1. Jesus or Nothing? How about Jesus Died for Nothing?
As I've mentioned many times in previous entries, I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home. The specific denomination was Baptist. Most people in my life (family and friends) did and still do even accept young earth creationism. Now, most of these people, I think I can safely say, haven't done their homework. Most reject the entire theory of evolution or at the very least when applied to our species. So it's safe to say these well meaning Baptist Christians reject something they haven't taken the time to learn the basics of. That being said, we know that in those that are educated in the sciences will accept the validity of the theory of evolution (even when it deals with human origins). Well, simply because it is probably one of the strongest theories in science (with so much evidence to support it no scientist really questions it anymore)
A few years back I stumbled across an NPR article and interview titled "Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve". In this article we meet Albert Mohler who I was introduced first to me by my friend who is the dean of a Christian college (I have mentioned him before). Albert Mohler was once his boss. Albert Mohler explains here
http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/08/31/adam-and-eve-clarifying-again-what-is-at-stake/
that if Christianity let's go of a historical Adam and Eve then Christianity is done. I couldn't agree more. I think many would agree with this too on all sides of this. Some Christian theologians have tried desperately to reconcile a metaphorical Adam and Eve in several different ways all of which are refuted by renowned biologist Jerry A. Coyne (author of Why Evolution Is True) here:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115759/adam-eve-theologians-try-reconcile-science-and-fail .
Of course if one is at all familiar with not only the theory of evolution by natural selection but specifically the origin of homo sapiens we understand there is no such thing as "the first two" of any species. Obviously "divine magic" has no place in the field of paleontology, but it is well understood by those who have looked at the evidence that it is impossible for there to have been a historical Adam and Eve. We know too much about the human genome, we know too much about species populations, radiometric dating of bones, teeth, etc to accept the Adam and Even story as a literal, historical event. There simply could not be a historical Adam and Eve.
As Christian apologists do what they do best and search everywhere for ways to bend the real worldview provided to us all by scientific evidence to fit with their specific dogma from Scripture, more and more evidence is piling up on our ancestors and our closest relatives. The picture of our past as a species gets clearer ever day. Just read the scientific journals. The professionals in their fields are pulling back the curtain on our origins. What isn't in the scientific journals is a historical Adam and Eve.
If you haven't noticed yet, one of the most difficult things to do is to get any of the New Christians to name specific problems they have with the scientific evidence paleontologists, geneticists, biologists have presented for the origin or our species. Why? A good amount I would say do not know enough of the science to speak to human origins, but others must know to accept the science (from the majority of professionals in that field of study) is suicide for their religious worldview. Once you open the door to the evidence on human origins (as Darwin has already done for us over a hundred years ago) you shoot your theology in the foot before you can even introduce a Savoir to the mix. This is where Mohler and I agree completely. So what's the option? Well, Mohler doesn't seem to ever give specific scientific evidence to counter the claims made by professional scientists (since he apparently knows more on the subject, enough at least to reject it as false). We see the dodge. The deflection is in full color.
Mohler and many Evangelicals like him will go down with the ship and that's precisely what they've done and are continually doing. It's ongoing. I just spent almost six to seven months reading and discussing a book called The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg with my good friend (the Dean of a Christian school I have already mentioned). In our email exchanges he explained how he thinks atheists do not have a moral framework in which to base anything. Basically, embracing atheism leads to nihilism. He has even written a book (in which I will review soon) called Jesus or Nothing with this very theme. However, it seems to me if the framework for your entire religion hinges on a historical Adam and Eve and science has conclusively proven that there was no such two people then cannot the same thing be attributed to your worldview? Where is a Christian's theological framework to their worldview if Adam and Eve never existed?
Without Adam and Even, as Mohler points out, we have no original sin. We have no atonement for the sin of humanity without a historic Adam and Eve to commit the first sin. We still debate whether Jesus was a real person let alone died, and rose again and all this. Even if these things could be historically proven conclusively (and don't let any Lee Strobel-like apologists tell you that it has been, because it hasn't) that still is meaningless without Adam and Eve. Forget Jesus or NOTHING, if there was no historical Adam and Eve (which we have solid scientific evidence to prove there was not) then Jesus died FOR NOTHING. And he must have (if he even existed) because the evidence shows there was no Adam and Eve.
See, we don't even have to talk about why an all-knowing, all-loving/wrathful bipolar Patriarchal God needs to shed the blood of himself/his son (like following some ancient cult spell or curse rulebook) to die for this one species of ape to knock Christianity to its knees. See, we don't need even get to the reality of talking snakes, donkeys, and bushes to take out the blood cult most call Christianity. Christianity was destroyed by Darwin over a century ago. Move on.
Check out my friend's book Jesus or Nothing here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jesus-or-nothing-dan-dewitt/1116874863?ean=9781433540462
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2. Ghosts are People Too!
I just came back from a very fun family vacation (with my girlfriend, my brother, and my mother and her boyfriend) to Southern California and Catalina Island. We had a beach house that we rented and relaxed by the ocean for a week. On Catalina Island we all laughingly (I think.?) said it would be a fun idea to go on the local ghost tour. Well, obviously it was going to be a joke. It was essentially a tour of the main street of the city of Avalon as the tour guide told ghost story after ghost story. At one point I said to my mom, "Maybe at this point the tour guide should just tell us when we get to a building where there wasn't a haunting."
My brother laughed as he downloaded the "ghost locator" Iphone app that the tour guide told us to download. We located multiple ghosts. Each giving a very vague message. One happened to be located once exactly on top of the tour guide (thus we concluded she was probably a ghost, ... obviously). The tour guide explained the 7 layers of paranormal dimensions and instructed each of us to take pictures .. "You very well may pick up some orbs!" She said (AKA ghosts - which are very tiny circular dead humans apparently). My girlfriend caught a couple dust or water particles on camera in a few pics. I am skeptical of the orb thing. Did I need to say that?
Anyways, we all had a good laugh and that was that. We stopped at the gourmet coffee shop near where we were staying and gathered around the table to tell our own ghost stories from our past. I had a few myself. One was when I was in college in Missouri my friend John and I worked at a resort where we cleaned up and set up banquets for various corporate events or dinners. It was an exhausting job that wasn't worth the money and kept us there sometimes til 3am. This resort was said to be haunted. We discovered this at orientation. Apparently someone of some significance to the resort in the early 1900s had a daughter that killed herself by jumping of this cliff near the building that was eventually called "Dorothy's Presence" (which was eventually turned into a gift shop. Ghosts are good capitalists). The human resources employee giving us the tour during orientation said many guests of the resort have witnessed Dorothy's ghost (clothed in her 1900s original white party dress and hat).
One night around 2:30am or so John and I were taking a quick smoke break out the back of one of the many buildings at the resort while out of the corner of my eye I caught Dorothy. A woman dressed in an all white dress slowly walking down into the woods nearby. She appeared somewhat transparent, and floated while she walked. I screamed very loud like a little girl and literally jumped sky high then clung to my friend John. He was confused because he didn't see it. However, my story as convincing to me as it was (at the time) was not as convincing as a few others presented by my family. One story involved multiple people witnessing the same supernatural event. Needless to say, I was the only supernatural (ghost, angel, demon, etc) skeptic around this table. I used to believe in angels and demons when I was a Christian. I am no longer a Christian (as my mom and her boyfriend still are and admitted that night specifically to belief in such supernatural things as angels).
I am also confused by Christians that profess a belief in ghosts and also adhere to Christian dogma (which is when you die you either go to heaven or hell.) This isn't even a purgatory situation - since my family isn't Catholic, nor if they were would ghosts describe what the Catholic church teaches on purgatory. Aren't these contradictory beliefs? You can't be in heaven or hell and still roaming around knocking over lamps and opening and shutting doors randomly after you die. Also, why are we so prone to assume these ghosts are humans that have died. If death (afterlife) is essentially the same "experience" as before life - just nothingness (which is what I believe) then if we were to take the next step to believe in these ghosts why couldn't they be "pre-birthed" humans? Confirmation bias all the time everywhere with us fallible apes.
Carl Sagan once wrote that yesterday's demon possessions are today's alien abduction. He's right, though angels and demons still exist too for some. No one talked of aliens (at least as we can tell by the literature) in our distant past. The supernatural beliefs have shifted and evolved over time. Each claim (whether it be ghost sightings, demon possession, guardian angel sighting, alien space craft sighting, or alien abduction) should be taken on a case by case basis. I am pretty confidence in saying most accounts can most likely be explained by natural phenomenon.
It's easy to piss people off, or even offend family and friends when you attack their beliefs regarding something they witnessed or a story of someone close to them witnessing something supernatural. It's so personal, it's a very deep subjective experience in some cases. So a skeptic has to somewhat be careful on what one says. I mostly kept my mouth shut during these conversations. I expressed my disbelief and no one pressed me on it. Maybe I should have expressed more, but like I said, it's a touchy terrain to tread down with the people you love most.
I vividly remember my aunt telling me a story when I was young about her son's guardian angel. My cousin was very little and my aunt was driving down the road while he started choking. (which, by the way, I would like to interject is a pretty good example of "UNintelligent design" within our "made in the Image of God" species) Anyways, she immediately pulled the car over into an abandoned parking lot. It was late, she said, no one was around. She tried desperately to get my cousin to spit out what was keeping him from breathing. To no avail. Out of no where -- she explained -- a man in an all black suit pulls up in a limo, jumps out, grabs my cousin and performs the heinrich maneuver. He spits out the piece of food he had lodged in his throat. My aunt grabs my cousin, in tears, hugging him, asking him if he is OK. She said after a mere few seconds she looks over to thank the man that just saved her son's life and sure enough... he was GONE! He had completely disappeared - thus, ... her conclusion: guardian angel. I shared this with my family around the table as we sipped our coffee and ate our dessert.
You probably are a good enough skeptic to pick apart this story for what it is. And hopefully a good enough skeptic to pick apart my own personal "ghost" experience I mentioned above. What my aunt concluded from this event doesn't have enough evidence to support her conclusion. The entire experience is riddled with issues and variables. This is the same aunt that recommended my father read Pastor John Hagee's new book about the "blood moons" signaling certain Biblical events soon to come. She also recommended he read the "dying and going to heaven" bestselling books - A child has a near death experience about arriving in heaven, a neurosurgeon has the same near death experience (well, only same in the way that they confirm what they already knew prior to their near death experience - which is the Christian religion and stories in the Bible talking about heaven. They are not similar experiences in that one is flying on a giant butterfly while the other is explaining how everyone is a little kid in heaven.) The neurosurgeon has more credibility than a child obviously so Eben Alexander's book Proof of Heaven holds more weight among believers BUT the loveable kid's story is just so much more cute since it's a little boy's experience, which made it sell more copies. Seems we collectively prefer cute kid accounts of "after death" experiences over a scientist's "after death experience". Check the sales numbers.
Life isn't simple. Being a skeptic and thinking scientifically and philosophically are noble and best attempts to get at the underlying truth to our reality. This is all we have. The best tools are our reasoning capabilities through our own conscious experience. We are easily tricked, easily superstitious (just ask a sports fan). We use phrases like "Lord willing," or "knock on wood" or "pray for me" or "wish me luck". Why? None of it makes actual sense in the cosmos we know. We aren't affecting the outside shared reality of the universe with our minds here. We're not all a bunch of Professor Xaviers here from Xmen.
I should have stood up at the table and proclaimed loudly, "I used to believe in a god, demons, angels, aliens, ghosts, etc etc but I no longer accept claims without sufficient evidence to support them. ESPECIALLY extraordinary claims such as something like witnessing the supernatural happening! It feels good to tell ghosts stories because we have evolved a social set of playfulness and fear and struggle and the LOVE of stories that channel these things. That's it. Can't that be enough?! ... Can not that be enough?!" Then I could have slowly sat back down after the diatribe to crickets and
.. "DUDE COME ON! .. why you always have to ruin the fun?!"
I think I chose wisely in retrospect. Haha!
In the car on the way back I argued that in the United States we need to invest more in education. I didn't want to go off course talking about how the department of education wastes tax payer money through various programs that bog down the system and so on as my mom's boyfriend took the conversation. What I meant by this was according to the polls asking basic questions to the citizens of this country we are embarrassingly ignorant of all sorts of subjects in mathematics and sciences. This is why we need shows like the new revamped Cosmos series to educate the people of this country. When polled almost half the citizens of this country do not accept the theory of evolution. Don't get me started on climate change. There are people that claim to know more about certain specific fields of science (such as the climate change and evolution deniers) than the majority of scientists. Think about that for a second. That's insane. And if you have ever listened to talk radio, watched a debate with a young earth creationist or turned on Fox News you will see these people are proud of their ignorance. Sad. Do what you can to educate those that are ignorant of these things that are well accepted in the scientific community.
"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the ignorant are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell
Check out Catalina Island Ghost Tour if you ever visit Avalon:
http://www.ghosttoursofcatalina.com/
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