Review: The Canonical Gospels

Early last year, I got into a longish conversation with an evangelist. This is unusual, as I generally would regard this as a waste of time. What made him different from most was that he was able to talk about things other than Christianity, and showed some actual curiosity.

I was periodically walking back and forth in the food court to stretch, and every time I passed him he noticed my "Secular Values Voter" button. So eventually he stopped me to ask what this meant, and that led into a discussion about Christianity and various more or less related topics. Nonetheless, he did eventually zero in, before taking his leave, of how he really thought I should read the Gospel, and was sure that if I did so I would be convinced. I'd always figured I'd get around to this sooner or later, in view of the books' historical and cultural significance, but never had. So I told him I would, and within a couple months did so. I took a bunch of notes with a view to writing a review here before sending it to the evangelist, but recently decided to write him off the top of my head before he forgot our encounter (or changed his email address). What I wrote him is below (fittingly in red, since he used the sender name "jesus christ" -- no kidding).

Dear Pete,

After getting caught up on already planned books, I followed your suggestion and read the four canonical Gospels (KJV). That was over a year ago, and I meant to write a thorough review for my blog, but haven't managed to get around to it yet. Rather than delay any further, I decided to just go ahead and write you about my experience.

To aid me in understanding the material, I concurrently read the corresponding chapters of Asimov's Guide to the New Testament. (Since he discusses the books in their traditional order, that's how I read them, even though I knew that Mark is generally regarded as the most "primitive" Gospel and was probably written first.) But even if I hadn't, I think I'm sharp enough that I would have made many of the same observations on my own.

My most striking impression when I was finished was that there was "no there there." It was really anticlimactic. My whole life I'd been hearing that Jesus had this incredible message that I had to read the Gospel to get, yet I could find hardly any message at all. Most of his preachings seem to have taken the form of parables, and most of these were sort of meta-allegories about the importance of the message, without actually telling you what the message is. About the only substantive message I could find was the Golden Rule, and even that -- as I also had already known -- was not original with Jesus. For instance, his older contemporary the Rabbi Hillel had said something quite similar, not to mention sages in other parts of the world.

Although I'd heard previously that there are inconsistencies between the Gospels, I had no first-hand experience with these until I read them at your prompting. The biggest ones are between John and the other, so-called Synoptic Gospels. One concerns where Jesus recruits his first disciples: John puts this by the River Jordan, whereas the earlier books place it in Galilee. Another is his relation to John the Baptist. The Synoptic Gospels have him and Jesus competing for followers, while John says he told his followers to leave him for Jesus.

Most importantly, Asimov illustrates how the discrepancies between the Gospels aren't random, but actually reflect pretty well the theological evolution of Christianity from a Jewish sect -- one whose leader initially denied being divine -- to a Gentile religion holding this same figure to have known he was God from the outset.

I thank you for motivating me to read these books after so many years of procrastination. While doing so hasn't changed my fundamental view of Christianity as a product of human imagination, it certainly has deepened my understanding of it.

Eric

P.S. What prompted me to finally write you was having looked at a web site making the case for Jesus' not having been a historical figure at all. It argues that Christianity was the product of a gradual syncretistic fusion of Judaism, Greek Cynicism and Platonism, and other traditions, which became institutionalized before deciding on a unifying theology, including the idea of an incarnate God. While this is an intriguing idea, I haven't studied sufficiently to have an informed opinion, so for the time being I'll remain agnostic on this question.

Motte, Bailey, and Rape

One of Thom Hartmann's recent "The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly" segments -- in which he seems to be less careful about his facts than elsewhere in his programs -- criticized some statements by Tammy Bruce in a superficial, nearly puerile way. I made the following comment on his website:

With all due respect, Thom, your comment isn't a serious critique of what Bruce said. Suggesting that the public image or status of victimhood is being romanticized isn't at all the same as saying that actually being victimized is "cool." For instance, there's widespread admiration for POWs, especially those like John McCain who were tortured. This is why some politicians have been caught making false claims along these lines. You could call this a romanticization, but it in no way implies that anyone thinks it's cool to be tortured.

I've attended a few Take Back the Night rallies, and I've noticed that typically, after someone gives their personal testimony about being sexually assaulted, they're applauded. Of course participants will say that it's not their victimization that's being applauded, but rather their courage in coming forward to talk about it. Nonetheless, it could be argued that this is a social environment in which people are given an incentive to self-identify as victims, even if the facts may not warrant it.

In fact, at the first TBTN I attended, one of the participants implied a man had drugged her to unconsciousness in order to take her, even though the very fact that he called her about it the next day, as well as what he said in that call, indicated he'd perceived her as conscious and willing, and had expected her to remember the encounter. When I wrote the campus paper about this discrepancy, the reply by a student anti-rape leader consisted of stock rhetoric while ignoring or distorting all the factual points I had made, such as by pretending that my pointing out the difference between blacking out and passing out was somehow equivalent to saying no one ever passes out from drinking. She was too preoccupied with reaffirming a party line to actually read my letter for comprehension. (You may be able to find these letters, along with my rejoinder, in the online archives of the Daily Pennsylvanian on or about 4/9/05.) Similarly, it seems the Rolling Stone reporter was too doctrinally sure about what had happened to the woman she interviewed, to remember the normal journalistic standards about fact-checking.

I must say I noticed a similar two-step in the remarks of your recent NOW guest. I'd heard previously about traumatic memories' being stored differently -- but never from feminist representatives in the context of an actual rape trial. In those circumstances, what you always hear, without any qualification, is "Believe women," "Women don't lie about rape," and cries of outrage any time a defendant is found "not guilty" in spite of the victim's (traumatically unreliable) testimony.

This could be considered an example of what's been called the "motte-and-bailey doctrine" (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/): the strategic equivocation of making a very dubious or totally indefensible argument to those who are sympathetically inclined; then, when criticized for it, saying, "All I mean is [something totally uncontroversial and obvious]"; then going back to the extreme and indefensible claim as soon as the critics go away.

Yesterday I checked out a party at one of the office buildings I visit regularly. I'd seen it announced there as an Open House a couple days before; nonetheless, noticing from the outside how classy it looked, I worried that I might not be admitted since I'm not a tenant. I'd thought of going there before visiting the credit union to make a deposit, but turned away out of feeling intimidated. While making the errand, I realized this was an instance of my principle, "If you're afraid of something for no good reason, that's a very good reason to do it," and that this was an opportunity to give myself an exposure to help me learn not to be controlled by social anxiety. I decided to put myself in something like the "little kid trance" that I discovered several years ago, looking at everything wide-eyed without anticipation, only curiosity. In this way I got myself to walk in. As a further exposure to the possibility of rejection, and preempt any sense that I was "sneaking in," I stopped to ask the security officer, "So, what's all this?" He said it was a Christmas party. He then asked if I work there, and I said "No, I deliver payrolls here." He nodded but said nothing else. So I walked a little further in and looked around. Lots of people were talking, eating, and drinking. Together they were making a lot of noise. I could have served myself food or a drink, but didn't see much point in that by itself. I might have felt differently if I'd seen someone I recognized. I'd have probably at least spent a moment greeting and making small talk with them. But since I didn't notice anyone I knew, hanging around just for some free food and drink didn't seem very interesting. And I had other things I meant to get done before going home. In the last analysis, I felt the most important thing was that I had given myself an exposure to something that was triggering my social anxiety, and showed myself that I could manage it. So after a moment I left.

"Why Does Power Corrupt?" by Eliezer Yudkowsky

This seems like an excellent summary of the question. I'd intuited the general idea but never thought it through so thoroughly. http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/

Quote of the Day

If you are hearing an argument for the first time, and you are only hearing one side of the argument, then indeed you should beware. In a way, no one can really trust the theory of natural selection until after they have listened to creationists for five minutes; and then they know it's solid. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky, What Evidence Filtered Evidence?"

America's Deadliest DA

For those who may have forgotten, that's what many have called former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, now running for Mayor:


http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/16/magazine/the-deadliest-da.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar

Moneyball for Government

The authors of a new book suggest taking an evidence-based approach to deciding on government policy.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/using-numbers-based-approach-end-political-gridlock-moneyball-government/

If consciousness is localized, why does my mind keep wandering?

Quote of the Day

"Weltanschauung Schmeltanschauung!" -- James Morrow, *The Madonna and the Starship*

Scientists are undertaking to cure deadly mitochondrial disease with germ-line engineering. Hopefully, if proven feasible this will be treated as a social good rather than a commodity, so that it doesn't result in speciation between haves and have-nots.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/11/10/360342623/combining-the-dna-of-three-people-raises-ethical-questions

Harvard Study: 70% of Non-Reciprocal Domestic Violence Is Initiated by Women, But Reciprocal Violence Causes More Injuries

This study pertains to young heterosexual couples:

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020

An Interview That Doesn't Deserve to Be Loved

Last night I watched Mike Wallace's 1959 interview of Ayn Rand. It's probably most notorious for the part where Rand says "most people don't deserve to be loved": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ooKsv_SX4Y




The obvious problem on a political level, of course, is that, contrary to her fantasy world, most large private fortunes were not created in any substantial part by the owner's own labor -- either manual or intellectual -- but, rather, by exploiting that of others: workers prevented from accessing the means of production created mostly by past workers, or keeping the full fruit of their labor thereupon, "at the point of a gun" as libertarians like to say -- not thanks to the kind of special government favors she liked to denounce, but through the enforcement of private property itself. I recall that, where in her writings she presents her cartoonish idea of what pre-class society was like, she asserts that the creation of private property in land was the prerequisite of civilization, but conveniently glosses over the question of how this creation occurred. You could call this the "shabby little secret" of her philosophy, to borrow the phrase she used for the state power backing paper legal tender.




On the philosophical level, this interview reminded me of how thoroughly, behind the rhetoric of "reason" and "objectivity," Rand based her doctrine on superstitious premises. For one thing, she repeatedly talks about "free will." I've never even seen an empirical definition of this concept, let alone verification of its reality. Second, there's her assumption that there are objective moral values and objective duties. Since moral statements, unlike physical statements, are assertions of what "should" be rather than of what is, they can have no empirical truth value. So to assert their objective existence as principles, independent of individual human brains, is essentially just a more abstract version of a belief in ghosts.




Given the above statement, you may wonder what my objection is to her saying most people don't deserve to be loved. It's that she's trying to impose her pseudo-objective definitions of "achievement" and "deserts," which simply reflect the bias of her class background, on a species which has evolved the emotion of love for a function that her definition ill-suits. Wallace points out its ridiculousness as applied to infants who haven't achieved anything yet but tend to receive our most unconditional love -- a point she never really answers -- although it was well spoofed in a *Simpsons* episode depicting the "Ayn Rand School for Tots" (http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/A_Streetcar_Named_Marge). The *objective* fact is that we humans have an instinctual urge to help each other that is completely independent of "achievement." This is widely practiced not because of any philosophical doctrine but because it's human nature -- and it's human nature because it's beneficial for our species, and hence has been favored by natural selection. The only reason that, in spite of this, Rand's doctrine enjoys such a large megaphone now is that there's a minority exploiting class with both the means and motive to misdirect people's anger at the institutions this same class dominates -- church and state -- toward further strengthening their own domination over the rest of us.

Nothing Unusual

"False memories are universal, even without prompting or much passage of time. Post-crime eyewitness accounts routinely contradict each other. A poll taken right after JFK's assassination showed that somehow he had picked up an additional 10 million votes."
-- Michael Fumento, author of *Science Under Siege*, *Polluted Science*, and *BioEvolution*, in "Runaway Hysteria," *Skeptical Inquirer* volume 38, issue 5, p. 46.

Regulatory Capture at the Fed

Thom Hartmann had a guest on last night's The Big Picture who laid out some structural impediments to making the Fed independent of the institutions it's supposed to regulate. Of course abolishing capital markets, or at least statizing credit, would render these concerns moot.

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/secret-tapes-show-how-banksters-get

The Most Boring Limerick Ever

Completing a bank deposit originating from Limerick, PA, has inspired me to compose a limerick of my own:




Rothman once made a deposit
Of some funds they had found in their closet
Mellon said, "Keep it coming.
All that cash we'll keep summing.
There's absolutely no need to pause it!"




So unfunny it's funny, wouldn't you say?




By the way, Rothman (in)famously sends funds other places too. They were the largest source of donations to the Romney campaign.

I spent a couple hours taking part in today's March to End Rape Culture by Slutwalk Philly in alliance with other groups. Here's a sign I saw, along with both sides of my own.

One person's sign called the term "friend zone" an "attack" on women who say no. I informed her that the term is not an attack, but simply a factual statement of how one person feels (or doesn't) about another. Wherever I see it, it's made very plain that it's a man's responsibility to try and change how a woman feels about him, if he can; it's not her fault she doesn't feel what she doesn't feel.

Biggest Number Yet for a Lower Number

Here's an assortment of pictures I took at the People's Climate March.

This was with Ben and Jerry's contingent. Words around the base: "If it melts, it's ruined!"

 

To the point:

This one reminded me of a sign in front of the Supreme Court for George W. Bush's Counter-Inaugural. It incorporated an official Mars Society placard in a banner that suggested, "Send Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas to Mars!" apparently with the idea of solving two problems at once. The man holding this sign, a member of a group from Bennington College whose father is a big space enthusiast, was tickled when I recounted this to him. (Technically the slogan might have better been, "Terraform Mars, don't Veneriform Earth," since Venus appears to have suffered the kind of runaway "greenhouse" effect we're trying to prevent here.)

This screen reminded people that this was a global day of action -- 2600 separate actions in 150 countries, as I heard after getting back to the bus.

I liked the sense of humor here. "Cut emissions, or we sleep with the fishes."

This float promoted the campaign for natural history museums to drop donors who promote climate denialism.

Before I had to go back to my bus, I panned as much of the march as I could from where I was standing.

Philly vs. Comcast

Philadelphians rallied today against a Comcast/Time-Warner merger and to preserve net neutrality.

Update on Mental Health First Aid

Good news. The community outreach coordinator responded to my comments and we have a meeting set up for Friday where I can elaborate on my concerns.

Ask Candidates Where They Stand on a Constitutional Convention

Now is the time, as the campaign season starts, to challenge candidates to take a stand on government's ultimate accountability to the people through the Constitutional amendment process. A good case can be made that Congress has been remiss on this point for over a century, but as this may seem like a rather arcane and technical argument, I have not chosen to focus on that aspect for now. I've started by writing Ruth Damsker, a candidate for the PA state legislature who spoke last week at a meeting of Philadelphia's Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club. Copied below is what I wrote.

Dear Ms. Damsker,

I heard you speak at Liberty City's State of the Races meeting. I am pleased that you are running as a supporter of our community.

There is something I like to ask all candidates for the state house or senate. Many people are dissatisfied with the way our government works these days, even if there's no consensus on what the solutions are. People may focus on overturning Citizens United, or Hobby Lobby, or some other Supreme Court decision. They may want to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment, or DC statehood, or to repeal the Second Amendment. The Constitutional process for making amendments one at a time may seem laborious, but there's an alternative, specifically intended for times when most people are dissatisfied even though they're not sure yet what the answers are.

One of the Framers (I think it was Madison) commented that the new Republic's government ruled by the consent of the governed, and that the people can withdraw this consent at any time by petitioning Congress for a Constitutional Convention. This is provided for in Article V, which says that Congress, "on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments." It goes on to stipulate that any amendments so proposed must still be ratified by three-fourths of the states, the same as if they had simply been passed by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress.

The advantage of this process over the other one is that it creates an open forum in which every aspect of government that might use revision can be looked at with fresh eyes at one time, in a coherent way, instead of piecemeal. The other advantage is that it provides a way for everyone who's dissatisfied with the status quo to work together, instead of at cross purposes, on the common project of "withdrawing our consent" through the Article V process, and then have a collective discussion at the Convention through which we can seek consensus on what kinds of changes we want.

I am strongly in favor of having the PA legislature petition Congress for an Article V convention, and hope that if elected you will introduce a motion for one. If you need more information, visit Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org, where you will see that this is an issue supported by people from all parts of the political spectrum. I look forward to hearing your opinion on this matter.

Thank you for your attention.

Having sent the above to Ms. Damsker, I will now write my current state representative and senator as well as anyone who may be running to fill their shoes. I encourage others to do likewise, borrowing as much or as little of the above as you like.