. Sure, it is understandable that the first kid would be seen differently from any subsequent children (especially if the first kid was a medical marvel), the first is always going to be different and I could imagine the average parent would treat them a bit differently. But why cement that with a declaration from God? Shouldn't the ideal be to treat all of your children equally? To put everyone on equal footing? I assume the answer to that will typically be that it was a different time back then, but if that is the answer then why is it a good idea to use this book as a guide for how to live our lives in the modern world?

The Feast of the Unleavened Bread (v. 3-16)

They get instructions about not eating leaven for a week every year.

Didn't we just cover that material last chapter?

All of the firstborn will be for God, all firstborn male animals will be sacrificed to God and all firstborn male children must be redeemed.

I'm not 100% sure what it means to say the firstborn sons must be redeemed, but verse 13 says that firstborn donkeys either need to be redeemed with a lamb or have their necks broken. Presumably the redemption of the donkey is sacrificing the lamb. So my guess is when it comes to firstborn children being redeemed, there is also a sacrifice of an animal involved.

From Guzik:

But every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb … And all the firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem: If the firstborn was unacceptable to sacrifice (an unclean animal or a human) a substitute was offered to redeem the firstborn from God. If the firstborn was an animal the substitute was a clean animal. If the firstborn was a human, the substitute was money.

So you are supposed to sacrifice the donkey, but you can use a lamb instead. You are supposed to sacrifice the first child, but you can pay money instead? I still find myself confused. What exactly are they being redeemed from? Why does only the firstborn need redemption? Who gets the money?

Pillars of Cloud and Fire (v. 17-22)

When the people left Egypt, God didn't send them via the most direct route (through the land of the Philistines) because they might see war and return to Egypt.

Wait, what!?! They were slaves in Egypt, they would return to that voluntarily because they see war? Do they have to fight in this war if they pass through this land? I looked through other translations, and some indicate that they would have to fight to get through the land. Even still, fighting to get through a country would be different than actually taking a direct part in the war right? Especially with 600,000 men, you would think they can pass through without getting too terrible involved with the fighting.

But that's irrelevant anyway, they were cast out of Egypt so fast they had to take their bread without finishing it, and they didn't have other provisions ready. They wouldn't be allowed to return if they wanted to. It just doesn't make sense.

From Guzik:

It would have been easy for the Israelites to think that the Via Maris was the way to go; it had good, easy roads, the shortest distance, it was a trade route so food and water could be bought. But the dangers of the way were too great, even though they could not see them. The same is true of our walk with God; a way that seems right to us may turn out to be full of danger we can't even think of.

English: Lag BaOmer bonfire
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

God led the way in the form of a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night so they could travel day and night.

That's kinda cool I guess.

One final thing from Guzik:

He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people: We often think that such miraculous assurance would make us never doubt the LORD again, but Israel certainly did - and so would we

This also reminds me of things I would hear in church all the time. They like to make these bold declarations about what everyone would do in the same situation. The huge number of people around today who don't doubt God with nowhere near this kind of evidence would seem to blow a hole in this idea. This kind of thing drives me crazy, and seems to me that it is just an attempt to explain away the illogical reaction that the Israelites will have later on.

Moral of the Story:

Trust in God, he can see dangers that we can't.

This is right from Guzik's commentary up above, furthermore, it is something I remember hearing in church and that I hear from Christians all the time. Trusting in God and letting him guide your life is a pretty common thread in a lot of Christianity as far as I can see. And honestly, it seems like it works pretty well for a lot of people, the question is how it works.

If you ask them, they would probably say that they pray and God tells them what they should do. In my opinion, they hear messages in church that generally focus on being a good person, helping their fellow man and such. They know what being a good person generally entails, and they apply those qualities to their God. Then when they do something that doesn't live up to that ideal, they think of it as God being disappointed in them or something, and use that as motivation to stop doing the bad thing. Not too different from what an atheist does, except we would just say it is our conscience or something.

Verses of Note:

--Short Memory--

Exodus 13:17 They might return to Egypt? Really?

"When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, "Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt."

A Children's Book About Evolution

2014-03-02T22:32:00.000-05:00

I happened to stumble upon Great Adaptations - a children's book about evolution on kickstarter and I thought it might be the kind of thing my readers would enjoy. I'm looking forward to teaching my son about all of the science stuff that I love, and this is exactly the kind of thing that will help me make it fun. It of course also reminded me of The Magic of Reality, which I am also looking forward to reading to my son (once he's moved beyond board books).

In addition to letting you guys know about this super cool upcoming book, I would like to ask you guys if you know of other books along these same lines. Please add any other suggestions to the comments and I'll edit the post.

(Also, I want to let you guys know that I have my Exodus 13 post written, I just need to record the podcast for it, but I'm sick right now and my voice is ruined. Hopefully I will be able to get it done within the week)

Edit: Additional suggestions from the comments

Steve pointed us toward a slate article which suggests Bone by Bone, Why Don't Your Eyelashes Grow?: Curious Questions Kids Ask About the Human Body, and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

I'm looking forward to getting all of these books, please keep the suggestions coming :)

Jesus Came to Fulfill the Law

2014-02-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

Shield of Faith
(Photo credit: crunklygill)

As my longtime readers know, I have been reading the Old Testament (very slowly) for the last year and have been surprised with how terrible much of it seems. I have brought many of these points up in various places, and one of the most common defenses I hear is from Matthew 5:17, that Jesus came to fulfill the law and therefore the Old Testament doesn't apply. Most of the time, it seems that Christians I talk to use this verse as a shield against difficult passages from the Old Testament, they simply want to be able to ignore what is inconvenient. Often I will then get into a conversation about what fulfilling the law really means (I honestly am not sure) and why God would give a law that would only be valid for some people and not for others (certainly seems to contradict objective morality which many Christians assert is very important). But ultimately, these arguments spin out and feel very unproductive.

So in search of another angle of attack, I decided to think about what would happen if we just grant my other objections to the Christians and see what happens. Let's assume for the moment that it is reasonable for God to give different people different sets of laws. Let's further assume that Jesus fulfilling the law means that the law doesn't apply to us anymore. What does this really get them? It certainly allows them to disregard the rules God laid down for us such as kosher laws and the fact that we can't wear mixed fabrics or get tattoos. If you really want to push it, it can even invalidate the rules about it being okay to have slaves. But even taken to this extreme, it doesn't whitewash everything. Anything that God himself does must be explained in other ways. Jesus fulfilling the law doesn't explain why God had to murder all of the firstborn in the tenth plague, why he had to murder nearly everyone in the world in the flood, why he made the loved wife barren and the hated wife pregnant, or why a loving God could do pretty much any of the other horrible things he does in the Old Testament.

Next time this topic comes up about a horrible thing that God himself has done in the old testament, instead of arguing what fulfilling the law means, I will point out that this is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It's simply a diversionary tactic, because God isn't laying down a law, he is just being a monster. Jesus fulfilling the law can't apply to something that isn't a law.

Why Is Our Society So Hard On Moms?

2014-02-04T23:25:00.000-05:00

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As my regular readers know, my wife and I had our first child last summer. The experience of raising a baby has been very eye opening in a lot of ways, I thought I was generally prepared, I was largely mistaken. I had prepared myself mentally for the lack of sleep and for the huge amount of time I would need to devote to my son. My expectations weren't even close. It's not like I thought it would be easy, but I wasn't expecting the whole thing to be so relentless, you never get a break to recharge your batteries. I've dealt with lack of sleep a lot (insomnia), I've done some things that have taken over my life for a while (dissertation). But I've always been able to take a Saturday to relax, or take a nap, or whatever. Not so easy to do that now.

My wife has the real career and I work from home and take care of our son, so my insights into raising children are more analogous to what is typically motherhood rather than fatherhood. Raising children is a ton of work, and I have recently been thinking about how motherhood gets very little respect from our society in general. A moment from an old Simpsons episode popped into my head the other day, the kids were supposed go with their parents to work (so Principal Skinner could go on vacation early) and the note sent home specifically said that being a mom isn't work, which is why you don't get paid for it. I know it's just a cheap joke, but it really does seem to be a fairly typical attitude in this country. The men go to work and earn the money. They are the bread winners, they are doing what matters. The women are just at home raising the children and keeping the household together, or whatever. They are probably just spending half the day on their asses watching TV. Maybe it is just because I grew up in a fairly fundamentalist environment, but this wasn't simply a joke, it did seem to be the general attitude I grew up around, and to a lesser extend that I still see.

Another example that came to mind recently is the whole idea of the welfare mom. My dad listened to Rush Limbaugh a lot when I was growing up and I recall hearing these welfare moms completely vilified. "They are just having kid after kid to get their check from the government". Granted, this is a fairly extreme view from an extreme source. And yet, for the idea to land at all in anyone's mind, people already have to believe that raising kids is easy. The whole point is that they are deadbeats, it makes no sense that they are doing something this difficult just to get some money from the government. If my entire motivation was to get a check in the mail, I would never have another kid, it makes no sense. It's way too much work. Seriously, how much money would it take for it to be worth it for that alone?

This post is a bit rambly, I'm mostly just working out some thoughts that have been accumulating in my brain for the last little bit. If I do have a point of some sort it is this, I have a new appreciation for mothers, especially single mothers. I honestly have no idea how they do it. My wife and I are working together and we are both run super ragged.

Well Said [Skepticism, Prayer, Microbiome]

2014-01-28T11:25:00.002-05:00

Even though I don't have much time to write, I can find time to listen to podcasts and watch a few youtube videos. Here's some stuff I've liked recently.

The first one is from Steve Shives. I've really been enjoying his channel lately, in particular his "an atheist reads..." series. He recently started a new series reading The Reason for God, he started off (at about 4 minutes) with a comment about the book's subtitle "Belief in an age of skepticism".

This next one is from a podcast I have found pretty recently that I have been enjoying quite a bit, the imaginary friends show. In this episode (at about 9:30), they were talking about people praying for victims of natural disasters.

This last one is from ask an atheist in their "moment of science" segment (at about 46 minutes into the show). They were talking about the staggering number of microbes in our digestive system. I've recently been fascinated by microbiomes and this fact really jumped out at me. So cool!

background picture from wikimedia commons

Exodus 12: God Slaughters the Firstborn in Egypt

2014-01-20T23:18:00.001-05:00

Today's podcast

Previously:

God has sent a bunch of plagues to Egypt to try to get the Pharaoh to let his people go. Last chapter he warned of the final plague, the death of all the firstborn in Egypt.

The Passover (v. 1-28)

God declared the current month to be the beginning of the year. Then he said that on the tenth day of the month, every house (or if a house is small they can combine with a neighbor) shall take a year old male lamb without blemish. Wait until the 14th of the month and everyone will kill their lamb at twilight.

The specificity of the request for the sacrifice caught my attention. In fact, the whole idea of God wanting sacrifice seems odd. Perhaps that's just because we don't do sacrifices any more, but it just seems so strange.

From Guzik:

In this way, the lamb became part of the family. By the time it was sacrificed on the fourteenth it was cherished and mourned; God wanted the sacrifice of something precious.

I suppose some people would become fond of their lamb, but how attached are you really going to get to an animal that you know is being sacrificed in four days?

Take some of the blood from the sacrifice and put it on your door. Eat the meat with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Roast the meat, don't boil it or eat it raw, if any meat is uneaten burn it.

Again, the specificity seems strange to me.

From Guzik:

Structural lintel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the blood was applied to the top and each side of the doorway, this blood dripped down, forming a figure of a cross in the doorway.

Wait what? How could it form a cross? Perhaps I'm picturing this wrong. So I went back and looked at verse 7 which says

take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses

I had to look up what a lintel is, but it is basically just the top of the door. Put blood on that and the doorposts and you get an arch, not a cross. It's amazing to me how desperate some Christians are to insert Jesus into the old testament.

google image search for passover blood

I then did a google image search for "passover blood". Most are what I was expecting, but one picture near the bottom right looks like a cross. Are they supposed to put the blood on the door as well? I had to go back and reread the text.

7 "Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it

Doesn't say anything about the door. I suppose they aren't forbidden from putting it on the door, so if they do you get a cross. But it definitely isn't inevitable as the rest of the images reveal.

And more from Guzik:

As our Passover sacrifice, Jesus had to come into direct contact with the "fire" of the Father's judgment on our behalf, and the bitterness of the cross is reflected in the bitter herbs.

Wow, again, inserting Jesus into the old testament. A few quick google searches found better answers. This site explains that the fire is symbol of what was happening with the exodus. If you cook with fire you separate ingredients, if you boil the meat will take on aspects of the water (such as spices I suppose). This site explains that he bitterness reminds us of the bitterness of the slavery the Israelites are escaping from. Honestly, I find the explanation from Guzik completely ridiculous, and I imagine a Jew would find it downright offensive. In fact, I showed this to my wife (who is Jewish) and she made a pretty funny "what the fuck!" face.

One more thing from Guzik here:

For the first Passover, the unleavened bread was a practical necessity - they left Egypt in such a hurry there was no time to allow for the dough to rise.

That just makes no sense (although I looked around at other sites and it seems to be the common explanation). For one thing, they were told ahead of time to eat unleavened bread. It's not like they were cooking it normally and they had to leave unexpectedly or something. If timing was the issue they could have just started making it earlier.

Leaven was also a picture of sin and corruption, because of the way a little leaven influences a whole lump of dough, and also because of the way leaven "puffs up" the lump - even as pride and sin makes us "puffed up."

That, on the other hand, is actually some decent symbolism. I could believe that this is really the reason for the unleavened bread.

God will pass through the land of Egypt and kill all of the firstborn, except the blood will be a sign for him to skip your house.

Why exactly does God need the blood on the doors to know which houses to skip? It's almost like he's not all knowing. I suppose an answer I would have given to this when I was a Christian is that God knew who was going to put the blood on their door ahead of time, and so he is still all knowing, but there is value in having them actually do it. It's not too dissimilar from God calling out to Adam and Eve to find out where they are in the garden after they ate the fruit. It seems much more likely to me that the God written about here wasn't supposed to be all knowing, but I also know that this explanation would have satisfied me as a Christian.

English: A depiction of the Matza.
עברית: תיאור של מצה.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Keep this day as a memorial throughout generations. For 7 days don't eat leavened bread, remove it from your house on the first day, for if anyone eats leavened bread during that time, they will be cut off from Israel.

God damn that is harsh.

Have a holy assembly on the first and seventh days, no work shall be done on those days except to prepare food, but only what people need to eat.

No leftovers?

Then they repeat the instructions 3 times. Wow, God really doesn't want people to eat leaven, got it.

Then Moses calls over the elders and repeats the instructions again. Why the repetition?

The Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn (v. 29-32)

As promised, God kills all of the firstborn. From the Pharaoh to the prisoners, every house has someone dead. Even the livestock have their firstborn killed.

I really don't understand why there needs to be so much death. It works in the story, but is there really no other way? I suggested in the last chapter that as a Christian I would have probably accepted a "no half measures" narrative to explain this. But damn, it's hard to believe an all powerful God can't find a better solution.

Interesting note from Guzik:

This plague was directed against two significant Egyptian gods. First, Osiris was the Egyptian god thought to be the giver of life. Second, against the supposed deity of Pharaoh himself, because his own household was touched

As before, it seems that this is really a pissing match between various gods.

An inscription was found in a shrine connected with the great Sphinx that records a solemn promise from the Egyptian gods vowing that Thutmose IV would succeed his father Amenhotep II - whom many believe to be the pharaoh of the Exodus. Why did they make such a unique, emphatic promise from the gods that something so natural would happen - the eldest son take his father's place as Pharaoh? Undoubtedly, because Thutmose IV was not his father's firstborn son, and the firstborn was struck dead at the first Passover. Therefore, they believed that the second born son needed special protection from the gods and the inscription seeks to provide that.

I'm no historian and have no idea how to verify any of these claims, but it is interesting nonetheless.

In dealing with Pharaoh, God first had to inform his mind, and then break his will. Pharaoh's problem wasn't that there was insufficient intellectual evidence; his heart had to be broken and made soft towards God.

Wait, he needed to have his heart made soft toward God? Why did he harden it first then? Is the argument that it had to be hardened first in order to break it? Like, it was breaking a little bit, so God hardened it so that he could really break it? I suppose there is some logic to that, but damn.

Pharaoh calls Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and tells them to gather up all of their people, and their flocks and herds, and be gone to serve God.

Way back at the beginning of all of this, Moses and Aaron weren't asking for the slaves to be free, just to be able to go out into the wilderness to worship God. It's not entirely clear to me whether Pharaoh is telling them to go forever, and be free, or just telling them to go worship God and then come back.

Pharaoh also asks Moses and Aaron for a blessing.

This seems beyond strange to me. He's asking for a blessing from the person whose God has just decimated his country. Is this perhaps a way of asking if God will knock it off now that he's finally releasing the Israelites?

The Exodus (v. 33-42)

The people of Egypt wanted the Israelites to leave urgently, so they had to leave before their dough was leavened.

Moses had told the Israelites to ask the Egyptians for silver and gold, and God gave them favor so the Egyptians would comply. "Thus they plundered the Egyptians".

Whoa! They plundered them? When this was brought up before I wondered what favor meant and I accepted the idea that they were receiving payment for centuries of slavery, and that they were probably taking money from wealthy people who had profited off of their labor. That still might be true, but I don't like the idea of them plundering. I thought it might be worth it to look at some alternate translations, I see "they robbed the Egyptians", "they took away all their goods from the Egyptians", "they stripped the Egyptians". Seems excessive. I suppose the question remains of who they are taking this money from, if it is the people who directly benefited from their enslavement maybe it's okay. If it is just random Egyptians (which this verse seems to imply to me) then it doesn't seem like justice at all.

600,000 men (plus women and children) journeyed from Rameses to Succoth with their livestock. They baked unleavened cakes, because they were rushed out of Egypt with unfinished dough and they hadn't prepared provisions.

I hadn't really thought about this before, but the whole point of the final plague was to do just this right? To make the Egyptians want the Israelites the hell out of their country. Why didn't god just tell his people to be ready to go. "Hey guys, in addition to putting blood on your doors so that I don't kill your firstborn, have your bags packed". [Later addition: Actually, a second reading reveals that he did: v.11 "In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste." Shouldn't this include having provisions packed for the journey?]

The text says that the 600,000 men were "a mixed multitude". I didn't know what that meant, but Guzik has some insight:

Not all of the 600,000 were Israelites. Many Egyptians (and perhaps other foreigners) went with them, because the God of Israel demonstrated that He was more powerful that the gods of the Egyptians.

Institution of the Passover (v. 43-51)

Here God sets the rules for the Passover celebration in the future.

No foreigner shall eat of it but your slaves, which have been purchased, can join in if you have circumcised them. However, no hired servants may eat of it.

This is interesting! There is a distinction between slaves that you have purchased and just hired servants. Doesn't this break the defense that slavery in the Old Testament is just indentured servitude? Those people would seem to qualify as hired servants, right?

If a stranger stays with you they can participate if they will agree to a circumcision. Such a stranger is subject to the same laws as you.

I guess the point is supposed to be that by getting circumcised, you are joining the tribe? Were there no other groups at this period in history that practiced circumcision?

In my summary I skipped the rule that the bones of the lamb can't be broken, but Guzik forced me to bring it up with this comment

None of the bones of the Passover lamb were to be broken. This looks forward to Jesus, the ultimate Passover Lamb, who had not one bone broken even in His crucifixion (Psalm 22:17, John 19:31-36).

This sounds pretty crazy to me, and it sounds like they are just trying to cram Jesus into the Old Testament again. I was curious what the real symbolism of the lamb not being allowed to have his bones broken, but all I could find was this same interpretation. I figured the best place to look would be on Jewish sites, but they all just explain that you can't break the bone at the passover seder and point to the verse, I couldn't find an explanation as to the symbolism here. If anyone knows the symbolism or has better googling skills than me, please enlighten me.

Moral of the Story: It's really just the same moral as the last few chapters, follow God's commands or else.

Verses of Note:

--Justice--

Exodus 12:15 Excessive punishment for trivial crimes

"if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel"

--Properties of God--

Exodus 12:23 Why does an all knowing God need blood on the doors to know which houses to skip

"For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you"

--Slavery--

Exodus 12:44-45 A distinction is made between slaves and servants

"but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. 45 No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it."

--Stealing--

Exodus 12:36 With god's help, the Israelites stole from the Egyptians before they left town

"And the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians."

--Violence--

Exodus 12:12 God says he will kill all of the firstborn in Egypt

"For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD."

Exodus 12:29 God follows through on his threat to kill all of the firstborn in Egypt

"At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock."

Well Said [31 December 2013]

2013-12-31T14:43:00.001-05:00

This was from a post on the No Forbidden Questions blog about everyone's favorite apologist, William Lane Craig

This was a comment from Andrew Hall of Laughing in Purgatory on a recent post of mine

And another post about William Lane Craig, this time from The Thinker of Atheism and the City. I find this quote compelling because it applies perfectly to me when I was a Christian.

Even In an Infinite Regress, the Distance Between Any Two Points is Finite

2013-12-24T01:04:00.000-05:00

aleph_0, smallest infinite cardinal
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's Podcast (For a non-bible post? That's new!)

Let's start by considering the set of all positive integers {1,2,3,4,...}. Notice that there are infinitely many numbers in this set, and yet the difference between any pair of numbers is always finite. Even though we have an infinite set, there is no member of that set that is infinitely big, there is no integer of size infinity. Of course if we include negative numbers (and zero) to get all integers {...,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,...} the same holds true. We have a set which limits to negative infinity in one direction and positive infinity in another, and yet every number in the set is some finite distance away from zero. This type of thing is very common when we deal with infinities and it demonstrates that precision and care is very important. Your first instinct when considering this infinite set is that there must be some point in that set which is infinitely far away from zero. However, by looking at it from this perspective, I hope it is easy to see that it's not quite right. (Although what you can say is that for any number N, there is some integer which is more than distance N away from 0)

While arguing with apologists, I will commonly see it very casually mentioned that an infinite regress is impossible. Although the explanation is typically quite sparse, I've luckily had a few good conversations with apologists lately where they have tried to explain themselves more fully on this topic. The first such conversation took place on my blog in a comment from The Rational Zealot

Let’s say the past is represented by negative numbers, zero is the present, and positive numbers are the future. Let’s say you never start counting but have been counting from an infinite past. An infinite amount of time later, you are still counting negative numbers. An infinite amount of time after that, you are still counting negative numbers. An infinite amount of time after that? Still negative numbers. To say otherwise means you haven’t really been counting from negative infinity, but have changed infinity into a number.

So the situation we find ourselves in is an infinite regress. Every moment has a moment before it. If we take the entire timeline at once we have an infinite number of moments. I would argue that there is nothing wrong with this, there is an infinite past, so what? Every moment has an infinite number of moments preceding it, and yet the distance between any two moments is finite. Strange for sure, but there is no contradiction here. Let's look at The Rational Zealot's argument one step at a time.

Let’s say you never start counting but have been counting from an infinite past.

I'm with you so far, we have been counting forever into the past, there was no start.

An infinite amount of time later, you are still counting negative numbers.

Here is where he loses me. An infinite amount of time later from when? It seems that we have assumed a starting point at negative infinity (we'll explore what this means in a moment). He continues

An infinite amount of time later, you are still counting negative numbers. An infinite amount of time after that, you are still counting negative numbers.

I believe this is the key problem to this conversation every time I have it. Every point on the timeline is a finite distance from the current moment. There is no point on the timeline from when I can count for an infinite amount of time and still land on the timeline. Again, every pair of points on the timeline are a finite distance apart. So what does it even mean to count for an infinite amount of time?

Sometimes for convenience we will compactify the space and put a point at infinity. In the case of a line we will probably put a point at negative infinity and another point at positive infinity. These two points are not standard, they are instead a mathematical abstraction. They are special points very different from the mundane numbers on the rest of the timeline. One way to look at this is that starting at negative infinity in the compactified space is the same as saying that you have always been counting without a start in the non-compactified space. Similarly, saying you will end on positive infinity in the compactified space is the same as saying that you will never stop counting in the non-compactified space. It is sometimes nice to translate "I will count forever" into a more manageable form.

If we do allow these points at infinity and we allow ourselves the ability to actually count an infinite number of moments, there are three possibilities as far as I can tell

You start on the timeline and after an infinite number of moments you are at positive infinity
You start at negative infinity and after an infinite number of moments are at positive infinity
You start at negative infinity and after an infinite number of moments are anywhere on the timeline

To say that we count for multiple infinities worth of counting and still are at negative numbers makes no sense.

To say otherwise means you haven’t really been counting from negative infinity, but have changed infinity into a number.

Ultimately, I believe that the mistake that has been made is to assume that this special point at infinity exists, but then treat is as a standard point in some ways. The easiest way to solve this problem is to not allow this point at infinity. Only consider normal points, even though there are an infinite number of points, there is no first point and any pair of points is a finite distance from one another. The complaint evaporates because there is no start, there is no point from which we can count an infinite amount of time and still be in negative numbers.

Humblesmith provided a very similar complaint over on his blog where he discusses an example of an infinite string of dominoes that is falling over. At first I thought the addition of physical objects would make things more complicated (where did the dominoes come from, etc), but if we ignore those problems, having dominoes set up does wind up being instructive. He was talking about various problems with such a setup and we get to his third point

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Third, as we observe this string of dominoes falling over, if it were infinite, we must ask ourselves “how did the falling get to me?” If the line of dominoes were infinitely long, it seems the falling would always be an infinite distance away from me. The atheist might reply, “Well, the ones currently falling over have to be somewhere. It just so happens that it is next to you.” But this misunderstands infinites. If the line were truly infinite, then the falling would always, at all instances, be an infinite distance away from any one point on the line. Pick any domino, and the falling would have been an infinite distance away. Since the falling is happening in sequence, it is impossible to select a domino where the falling is not an infinite distance away. The dominoes are always falling, but never arriving anywhere, which is an absurdity.

This is essentially the same objection, we have an infinite string of dominoes, which have been falling forever, and therefore the falling cannot get to the current position. But we have a similar problem, it seems to me that what is happening is they are trying to put a domino at that "point" at negative infinity, flick it, and say it can never hit any of the other dominoes. But there is no domino at negative infinity, the fact that we have an infinite number of dominoes just means that every domino has one before it. To say that this string has been falling forever simply means that every domino has been hit by the one before it. Let's again, highlight the real misunderstanding here

If the line were truly infinite, then the falling would always, at all instances, be an infinite distance away from any one point on the line.

No, this is incorrect. Every domino is on the line, so if any dominoes are falling then the falling is somewhere on that line. If the falling is an infinite distance away from the domino that I am standing next to, then which domino is falling? Remember, every domino is a finite distance from the one I'm standing next to, if falling is happening it has to be happening to some domino. Either the falling is some finite distance from my domino, or no dominoes are falling and it doesn't really make sense to say that falling is happening at all. Falling can't be happening an infinite distance away because there is no domino at distance infinity from mine.

In both cases here, the key is to ask what is meant when things are happening "at infinity". If we count for an infinite amount of time and are still stuck at negative numbers, then when did we start? If a domino is falling an infinite distance away, where is that domino? The problem here seems to stem from the same counter-intuitive notion that we can have an infinite number of points such that every pair of points is actually a finite distance from one another.

There Is No Cosmic Justice In Christianity

2013-12-12T23:41:00.000-05:00

I was recently reading a Christian blog that was talking about trying to get into the heads of atheists. (An endeavor that I applaud, just as much as we should try to get into the heads of the religious. A better understanding of one another is always a good thing). He opened his post complaining about the lack of cosmic justice in the atheistic worldview.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The idea of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Lenin, and innumerable other evil dictators being morally blameless for their crimes gave me a sense of discomfort.

I agree, it is discomforting to think of those people never being punished for their crimes. There is definitely a part of me that wants justice for the people who commit horrible atrocities. I definitely don't like the idea that people can get away with things Scott free. It would be nice to think that justice is ultimately served, even if it had to be carried on in some afterlife. We don't have any good reason to believe an afterlife exists, so we should use this discomfort to motivate us to make sure justice is served here.

But he does make a valid point, if there are no gods and no afterlife then there is no cosmic justice. But suppose instead that Christianity is true, I would argue that there is no cosmic justice there either. Think about those horrible people in history mentioned above, suppose they are burning in hell. Is this really justice? They have done very bad things, but is any finite crime worthy of being tortured forever? Worse yet, those guys are suffering the same fate as every non-believer that ever lived, no matter how good they were in life. They will be there along with every religious person who subscribes to the wrong religion (according to some Christians, this includes other Christians in the wrong sects). Does that sound like justice? Doesn't to me.

But it gets worse, the problem is, Hitler isn't being punished for murdering millions of innocent people, he's being punished for (supposedly) not accepting Jesus into his heart. So if he were to simply accept Jesus, even in his last breath, he would get eternal paradise. Meanwhile, I'm still going to be doing laps in the lake of fire. This is not justice.

Podcast for Exodus 11

2013-12-11T23:37:00.001-05:00

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of you may have noticed that my recent post on Exodus 11 didn't include a podcast episode along with it. Given my new addition to the family I have been very crunched for time and have had to cut back on a lot of things. Recording the podcast is difficult, as it requires me to not only devote some time to record it, but that time actually has to be contiguous and quiet (unlike the blog which I can do piece by piece and with all kinds of craziness happening behind me). Plus, if I don't do the podcast, I can take that time and put it toward writing the next post, which would be nice as I get these out way slower than I would like. Given that I seem to have relatively few listeners anyway, it seemed like a reasonable thing to stop doing the podcast. I canceled my podbean account and called it done and published my Exodus 11 post.

Then I went to sleep, and I was a lot more bummed about it than I thought I would be. Turns out, I really like doing the podcast. Fuck those reasons I gave before, I'm still doing it. So I reactivated my podbean account and recorded my Exodus 11 episode the next chance I got (three days later). Anyway, here's the episode if you want to listen to it, or of course you can use the rss feed in the sidebar as always to get it in whatever podcast app you prefer. I also updated the original post so the episode looks like it was always there.