My parents have indicated their desire to come for a visit next spring to see our firstborn child graduate from high school. We have not seen them for several years. And since I became an atheist a dozen years or so ago, I have not sat down and discussed this development with my father. Even though I’ve had success at avoiding the topic all this time, I feel like I need to be prepared in case things “come to a head” during the visit. I do worry a bit. He is a Trump MAGA-cultist. And my firstborn is LGBTQIA+.
This started as notes for my defense, but I decided to flesh it out into text that I can post here. The basic outline: Evolution, Dispensationalism (I’m against it), and Mythicism. There’s a lot to unpack here. And I don’t expect I’m going to just dump it all on my dad in one sitting, or even at all. It would probably freak him out.
But I should start at the beginning of the end, which is when the third-to-last church we were at elected to chose a “Statement of Faith” that provided some exceptions to the traditional Baptist confession (for example, to avoid offending those who worked on Sundays). Except when it came to a literal six-day creation, they weren’t going to make an exception for that, or even a clarification, since the Confession doesn’t use the word “literal.” (It just says, “in the space of six days,” like the Bible.) This question got me doing a lot of reading. I knew that we shouldn’t “make the doors of the church narrower than the gates of heaven,” as John Piper once put it. I was mostly thinking of how this would exclude “other people” who might have more progressive views. But as I did my research, I became convinced of two things: evolution was true, and Genesis 1 was literature.
Framework Hypothesis
I first learned about the Framework Hypothesis from Lee Irons and Meredith Kline. It considers the “rhythmic cadence” of Genesis 1.
Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Gen. 1:3-5, NRSV)
(See the rest on the Bible Society NRSV web app.)
The text isn’t indented like most poetry in the modern copies of the Bible, but the literary refrains are clear:
- “And God saw that it was good.”
- “And there was evening and there was morning, the nth day.”
| First Stanza: The Elements (vv. 3-13) | Second Stanza: The “Rulers”(vv. 14-31) |
|---|---|
| Day One: Light | Day Four: Sun, Moon, and Stars, as light-producers |
| Day Two: Air and Water | Day Five: Birds and Sea Creatures, masters of sky and sea |
| Day Three: Earth and Plants | Day Six: The Beasts, culminating in Man as the Image of God |
As I wrote in 2010:
What we have in Genesis 1 is an anthropomorphism: it is the Creator’s metaphorical work-week. The passage exists to teach humans—the image of God—the importance of our own creative work, and the importance of the Sabbath. God is depicted as getting up in the morning, going to work, and at the end of the day, looking upon all that he had accomplished and saying, “it is good.” His work is done for the day, and he goes home and goes to bed.
On the seventh day, the work of creation is completed and he “rests” (Gen. 2:2). Not literally, as he is an all-powerful god. But as the example of a worker who finishes his work for the week and then gets a day off. But Irons considers that the seventh day is not in fact a solar day, but an eternal state in that the work is done, and the previous days are likely not literal days either.
This is the only reading of Genesis that makes sense. The problem is that so many fundamentalists insist on a literal reading of this figurative text. If the Holy Spirit were guiding the church as scripture says, why would so many Christians be wrong?
Against Dispensationalism
“The teaching of a secret pre-tribulation rapture is a doctrine that never existed before 1830.” —Brian Schwertley
Dispensational premillennialism, which teaches a secret rapture of the church, is a relatively new theological development. It is the antithesis of covenant theology, and it would have been considered heresy by most theologians until it became the prominent viewpoint of evangelicals and charismatics in recent years.
I wrote in May 2011 that you can judge a tree by its fruit:
- Dispensationalism leads to churches setting up all-powerful pastors with no accountability or elders to handle things when he’s dead and gone.
- Dispensationalism leads to churches meeting in strip malls or movie theaters instead of building stone buildings to last a hundred years so their children don’t have to worry about paying for facilities.
- Dispensationalism leads to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that promotes inequality by favoring Israel “at all costs” even when they perform illegal crimes against humanity.
- Dispensationalism leads to U.S. environmental policy that is only concerned about the short-term, endorsing oil as fuel since it doesn’t matter if it runs out because we won’t be here anymore…that doesn’t care about raping the environment and exterminating species, because it’s all going to burn anyway.
- Dispensationalism leads to American Christians getting deep into debt to support their “prosperity gospel” lifestyle, since they expect they’ll never have to pay the money back anyway.
- Dispensationalism leads to American Christians failing to provide an education or inheritance for their children since Jesus is coming back tomorrow anyway.
Theodicy and Dystheism
“Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?” —David Hume
- Theodicy is the question of why does God let bad things happen?
- Dystheism is the question of why does God do bad things?
The Rapture heresy that only developed 200 years ago and has taken control of Evangelicalism and given us the antichrist of Christian nationalism. If the Holy Spirit were leading the Church, this would not be so.
And when it comes to “natural revelation”, why God has allowed his church to be so far off the mark? One might argue, “not all Christians take it literally.” But the ones who take it literally are destroying society. Now we come to the denominational theory of the church, which is another topic altogether, but I think it ties into Theodicy: if the Holy Spirit were leading the church, we would not have so many people who are wrong.
As Robert Ingersoll observed regarding God, the omniscient Creator of the universe, and the hardline interpretations of Genesis 1: “If it was inspired, of course God must have known just how it would be understood, and consequently must have intended that it should be understood just as he knew it would be.” So God know people would misinterpret the literary framework and allowed it to be composed anyway.
The problem of religion is that scientists are always treated as heretics by the orthodox. So “orthodox” religion is therefore invalid. If one argues that the orthodox are not the true Church and only the critically-thinking Christians are the true Church, then you’re still left with the problem of theodicy: that the Holy Spirit has allowed the established church to deceive billions of people over the last 2,000 years. original post
[J. Gresham] Machen wrote about this necessary dependency of religion on science:
For example, if any simple Christian of one hundred years ago, or even of today, were asked what would become of his religion if history should prove indubitably that no man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century of our era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fall away. Yet the investigation of events in the first century in Judea, just as much as in Italy or in Greece, belongs to the sphere of scientific history. (Christianity and Liberalism, p 5) original post
1 Corinthians 15
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God… (ESV)
So let’s sit with that for a minute…
Paul
Even the most liberal scholars affirm that Paul was a historical figure who actually wrote most of the epistles attributed to him (though not all). The gospels were written long after Paul’s epistles. So Paul is the more correct picture we have of early Christian beliefs.
Paul never asserts Jesus was born of a virgin or killed in the flesh in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate (1 Timothy was not written by Paul). For Paul, Jesus is known not by eyewitness testimony, but by “revelation.” “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1) “…even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?” (1 Cor. 9:5) (N.B.: Brothers of the Lord means believers)
Paul speaks of the First Adam and Last Adam in 1 Cor. 15:45 ff. Adam was physical, Jesus was spiritual. And in Philippians—”Through him all things were made”—Jesus was therefore a celestial being. Now my question is this: If he can create all things as a celestial being, can he not also accomplish “our present salvation” as a celestial being?
The Firmament in Ancient Cosmology
The firmament was a solid (firm) structure. There were ziggurats and stairways that allowed “gods” to ascend to it and descend, through the “gates of heaven.” In The Ascension of Isaiah (an apocryphal text), it says “And as above, so also on earth, for the likeness of what (is) in the firmament is here on earth.” This is Platonism—imperfect “types” as copies of the true form that actually exists in the firmament.
The Talmud says there’s a higher (“Gan Eden”) and lower Eden. In the Apocalypse of Moses (“The Life of Adam and Eve”), Adam, Eve, and Abel are buried in “Paradise” - the third heaven, which had dirt (it was a garden), the very clay from which Adam was made. (Stay with me…) So in theory, one could be crucified, dead, and buried in heaven…
The “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah 52-53
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot…
He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities…
(Not citing a version here because it’s from memory.)
In Zechariah chapter 3 we have Joshua the high priest (“Jesus” in Greek). “My servant the Branch” (as in Isaiah’s’ “tender shoot”). And in Zechariah 6 he says, “Here is the Branch”—identifying Joshua/Jesus himself as the branch.
Daniel 9 “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off…”
In the Melchizedek text of the Dead Sea Scrolls 11Q13, Melchizedek destroys Belial “in the midst of the gods.” So it happens in heaven. And it says, “This is the day of Salvation spoken of through Isaiah” and quotes, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him that brings good news…” “…The messenger is the Anointed one of the spirit, concerning whom Daniel said…”, etc.
As Hebrews 5, 7 says: “You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” “Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest for ever.” —Hebrews 7:3 (NRSV) “Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all.” (Heb. 8:4)
Richard Carrier writes: “The notion of a dying messiah was therefore already mainstream, well before Christianity arose” (On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 120). Amid the eschatological fervor of the 1st century, it finally got to the boiling point where the Qumrani sect and others had decided the Messiah had in fact come.
Thus, every time Paul or his closest successors describe anything like a complete gospel ‘kerygma’ we see no clear evidence of a historical Jesus, but a consistently celestial being doing magical things in a supernatural realm, whose deeds and teachings in life (if any there were) are completely absent and somehow of no relevance to Christian belief. What are the odds of that? —Carrier, p. 784
Where is the extra-biblical evidence?
- Despite so-called scholarly consensus, the relevant texts in Josephus and Tacitus might be marginal notes (interpolations) made by copyists. Regardless, they are dated later than the gospels and even if it weren’t a marginal notes made by later Christians they weren’t eyewitness testimony.
- Josephus actually mentions 20 people named “Jesus.” So…
Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation for the gospel is that the Old Testament texts were the “inspiration” for Christianity as opposed to discovered after the fact. Are we really supposed to believe that nobody noticed Jesus was fulfilling prophecies until he rose from the dead?
I remain agnostic about Jesus of Nazareth. And I have grieved for years as though losing a best friend. Because he was my best friend. And I relied on his teachings, the Beatitudes, the parable of the Good Samaritan… If these sermons were just made up, it makes me sad.
And I mourned as I watched the church I grew up in abandon the teachings of Christ to follow the lying, pussy-grabbing antichrist of Trumpism. And now even empathy is condemned as wicked!
Oh how the mighty have fallen!
The rise of Trump is the logical outcome of centuries of producing and perpetuating lies. Today, despite describing themselves as “values voters” in the very recent past, white evangelicals and other conservative white Christians have pledged their undying fealty to the most dishonest president in American history. (Robert P. Jones, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy)