Our Daily Train blog from a freethinker and former believer

For on a time when a cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: All ages can testifie enough how profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie. - [[John Bale]], "The Pageant of the Popes," 1574

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Christians arguing with other Christians about the "true" nature of Jesus and the church always makes for entertaining reading, but even more so when it comes from an openly gay Catholic whose own intellectualism should undercut his own faith in the first place.

In his new essay for Newsweek, "Christianity in Crisis," Andrew Sullivan says that we should eschew the influence of politics and power that has crept into religion and get back to the "radical ideas" that spring from what Jesus did and said, including loving both our neighbors and enemies, turning the other cheek, giving away all material possessions and loving God the Father, whom Sullivan calls "the Being behind all things." Presumably, this being is distinct from Jesus, yet Sullivan admits that he believes in the "divinity and resurrection" of Christ. That's at least two gods in which Sullivan believes. We can imagine that there are three since most Catholics believe in the Hoy Spirit, which, when assembled, they call the Triune. Since the Holy Spirit is really just God the Father in spirit, I don't really count that, so let's just go with the two. So, Sullivan believes in two distinct beings, one that came to earth as a human but who was also divine and eventually was resurrected and another god who was behind everything that is. From any monotheistic viewpoint, this is troubling, but this is what every Jesus-as-divine believer must admit, that they believe in two distinct gods. Or not ... depending on which verses one reads. Christians often support the Triune business by quoting the John 10:30 line that reads, "I and the Father are one." Yet, the verse directly before it claims that, "My Father ... is greater than all."

But who knows. And that's the point. Biblical scholars now have a clearer understanding of which parts of the gospels may be authentic, and in turn, which quotes attributed to Jesus he might have actually uttered (if he existed at all). One thing we do know: the gospels were written decades after the events took place, and there is not one contemporary source that attests to his existence. Further, the non-contemporary, extra-biblical texts that mention Jesus may point to a figure by that name roaming around the desert, but scant references to a Jesus by Josephus or some other early historian is a far cry from evidence that he was supernatural.

Sullivan knows this. He also knows that Jefferson, whom he rallies to the call in defense of Jesus' simple truths, was not a Christian in any modern sense and rejected Christ as a divine being. On Jefferson, Sullivan declares of the Jeffersonian Bible:

And what he (Jefferson) grasped in his sacrilegious mutilation of a sacred text was the core simplicity of Jesus' message of renunciation. He believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle.

While the latter is a clever sentence, Jefferson clearly saw no miracles and was only attempting to get after the rote details of Jesus' life and the core precepts that he espoused. Jefferson said he was a "real Christian," but only to the extent that he thought some of Jesus' words were laudable, and that's as far as Jefferson was willing to go.

Yet, despite what Sullivan describes as

a century and a half of scholarship that has clearly shown that the canonized Gospels were written decades after Jesus' ministry, and are copies of copies of stories told by those with fallible memory

he still seems to hold these works in high regard and for reasons that escape comprehension. If he readily admits that the gospels contain embellishments, how is he to trust the parts that he likes? How does he know that those parts - love they neighbor, turn the other cheek, etc. - authentically sprang from the mouth of Jesus and are not creations of equally fallible memories. How does he even know that those high precepts originated with Jesus, or the gospel writers, in the first place, or that most of the key episodes of the New Testament (virgin birth, ascension) were even New Testament constructs.

Indeed, many of the great ideas of Christ predate his uttering them. As for other elements that were likely copied from other religions, here's a handy guide.

Sullivan conclusion doesn't get any better. Earlier in his essay, he claims that

The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the  profoundest human questions-Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?-remain as pressing and mysterious as they've always been?

But the profoundest human questions are quests for knowledge independent of faith or religion. God, in short, is not the author of the questions or the answers. He's a distraction from them since to assume a god in contemplating these questions makes the calculus even that more convoluted because we must then explain where God came from. The "thirst" that Sullivan no doubts feels in his soul can be rightly explained simply as a thirst for knowledge and truth, and while I have no doubt that Sullivan is a deep thinker, he seems to be also in deep denial. It is hard to tell whether this is out of fear of hellfire or merely out of devotion for the things of faith. If he already admits that the gospels are copies upon copies containing story "told by those with fallible memory" what is stopping him from throwing the whole thing out with the bath water?

Perhaps David Wimberly has it right. Here is part of his comment posted under the Freedom From Religion Foundation's refutation of Sullivan's article:

I stopped reading Sullivan some time ago as he continues to position himself as an intellectual but clearly cannot escape the fear from his catholic upbring. I have observed him to simply be a humanist in denial-as in someone guided by human morality-a morality built of our need to coexist.

His flat out refusal to overcome irrational fear of damnation and childish notions of fairy tales and to continually blame the contemporary church for crimes predicted by the reality of what his religion is make him sound more and more shrill in his attempts to square what he thinks is some higher intellect with the absurdity of his faith.

Makes perfect since to me. NFL fans, by and large, don't care about this game. I know I don't. The players care even less, and that is clear from the body language and the effort on the field. Here's a story about potentially canceling the Pro Bowl and a portion of the article:

The league and union agreed that the quality of last year's game, which saw the NFC claim a 55-41 win over the AFC, was unacceptable at a meeting between the sides earlier this month.

The sides, though, were understood to have discussed ways to improve the fixture rather than wipe it from the schedule.

The game still is listed on the NFL's calendar the week before New Orleans hosts Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, though the location remains unknown.

Of course, if NFL officials wanted to go ahead and destroy any lingering interest in the Pro Bowl, they all ready did so by scheduling the game before the Super Bowl. Some of the best players in the league aren't even going to play because of the injury risk. That was the most boneheaded move officials could have made. I realize that interest in the NFL season wanes after the Super Bowl, but at least you will have the best players involved in the game, including those who actually played in the Super Bowl.

If officials are going to leave it hopelessly wedged between the final playoff game and the big dance, I say do us all a favor and just shoot the lame duck before it becomes more of a joke than it already is.

NFL, players union consider canceling Pro Bowl game - NFL News | FOX Sports on MSN.

Romney's basic plan for health care: give tax breaks to people so they can purchase their own individual plans and try to entice businesses away from offering coverage to their employees.

That's a plan? First, most people, including myself, would not be able to afford health insurance without getting it through an employer. This is the only way we can actually afford it. That had better be one massive individual tax incentive because as Stephen Andrew points out, of the people who won't be turned down for coverage because of some underlying medical condition, most of them cannot afford the going rate for insurance  in any case, especially given what they already have to pay in mortgages, car payments, eating expenses, utility bills, etc. And insurance for people with some kind of condition would be financially out of reach in this scenario. This prospect scares the shit out of Andrew, and I would have to concur.

In Andrew's words:

This has been the goal for many corporate conservatives for a long time. Divorce healthcare from employers, throw you out there on your own, save money for the stockholders. Romney and others seem to think that can be done by offering a fat tax cut on your gads of disposable income, so that you can offset the cost of an individual policy.

What planet are these jokers living on? Putting aside the idea that a tax cut doesn't do almost half the population a lick of good, there are no affordable health insurance policies for a fifty year-old guy like me available on the private market. None, nada, zilch. Check for yourself, go out and get a quote on an individual policy for a fifty year-old with minor preexisting conditions and an autoimmune disease with similar deducts, Rx, and copays. Go ahead, I'll wait right here for you freedom loving libertarians to find and link a plan with a major or at least half-ass reputable company comparable to the employer based one I have now with CIGNA. ...

The rest of you already know the math don't you? Now try it for someone in their 40s who's had breast cancer, or 58 years old with diabetes, or a young 22-year-old with a congenital heart defect. Those policies either do not exist or they are exorbitantly priced. Few people in the 99% will be to afford one, for themselves let alone their family, with or without a Tax Cut. If this is Romney's plan, it is a fucking death sentence for millions of Americans, it will certainly cost is way more money at best, probably come with increased suffering and debt for individual and government eventually, and that all probably includes me.

Insurance, of course, isn't the only concern: after one renders a hefty sum to Caesar for insurance, there is also potential medical bills, high drug costs and doctor visits, all of which are still egregiously high after insurance pays its share. The health care wormhole runs deep in this nation, I'm afraid, and it will only go deeper under GOP leadership.

This is what scares the hell out of me about Romney et al | The Zingularity.

It's pretty stunning that Romney can't throw his spontaneous support behind women receiving equal pay as men. According to this article, when asked about the [[Lilly Ledbetter Act]], his campaign pulled the ol' "We'll get back to you on that line:"

Romney's advisers held a conference call inviting reporters to ask questions. One was simple and straightforward: "Does Gov. Romney support the Lilly Ledbetter Act?"

In other words, when a woman is paid less than a man for doing the same work, does the presumptive Republican nominee support her right to fight for the equal pay she's guaranteed under the law? That's exactly what the bill that bears my name ensures -- it simply gives workers a fair shot to make their case in court. ...

Romney's team has certainly had enough time to think about its candidate's positions -- he's been running for president for six years -- and about the law in question, which was the very first one that Barack Obama signed as president more than three years ago.

But Romney's team drew a blank. The line went silent. Crickets. When an adviser finally piped up, it wasn't to answer the question. It was to tell the reporter, "We'll get back to you on that."

Of course, stunning as it is, it shouldn't come as much surprise, since Romney doesn't seem to have had one spontaneous thought in this campaign, unless, of course, it was a "spontaneous" gaffe about not being concerned about poor people, etc. and other unsightly miscues.

Romney's insult to women on equal pay - CNN.com.

Far right wing fringe candidates may be gaining influence in Europe, and that is good news for no one, except the crazies of course. It's definitely bad news for poor people, women and immigrants ... and blue collar workers ... and sick people.

Here is an article on one of the far-right leaders, Marine Le Pen, president of France's National Front party.

Is the far right gaining ground in Europe? - CNN.com.

In his most recent column, The New York Times' Paul Krugman asks, "Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are."

At a recent campaign stop, Romney spoke at a shuttered factory in Ohio to imply that Obama's economic policy had something to do with its closure. As reporters on hand pointed out, the factory in question actually closed while George W. Bush was president. But inconvenient truths such as that surely won't stop the Romney machine.

Here's Krugman:

Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor's policy failure?

Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration's policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don't remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

So the answer to the first question: yes, Romney thinks Americans are that stupid, either too stupid or too lazy to hold him accountable to his claims or to do some independent fact-checking. He's counting on that, and he's right. That probably does describe the large majority of Americans. The proof is in the pudding: Bush got re-elected in 2004 after leading us into a war on false pretenses, and in 2008, we came inches away from having the incompetent and anti-intellectual Sarah Palin as vice president thanks to that alarmist Tea Party nonsense. So, no, Romney doesn't hold the intellect of many Americans in high regard. It's insulting, but then again, we get the politicians that we deserve.

The Amnesia Candidate - NYTimes.com.

I listened to most of Bach's Brandenburg concertos this afternoon and got to thinking again about the argument for beauty.

This fellow blogger raises a concern that the argument, which is articulated this way

1. Beethoven's quartets, Shakespeare's sonnets, etc., are beautiful.


2. If there were no God, then there would be no beauty (and thus no beautiful things).


3. Therefore, there is a God.

may not be a legitimate argument for the existence of God in the first place and that Richard Dawkins' only reference to the argument in "The God Delusion" is anecdotal. The writer also claims that Dawkins dismisses the argument for beauty by committing the begging the question fallacy because he asserts "without argument, that beauty doesn't depend on God."

First, it is clear from reading the entire passage about the argument from beauty in Dawkins' book that he doesn't take the claim very seriously in the first place, but that he was compelled to at least give it a brief airing since it was, from his experience, a commonly articulated argument, however flawed it may be. And the blogger leaves out the two sentences that make this point. Here is the full paragraph:

Another character in the Aldous Huxley novel just mentioned proved the existence of God by playing Beethoven's string quartet no. 15 in A minor ('heiliger Dankgesang') on a gramophone. Unconvincing as that sounds, it does represent a popular strand of argument. I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: 'How do you account for Shakespeare, then?' (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.) The argument will be so familiar, I needn't document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be. Obviously Beethoven's late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare's sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn't. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare. A great conductor is credited with saying: 'If you have Mozart to listen to, why would you need God?'

Actually, the authors of "Handbook of Christian Apologetics," the supposed seminal work on all arguments for the existence of God, list the argument from beauty, which they call "the argument for aesthetic experience," as one of the 20 cumulative statements that, taken together, make a "very strong case" for God. Here is the authors' rather crudely constructed claim:

17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don't.

Talk about question begging. (I've dealt with numerous portions of the book on this site already. Here is my last entry: Apologetics VIII: heaven, hell, free will.)

In any case, let me deal with the first articulation of this argument at the top of this post, admitting that Dawkins probably could have handled the topic a little more carefully, but the fact that he didn't consider it as a serious argument in the first place perhaps should have led him to ignore the claim in the first place. In any case, let's see if we can do a little better.

Premise 2: If there were no God, then there would be no beauty (and thus no beautiful things) is a false premise because it assumes that God is the source of beauty and that all things beautiful must spring from the mind and hands of God. But we can equally claim, just as fallaciously that If there was a God, then there would be no beauty. Just because a god exists provides no guarantee that he is the source of beauty or ugliness, just like the existence of a god doesn't prove that he is the source of morality. He may very well be the father of evil and ugliness. The writers of the Bible and other holy books couldn't seem to make up their minds whether God was a supreme sadist, benevolent or the judge, jury and executioner. Indeed, he is all of those things depending on which passages you read.

The crux of the question is the same as with morality: can we come up with an objective way to define and identify that which is beautiful? While beauty is surely relative to a degree, I think it's well documented within psychology and neuroscience that whatever we perceive as beautiful has certain positive or euphoric effects on our mood that differ drastically from that which we view as ugly or disheveled. And if outward beauty if more relative than inward beauty, we can make a strong case that society generally favors and awards members of communities who display peace, happiness, acceptance, love, etc. than those who display other inward traits like disdain, hatred and unfaithfulness.

Though not stated directly, I think this is what Dawkins may have been getting at when he said that Beethoven and Shakespeare's works

"are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn't.

Even if there are various levels of beauty or sublimity depending on the person, few could argue that works of those two artists fail to meet the following definitions of the sublime:

1. elevated or lofty in thought, language, etc.: Paradise Lost is sublime poetry.


2. impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe, veneration, etc.: Switzerland has sublime scenery.


3. supreme or outstanding: a sublime dinner.

Now, how about some sublimity:

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No.5 - i: Allegro

Obamas Release Tax Returns.

See the photo for a handy breakdown of wages, percentage paid to taxes, etc.:

Here is a good Krugman piece about the real motives behind New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie axing the Hudson River Tunnel Project. All for political expediency, apparently.

It is also brings to light, yet again, the inconsistent Republican stance on the use of federal funds, that is, it's almost always OK to pony up money and increase the deficit for military reasons or to go to war, but when it comes to services at home, like public transportation, no dice.

Kruman's concluding paragraph hits the mark:

America used to be a country that thought big about the future. Major public projects, from the Erie Canal to the interstate highway system, used to be a well-understood component of our national greatness. Nowadays, however, the only big projects politicians are willing to undertake - with expense no object - seem to be wars. Funny how that works.

Cannibalize the Future - NYTimes.com.

Republicans bickering among themselves is always entertaining but even more so when they complain about who FOX News has favored the most in this election. The winner? Apparently not Gingrich.

He says that CNN has been more fair to him in its election coverage than FOX, claiming that Rupert Murdoch must be a fan of Romney. He seems to be wrong, of course, because Murdoch has already come out as a Santorum supporter. As for FOX's fairness toward all candidates, I don't think Murdoch cares much about the day-to-day "stance" that FOX takes on the election as long as the network continues making him money. Roger Ailes may very well be a Romney supporter, but the article above doesn't have Gingrich making any claims about Ailes, oddly enough, since Gingrich must know that Ailes is really the one behind FOX's particular brand of non-journalism.

Gingrich Says CNN is Less Biased than Fox News - NYTimes.com.

Thanks to this Squidoo user for posting this quote from Ferdinand Magellan:

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.

I have often heard the following obligatory and rather futile complaint from believers when asked to supply proof for their claims about God and the universe: "I can't prove that God exists, but neither can you prove that he does not exist." Usually at that point in making their case for God, they say something about personal testimony and their own experiences with the Holy Spirit. Apologists in this way attempt to encase themselves in what they think is a win-win situation for them: 1) non-believers can't prove me wrong and 2) I know how I feel and what I have experienced in my heart, and this stands above the scrutiny of logic; in fact, given what I have experienced, it's even reasonable for me to believe as I do.

The first point is obviously true. One day, we may perhaps be able to disprove God scientifically because as Richard Dawkins has said, a universe in which a being intervenes in peoples' lives, reads their thoughts and micromanages the weather, etc., has to be a vastly different universe than one in which this is not the case. Even if the God of Abraham and Isaac resides is in some "spiritual" realm, he still supposedly acts in the physical world and upon living organisms, and so in this way, may be, in some future technological era, within the scope of scientific discovery. This would only not be the case if we are to assume a deistic god, that is, one who only created the world but does not intervene in it. This god, perhaps, may be outside of the boundaries of science, no matter how advanced. But the theistic god %u2026 quite a different matter.

The troubling point is the second one and gives a person license to say they believe anything, and we must, according to them, then except it and respect it outright without question just because they have a personal testimony or have received some kind of revelation. Of course, we can see how well that has worked out for the legacies of Joseph Smith, Marshall Applewhite, Tom Cruise and many other deluded figures. Further, and as I stated elsewhere, it is not the freethinker's job to stand up for or support her non-belief because non-belief is, indeed, the default position and actually not a belief at all. People are born with zero beliefs; it is only after being inculcated by whatever culture we happen to be born into that the cloak of religion is cruelly and forcefully draped over us before we have time to make up our own minds. The believers alone have to say 1) why they feel compelled to introduce elements like gods, angels and demons into the world when none were solicited and 2) how they explain their belief in the existence of such things. The onus, in short, is on believers to supply the proof because they are the ones making the claims. For the non-believer, no claims have been made; the world is the same as it was when we entered it.

This Squidoo user has made the point as well as anyone:

I get asked all the time to prove there is no God, and although I believe the evidence weighs heavily in my favor, I can't prove a negative. I also do not have to because the burden of proof in this lies with the one making the claim, the theist. Someone could not claim to be an atheist had there not been a theist first, so it stands to reason the theist made the claim and has the burden of proof in this matter.

If I were to make the claim that I have little green men living under my bed, and at night they come out and talk to me, most people would assume that the burden of proof lies with me to substantiate this claim. It would not be up to others to prove I do not have little green men hiding under my bed, because it would be impossible for them to do so, you can't prove a negative. I might say they only talk to me or that only I can see them making it impossible for anyone to prove that I am wrong. But since I am not able to prove my statement, most sane and rational people would discount my claim as the ramblings of a mad man.

Read more here: Our Daily Train

God and "his" church have had kind of a rough-and-tumble relationship, don't you think, especially if we consider the Israelites' disobedience and flirtations with rival gods through most of the Old Testament, and the god of the universe, almost comically, looking as if he is at his wits end and about to pull his proverbial hair out?

In any case, I found the following attached image via John Loftus' blog.

Loftus makes the compelling case that

If a human husband said that to his wife, we would classify it as domestic violence. And rightly so. It reflects a view of the wife as property, and the husband as her lord and owner with sovereign rights to inflict punishment on one who has "stolen" from him his exclusive right to "sow his seed" in a "field" that is his property.

And verbal abuse is considered domestic violence, so Loftus is dead-on.

His comments on the wife and property also hit center, for that is the very message of Christianity, that we are and should be happy serving as slaves to the big brother in the sky, and if we dare look at another slave driver (maybe a more benevolent one, if that's possible) with a covetous eye, we will be smashed to bits. And yes, I am comfortable calling Christianity both spiritual and physical slavery because the New Testament itself admits it: in a right relationship to Christ, we are, and no doubt must be, totally void of self-thought or action. Thus, to be "sold out" for Christ, as I have heard the phrase turned so many times, is to be a slave to a guy for which there is not a single contemporary source that confirms his existence, much less his benevolence or grace. Not one. Nonsensically, then, evangelicals will openly admit that they are slaves to Christ, although they have somehow convinced themselves, with the false security of bliss waiting for them all the while, that this is actually a desirable thing.

Read more here: Our Daily Train

From a professional standpoint, I can't sign any petitions or write my state Congressmen to express my concern about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act, but I can voice it here. I am a proponent of a free and open Internet, with the obvious exception of child pornography.

The federal government has already overstepped its bounds with regard to television and radio censorship, and it would be ill-fated if the government further trampled over free speech with regard to the Internet.

The current legislation requires U.S. sites to police links that may or may not point to infringing content. This would put a ridiculous workload on large sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube. As they have already been doing, I say it is up to the individual companies (recording companies, media outlets, etc.) to alert Wikepedia or YouTube of potential infringements on copyrights. To ask Wikipedia and YouTube to rummage through the recesses of its user-uploaded content in search of offending material is non-sustainable and non-sensical.

Read more here: Our Daily Train

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age-and Sarah herself was barren-was enabled to become a father because he [fn] considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. - Heb. 11:11-13

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The entire biblical narrative hinges on a promise, that is, the promise from Yahweh to Abram that God would give him and his descendants the land of Canaan "forever," as quoted in Gen. 13:14-15.

God did not live up to this promise. The lands in and around "Canaan" were in those early epochs and still are contested territories, as evidenced by the constant strife in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Of course, "Canaan" encompassed more than just Israel and the West Bank to include parts of modern-day Jordan and Syria and other areas, so God is still far from living up to his long-past promise to Abram and the tribes of Israel. Christians here will say that in Christ, a new Covenant was formed by which Christ will reconcile Jews and Gentiles and allow everyone who believes to be saved through Jesus. Here is Jeremiah 31:29-31:

In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.

OK fine, but one may ask: what about the old covenant? Did God change his mind? Did he decide that he wasn't quite up to the task of protecting Israel to the point where that nation would be able to inhabit and control the entirety of Canaan? Why did God supposedly make a new covenant when the old one wasn't fulfilled when Jesus came, and it still has not been fulfilled. Didn't God describe the covenant with Abram as one that would last "forever?" And further, why is God so concerned with a land grab? What's so important about land? Wouldn't the spiritual aspects of religion be more important than just conquering territory?

Further, doesn't this destroy Yahweh's credibility in the first place when a) his character alone was not enough to compel Israel to fervently follow him? If you will recall, God and his hand-picked nation had a rather strained relationship through most of the Old Testament, with the following scenario playing out in droll and ludicrous fashion: Israel disobeys and/or falls into idol worship, God gets pissed, Israel repents, brief interlude, Israel falls into idol worship again, God gets pissed, Israel repents, rinse and repeat %u2026 you get the picture. And b) wouldn't an all-knowing God have anticipated the "hiccups" in his own plan and tweaked his schemes so that they would have worked out right the first time? As I have said repeatedly, he knew everything from the start: the fall, subsequent disobedience and the failure of his own covenant. He knew that he either would not or could not meet the terms of his own covenant before he created man in the first place. But he proceeded anyway, if we are to believe the Bible, or else, we must grant that God is not all-knowing. So which is it? Neither option, I'm afraid, bodes well for Christianity.

I conclude with some thoughts from Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography from a Q&A. Here, Miles is using a strictly literary interpretation of scripture, but one that is nonetheless poignant because the tale is scarcely logical from a literary standpoint (That is, it doesn't even make much sense within a book framework) much less a framework in which we are supposed to believe it is true in reality.

Here is Miles:

The fresh start that God makes with Abraham is a kind of lowering of his sights. Rather than promising fertility and world dominion to the human species as a whole and attempting to maintain a satisfactory relationship with us, he makes those promises with special intensity and specificity to just one clan. The complication that follows, however, is that he must become a warrior on behalf of that clan, something he had not needed to be before taking this step. God's most extravagant military commitments are made after his people suffer their most devastating military defeat, the defeat by Babylon that destroys Solomon's temple and carries much of Israel into exile. Read either in the Jewish or the Christian order, the Hebrew scriptures end with this promise unfulfilled. At the time when God chooses to become a Jew himself, five hundred years have passed, and still this promise has not been kept.

This is the question, the divine dilemma, to which, as I read the them, the Gospels are the resolution. Nothing could be more evident than that God has some kind of reservation about returning to massive military action. My suggestion is that he develops late in his life the awareness which he lacks at the start-namely, a realization that if he had left his human creatures as he had originally made them-living as immortals in a world without scarcity, sexual conflict, or toil-he might never have felt so estranged from them. His ultimate task is somehow to restore that condition. But his immediate task is to both reveal and explain to his chosen people that their divine military protector is never going to take the field again. The moment is poignant, even heartbreaking, and yet it carries glory within it as a seed carries a flower.

I said that the biblical account is not even logical from a literary standpoint because the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, yet God did change his mind and his entire method for dealing with his own creation, if we assume the entirety of the Old and New testaments. For Miles' point to stick, however, God must be a being capable of "developing." But nowhere do I find this in Christian teaching.

Read more here: Our Daily Train