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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Violating The First Rule Of Critical Discussion

Recurrent claim from Christians in comments:
"you seem to be questioning God. Why didn't God do this? why did God do that? The short answer is, because God does what he pleases and since he is infinite in knowledge, then God knows best, not us."
10:41 PM, August 23, 2008

According to Van Eemeren, Grootendorst and Walton, the first rule of a critical discussion is that

1. Parties must not prevent each other from advancing or casting doubt on each others viewpoints.


[Rules for Critical Discussion by Frans Van Eemeren & Rob Grootendorst, taken from "Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation" by Douglas Walton,Cambridge University Press, 2006.]


But what we see here is that some christians don't have a problem with trying to shut down critical questioning of biblical principles. When Biblical principles don't accurately reflect reality, then one of two things are happening. Biblical principles are flawed or reality is flawed. Pick your poison.
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Saturday, August 30, 2008

Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option

Breaking the law is risky behavior.
In my view, to go around breaking the law of society or of a God, is unnecessarily risky behavior. Those that do break the law have some other frame of reference. For example, they don't put as a high a value on the risk as I do, or they may be mentally handicapped in some way, and the former may follow from the latter. I know that if I broke the law I would worry about being caught, then perform some inconvenient tasks such as lying or hiding to resolve it, then, if I got caught I would pay some fine or spend some time in Jail. For the most egregious acts, the punishment can last a lifetime. For example, the punishment for murder can get a person put in Jail for the rest of their life, and on the other hand, for stealing a piece of fruit and eating it, you may get a fine if anyone cares enough to pursue litigation.


Teaching and changing behavior.
The reason people get fined and go to jail is to pressure them to change their behavior and to condition them to follow rules. It is a form of education. Education is important to facilitate sound judgment and conformance to societal standards. From the time children are born to the time they finish their formal schooling, they undergo conditioning. They learn such things as the rules of Grammar, Math, Science, Physics, Music, Art and the lessons of History. To advance to the next level they must satisfactorily demonstrate their grasp of the information, and their proficiency is monitored periodically along the way to ensure they are progressing toward the goal of advancing. Education and changing behavior is a sound principle, but it is not limited to people. It works on animals as well.

My dogs want to put their noses on the table.
I am an expert on the behavior of my dogs, but not to the degree that God must have been an expert in Adams behavior. When I have dinner, my dogs stay out of the kitchen, where the table is, because they like to put their nose on the table (they're big dogs). I can tell them a hundred times not to put their nose on the table but after awhile, they do it anyway. So I make them stay out of the kitchen and I do not feed them from the table.
When I want to spend time with my dogs, we laze about the house, tug on a stuffed toy and they get a little petting. We all love each other (I guess they love me) and I pet them, praise them, give them instruction in the form of a stern "no", or a "sit" or a "go lay down" and they understand me and comply. When they don't, I admonish them.
I do it in a nurturing way because I don't want them to become afraid of me or they will want to avoid me. I admonish them just enough so they respect me and follow my instruction. I know that because of their nature (how they are composed), they act a certain way and we work with it. In doing so we have a happy, healthy nurturing life together. I didn't make my dogs, but I know how they act, and I accommodate their behavior, adjust and compromise with them.
How much disobedience do I tolerate? I tolerate quite a bit. What type of transgressions would get them kicked out of the house? Biting the kids.

Decision/Event Tree for teaching my dogs not to put their nose on the table.
In the diagram below I would like to draw your attention to the box labeled “Teaching phase”.

If my dogs are not in the kitchen, they decide to sleep or chew toys and have no option to disobey. They don't worry that their free will is impeded, they understand that they just have a limited number of options because an infinite number of options would just confuse them.
If my dogs are in the kitchen with me they get a warning. They will either be with me or without me, but I'll focus on when they are with me because its analogous to Adam and Eve living in the Garden with God walking around. If they put their nose on the table I have three options but one of them is not obvious. The two obvious options are to ignore the behavior or to admonish them. Ignoring the nose on the table, in my view, is out of the question. So I opt for the admonishment option. This way I can reprove them and they will stop until they are overcome by their nature and I reprove them again or they learn that to stay in the kitchen with me, they have to keep their nose off the table.
The other option that is not so obvious is the option to abandon them to the street and never have any animals in the house again until one of them kills themselves to show me they can obey. I don't choose that option for a variety of reasons. The overriding one is that I'd never have thought of it without the story of Adam and Eve in the bible and another reason is that it is freaking stupid. In my view the admonishment and instruction is by far the best option to sustain a healthy loving relationship between myself and my dogs and this is the event labeled in the diagram as the “Teaching Phase”.

Decision/Event Tree for Adam in the Garden
We all know the story. Boy meets girl, girl gets motivated when she sees that snake, and carries her fruit over to her boyfriend to share it with him. Adam follows the script, disobeys God and God kicks them out of the garden until he and the holy spirit can come back four thousand or so years later as a perfect human that obeys himself to follow the course of events of his plan that ultimately end up with his human part dying as the perfect sacrifice and he and his holy spirit bail out just before the end. The happy ending is that the human part gets resurrected and disappears amid rumors that the body was stolen, or that he was taken down before he died. It usually takes longer than a few hours to die impaled on a cross. That is why the Romans used it. In fact Josephus talks about a couple of his friends that survived a crucifixion.

Once again I'd like to draw your attention to the area labeled “Teaching Phase”. You may have noticed that the Event Tree is the same as the Dogs Event Tree. The algorithm is exactly the same. The analogy is the same. The difference is that God did not choose the admonishment option. He chose to break off the relationship rather than nurture it.
How much and what type of transgressions should God tolerate and work with? I think that most people get along well enough and follow the rules to sustain a society. Are the transgression of these people, or should I say, are your transgressions serious enough to not warrant nurturing admonishment? Think about all the things you've done today. How many of them would you be embarrassed about? How many of them are even worthy of being “exalted” to a “TRANSGRESSION” [thunder and lightning in the background]

Being in a relationship means to nurture.

Parents don't kick their kids out of the house the first time they disobey, most of the time they put up with a lot of transgressions.
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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.

God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.

If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker.

Stipulating that the story of the Fall of Man is true in some sense, God was an expert in how to make Adam. He understood Adam intimately.

God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.


6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.


Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals.

2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.


If certain conditions are met, we can reasonably expect a certain outcome.

An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch.

Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes.

Adam worked with what he had. Generally, a small number of mistakes are expected.

When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing.

In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake.


A list of factors follows leading up to Adams disobedience.

1. Adam Existed
1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6)
1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7)
1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6)
2. Adam was put in the Garden
3. Eve existed
3.a No Warning about the snake
4. Snake Existed
5. Tree Existed

These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it.

Causal Diagram of Adams Transgression.
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Friday, August 22, 2008

How Accurate Is The Bible?

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
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How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 100%? 90%? 75%? 50%? How accurate do you want your map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.

A Map is a model of the real world.
It is made to represent the world to some degree of accuracy decided upon before it was ever made. We can make value judgments about the map using whatever criteria are important to us. One criteria that should be important (because it is the purpose for the map) is how accurate it represents whatever it is that it is supposed to represent.

If we have to go somewhere and we are uncertain about how to get there, we can use a map. A map eliminates uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that we can use for planning. It gives us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where the towns are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best route at a glance, make decisions about time and resources based on what resources are found along the path, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for the trip that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for the trip really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well the map models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in the map.

The Bible is like a map.
Jesus describes himself as "the way" and goes on to further describe himself as a kind of "Model" to show what God is like.

John 14:6
6Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

7"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."

8Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."

9Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

10"Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.

11"Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.


Jesus confirmed the Old Testament was the word of God by referring to it as such and referring back it frequently.

- Matthew 1-1:21, judgment of Tyre and Sidon
- Matthew 5:18, validates scripture
- Matthew 12:3, verifies Davids actions
- Matthew 12:39ff, verifies Jonah and the whale
- Matthew 15:3, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:6, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:7-9 He refers to the first part of Isaiah's work (Isaiah 6:9), verifies only one Isaiah
- Matthew 19:1-6, verifes Adam and Eve
- Matthew 19:8, 9, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- Matthew 21:16, validates scripture by citing Psalm 8:2
- Matthew 22:31, validates scripture
- Matthew 24:15, verifies Daniel was a prophet
- Matthew 24:37, verifes Noah and the Global Flood

- Luke 4:17-21, He cites Isaiah 61:1, 2, verifies only one Isaiah
- Luke 11:51, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain
- Luke 17:29, 32, the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot's wife

- Mark 12:26, calling Moses
- Mark 12:29-31, Moses wrote the Pentateuch

- John 6:31-51, manna in the wilderness
- John 7:19, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- John 10:35, validates scripture

So how accurate should we expect the Word of God to be?
If we use a weighted raking we can get a rough idea. God is perfect, and man is not. So we can expect that man will be less accurate than God, but if God is helping man, then man should be more accurate that if he were working alone.

1. God is more accurate
2. Man is more accurate with help from God
3. Man alone is less accurate

That should serve as a rough guideline and the first metric in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of the Bible.

Jesus intended us to use himself and, by extension, scripture as a model or a map for how to live our lives.
He intended it to reduce uncertainty about how to live a righteous life. Scripture was intended to eliminate uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that can be used for planning. It was intended to give us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where our goals are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best choices at a glance, make decisions about how to spend our time and resources based on what resources are found around us, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for our lives that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for life really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well scripture models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in scripture.

Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 100%? 90%? 75%? 50%? How accurate do you want your map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Therefore, the probability of the likelihood that their conclusions are correct depend directly on the degree of accuracy of The Bible as a representation (or model) of events in the world past and present.
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Monday, August 18, 2008

Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent

This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis. Points in time are defined and used to document the point along a timeline where one event occurred in relation to another. It concludes that since Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.

Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)

TIMELINE OF EVENTS
GENESIS 2:16
Time 01 - Warning about the Tree of G&E
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN

T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.

The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.

T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because it was likely that he would trust her.

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.

T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...

T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

HYPOTHESIS MATRIX
This is a Hypothesis matrix testing the hypothesis that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between Good and Evil when they disobeyed God. The data are labeled with a "C" for consistent with the hypothesis, "A" for Ambiguous (it doesn't make a difference but is worth mentioning), and "I" for Inconsistent. The hypothesis that is least inconsistent with the data is the better hypothesis.
Data Didn't Know Did know
God is all knowing A A
God is all powerful A A
T01 Gen. 2:16 Adam can eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he doesn't. Evidently he is not interested in it or maybe he doesn't realize what it means. God may have known that he wouldn't eat it although what God says at T12 in 2:22 contradicts his supposed omniscience. C I
T01 Gen. 2:17 Commands the man not to eat the fruit of the Tree of K, G&E or he will surely die, but neglected to tell him the truth which is that he will know the difference between good and evil and as a result will realize that he is naked C I
Until man eats the fruit he will not know the difference between good and evil C I
T02 Gen. 2:18 Adam was alone and has never had any experience with anyone he shouldn't trust C I
T06 Gen. 3:4-5 The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere. If it did, then it had the advantage over Eve. If it didn't know the difference between good and evil then it did nothing wrong by telling Eve the truth. In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die. The serpent clearly described what would happen with the Tree of K, G&E better than God did. This is where Eve got the truth about the tree. C I
T07 Gen. 3:6 Eve trusted the serpent, evidently because she didn't know not too, she didn't know that dying was bad, or that disobeying god was bad. The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned. C I
T07 Gen. 3:7 After they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they knew that being naked was bad. This is a cultural rule, not a natural one. C I

The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Further Reading on Cognitive Biases and Persuasion Principles
The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church
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Saturday, August 16, 2008

Not Creating Is The Greater Good

If we accept the Theist's position, then god chose to create. Choosing instead to not-create would have been a greater good, as it would have necessarily avoided any suffering or evil whatsoever.
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Friday, August 15, 2008

If God Has A Plan, Free Will Is An Illusion

This is a short mathematical proof that if God has a plan, then free will necessarily is an illusion. 2 + n = 4, if n = 2 then free will is an illusion.
Got your attention didn't it? It's really just a little joke used to make a point.
In response to my assertion that Jesus was a human sacrifice, some of our commenters kept saying that "God has a plan" and that Jesus sacrifice doesn't meet the criteria for a Human sacrifice even though Jesus was a Human whose sacrifice of his life saved us from Gods Wrath by his blood (Rom. 5:9). Regardless of how that equivocation plays itself out, the fact that God has a plan and things seem to be going according to plan, nullifies the concept of Free Will.

Think about 2 + n = 4. We don't know what the 'n' variable is but the relationships inherent in that problem were already worked out ahead of time whether (as some ancients believed) it is mystical or it is just naturally ocurring like the shape of water that fills a hole. Even though we don't know what the 'n' variable is, it can only be one thing.

So when Christians say that God has a Plan, that means that things can only work out one way, and the variables only have the appearance of being unknown. As long as God has a plan, free will only has the appearance of being unknown to us. To an omniscient God, it must be obvious. This is why, free will is an illusion as long as God has a plan.
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

My Anti-Climactic Milestone

Last weekend at the pool, in response to some of my critical questions about pagan cannibalism and communion, one of my family asked me if I was an Atheist. Yikes!
We were hanging out in the pool. The local preacher lives close by and he was blaring some Old Ancient Medieval Church music and we were commenting on it. Someone said it reminded them of taking communion. I make it a habit of asking critical questions about religion whenever I find the topic comes up but I don't usually give my opinion other than "I don't get it". So, I asked the critical question about the "body and the blood", cannibalism and pagan ritual. That was when they asked me if I was an Atheist. This was a turning point, an engagement that I wasn't sure I wanted to have especially on the weekend in the pool, but to deny it would obviously be lying so I had to "frame it" properly to do damage control. I said
"I don't believe a God Exists".
and they said
"Well, I'm not sure if I do either".
and another said
"Well, I do."
and that was it. We went back to splashing around and talking about summery, pooly stuff. My milestone was surprisingly anti-climactic. I guess I could say it went swimmingly. I think my strategy of asking critical questions and giving them food for thought paid off for me. What a relief. Now I am officially out of the closet.
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Saturday, August 9, 2008

50 Reasons People Give For Believing In A God

DJ Grothe interviews author of "50 Reasons People Give For Believing In A God." The author is very respectful to believers and lets them have their say without judging. Its a type of Comparative Religion study. Its good for both for believers and non-believers.
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Friday, August 8, 2008

Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent

This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis.

Points in time are defined and used to document the point along a timeline where one event occurred in relation to another. It concludes that since Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.

Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)

TIMELINE OF EVENTS
GENESIS 2:16
Time 01 - Warning about the Tree of G&E
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN

T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.

The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.

T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because it was likely that he would trust her.

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.

T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...

T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

HYPOTHESIS MATRIX
This is a Hypothesis matrix testing the hypothesis that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between Good and Evil when they disobeyed God. The data are labeled with a "C" for consistent with the hypothesis, "A" for Ambiguous (it doesn't make a difference but is worth mentioning), and "I" for Inconsistent. The hypothesis that is least inconsistent with the data is the better hypothesis.
Data
Didn't Know
Did know
God is all knowing
A
A
God is all powerful
A
A
T01 Gen. 2:16 Adam can eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he doesn't. Evidently he is not interested in it or maybe he doesn't realize what it means. God may have known that he wouldn't eat it although what God says at T12 in 2:22 contradicts his supposed omniscience.
C
I
T01 Gen. 2:17 Commands the man not to eat the fruit of the Tree of K, G&E or he will surely die, but neglected to tell him the truth which is that he will know the difference between good and evil and as a result will realize that he is naked
C
I
Until man eats the fruit he will not know the difference between good and evil
C
I
T02 Gen. 2:18 Adam was alone and has never had any experience with anyone he shouldn't trust
C
I
T06 Gen. 3:4-5 The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere. If it did, then it had the advantage over Eve. If it didn't know the difference between good and evil then it did nothing wrong by telling Eve the truth. In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die. The serpent clearly described what would happen with the Tree of K, G&E better than God did. This is where Eve got the truth about the tree.
C
I
T07 Gen. 3:6 Eve trusted the serpent, evidently because she didn't know not too, she didn't know that dying was bad, or that disobeying god was bad. The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned.
C
I
T07 Gen. 3:7 After they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they knew that being naked was bad. This is a cultural rule, not a natural one.
C
I

The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.

Further Reading on Cognitive Biases and Persuasion Principles
The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church
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Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.

God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.


If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker.

Stipulating that the story of the Fall of Man is true in some sense, God was an expert in how to make Adam. He understood Adam intimately.
God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.


6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.


Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals.

2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.


If certain conditions are met, we can reasonably expect a certain outcome.

An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch.

Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes.


Adam worked with what he had. Generally, a small number of mistakes are expected.

When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing.

In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake.



A list of factors follows leading up to Adams disobedience.

1. Adam Existed
1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6)
1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7)
1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6)
2. Adam was put in the Garden
3. Eve existed
3.a No Warning about the snake
4. Snake Existed
5. Tree Existed

These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it.


Causal Diagram of Adams Transgression.



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Religion As A Logic Puzzle

Here is a logic puzzle. You are walking down a road to a town. You come to a fork in the road. Standing there are two men. You already know that one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth. What one question can you ask one of them that will give you the information you need to choose the right road?

The answer is "which road would he tell me to take?" Now lets add three more liars for a total of four liars and one truthful. At this point, it becomes unsolvable. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not?

Now Imagine we replace the town with Heaven, and replace the men with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim and add a road for each. How can you determine who is telling the truth and who is not? All you can do is just pick a direction and go. That strategy violates the principle of minimizing as much uncertainty as possible to increase the likelihood of a successful outcome. That is a strategy that wasn't thought out very well.
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Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Jesus Was a Human Sacrifice

In all "civilized" countries in the world, Human Sacrifice is unlawful. The reason it is unlawful is that it is murder. I have seen it argued that a law against murder is one of the Ten Commandments because it is an aspect of a universal moral that proves Gods existence. I think we can all see the irony and logical inconsistency in that.
[Revised Aug. 8, 2008 to add the "Human Sacrifice Algorithm" to the bottom of the matrix]









This article uses a Matrix to show that Jesus was a human sacrifice. While some Christians may find nothing wrong with this, I know that some do. In my early days in the church, the sight of that cadaver hanging on the cross with blood pouring down its face and a bleeding gash on the side along with the old "this is my body and blood" at the communion presented a formidable stumbling block to me. I will even go so far as to say that I had to overcome a natural revulsion to accept those aspects of Christianity. [Click on the picture of the lamb to enlarge it to see the stream of blood pouring out of the gash on the left side.]

Since I expect that some Christians will attempt to concentrate on one datum or some philosophical spin to discredit the conclusion and/or "poison the well", I opted to present the data in a matrix because it is a data analysis tool that presents data in a way that makes it easier to avoid focusing on one datum and to consider, compare and contrast all the data at a glance.

In the Hypothesis Test Matrix, a datum that is consistent with the two categories of comparison are labeled with a "C", a datum that is inconsistent is labeled with an "I", and a datum that is ambiguous is labeled with an "A". In Hypothesis tests, usually there are competing hypotheses but in this case, I couldn't think of any competing hypotheses. Therefore there is nothing that is inconsistent or ambiguous, especially since Paul and John speak of Jesus death as a sacrifice of atonement. In a real Hypothesis Matrix, the winning hypothesis is the one that is least inconsistent with the data.

Hypothesis test: "Jesus was a Human Sacrifice"

Data Jesus Human Sacrifice
Wikipedia on the "Lamb of God":
Lamb of God (Latin: Agnus Dei) is one of the titles given to Jesus in the New Testament and consequently in the Christian tradition. It refers to Jesus' role as a sacrificial lamb atoning for the sins of man in Christian theology, harkening back to ancient Jewish Temple sacrifices in which a lamb was slain during the passover (the "Paschal Lamb", Hebrew: Korban Pesach), the blood was sprinkled on the altar, and the whole of the lamb was eaten. In the original Passover in Egypt, the blood was smeared on the door posts and lintel of each household (Exodus 12:1-28).
C C
The Lamb (in early Christian Symbolism) from The Catholic Encyclopedia:
The next step in the development of this idea of associating the Cross with the lamb was depicted in a sixth-century mosaic of the Vatican Basilica which represented the lamb standing on a throne, at the foot of a Cross studded with gems. From the pierced side of this lamb, blood flowed into a chalice whence again it issued in five streams, thus recalling Christ's five wounds.
C C
Romans 5:8-11:
"8. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
11. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement."
C C
Atonement from Answers.com:
"1 Amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong; expiation.
2.a. Reconciliation or an instance of reconciliation between God and humans.
b. Atonement Christianity. The reconciliation of God and humans brought about by the redemptive life and death of Jesus."
C C
John 3:16-17:
"16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. "
[this is the atonement, or reconciliation between god and man, jesus paid the price for mans sin with his life blood.]
C C
Without the atonement no one, moral or not, gets to heaven. Jesus Sacrifice was a prerequisite requirement.
C C
Jesus was killed (more or less) during the same time frame as the passover lamb was supposed to be killed. The Passover is a Jewish ceremony that contains rituals of cultural rememberence.
C C
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia on Human Sacrifice:
"Offering of the life of a human being to a god."
C C
Human Sacrifice from Wikipedia:
"Human sacrifice is the act of homicide (the killing of one or several human beings) in the context of a religious ritual (ritual killing). Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals (animal sacrifice) and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that is supposed to please or appease gods, spirits or the deceased."
C C
www.allaboutjesuschrist.org says it explicitly:
"Approximately 1,500 years later, on the 14th day of Nisan, the Passover Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was sacrificed upon a wooden cross for the sins of all mankind. When the Day of the Lord comes, those who have covered themselves in the blood of the Lamb by accepting Christ will be kept safe while the world pays for their rebellion against God."
C C
Revelations 5:12:
Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
C C
Humans do something to offend god,CC
Humans need to do something to propitiate, apppease, pay, remdiate, reconcile, pick the synonymous word you prefer or come up with one of your own. CC
A human sacrifice is chosenCC
A human sacrifice is performedCC
A human Sacrifice is made as part of a ritualCC
Sometimes the sacrifice victim is willingCC
The god is appeased, the "wrath" in this instance is all wrapped up and put away.CC

Considering that it is so easy to find Christian sites that support the hypothesis, it is not a good hypothesis to test with the matrix because there really are no other competing hypotheses that I know of. However, I have been challenged and seen Christians deny that Jesus was a human sacrifice while acknowledging all the premises required to support the conclusion. I expect that this article will turn into a debate with some Christians about "definition", "meaning" and "distinctions" with liberal use of "special pleading" where they argue that it is not murder or human sacrifice because the Christian God was involved, while they wrestle with the cognitive dissonance that occurs when two values come into conflict.

Further Reading:
Answers.com: Human Sacrifice
Answers.com: Ritual Killing
Answers.com: Atonement
The Catholic Encyclopedia
Wikipedia: Lamb of God
www.allaboutjesuschrist.org
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