JI: John Versus the Synoptics

The third chapter of JI focuses not on specific contradictions, but on deep-seated, large-scale conflicts in viewpoint among New Testament writers. Ehrman dedicates 15 pages just to disparities between John and the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke. (Scholars think Matthew and Luke used Mark and an unknown "Q document" as sources, hence their similarity.) He points out differences in content, differences in emphasis, and differences in Jesus' teachings and miracles.

Here are just some of the important events never mentioned in John:

• Jesus' birth of a virgin in Bethlehem
• His baptism and wilderness temptation
• Preaching that God's kingdom is at hand
• Telling parables of any kind
• Casting out demons
• The Transfiguration
• The Last Supper and crucifixion trial

Instead, we have things like:

• Jesus as the Word of God in human form
• Seven "signs" meant to demonstrate his power
• The washing of the disciples' feet
• Constant statements about himself (e.g. "I am the bread of life")
• Long speeches instead of wise proverbs

Ehrman argues that when Christians lump together various doctrines, they obscure the views of the individual authors. He says:

"The idea that Jesus preexisted his birth and that he was a divine being who became human is found only in the Gospel of John; the idea that he was born of a virgin is found only in Matthew and Luke. ...Mark doesn't say anything about either. The story starts with Jesus as an adult, and Mark gives no indication of the circumstances of his birth. If your only Gospel was Mark—and in the early church, for some Christians it was the only Gospel—you would have no idea that Jesus' birth was unusual in any way, that his mother was a virgin, or that he existed before appearing on earth."

Not only that, but Matthew just says Jesus was a virgin and leaves it at that, mistakenly calling it a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. Luke, however, specifically says that Jesus was born of a virgin because he was the Son of God.

Jesus' teachings in Mark also contrast starkly with his teachings as portrayed in John. In Mark, he teaches little about himself, and he never claims to be divine in any way—he's mentioned as the "son of God," but the term had several meanings. Instead Jesus emphasizes a coming apocalypse, and that people should quickly repent before he returns to judge the world. However, in John he says nothing about the kingdom of God approaching, but rather preaches about himself, saying that "I and the Father are one" and "I am the way, the truth and the life." Why this sudden shift in tone? Ehrman explains:

"For many historical critics it makes sense that John, the Gospel that was written last, no longer speaks about the imminent appearance on earth of the Son of Man to sit in judgment on the earth, to usher in the utopian kingdom. In Mark Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mark 9:1; 13:30). By the time John was written, probably from 90 to 95 CE, that earlier generation had died out and most if not all the disciples were already dead. ... What does one do with the teaching about an eternal kingdom here on earth if it never comes? One reinterprets the teaching. The way John reinterprets it is by altering the basic conceptualization."

This is accomplished by reimagining the "kingdom of God" as a rebirth "from above" (see John 3:3–6; I'll cover this in a later post) rather than something that will descend to earth.

Finally, we have the miracles of Jesus. In the synoptics, their purpose was to show Jesus' compassion and the arrival of God's kingdom to those who already believed. However, he refuses to do them to make people accept his God-given authority, and he even tells those who have been healed not to spread the word. In fact, the reason Satan tempts Jesus to throw himself off the Temple is because when the angels caught him, his power would be revealed to the many Jews in the vicinity. But in John, revealing his authority is the whole reason Jesus does his signs:

"In John's Gospel, Jesus' spectacular deeds are called signs, not miracles. And they are performed precisely to prove who Jesus is, to convince people to believe in him. Claiming to be the 'Bread of Life,' he performs the sign of the loaves to feed the crowds (John 6); claiming to be the 'Light of the World,' he does the sign of healing the man born blind (John 9); claiming to be the 'Resurrection and the Life,' he does the sign of raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11)."

John's version of Jesus' miracles is summarized perfectly in John 4:48 when he says, "Unless you see signs and miracles, you will not believe," and later John himself states this as his purpose in recording Jesus' signs.

The disparity in outlooks between John and the synoptics could hardly be more obvious. What's remarkable is that a lot of Christians don't even realize that John is particularly different from the other gospels. It just goes to show how much people can miss when they aren't really looking.

Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 2

I've already covered the intro, human transitionals and Noah's flood portions of my sister's school creationism notes. Next up is dinosaurs, dating methods and the age of the earth. But her notes also included a printout of an article by Brian Thomas called "No Fruit Fly Evolution Even after 600 Generations," which can be found here. He claims that no evolution was observed in three long-term scientific experiments involving bacteria and fruit flies. In doing so, he blatantly misrepresents their findings; it's hard to tell if he's lying or just really dumb. Here is one response, but I'll summarize the article's errors below.

In the first experiment, the scientists collected mutant stains of fruit flies in order to identify the genes for body development (which turned out to be similar to corresponding genes in other animals in a way that supports evolution). They were trying to get deformed fly embryos, yet Thomas falsely says they wanted to "document...evolution in action," and accidentally ended up with deformities, which showed "that fruit flies could not evolve." Next Thomas claims that the E. coli in the Lenski experiment were "hobbled by accumulated mutations, and the only changes that occurred were degenerative." No evidence is provided for this, and in fact the E. coli evolved several useful features, including the ability to breed 75% faster and to eat citrate.

Finally, there's the titular "600 generation" experiment. Scientists succeeded in getting fruit flies to develop 20% more quickly in the human equivalent of just 12,000 years, although some other traits were negatively affected. Thomas complains that the genes had not yet become "fixed" in the population, and though he mentions the authors' suggestion that not enough time may have elapsed for this to occur, he doesn't actually respond to this possibility (plus, genes may not need to be fixed in sexually reproducing populations at all). Overall, the article is a hopeless mess of confusion, mistakes and baseless assertions.

Now then, on to the notes.

Dinosaurs

It's not clear whether the teacher thinks actual winged, fire-breathing dragons have existed in the recent past, or just dinosaurs. On the one hand, the notes mention that the word "dragon" was used a few centuries ago to refer to dinosaurs—a fair point. But then they turn around and cite Isaiah 14:29 and its "fiery flying serpent" as evidence. They're really sending mixed messages about precisely what level of crazy they're willing to endorse.

Notes: Post-flood dinosaurs went extinct due to climate and human hunting.

Answer: I find it highly doubtful that well over 1,000 species—covering a wide range of sizes and niches (including air, land and sea)—could have died out that fast.

N: There are many stories about dragons, including Bible references (note: KJV).

A: And? There are also stories about Bigfoot, Nessie, krakens, UFOs and so on. Heck, there are entire fields of pseudoscience called cryptozoology and ufology. Are those things all real because there are stories about them? (Also, dragon myths were likely inspired by actual dinosaur fossils, just as giant squids inspired kraken myths.)

N: In Daniel 14:22, Daniel kills a dragon the Babylonians were worshipping.

A: This verse isn't even in the Bible. It's a later addition.

N: A dictionary from 1946 called dragons "rare" rather than "mythological."

A: Uh... huh. So 60-odd years ago there were still a few dragons hanging around? Is this for real? Do the people teaching this have brain damage or something?

...Ahem.

Anyway, this seems to be the entry in question:

"Now Rare" quite obviously refers to usage of the word "dragon" to mean "a huge serpent." The phrase's formatting (capitalized and italicized to distinguish it from the definition itself) and the second listed definition ("A fabulous [i.e. mythical] animal...") both confirm this.

N: Soft tissue has been discovered in dinosaur bones.

A: Not necessarily, and even if they did, it still doesn't indicate recent fossilization.

N: Ica stones have drawings of dinosaurs.

A: Yeah, except they were created as souvenirs for tourists.

Dating Methods

N: The geologic column is based on circular reasoning.

A: No, it isn't. Strata were mostly dated relative to one another, and index fossils create an additional reference point.

N: Radiometric dating is based on unprovable assumptions.

A: Some of the assumptions are reasonable, some are taken into account. And some methods avoid making assumptions.

N: The RATE project concluded that decay rates change.

A: There were numerous problems with that project, and tons of scientific studies disagree. My personal favorite detail is that "radioactive decay at a rate fast enough to permit a young earth would have produced enough heat to melt the earth."

N: Certain mammoths yield differing dates for different parts of their bodies.

A: This claim seems to have resulted from misinterpreted data.

Old Earth "Counterexamples"

The following are supposed limits on the earth's age.

N: Exponential growth of the human population!

A: Wow. Seriously? Okay, look. The fact is that population growth rates fluctuate wildly: war, disease, famine and natural disasters kill people off, and innovations such as agriculture and medicine allow them to flourish. This is what the actual population curve looks like.

N: Too few supernovas (just 300)!

A: Nope. And here are all the ones we've found so far—notice that there are way more than 300, and the number discovered per year has recently exploded.

N: Jupiter's cooling off too fast!

A: Nope. It's just not.

N: Ganymede's cooling off too fast!

A: Here are two possible explanations (see bottom paragraph of section).

N: Saturn's rings should have disintegrated!

A: Nope. They're relatively young and kept in place by Saturn's moons.

N: The moon is moving away from the earth too fast!

A: Nope. Based on bad data.

N: All the comets should have disintegrated!

A: Nope. New comets come from the Oort cloud.

N: No direct evidence for the Oort cloud!

A: So? Its existence is supported by indirect evidence (see previous link).

N: The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast!

A: Nope. Sure, it's decaying right now, but it fluctuates.

N: Earth's rotation is slowing too fast!

A: Nope. Based on bad data.

N: The Mississippi River delta doesn't have enough sediment!

A: Nope. The delta's location changes periodically.

I am continually amazed by how abysmal these arguments are. At times it's like they've scraped clean through the bottom of the barrel and just keep on digging. To think that parents are paying the school thousands of dollars a year for their kids to be taught this stuff.

About halfway done now. Just two more posts to go.

What It Means to Say I'm an Atheist

I haven't really stated it unequivocally before, partly because I wasn't sure of myself and partly because I just didn't want to admit it. But I've done some thinking, and I think I should lay it out clearly rather than beating around the bush:

I'm an atheist.

There. Now that I've said it, I'm going to unpack that statement by explaining what it does and does not mean.

It Does Mean...

Well, in itself, it means very little: simply that I don't believe in God. Or to put it more carefully, I lack belief in any deity. That's all there is to it. In practice, however there are several related principles that atheists often (but not always) hold. For example:

I value reason as the best tool we have for evaluating the world around us.
I see science as a highly effective application of our reasoning ability.
I am skeptical of extraordinary claims, religious or otherwise.
I try to reject dogmatic and irrational thinking in all its forms.
I am also agnostic, meaning I think the existence of God can't be conclusively proven or disproven.

It Doesn't Mean...

This list is much longer, mainly because there are so many faulty assumptions about atheism. For example, the fact that I'm an atheist does not mean that:

I'm absolutely certain I'm right: Certainty is no more a requirement for atheists than it is for theists. I think there's a small chance that a god of some sort exists, but that doesn't mean I'm not an atheist.
I need to prove God doesn't exist: It is theists, who make the positive claim that "God exists," who have the burden of proof. Most atheists simply see insufficient evidence for the theist claim.
I have "faith" in my position: Curiously, theists see the atheist's alleged faith as a bad thing—whatever happened to faith being a virtue? Anyway, faith is belief apart from evidence—some theists may agree and some may protest, but this is inevitably what it amounts to in practice. My position is based on an examination of the evidence, so I don't have "faith" in the religious sense.
I claim to have all the answers: I don't. Neither theists nor atheists know the answers to every important question we face. The difference is that theists often claim to, while atheists admit that they don't know and keep searching.
I'm rebelling against God out of hatred or selfishness: This is just silly. I spent more time agonizing over this process than anything else I've ever done. I've had to give up my hope of heaven, and I constantly worry about how my friends and family will react. Besides, I don't even believe in God. To say I'm rebelling against him makes no more sense than to say that Christians are rebelling against Ganesha.
I never truly believed in Christianity in the first place: Interestingly, this is almost the opposite of the last misconception. The fact is that I fully believed by any reasonable definition of the term "belief." If we apply this question to other religions (e.g. Were Muslims who deconvert never really Muslims at all?), its absurdity should hopefully become evident even to Christians.
I have no reason to be moral: First of all, religious motivations to be good—the threat of hell, the promise of heaven and divine command theory—are terrible to start with. Second, humans have an innate sense of empathy. That doesn't magically disappear when you become an atheist. Third, secular ethical systems do exist, and from what I've seen, some provide a much better basis for morality than religions do.
My life is no longer worth living: I'll be the judge of that, thanks. Theists often denigrate earthly happiness as fleeting and therefore empty, but if anything the opposite is true. If my time is limited, I should enjoy it all the more while it lasts, whether it be by spending time with loved ones, savoring a great meal, or staring up at the stars in awe, pondering life's great mysteries.
I can't be convinced that I'm wrong: I'm certainly open to changing my mind, but to provide good arguments for theism isn't enough: they must also outweigh the good arguments against it. And to claim the existence of a being with God's extraordinary traits requires equally extraordinary evidence.

So that's what it means (and doesn't mean) to say that I'm an atheist. I didn't suddenly change into some cold, uncaring monster once I stopped believing in God. All I did was apply my reasoning abilities to an area of my life where I had previously suspended them. I still love my family, and I still enjoy the same things I used to—it's just that now I appreciate it all a little bit more.

WEIT: Human Vestigiality & Atavisms

Chapter 3 of WEIT, "Remnants: Vestiges, Embryos, and Bad Design," is one of the richest sources of evidence for evolution in the book, so I'll have to maintain my current slow pace to adequately cover it. Near the beginning of the chapter (p. 58), Coyne clears up a misconception about vestigiality that is constantly repeated by creationists:

"Evolutionary theory doesn't say that vestigial characteristics have no function. A trait can be vestigial and functional at the same time. It is vestigial not because it's functionless, but because it no longer performs the function for which it evolved. The wings of an ostrich are useful, but that doesn't mean that they tell us nothing about evolution. Wouldn't it be odd if a creator helped an ostrich balance itself by giving it appendages that just happen to look exactly like reduced wings, and which are constructed in exactly the same way as wings used for flying? 

"Indeed, we expect that ancestral features will evolve new uses: that's just what happens when evolution builds new traits from old ones."

Another clarification: a vestigial characteristic occurs consistently in most individuals in a species, while an atavism is the rare resurgence of a characteristic that had been absent in previous generations. With that settled, I'll cover some examples of human vestigiality and atavisms.

The best-known vestigial organ in humans is the appendix. The original function of the appendix, which can still be observed in many herbivorous mammals, is "as a fermenting vessel ... containing bacteria that help the animal break down cellulose into usable sugars." Since humans evolved from leaf-eating animals but no longer eat leaves, we have an appendix, but one that has been greatly reduced in size. While it maintains minor immune functions, our appendices do far more harm to us than good due to the prevalence of appendicitis.

Another vestige of our past is goosebumps, which we get when we're cold or feel threatened but are basically useless. But in mammals that actually have fur, raising that fur would be useful to insulate from the cold or to appear larger when threatened – exactly the same two situations. And one more example: ear-wiggling muscles. Most people can't use them at all, and the rest still can't move their ears more than slightly. But other animals use these muscles "to move their ears around, helping them ... detect predators, locate their young, and so on."

Now for atavisms. I've already mentioned human tails: while very rare, they may contain hair, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and most tellingly, extra vertebrae. But Coyne expands on this point by saying, "Indeed, recent genetic work has shown that we carry exactly the same genes that make tails in animals like mice, but these genes are normally deactivated in human fetuses." (I'll do a separate post that expands on the evidence from genetics.)

I want to add one atavistic feature that Coyne doesn't mention: a tiny, almost imperceptible point on the outer rim of the ear known as Darwin's tubercle. Only 10% of the population has it, but I'm lucky enough to be part of that statistic. Darwin's tubercle demonstrates our common ancestry with other primates, which have significantly more prominent pointed ears, possibly to help funnel sound into the auditory canal. Below is my ear, a macaque's ear and an example illustration from Darwin's The Descent of Man.

It's both startling and fascinating to realize that I carry tangible, visible evidence for evolution with me wherever I go. And by no means is this connection to the past is something to be ashamed of. On the contrary, to bear such tokens of our history just serves as a reminder of how far our species has come.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

Before I begin writing about how and why unbelievers are moral, I want to show why a Christian-style God cannot serve as an acceptable objective moral standard. The simplest way to do this is by using the Euthyphro dilemma. It was first posed about 2,400 years ago in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, and to this day there is no well-accepted solution to the problem. Here it is:

"Why are God's commandments morally good? Does He command them because they are good, or are they good because He commands them?"

Let's start by considering the first option. If God commands things because they are good, then God is no longer the objective standard by which goodness is measured. It would mean that morality exists completely apart from and above God, and that God obediently follows whatever it says just as believers follow what God says. It would also mean that unbelievers could in principle bypass God and derive their moral system directly from the source.

The first option is unacceptable to most Christians because it robs God of his moral authority and makes him subservient to an external standard. However, in my opinion the second option (known as divine command theory) is worse. If God's commands are good only because they are commanded by God, then they are completely arbitrary. (At this point the theist may object: "They're not arbitrary! God has good reasons for commanding the things that he does!" But if this is the case, then those "good reasons" are the true moral standard, not God, which leads us back to the first option.)

The implication is that if God happened to make some other commands, they would be equally as good as the current ones. For example, if he commanded us to run around raping and torturing innocent people on the street, then to do so would be not only acceptable, but required as a moral good—and to prevent such acts would be morally evil. To put it another way, suppose that God happened to command whatever it is that Satan would most want God to command. This version of God would essentially be Satan in a God costume—the very embodiment of what Christians consider to be evil—and yet each command that he made would just as righteous and good as God's current commands. Furthermore, if goodness is defined as "whatever God commands," then the claim "God is good" no longer has any real meaning.

What's remarkable is that some people actually accept this abhorrent option. On his blog, Christian apologist Vox Day received the following question:

If your god revealed to you in a set of flawless communications you could not dispute that you should kill every child you see under the age of 2, would you?

He responded:

"I don't see what the problem is ... The answer is yes, and how would you possibly take issue with that position regardless of whether you believe in my god or don't believe in any god?

"If I am correct that my God is the Creator God, that we are all his creations, then killing every child under two on the planet is no more inherently significant than a programmer unilaterally wiping out his AI-bots in a game universe. He alone has the right to define right and wrong, and as the Biblical example of King Saul and the Amalekites demonstrates, He has occasionally deemed it a moral duty to wipe out a people.

"And as we are informed in Revelation, He will wipe out many peoples through the acts of (presumably) His angels. Jefferson [the questioner] can complain that this makes God unworthy of worship all he likes, but that's as irrelevant as complaining that Stalin wasn't properly elected according to the Soviet Constitution. Although in this case it isn't might makes right, it is a much simpler case of might = right. Obey or perish."

Wiping out babies like AIs in a video game. Might equals right. Obey or perish. This is the reasoning that divine command morality leads to. It should go without saying that this moral system is unacceptable. The very fact that some people can condone this is a testament to how terrifying and destructive religious morality can be.

Some theists have tried to concoct another solution to the problem: they say the things God commands are morally good because goodness is inherent not in God's commandments but in his nature. But this is no solution at all, for we can simply ask: Is the goodness of God's nature based on an external standard, or would God's nature be good no matter what that nature happened to be? These two options have exactly the same implications as they do in the original dilemma.

As a last resort, theists may say, "Well, it's a moot question, since God's nature won't change anyway." With that, they breathe a sigh of relief and consider the issue settled. But refusing to accept hypothetical questions doesn't make them go away. And even if we blindly accept the claim that God will never change, I must ask: Why do the theists seem so relieved about this? It's almost as though they place importance upon their morals quite apart from their supposed foundation in God's nature. Could it be that they, like unbelievers, in fact operate primarily according to non-religious ethics?

Some theists say unbelievers are "moral parasites" who co-opt religious ethics for their own ends. But I think it's quite the opposite: instead, it is theists who have taken our innate capacity for empathy and tacked on some heavily flawed laws and rituals, then claimed the entire system originated from an unfalsifiable almighty being.

Creationism Notes Refuted, Part 1

Recently my sister mentioned that she was being taught about creation and evolution at her (Christian) school. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if she had any notes on the subject. What I found was much worse than I expected: she's been taught about two months' worth of absolute raving lunacy. It's even more ignorant than the stuff I learned while I was there. I had wanted to take on various creationist claims slowly and steadily, but I've decided to accelerate my pace by quickly picking these notes apart. Because there's so much (mis)information, I'll do this with a combination of personal commentary and external links.

Before I start, I want to emphasize that I certainly don't blame my sister for content of these notes. She just wrote down what she was taught, and although she's a very intelligent person, it's remarkably easy to simply go along with those teachings without questioning them. I know that from personal experience.

Introduction

Notes: References to Prov. 4:23, 22:6; 2 Cor. 2:4-5.

Answer: These verses have the effect of encouraging close-mindedness and child indoctrination. Creationists have to be on their guard against religious doubt; honest and unbiased investigation of the evidence is not even an option.

N: Science has to be observable.

A: And evolution is—we see it directly on a small scale and indirectly through other evidence. (Indirect evidence is perfectly valid, else forensics would be non-science just because the crime itself wasn't observed.)

N: There are no transitional fossils.

A: There are so many it's not even funny.

N: Quote from biologist Colin Patterson apparently claiming uncertainty about transitionals.

A: A very common creationist misinterpretation.

N: Many scientists think aliens planted the first life on earth.

A: A huge exaggeration. A few have suggested it as a possibility, but there are far more plausible explanations.

N: Timeline that places the Big Bang at 20 billion years ago.

A: The actual time is about 13.5 billion years ago.

Human Transitionals

The point of these examples is to cast doubt on human evolution. But even when they actually get something right, their focus is still only on a few unusual and often insignificant cases, ignoring all the other fossil evidence.

N: Ramapithecus turned out to be an orangutan; this shows that we should be skeptical.

A: A legitimate error, but in fact it was an ancestor of orangutans. And we should always be skeptical—now if only YECs would apply this to their own crazy beliefs.

N: Java man was a gibbon skull and a human leg bone found 50 feet away.

A: The femur is indeed human. However the skull is similar to that of a Homo erectus and not even remotely gibbon-like.

N: Lucy was a chimpanzee, and her knee was over a mile away from the rest of her.

A: The chimpanzee claim ignores human-like features such as the pelvis. The knee claim has long been proven false, and some creationists have even retracted it.

N: Piltdown man was a fraud.

A: Yes it was, although some scientists had always been skeptical of its authenticity.

N: Neanderthals just had rickets and are now simply categorized as humans.

A: No and no. They definitely didn't have rickets, and they have several features distinguishing them from humans.

N: Nebraska man was based on an extinct pig tooth.

A: It was indeed a peccary tooth. However, scientists were highly skeptical of the find, the imaginative reconstruction was for a popular magazine, and peccary teeth are surprisingly similar to human ones.

N: The Ida fossil was a lemur, and rejected as a human ancestor.

A: This is scientific skepticism at work: scientists test their hypotheses and reject them when they fail. Also, Ida has several differences from modern lemurs.

N: Rick Potts didn't conclude that Ardi was related to humans.

A: He said it was "too soon to tell exactly where it stands."

The Flood

N: 270 stories from around the world support a worldwide flood.

A: Flood stories are common because most civilizations live near a water source that is subject to flooding. These stories also differ widely in many aspects, and those that are very similar were most likely spread by missionaries.

N: Explorers may have found the ark on Mt. Ararat.

A: I'm amazed they can teach such a repeatedly debunked falsehood.

N: Sediments have to quickly bury organisms for fossils to form.

A: There are several counterexamples to this. And believe it or not, natural disasters don't have to be global.

N: Marine fossils have been found on mountains.

A: Geology explains this. The flood cannot.

N: Rocks could only have folded while solidifying.

A: Lab experiments have shown otherwise.

N: Genesis 1:6 says there was a vapor canopy above the earth before the flood.

A: Even most creationists avoid this one. It's totally unfeasible.

N: Baby animals were taken on the ark since they use less space and resources.

A: The main problem is they would be utterly helpless once they got off the ark.

N: 8,000 "kinds" were taken on the ark.

A: There are about 11 million species on earth—and that's not counting extinct ones. Even taking into account aquatic "kinds" that weren't on the ark, that would mean an enormous amount of speciation in just over 4,000 years—far more than even evolution predicts.

That's just the first quarter or so of this nonsense. I'll cover the rest in later posts.