The reliability of the gospels

You may remember quite a while ago a rant I posted here about a couple of Canadian evangelicals who were trying to convert me but actually ended up getting swayed more by me than I did by them. They left me with a book called The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel for my own perusal. I’ve been reading revision books and more recently Catch 22, so I haven’t got around to reading it yet, but I’m about halfway through, and when I finish I’ll be sure to post a more in-depth review. The first 2 chapters, however, are specifically about how reliable the gospels are in regards to being passed down faithfully and having been written by eyewitnesses or disciples of eyewitnesses, and I have a couple of points. You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve rather stupidly left my copy somewhere so I don’t have it in front of me.

Strobel constantly reaffirms and asserts that when he was making this ‘2-year spiritual journey’ from effective atheism to committed Christianity, he approached the subject with an open mind and like lawyers in a court case would, but it’s clear from the text that this simply isn’t true. He seems very up to date on polemics in modern Christian theology and he often just takes the experts’ words at face value without questioning it at all (typical of a religionist to use arguments from authority rather than reason), even though his language would make you think he’s probing deeper all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was never an atheist; he never takes the skeptic’s point of view and I could do a better job of grilling these experts.

I’d also like to mention that, unlike most journalists and certainly unlike a court case, Strobel only addresses one side of the story. Not a single time so far has he spoken to anyone who doubts the literal interpretation of the gospels and the orthodox doctrine of the evangelical church, even though he’s devoted a whole chapter to interviewing Greg Boyd, who does little more than dismiss the evidence and research of the Jesus Seminar (a liberal Christian group who separate the historical Jesus from the Jesus of faith). He never speaks to anyone from the Jesus Seminar.

Strobel and Metzger (some expert he’s interviewing at the beginning) constantly compare the evidence in favour of the New Testament to evidence in favour of other documents such as biographies of Caesar or someone else. But in this they are totally missing the point! If Mother Theresa or George “I cannot tell a lie” Washington — Totally off topic but does anyone else think that phrase of his is ironic? He was physically capable of telling a lie, so “I cannot tell a lie” in itself is a lie… duh — anyway if Mother Theresa or George Washington or anyone else that doesn’t normally lie told you that they woke up at 7am that morning, you’d believe it just like that, but if they told you that a pink elephant crash landed in a field from the sky, then disappeared, you wouldn’t!

It doesn’t matter at all how well the gospel story is preserved, or how trustworthy historians believe these ancient writers to be. The important question to ask is which possibility is more likely: that Jesus really did perform all these miracles and really did rise from the dead, or that early Christians and the writers of the gospels were either lying, lunatics or mistaken? I think the latter is much more plausible. A magician’s show might seem wonderful and supernatural, but nobody but naive children genuinely believe it to be magic. We should apply this same level of skepticism to the gospel stories, particularly since the deity of Jesus is not supported in any contemporary document outside the gospels. Think about it, if all this genuinely did happen, any historian or journalist worth his salt would be all over it! And yet there’s very little to support it, even within the Jewish community.

Embryology Bill

Wow, what a lot of to-do about nothing! For the last few days, MP’s have been taking part in free voting on 3 clauses of the much-scorned-by-fuddy-duddies Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and thankfully it appears they’ve voted with their heads.

I sent a letter a month or so ago to my local Labour MP, Ben Chapman, urging him to ignore the irrelevant religious arguments that have made their way to the forefront of the public debate. He sent me a very nice letter back saying that the religious arguments were not the only reasons to oppose the bill, and listed a few other arguments which I don’t personally agree with. His main reason was that (paraphrasing) “the importance of human life is paramount. It’s what all our other laws are based upon.” Now this is essentially a religious argument. Thinking biologically, human life is no more important (or ’sacred’, to use the religious terminology) than animal life. That said, I’m glad he voted with his head rather than with his heart.

Looking at the science, I’m a bit confused what all the fuss is all about. The words “human-animal hybrid” portray to many a little baby with a cow’s head or something. In reality most of the hybrids are 99.9% human, and the only animal part is the casing of the egg. What’s the big deal?

Similarly, the Daily Mail made a massive deal about “fathers being made redundant”, the morning after the vote which meant that lesbian couples or single females could have IVF treatment without the need for a male parent. I’m sorry but their argument is totally flawed. Nobody is saying that male role models aren’t important in a child’s life. But a woman can go out, have sex with a man, get pregnant and bring the child up alone, totally by choice. But as soon as it gets to IVF, there has to be a male parent. Why is the law different in this respect just because IVF is involved? I really think that these religious people (and a series of articles in the Daily Mail have specifically defended the religious view) will argue against anything that advances reproductive rights in this country.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, (who remember, supposedly represents a million Catholics in Scotland), has reeatedly said that this bill “has no public support”. But the polls suggest otherwise, apparently 61% of people support the bill, according to a survey from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Sometimes I wish people would pull their heads out of their arses and use them for thinking, for once.

Condom pockets

Sorry about the lack of action around here but I’m at home and there isn’t an awful lot going on. I’m afraid I’m only going to be posting occasionally until I go back to Edinburgh in August

I just came across this story (I mean erm… I just saw it – this post is gonna be full of innuendo, I can tell) about some Swedish students who have won an award for designing a pair of men’s underwear with a pocket in which to keep a condom.

Now everyone these days knows that sexual health is something we’ve all got to er… keep on top of, and I applaud the effort to… bring the issue up here, but I have a couple of concerns that maybe this isn’t the best way to keep people abreast of the situation.

Enough innuendo! This post is starting to remind me of a line from my year 11 Duke of Edinburgh report, “we quickly put up our tents, stood back to admire our erections, and then laughed as the headmaster tried to get his up”.

Anyway, apparently the latex in condoms becomes weak and breaks when exposed to heat, so keeping it in a pocket in your underwear will probably make it less reliable, which I’m sure isn’t really what the designers had in mind. Quite why they use a material that breaks when exposed to heat for something quite so important when you get hot under the covers is beyond me, but apparently they do.

What’s more worrying for me though, is the last line of the report;

“The men said their next step is to create a pair of women’s underwear with similar pockets for condoms.”

Maybe I’m just being a bit too cynical, but if this product went mainstream, I can imagine boistrous men going around checking these pockets to see if any of the women around them are up for it, which is also probably not what the designers had in mind. So maybe we should leave this particular idea on the shelf, and concentrate on better advertisement and public awareness.