Don’t expect a Hollywood production here, folks. This has absolutely no production value, and the only edits I made were to remove two or three times where I slipped and called RoseMary by her real name. But I think the audio came out ok, and that is what is important.

I uploaded this to blip.tv since they allow me to embed an audio player here. Here is the description I put there:

My wife RoseMary and I would like to welcome you to the first episode our podcast. She is a Catholic Christian, and has been her entire life. I met her in 2004. We dated, and even though I was a liberal Baptist Christian, we fell in love. We wed in 2005. Some time in 2007, after 2 years of marraige, I lost my Christian Faith, and now considers the term ‘atheist’ to most accurately describe my religious stance. But my wife loves him whom I do not believe exists.

Does this story sound familiar? Is your marraige challenged with a similar situation? Has one of you fallen out of the Faith? Believer, what advice have you gotten from your friends, family and church? Non-believer, do you have anywhere to turn for support, or do you feel compelled to stay in the closet? RoseMary and I both believe that these stories are very common, yet few are willing to share these stories.

We are not so sure that we want to tell others our own stories, but are willing to give it a try. We want to share our experiences of being “unequally yoked”. Do you have a story to share? We would like to hear it, and possibly share it with others. Please contact us at unequallyyoked@hotmail.com

It is my hope that this proves beneficial to somebody out there, and it generates some healthy discussion around here.

- HeIsSailing

I have scoured the online world looking for stories, experiences, perspectives and worldly advice from couples who are “unequaly yoked”, particularly those where one has de-converted after marraige.  With the exception of religious sites that dispense advice to win the heathen back to the Faith or consider divorce, I can find absolutely nothing out there.   People in hurting marraiges need more than that.  I am particularly interested in those who want to remain in a healthy marraige, and those who have children.  How do you maintain a healthy marraige when  you have different religious beliefs?  What challenges do you face?  What compromises do you make?

My wife and I would like to discuss these issues, and maybe (with Paul’s permission) post them here for your enjoyment.  I should be ready to put the first episode up in the next couple of days.  I don’t have any idea what will become of it, but I do think it is an important topic that *nobody* is discussing. 

I am interested in your stories.  Perhaps we can hook up a skype interview or something, if you are interested in sharing your experiences here – or maybe you can just submit emails for me to read.  Right now, I am just in the crazy, brainstorming phase, but this is a much more interesting and important issue to me (and I bet many other de-converts and their spouses) than yet another Resurrection Challenge debate.  De-converts, particularly new de-converts have enough challenges to deal with, and I would like to contribute some help with healthy discussion - even if it is nothing but stories that say “We have all been there”.

If you have any input, or just want to call me an idiotic dreamer, just leave it in the comments, or you can email me at unequalyyoked@hotmail.com- seriously, let me know what you think

- HeIsSailing

I wanted to like this book. I really, really wanted to like this book. Inspired by an article by blogger DagoodS, I picked up the book in Dallas while waiting for a connecting flight. Dowd has lately been making the rounds promoting his book, and appearing on everything from Albert Mohler’s radio show to Point of Inquiry. He lives the life of an itinerant evangelist, who travels about the country writing and lecturing on his successful marriage of Christian faith and the theory of evolution. After hearing Dowd being interrogated and his Faith questioned by Dr. Russell Moore, I admit I developed a soft spot for Dowd. I wanted to like him, and his book. I wanted somebody from inside the Christian faith who could successfully promote and evangelize both Christian belief and modern science. Picking up the book, I was struck by 6 pages of accolades from theologians, physicists, ministers, biologists and Nobel laureates. I was impressed by his opening paragraphs which promise inspiration and insight to such diverse beliefs ranging from the Fundamentalist to the Atheist, and everyone in between. I was not even fazed when I turned to the author’s photo on the back cover to discover that Michael Dowd bears a shocking and disturbing resemblance to my old Calvary Chapel pastor Skip Heitzig.

I really wanted to like this book. And I did, but only occasionally. Dowd certainly has a unique way of looking at life that can be beneficial to his readers. He is critical of, what he calls, ‘flat earth Christianity’, or the belief that science should be filtered through the sieve of a literal reading of Scripture. Dowd rightly considers this to be naïve and foolish, and writes his book on this presumption with no justification. No justification is needed – and it was refreshing that this book was not another ‘science vs evolution’ debate. Rather, Dowd takes for granted that evolution is the truth revealed by God through science, and shows how we can understand ourselves better with a proper knowledge of our evolutionary past. In this respect, Dowd draws a lot of his inspiration from, and improves upon, David Sloan Wilson’s tepid Evolution for Everyone.

But my praise ends there. From the radio interviews that I have heard, Dowd is a better speaker than he is a writer. He continually interrupts his narrative with inspiring quotes attached to obscure names (and a disproportionally large number from David Sloan Wilson) and personal anecdotes taken from his many speaking engagements. Every author has their own style, and I understand that Dowd is trying to reach as large an audience as possible, but I found this style to be just a level above that used in Rhonda Byrne’s dreadful The Secret. I think Dowd is better than that, and he should write better than that.

As for the content, Dowd advocates using evolution in harmony with religious belief as a way of understanding ourselves and fellow humans. For instance, ‘original sin’ as conceived by the authors and interpreters of Scripture is actually inherent in each of us due to our evolutionary past. Humans have evolved from animals and that tendency to be harmful or ‘sinful’ to others is a vestigial by-product of past survival instincts. Dowd playfully calls this our ‘Lizard Legacy’, and contends that we can better tame this ‘sinful nature’ if we properly knew its source. Dowd considers Scripture to be true only as far as the writers could interpret the natural world around them. They could not conceive of Evolution via natural selection, so they used the ‘Night Language’ (Dowd’s euphemism for ‘myth’) to make sense of evil as best as they could. But as God continually reveals himself to humanity through his gift of science, we can see clearly the true nature and the evolutionary roots of ‘original sin’. Other theological concepts, like grace, atonement, and salvation are given similar ‘Night Language’ treatment.

I understand that many, if not most, modern educated Christians conceive of these theological concepts in a similar manner. I certainly did when I was a Christian. Yet, even as a religious skeptic, I found myself asking ‘what kind of Christian is this?’ as I read. I fear that the audience who could most benefit from this kind of book, the religious fundamentalist, will do exactly as Dr Russell Moore did during his interview of Dowd. The fundamentalist will ignore the content of the text and will instead search the pages for a litmus test as to what kind of Christian Dowd really is. That is a shame, but the good news is that Dowd answers that question in depth fairly early on. The bad news is, the Fundamentalist will likely slam the book shut upon reading the answer. Dowd considers himself neither a theist, nor a deist, nor a pantheist, nor an atheist, yet considers himself all of the above. He has coined the term ‘creatheist’ to describe his own religious belief – a believer in an all-pervasive God who is continually in the process of creating and revealing. The Fundamentalist will almost certainly stop upon reading these words (p. 337):

I cannot agree that “Jesus as God’s way, truth, and life” means that only those Christians who believe certain things about Jesus or the Bible get to go to a special otherworldly place called heaven when they die. I used to believe that, but I don’t anymore. In hindsight, I see that my old belief cheapened, belittled, and impoverished the universal glory of the Gospel.

Although many will find Dowd’s religious views to be distasteful, I certainly do not mind, nor am I offended. Yet at the same time, this is the sort of double-speak that makes people like John Shelby Spong difficult for me to understand or enjoy reading. Dowd’s resulting theology of Humanistic/Christian/Universalist views is a confusing mishmash of vague spirituality, mythology, pop psychology and a smattering of science. And I do mean a smattering – although he brings up evolution constantly, he never actually utilizes it in his message other than to state that our minds come from a primitive heritage. For instance, the middle chapters of the book veer into self-help territory, complete with exercises for the reader to try. One of the exercises involves describing our ‘DNA of Deep Integrity’ by listing our Evolutionary, or Christ-like, character traits (e.g. trusting, honest, loving, etc) and our de-evolutionary character traits. While the exercise may be helpful for the reader, the mere insertion of terms like ‘evolutionary’ and ‘DNA’ seems forced, and the fact that no explanation is given as to why Christ-like behavior is ‘evolutionary’ makes the whole thing rather moot. Other exercises, some of which are taken directly from 12-step recovery programs, are treated similarly. Nobody denies that evolution, in the sense of character progress, is a relevant feature in human development. The controversy with the religious adherant lies with Darwinian Evolution via natural selection, and I am afraid Dowd makes no harmony with this particular scientific theory and his religious views. The term ‘evolution’ is used by Dowd in a rather careless and haphazard way which left me fairly confused – sometimes I did not know what Dowd was writing about, but he was certainly not writing about evolution or religion. Some of Dowd’s other exercises, like speaking in tongues as a form of inward meditation and imagining a painful memory as if it were a practical joke from God, seems to me to be completely unhelpful.

Astoundingly, the book ends with an appendix written by arch-skeptic Richard Dawkins. Although I am not a big fan of Dawkins’s work, I must say this excerpt from A Devil’s Chaplain was quite enjoyable. Dowd includes it for its “sound guidance for an evidential, evolutionary faith”. Somehow, I doubt that Dawkins would entirely agree with that wording. But the appendix was a fitting conclusion to my overall perception of this book. It demonstrated to me that, sadly, there is no marriage between Evolution by natural selection and traditional Christianity. I discovered that in order to make the marriage work, Dowd must practically redefine both evolution and Christianity. I am now convinced that ramming the square peg of Christianity into the round hole of Evolution is pure futility. I can only think that the pages of accolades found at the beginning are from well-meaning, educated people who are tired of their constant debating with young-earth ignoramuses, and are happy to find anything somewhat reasonable that can hopefully get them to, not leave Christianity or religion, but to at least see the light of science and progress. Hopefully that book may someday come, but sadly, I think this one misses the mark.

Good luck, Mr Dowd. I wish you much success on your lecture circuit and your itinerant ministry.

-HeIsSailing

The book was recommended to me by fellow church-goers as a means of questioning my questions, and doubting my doubts. I read it during the early stages of my own suspicions of the claims of Christianity, and I was told that Miller’s experiences would mirror my own. Wrong – oh how wrong they were. What Miller shows is not doubt nor skepticism toward his beliefs, rather disillusionment towards the political right wing that Evangelical Christianity has recently taken. This goes without saying, and answers no questions about honest doubt in God or the Christians’ supposed relationship with him. To counteract his ‘doubts’, Miller devises a tepid theology is of the ‘feel good’ variety. He admits that he never really doubts his faith in Jesus, so rather than try and ground his faith, gains self gratification by a variety of good deeds: feeding the homeless, donating time to charities, and making banners for anti-Bush rallies. Oh yes, and smoking the occasional weed. Not that there is anything wrong with his good deeds; giving is an admirable trait. However this does not make one’s faith grow – I know this from experience. Miller never deals with core issues, such as the reality of Jesus Christ and the holy nature of God, things that I desperately searched for. Sorry Don, but endless similes and metaphors just did not cut it.

Ten pages of meaningless, and frankly insulting, Don Rabbit cartoons don’t make matters much better. But the fact that Miller must fill pages with crude rabbit and astronaut cartoons is symptomatic of the entire book. It is meaningless fluff – fast food, junk candy and brain Novocain. Blue Like Jazz is that bad. Is it any surprise then that many young Christians have no idea what their Bibles even say when they rely on vacuous McBibles like this for their Christian foundation? If Miller’s goal was to meet doubting Christians at a halfway point, I found the effort to be condescending. Miller writes as a self-absorbed young man who attacks traditional institutions like most college students do, Christian or not. The book reads like a diary written during fits of procrastination from doing freshmen psychology homework.

I will be blunt. Blue Like Jazz is garbage. Miller should have left it unpublished and given it to a girlfriend so she can read his ‘most deepest and innermost thoughts’. Other then that, I cannot see how anyone can possibly benefit from this pulp.

On a side note, I found the entire chapter entitled “Confessions” nauseating. Miller attempts to win fellow college students to Jesus Christ by personally apologizing for the 11th century crusades. Did potential converts really talk like that at his confession booth, or was it as contrived as it seemed?

- HeIsSailing
(originally published on 17Aug 2007)

The Gospels contain sayings of Jesus, which in some cases are identical between gospels. For example the Parable of the Leaven found in Luke 13:20-21 and Matthew 13:33 – “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened”. In other cases, the sayings are placed in the same setting, but slightly different, as in the voice from heaven’s proclamation of Jesus after the baptism (Matt 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22). The voice speaks directly to Jesus in Mark and Luke (‘Thou art my beloved son’), but the voice speaks to the crowd in Matthew (‘This is my beloved son’). Why the differences in some cases but near verbatim in others? Was this design by divine purpose, copyist error, or dare I say, differing Gospel traditions? Of course, my church never dwelled into this territory of Biblical study, and I was left with my questions parked in my brain where they remained for years.

Burton Mack’s The Lost Gospel of Q deals directly with this question with a hypothesis that is wholly plausible. Since studying up on Christian origins, I have run into ideas of Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis, but never fully understood the rationale behind these ideas. Mack shows the problems in harmonizing the various Gospel sayings, demonstrates the feasibility of Markan priority, then interprets the person of Jesus based on the implications. Mack does this in an intelligent, highly readable and nontechnical manner that requires only familiarity with the synoptic Gospels. It does treat some material a little too lightly for my tastes, but on the whole this was an excellent read.

Mack begins with the origins of the two-source hypothesis and why it is needed. Much of the material in Matthew and Luke are identical, particularly the sayings of Jesus like the previously mentioned Parable of the Leaven. However, those sayings which are common through Matthew and Luke are strangely missing in Mark. This is especially strange in the case of Matthew, since much of Matthew shares similar plot elements with Mark. This leads to the hypothesis of the book, that Mark is the earliest of the Canonical Gospels (Markan Priority), that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and a lost sayings gospel code-named Q (two-source hypothesis), and that the hypothetical lost gospel Q can be, at least in part, be extracted by comparing common sayings between Matthew and Luke. Mack then reconstructs Q based on his own Greek translation. The result is a book of sayings from a man named Jesus, a man who is a non-miraculous, non-divine Galilean Cynic. It is utterly fascinating, and wholly plausible.

My largest issue with the book is based on Mack’s stratifying Q. If the Q hypothesis is correct, Q is certainly our most ancient document based on Jesus. It is at this point that I wish Mack would have gotten a bit more technical in his presentation. Not content thus far, Mack separates the sayings of Q into three categories: common instructions based to the community at large, apocalyptic judgments largely addressed to ‘this generation’, and miscellaneous material that does not seem to fit the overall theme, like Jesus’ wilderness temptation.

Mack contends that the three categories are actually three levels of redaction, with the successive layers written at different times. Mack then reprints Q *again* with the ‘original’ version of Q, that with the general community instructions. That the hypothesized original Q is reprinted seems to stress the contention that this version is the closest to a historical Jesus that we are ever going to get, yet it merely comes by categorizing the sayings of Q. Mack may see redaction in the categories, but it just seems like a neat idea with little basis. Interpreting Jesus based on layers of storytelling like this makes the whole idea seem circular to me.

With that one complaint out of the way, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the viability of the two-source hypothesis. Read it, like anything else, with a critical eye and take out of it that which makes sense. After reading this book, I am convinced that, while not airtight, it is the most plausible hypothesis to the origins of our synoptic gospels and how they were written that I have ever considered. I recommend this book to anyone curious about Gospel origins and the sources for Christian faith.

- HeIsSailing
(originally published on 23 Aug 2007)

Reading the book reminded me of some mathematics seminars I used to attend. The speaker would spend great effort in setting up the initial steps of some elaborate proof, only to spend the last 3 minutes of his talk rushing through the rest to get to his conclusion. It is the classic cartoon of a math professor writing “Poof, a miracle occurs here” in the middle of his equation list. Lewis attempts to build the case for Jesus Christ on first principles. The argumentation style is that of a long chain of assumptions and arguments, with one continuously built on the other. The problem with this type of argument is that when any argument or assumption in the chain is shown wrong, or even questioned or doubted, everything else that follows is discredited. If the foundational argument fails, the whole structure collapses and we might as well not read the rest of the book.

Lewis begins his arguments, indeed the first half of the book, with the argument of our moral conscience. He claims that since we have a moral baseline, which seems to be a standard across humanity, that it must have been implanted into us upon creation. Since our moral conscience cannot conceive of the abstract notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ unless they exist, they must then exist outside of our selves. Has our moral base been implanted into us, or are we born with it? It is the classic sociological problem of ‘nature versus nurture’, which I am not well versed in. But even if we are born with a moral conscience, is it truly universal? Is right and correct in one culture equally abhorrent in another? Does this moral base exist in the same sense as a universal multiplication table, as Lewis claims? Is this truly evidence of a transcendent creator who implanted that base into every human? I really don’t know the answer to this, but they are important questions to consider when reading Lewis’s line of reasoning.

The subject of morality without God bores me a little, so any reader who wants to comment on this, please feel free to do so. Lewis spends over half the book establishing this argument, so he needs to move quickly to get from here to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Lewis then argues the subjectivity of good and bad. By defining these terms with the frame of reference of an observer standing outside of each, Lewis rejects the concept of Pantheism. Lewis uses a frequent tactic by assuming that humanity cannot conceive of an abstract concept if it does not exist. For instance, consider this quote:

“If the universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning; just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.”

This type of argument permeates the book. He could have saved a lot of space by simply claiming that if God did not exist, we could not conceive of him, therefore God exists. But are arguments like these valid? If something can be imagined, does that mean it must exist? I am no cognitive scientist, but having attended numerous seminars on abstract mathematics, I tend to doubt it. Topology comes off the top of my head as an abstract concept which has little practical value, little physical construction, but fills countless journal articles. Just because topological objects are abstractions that we represent with symbols does not mean any of it really exists. It doesn’t. What about the concept of God? Modern science has forced God out of the physical world and into some abstract space. The only way to imagine our modern concept of God is through symbols which represent him in some abstract space – and I see no difference between that and mathematics. After all, if Lewis is correct in that we cannot imagine or even perceive of the non-existent, then I think we would all imagine the concept of ‘God’ the same way, which we all know is absurd.

Unlike ‘hot’ or ‘cold’, ‘God’ has different meanings for everyone – different symbols to represent some concept of higher power. If Lewis is correct, then the Hindu is fooling the entire Western world with their claimed belief in Krishna, because since Krishna does not exist to the Christian, he must be inconceivable. No, Krishna, like the God of the Bible is one more abstraction that is represented purely with symbols.

Can we imagine the non-existent through symbols? I really don’t see why not. That is why it was frustrating to read page after page of similar arguments in Lewis’ book.

The ultimate conclusion to this book is the divinity and salvific nature of Jesus Christ. He concludes with the famous ‘Lord, Liar, Lunatic’ argument that is famous amongst Christian apologetic circles. In a nutshell, Lewis considers the claims of Jesus as God, which are mostly found in the Gospel of John. Then he argues that Jesus could not be just a great moral teacher without being God:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he’s a poached egg – or else he’d be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.”

I first remember reading this argument in Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict about 20 years ago where, if memory serves, he devotes an entire section to the above quote. I was astounded, even as a Christian, that I could refute it about 5 seconds after I read it. There are other options besides the three that Lewis has given. Because in order to accept this thesis, you have to accept that the Gospel of John is recording the whole, accurate, and un-exaggerated words of Jesus claiming to be God lock, stock and barrel. And if you are that far along in your acceptance of Scripture, then you are probably a Christian anyway. In other words, this argument, like many of the apologetic arguments out there, will only work if you already believe. It is a book that is designed, not to persuade the questioning or even seeking unbeliever, but to bolster the faith and soothe the doubts of the committed Christian.

In the end, The Case for Christianity is a long case of circular reasoning, and I was left disappointed. This is too bad, because Lewis is a clever writer, and I really enjoy his fiction. But it frankly amazes me that Lewis is held up in Christian circles as a great intellectual champion of the Faith. He was not as popular when I first read him in the mid-1970s as he is now. I think that perhaps his legend has grown 45 years after his death. But as interesting as he is to read, his apologetic work just does not hold much water for this reader.

- HeIsSailing
(originally published on 27 Aug 2007)

It is my firm belief that any book which asks the reader in its preface to put away all subjectivity and view both sides of a debate topic equally will immediately plunge headlong into logical fallacies and spin-doctoring. Such is the case with Strobel’s ‘The Case for Christ’. Not that I mind Strobel presenting only one side of an argument – he is after all making a ‘case’. However, to pretend this has any objectivity at all makes Strobel’s intentions suspect from page 1.

Strobel, acting as a journalist, interviews a dozen or so leading Evangelical scholars for their evidences for their belief in Jesus Christ. The questions he asks are fine, but in general he never asks the follow-up questions that are just screaming to be asked. One assertion after another is left unchallenged. Bruce Metzger claims there are over 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, so the reader is left with the impression that each manuscript is evidence of the reliability of Scripture. But Strobel fails to asks how many of those 5000 are actually useful for determining the actual text. Strobel fails to ask how many centuries have passed between the time of Jesus and the time the vast majority of those manuscripts were written.

Donald Carson claims that Jesus fit the profile of God revealed in the Old Testament. Strobel should have asked Carson about Marcion, the early church heretic who found no similarity between YHVH and Jesus, and in fact claimed they were two entirely different deities.

Craig Blomberg claims that the the disciples of Jesus all died martyrs deaths (John excepted), thus giving their witness to the Resurrection of Jesus added weight. This assertion by Blomberg was left unchallenged by Strobel. Why didn’t Strobel ask how we know how any of the disciples died and evidences that we have for their deaths? The reason is that the accounts of their deaths are from legendary sources, some written centuries after the fact.

Strobel fails to counter any Evangelical claim. I am not asking for counter-arguments by skeptics. Again, I understand that Strobel is making a ‘case’ and I am fine with only one side presented. I am interested in his opinions. But if Christ has a case to be made, that case should stand up against the strongest argument Strobel can build. Yet Strobel is content with the weakest of arguments, leaving any obvious follow-up challenge unasked. And like any good objective book, the fact that it includes instructions on how to ‘receive Jesus into your heart’, as sort of an alter-call appendix, leaves Strobel hawking Christianity like a bad Amway product. He is desperate to have me buy his wares for any reason, no matter how flimsy.

I gave Rob VandeWeghe’s dreadful apologetic book ‘Prepared to Answer’ zero stars, but I am giving Strobel one star because the book was well written and extremely easy to read. Then again, that could also be its curse. This is dumbed down religious propaganda – the only question I now have is who the intended audience for such books is? Does Strobel really think he can win the unbeliever over with this spin like some Evangelical used car salesman? Or is he aiming this toward the Christian who took the religion on faith and wishes for some excuse, any excuse to ‘objectively’ believe? That is one question I wish I had the answer to.

Originally published on HeIsSailing’s Shelfari Page

Last year about this time, I celebrated Easter as a committed believer of the Risen and Living Savior. I have done so every Easter I can remember except for a rebellious stint I had while in my 20s (we all have those, no?). The one thing I knew for certain was that it was impossible to be a true Christian without this conviction.

.…and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. - 1 Cor 15:17-19 (NASB)

Of course I believed in the Resurrection. It is a foundational belief. It is essential. As C.S. Lewis would say, it is part of “Mere Christianity”.

I have always been an avid reader, and I always saw books in the library or store that had titles that just screamed, “Open my cover and browse my pages if you dare. For we are here to challenge your Christian beliefs!” My church pastors had words for authors of books like this: Pseudo-Intellectuals, who “professing themselves to be wise, they had become fools” (Rom 1:22). They were likely angry apostates, out on an agenda to debunk The Word of God, the Anvil that has worn our many Hammers. It was easy to pass by these books left on the shelf without thinking another thought.

Upon entering graduate school, I was introduced to the Internet, and I was soon a little overwhelmed with the ease that I could obtain information. More than I few times, before I knew better, I had accidentally hit a porn site while in the school computer lab, and I would be furiously clicking the “close” button before an administrator noticed! The power of the Internet, the Information Superhighway, where articles and opinions were shoved in your face before you had a chance to see what was on the cover.

While working in the lab late one night all those years ago, I stumbled onto this site, an article by Dan Barker, self-proclaimed minister turned atheist, which challenged the reader to take what he called the Resurrection Challenge. The Resurrection Challenge was a challenge to harmonize the accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Four Gospels, and the one in 1 Corinthians 15 to remove the (apparent) contradictions. Dan Barker was a Christian minister who became an atheist simply because, he claimed, he found Christianity to be unbelievable. Another angry apostate! I read a few paragraphs of the article, but did not finish it. Of course the Gospels could be harmonized – we are only talking about the inerrant Word of God here! Sure the angels appear in different places in Jesus’ tomb, sure they said different things, but those details are so minor, so trivial, when considering he entire overarching theme of the Resurrection. The funny thing is, I never took it upon myself to at see if the Resurrection accounts could be harmonized. I knew they could, and that settled it. I clicked the browser window closed and did not give the Resurrection Challenge another thought.

Until last year – I was hosting our small group Bible Study, and the seeds of doubt had begun in my own faith. I was still a Christian, a believer in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I was scrounging around the Internet looking for some resources, until I again stumbled on, you guess it, the long forgotten Resurrection Challenge. This time, I read the entire article. Then I grabbed a steno pad, pencil with sturdy eraser, and attempted the Resurrection Challenge.

I admitted defeat in about 5 minutes.

Undaunted, I itemized most of the discrepancies that I found in the Resurrection Accounts just to see how many there were. Some of the contradictions are listed in the original article, but I had to check for myself. I was stunned at how divergent the accounts were. Not only were they contradictory in nature, they were practically completely different stories! This was not a case of several different eyewitness getting the story details slightly different, this was wholesale opposition. The truth of one Gospel account had to imply the falsehood of the other.

I listed the portions of the Resurrection accounts which diverged from the other accounts, and gave up after a couple hours. It really rattled me. If God wants us to believe in the Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, why are all these accounts so different? If God wants us to believe, why did he make his recording of events so inconsistent with each other? If these were separate Police reports of the same event, would they even be considered? What truth could be gleaned from them?

Take the Resurrection Challenge. What do you draw from your conclusions?

A list of some of the contradictions is at the end of Barker’s article. But he did not list one that I found, one that I consider perhaps the most troublesome and baffling contradiction in the entire Bible. It concerns whether Christ rose in the Flesh, or rose in the Spirit. Here I list two accounts from the Resurrection narratives:

Account 1 -
In 1 Cor 15, Paul is speaking of the resurrection of the dead, following the example of the resurrected Christ. He makes this remark that states Jesus was risen with a Spiritual, and most emphatically not Physical body.

So also is the resurrection of the dead It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. – 1 Cor 15:42-44 (NASB) – but read the whole chapter for good context.

Account 2 -
The resurrected Jesus has just disappeared from Emmaus, and has appeared to the eleven remaining disciples in Jerusalem. He mentions that he has a Physical, and most emphatically not Spiritual body.

While they (the eleven disciples) were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be to you.” But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them. - Luke 24:36-43 (NASB)

The only way I have seen these two passages reconciled is with the tried and true Harmonization by Omission tactic. I have heard the theory that Jesus could have risen as spirit, ascended to heaven while nobody was around, then came back to Earth as flesh. I won’t even entertain that idea here, because to give it credibility is to be desperate to even include sheer brute force to make this issue harmonize.

Some Christians concede that while the details of particular passages may differ, the essence remains consistent. I don’t see a consistent essence in this case. Everything differs except the amorphous detail that Jesus rose. What message he left, who he saw, what form he took and what he did remains unknown, because not a single detail can be reconciled.

The essence of Jesus life through the Gospels seems to be consistent, at least through the Synoptics. He taught similar things, he performed similar miracles, and events can be harmonized with a little ironing over rough details. Why do the events diverge so greatly after the crucifixion? There is general agreement that Mark is the first Gospel to be written, and many scholars agree that there is not much of a Resurrection story in that Gospel. Many scholars agree that the Gospel ends at Mark 16:8, with the women fleeing the sepulcher in fear. The End. If that is true, could it be that when Matthew and Luke were independently compiling their Gospels from Mark, and left with a paucity of Resurrection material, had to elaborate their own accounts from Oral Tradition and legend? What about John? Perhaps he had to derive things independently as well, thus four wildly divergent Resurrection accounts.

That is the only thing that makes sense to me. Is the Resurrection of our Savior Myth and Legend?

Tomorrow I will go to mass with my wife and celebrate Easter with her. I want to believe, I truly do, but what am I to hold my faith on? I am convinced that the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is incorrect, so do I have nothing to go on but 2000 year-old hear-say? I want to believe because I am afraid to discard a belief I have held my entire life. I want to believe for the sake of my family, and the sake of my wife.

I am afraid to say it. But I must admit it. This will be the first Easter that I celebrate as a non-believer.

- HeIsSailing

After I left Christianity, understanding morality was one of the harder challenges I had to face. I had been told all my life that without God, we had no basis for our morality. Without that lifeline, I have to admit that it was pretty scary there for a while.

Many theists approach this subject from a false premise. They ask a non-believer where the universal standard of morality comes from if not God. Rather, I submit that there is *no* universal standard of morality.

To a theist, that is scary. I understand that. It is cold. It is harsh. It is raw, amoral naturalism. My wife recently asked how our children were going to get their morality if I was no longer a Christian. Wow. She knows I am a good man, but that Christian mindset that there is no good without God is so ingrained in her that she is not even aware of it. That any morality can come without God is inconceivable to most of us!

But now that I have been away from Christianity for a while, and have had a chance to observe my former faith from the outside – I think I have a pretty fair idea what is going on. The bottom line is, I do not believe there is a universal standard of morality.

Yet, how do Christians gain their morality? Supposedly from Scripture, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. However, now that I have seen Christianity for a while from the outside, I no longer think that is the case. Christians think that is where they gain morality, but in reality, I think they are doing what we all end up doing in the long run – gaining what we can from our society, from our culture, our own gut instinct, and yes our religious traditions – and taking our best stab at it.

I am reading a book right now called, “Science and Ethics: Can Science Help us Make Wise Choices?”, edited by Paul Kurtz. It is very enlightening! It gives data and informed opinion on some of the uniquely modern ethical challenges of our times. What does the Holy Bible say about the ethics of cloning? Stem cell research and other kinds of biogenetic engineering? Does Jesus ever say anything about a patient’s right to medical privacy, psychotherapy or chemical treatment for mental health? What ethical standards are sent down by God concerning euthanasia, unnecessary suffering or prolonging the life of the elderly?

I remember my old pastor lambasting Christian psychology, because he believed the Bible was sufficient for all our needs. Yet, I don’t see how 2000-3000 year old sacred texts can give insights, much less absolutes, to critical issues like cloning, embryonic stem cell research, or any of these other moral problems of our day. These are sophisticated and challenging problems worthy of debate. The ancient writers of Scripture simply could not conceive of such things, and the Bible is just not equipped to handle these types of issues.

Does the Bible contain a guideline of moral absolutes? I submit that it does not – in hindsight, I don’t know what moral guidelines it contains beyond “Do unto others…”. I found an interesting book on Google Books recently, that I will get around to reading someday soon. It is called Bible Defence of Slavery: And Origin Fortunes and History of the Negro Race, by Rev. Josiah Priest, originally published in 1843, it appears to contain over 500 pages of a Biblical defense of Negro slavery.

I want to read this as a historical perspective, because I want to get an insight into the moral justification some Christians once used for what they believed was perfectly just, good and right – the subjugation, and ownership of an entire race of human beings. I am certain that you think slavery is abhorant, as do I and 99.99% of modern westerners. That is the morality of our modern culture. Yet, that used to not be the case. Where did Rev Priest think his pro-slavery morality came from? The same place the modern Christian thinks they got theirs:

From page iv of the introduction:

The question, “Is slavery, as it exists in the United States, justifiable?” is one which, at least, admits of discussion. IF it be in harmony with the immutable principles of truth and justice, and not a ‘crime against humanity’, and a libel upon our holy religion, let i tbe so understood and practised by our honest citizens, whose highest ambition consists in faithfully serving God…

“But Rev Priest was obviously twisting the Scriptures to suit his pro-slavery desires,” the modern Christian will say. Maybe so – but I don’t know. That is why I want to read the book, although I am certain Rev Priest will be just as sure the modern Christian is wrong in their anti-slavery stance.

If God is the ultimate arbiter of morality, who is the ultimate arbiter of theological study and Biblical interpretation? What good is a holy book of moral standards if we cannot interpret or agree on what those standards are?

I do not want to hijack this article to be a tirade against slavery. The point I am trying to make is, that ultimately, whether we realize it or not, the ultimate arbiter of morality is not God, not the Scripture, but ourselves.

Where did this universal morality come from? Well, for one I don’t think it is necessarily universal. But across a single culture the agreed upon moral structure does not seem to need a supernatural origin. Morality seems to be concocted by us humans over time so that we can live civilly with each other. I don’t see why that is so profound, or why it takes a heck of a lot of faith to understand.

- HeIsSailing

With the implications of eternal damnation on the bulk of humanity, I had no peace in Jesus. I looked at humanity in two camps – the Saint and the Heathen – the Saved and the Damned. I witnessed to my workmates fervently, because they were my friends, and I could not imagine them in eternal torment. I prayed every morning for the Holy Spirit to empower my witness so they too could experience the peace of Jesus.

Several years ago, my mother could tell that I was anguished at her unbelief. She was a strong Christian when I was younger, but had since left the faith after her own period of questioning and doubting. I was constantly witnessing to her and inviting her to church, as if she had never before heard the Gospel. The fate of my mother’s eternal soul weighed heavily on my conscience. One particular day, after praying for the convicting power of the Holy Spirit to fall upon my mother, I tried to show her that she needed to repent and again recognize the One True God through Jesus Christ. My face must have betrayed my true feelings – you can’t fool mom.

Mom: “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”

Me: “Nothing”.

“I’m going to be blunt. Do you think I am going to Hell?”

Having to answer a question like this to my own mother made me very uncomfortable. I began to soft-peddle the way I heard my pastor do many times before with the dopey Christian cliche, “uh – well, I don’t know your heart…”

“I’ll make it easy for you,” said mom, who had surely heard that line many times in her life. “I flatly reject Jesus Christ. He does not exist. He is dead. There is no forgiveness of sins.”

Emphatically, she demanded, “Do you think I am going to Hell?”

“YES!” I said in exasperation. My face felt flushed and hot tears welled in my eyes.

Mom spoke calmly to me. She had been through all this before. And she said something that I will never ever forget.

“You are going to Heaven to be with God forever. When the Judgment comes, what are you going to do when God passes his judgment on me? Will you be worshipping God when he assigns your own mother to never ending torture? Your sister (an unbeliever)? Your dad (a Mormon)? Will you be thanking God for your own salvation when they are cast into the Lake of Fire? Tell me, what kind of Paradise will that be? What will Heaven be like for you when you know your whole family is burning in hellfire? Will you still be praising God and declaring his judgments to be Holy, Righteous and True?

I had no answer for her, and I never witnessed to her again. And all these years later, I have come to accept that Christian Doctrine has no answer to her questions. I now realize that mom was absolutely correct. I see no hope, nor any peace in passing through the Gates of Paradise.

Does anybody else relate with this? What does a Christian do when they consider the damnable state of their unsaved loved ones, family and friends? I know some Christians assume God will wipe away these painful memories, or trust that somehow God will make us see them as he does – truly worthy of eternal damnation. But when Christians do this, they are just doing what they do when they posit the existence of an ‘age of accountability’ for dying children – they are just making stuff up, desperately trying to make God into their own image, to soften the blow.

And once I have come to understand that people assign God certain attributes to make damnation a little more palatable, then it is not too much a jump to come to the next logical conclusion.

What is the afterlife? It is humanity’s wish for ultimate justice and revenge. That’s it. It has no basis in reality. There is no reason to believe it. That is it. Pure and simple.

If I subscribe to this particular Christian belief system of eternal reward and eternal punishment, then I have become nothing more then God’s Stooge or God’s Flunky. God is the Divine Godfather Don Corleone with an offer the Christian truly cannot refuse. Because the Christian endorses the existence of eternal damnation, and worships an omnipotent judge who can do whatever he pleases with the poor Christian’s eternal destiny, the Christian has no choice but to tell God in essense:

“Yes God, it is okay that you assign the vast majority of humanity to eternal hell.”

“Yes God, I agree with your judgment to cast my unbelieving family into the Lake of Fire. They are certainly evil and deserve Hell since they willingly chose to be apart from you.”

“Yes God, you are correct to damn every single one of my friends who rejected the Gospel that I shared with them. Punish them for their hardened hearts.”

“Yes God, they are most unrighteous, wicked, depraved and corrupt, and you are Holy and Just in declaring their eternal damnation. Thank you for electing me for salvation, and seeing me as righteous through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

“Yes God, the vast majority of humanity who searched for you, but could not find you due to being in the wrong time or the wrong place are without excuse – your decision to torture them forever is Righteous and True.”

“Thank you God, for my eternal reward for being faithful to you. No I do not deserve it, but you are most gracious.”

“Thank you God, for my mansion in Heaven, and my crown of righteousness. I will worship you forever for your Perfect Love and Perfect Justice.”

This is beyond the pale. As I Christian, I could not continue being God’s stooge with a clear conscience. The thought of a God who would cast my own mother into Hell, while I piously continued praising his enduring love and mercy made me literally sick for years. The logical disconnect was just too profound for me to rationalize any longer. I can think of nothing more egocentric than this belief in eternal reward and punishment. I cannot live with this belief; it fills me with nothing but guilt and I cannot accept it. This type of divine love and justice has no meaning to a thinking human, yet the Christian must endorse it because they simply have no choice. Their God is the God of Damnation, the Grand Extortionist whom the Christian dares not question.

This is beyond reason! This is beyond logic! There is no perfect love or justice in any of this! It is beyond anything even resembling justice that all Christians say God is perfect in.

It is not that I am mad at God for creating Hell. I am not shaking my fist at God. It is that the existence of a God like this simply makes no sense! A God who does this is an invention borne from our own insecurities and neuroses. Matthew and Revelation, where most of the Biblical doctrine of Hell comes from, were written during a time of war, where the Jewish nation was severely persecuted by the Roman government. If the Jews had written the Bible during the holocaust of WWII, they would have wished eternal Hell on the German Nazis. This is human nature speaking, not God. If God exists, he cannot be like this. It simply makes no sense.

Eternal Hell is nothing more than a fabrication from barbarous human minds. Some group of people cooked it up to intimidate a certain group of readers, and inadvertently terrified countless millions over the centuries. I will no longer let the self-neurosis from Fear of Eternal Damnation ruin my true Hope and Joy in life! My beautiful wife who has given me a life I could have only dreamed of. My wonderfully crazy family. My precious friends and neighbors. The knowledge and wisdom of this world that the Fear of Hell clouds me from. I have learned treasure this short life that I have been given, and find great wonder, beauty, joy and awe in the natural world. I have learned not to think of this life as a trial from God, where the big show occurs after death, rather to accept and find beauty in my mortal life. Heaven, Hell, the afterlife and eternity are all a distraction, and needlessly sidetrack and complicate our real life here!

I will treasure this precious life because without Heaven or Hell, my remaining few decades here are probably all there is. I love my life, and I have great meaning and purpose in life, and I will love life and love those around me and give hilariously where I can. Does no eternal life mean no hope for me? Hardly. It means hope for the billions who don’t believe in the Trinity, and for me that is all the hope I need.

I am finally, truly at peace.

This is the end of my three-part rant against the belief in eternal damnation. It is my sincere hope, that the poor Christian who has been traumatized by this poisonous belief (and there are many who are) will release that fear. Stare that fear in the face, don’t be afraid to analyze it, criticize it, think it through, and finally throw those chains of fear away. I don’t care whether you come away from this a Christian or not, but the belief in eternal Hellfire and the fear it brings must be thrown in the pile of forgotten mythologies where it belongs.

- HeIsSailing

Part I: In Fear and Trembling – The Peace from Our Lord

Part II: Worthy of Damnation – A Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth