Culture of Death, Thou Shalt Die!

They called my new article on The Stream "Halloween, Zombie Morality, and the Light of the World." My chosen title was a paraphrase of John Donne: "Culture of Death,Thou Shalt Die." In any case, it's my fullest apologetic for the Gospel of Life, for the good Christ has done for the world, in that forum yet. Shares welcome!  Celebrate Halloween by reminding people what "all the saints" who follow Jesus have really accomplished, and can still do to save us from our follies today:

https://stream.org/halloween-zombie-morality-light-world/

Is Scandinavia a Secular Paradise?

(From How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test, David Marshall)

As noted above, the secularist community has, in recent years, often pointed to such countries as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to demonstrate the superiority of Secular Humanism over Christianity.  The work of sociologist Phil Zuckerman has been especially important in making this argument popular and seem credible.  While more cautious than some of his disciples, Zuckerman does indeed write with enthusiasm and persuasiveness about happy, “peaceful, and relatively godless Denmark” and Sweden:

“Quaint towns, inviting cities, beautiful forests, lonely beaches, healthy democracies, among the lowest violent crime rates in the world, the lowest levels of corruption in the world, excellent educational systems, innovative architecture, strong economies, well-supported arts, successful entrepreneurship, clean hospitals, delicious beer, free health care, maverick filmmaking, egalitarian social policies, sleek design, comfortable bike paths – and not much faith in God.”[1]

Why Richard Carrier's Anti-Christian Harangues are Always Bad

I haven't deconstructed any bad arguments by Richard C. Carrier for a while.  Sorry, I'm writing three books this year, plus working a full-time job, and the skeptical blogosphere is a target-rich environment.   But it is as hard to restrain oneself from messing with Richard's earnest self-worship as it is to not tweak the red nose of a clown, or laugh at a basset hound's sad eyes and floppy ears.

The title of his recent piece is "What's the Harm?  Why Religious Belief is Always Bad."

I wrote the title of my reply before reading Carrier's piece, based on

confidence grown of long experience that Carrier's piece will be awful.  My guess is, he won't even define "religion" usefully.

And what do you bet he will completely ignore all the evidence for the profound good the Gospel has done in the world?

I'll put Carrier's comments and mine in dialogue format, with his in light blue, highlighting points I will dispute with underlining and numbers.

If arguments were goats, Dr. Carrier would go hungry in this profession.

"I’m often asked, 'Christianity doesn’t really hurt anyone. Why is it so important? Just let people believe what they want. At least in religion. Why should we bother critiquing and opposing belief?'

In some cases the question is terribly naive. In others, it’s meant to refer not to conservative and fundamentalist religion—whose dangers to society and to every individual, both within and without the faith, are countless and well documented ,(1-2) but to liberal theologies, so-called 'safe' religions, that don’t appear to cause any overt harm . . . "

(1) As if the fundamentals of all "religions" were the same, or likely to have the same effect.  

(2) I have copiously documented the benefits of serious Christian faith to the human race, and one of the books I am presently writing will break a lot of new ground in that area.  As we have seen before, Carrier doesn't know what he's talking about very well when it comes to Christian history.  

"Why Conservative Theologies Are Dangerous

"False beliefs lead to bad decisions. (3) And that can be dangerous on a mass scale. Paradigmatic examples: the Catholic Church is an international rape factory (4); a majority of Evangelicals are perpetually pushing for war (5), the expansion of poverty (6), and the suppression of women’s autonomy (7); and Donald Trump is President (8)." 

(3) True!  Carrier's false beliefs have led to numerous bad decisions, ask his former wife.  I said his present harangue would be bad, not that every single comment in it would be false.

(4) Abuse of young men and women was the norm in Greek society when Christianity arrived.  Novelists didn't even pretend to mind, cheerfully comparing the thrill one gets from male or female slaves, respectively.  It appears to have been Christianity that forced western man to recognize the evil of such abuse, and the danger of corrupt institutions.

As for the claim that the frequency of rape in Catholic is higher than that in secular schools of the same sort, apparently there is little evidence for that.

(5) "The majority of Evangelicals are perpetually pushing for war?"  I'd love to see the data behind that claim.  I seem to recall spending the whole day today without advocating a single war, battle, or even gang fight.  I guess I'm in an exceptionally mellow mood?

We have plenty tulips our own, as you can see.

True, I believe mass-murders like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pott, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden occasionally need to be man-handled.  And I'm grateful that God has given America the power to be a force for good in the world, by and large, over the past 100 years, stomping on genocidal maniacs, bullies, and oppressors when required.  Personally, I think it's wise to distinguish between restraining a tyrant who has killed millions and has used weapons of mass destruction, and, say, invading Denmark to steal a tulip.

(6) I won't try to guess what Carrier means by "the expansion of poverty," or how he relates that to Christianity.  Steven Pinker seems to think poverty has contracted over the past several centuries, pretty dramatically. 

(7) The Gospel has probably liberated women more than any other force in history.  That's what one of my new books is going to demonstrate; but most of the evidence is in other threads on this site, already.

(8) Yes, if evangelical Christians had wanted a cheerleader for Planned Parenthood in the White House, Hilary Clinton would undoubtedly be sitting in the Oval Office, unsecured laptop on top of her lap, and Bill roaming the hallways looking for interns, right now.  Though credit for Trump's victory has to be shared with the press, which was obsessed with his every comment during the primaries and ignored his numerous more-qualified opponents, giving him billions of dollars worth of free publicity, and to Democrats, for nominating someone even creepier.

I don't think Christians need to be ashamed about voting against Hilary Clinton, though I personally couldn't bring myself to vote for Donald Trump.

"But just in case a few examples aren’t enough to make the point clear, let me give you a slightly expanded tour of the horrors of religious belief . . . (cut, reference to another website)

"Conservative religion causes misery to countless people infected with it who don’t conform to its false worldview, from producing self-hating homosexuals (9) to little girls terrorized by the idea they might burn eternally in hell (10) for merely asking questions (11). And countless other examples we could name.  Conservative religion also inevitably corrupts us into ignoring or even supporting evil." 

Most of this is too vague and unsupported to rebut, but let's focus on these three points briefly.

(9) I am attracted to young, beautiful women, not to men.  But the Bible tells me not to lust (a couple times) and to limit my love to one person.  This does not feel natural, especially when that one person is not by my side, or in the mood.  

Does the fact that normative biblical sex conflicts with my desires, mean I "hate" myself?  I find no such emotion within me.  I find numerous problematic tendencies, to be sure, but have no difficulty reconciling "love the sinner" with "hate the sin" in my own case.  I find this conflict between desire and moral restraint universal, outside a sad circle of psychopaths: the only person who is never a hypocrite, is one who admits no moral restraints at all.  

I recognize the conflict, however, and the selfishness and potential harm of my desires.  (Again, ask Carrier's former wife how having your husband play the field can hurt.)  So I don't think my situation is utterly dissimilar from that of people who have other desires they cannot scripturally fulfill.    

Let me ask a hard question now.  How many homosexuals are alive today because they obeyed Christian sexual mandates?  How many naturally promiscuous heterosexuals, like myself, would have died of syphilis or mad husbands or sired poor and lonely children, if they had not obeyed the Bible?  

The truth is, if everyone obeyed the biblical injunctions on sex, STDs would go the way of the dodo bird or small pox in a generation.   More children would know their fathers.  The world would be a much happier place, maybe even for Mrs. Carrier and any little Carrier pigeons. 

(10) When I was a child, even though I grew up in a conservative Christian home, I think I was more terrified of the prospect of dissolution than of hell.  After all, Christianity teaches that you can do something about God's judgement -- repent -- but atheism had no solution to the problem of death. 

So the terror is a two-way street.  Both Christianity and atheism describe the world in ways that can be frightening.   Atheists who claim Christians are deluding themselves with "pie in the sky" implicitly concede this point: so how can they have it both ways?  How can Christianity be both rose-colored glasses on a frightening world, and a form of psychological terrorism?  (To paraphrase Chesterton.)  

(11)  I don't recall anyone telling me I would go to hell for asking questions.  People asked Jesus questions all the time.  He didn't answer them all, because he perceived that not all were sincere.  


"Lawrence Krauss wasn’t wrong when he wrote in Scientific American that (my emphasis [RC]):

"Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension … Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olm­sted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric. (12)
Even just the idea of giving enemies of the people a “pass” merely because they profess to be pious or clerical, is a threat to society that must end. But worse is the very production of such vile beliefs. Kill moms? Really? And that’s but one example."

(12) I don't agree with that decision, if it has been accurately represented.  But tens of millions have been orphaned because their parents refused to obey the biblical commandments on sexuality and marriage.  Where is the compassion for them?

A woman who needs an abortion should probably not go to a Catholic hospital, even in extreme circumstances.  But yes, if Krauss was representing the situation accurately (but why was he beating this drum in Scientific American?  What is the scientific angle here?) faced with a tough choice like that, I think you have to save the mother's life.

"In actual fact the Catholic Church is an international rape factory. And has been for decades; possibly untold centuries . . . "

Again, no attempt is made to support the claim or put it into context.  Newsweek finds the claim false, as linked above.

When Catholic priests came to Japan, they were horrified at how Buddhist priests regularly abused the young men put into their care.  I get the feeling from reading their accounts that they did not find this appropriate or normal. 

The notion that the Catholic Church invented or popularized sexual abuse is utter nonsense.  I have been reading ancient texts on women and sexuality for the past few years, and do not think I have even encountered the notion that a man should not take his slave girl or boy whenever he desires -- unless you apply the Ten Commandments strictly.  Christianity helped impose the idea that such actions were abusive.

"And that’s not the only horror (13) that Church has unleashed on the world. Even now that same Church also teaches false and dangerous, even lethal, things about a great deal else, from condoms and AIDS in Africa (14), to mental health and marital and parental and sexual relationships. The Church even denies charity to aid groups that so much as associate with gay people. (15) And likewise enforces other positions it irrationally and harmfully endorses. Add it all up, and the harm Catholicism does well exceeds any good. Just see the Intelligence Squared Debate on whether the Church has been a force for good in the world—the affirmative is thoroughly annihilated by Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry." (16)

(13) This links to a list of the usual items, such as Crusades and witchhunts, by a blogger who seems to know as little as most people who make such lists.

(14) "Condoms and AIDS in Africa," is a little vague, so nothing more need be said.  (Except maybe that westerners who celebrated the sexual "freedoms" of African converts didn't seem to see that one coming.  One anthropologist wrote a book about how wonderful sexual wantonness was in a certain district in Africa; AIDS has since devastated that district, where she found a boyfriend for herself, while she was hanging out.)

(15) There is something particular perverse about chastising an organization for not giving charity to one group, without pausing to first note that they give charity.  That is the herd of elephants in the room: the enormous amount of good that Christians have done for Africans and people on other continents, while totally escaping the censorial and self-righteous eyes of philandering arm-chair quarterbacks of philanthropy.

I received an e-mail a few days ago from my former pastor Ron Rice, who has helped build wheelchairs for thousands of Nigerians, Christian and Muslim, crippled by polio.  They have a factory in Nigeria, run by a colleague who himself needs to use one of their products.

I guess Carrier doesn't get those kinds of e-mails.

Some atheists and skeptics have recognized the power of the Gospel in Africa, but such notices pass Carrier by, as well.

(16) And I believe I "annihilated" (to use Carrier's word) Hitchens' arguments in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, at least those that seemed worth addressing.  He is not an historian, and I think would only impress those who, like Carrier, don't know Christian history well, or that side of it that Carrier hides from.

"Do you think mass child rape only happens in the Vatican’s corporate properties? Look over the nightmarishly vast collection of reported “black collar crime” that Freethought Today has published at least two whole newspaper pages worth nearly every month for decades now (e.g. the June 2018 edition). And the crimes they document aren’t just rampant child molestation, but range from fraud to manslaughter. Faith, trust in religion, support of religious institutions, makes this possible. Churches should be treated just like any other corporation: just as self-interested, and just as much in need of suspicion, criticism, oversight, and regulation." (17) 

(17) "Power corrupts."  Whose verdict on history was that again?  Was Lord Acton an atheist?

Of course all human institutions tend towards corruption.  What follower of Jesus Christ, who spent his career calling out corrupt religious leaders, can deny that and affirm scripture at the same time?

I know a pious Christian who helped bust a sex-abuse ring posing as a kind of child-care center.  Of course perverts, abusers and sadists are going to create such fronts.  They will naturally gravitate towards positions of power and places they can get to vulnerable young people.  So long as we have schools, or even families, or humans congregate at all, including of course New Atheists at conferences, the strong will seek gratification at the expense of those who are weaker.

This is one reason Marxism failed: it located evil in a class, and thus overlooked it in the heart of Marxist leaders.  (Solzhenitsyn makes this point well.)  By rejecting Christian orthodoxy, Marxists rendered themselves more liable to tyranny and abuse.

But notice what Carrier does not do.  He provides no general overview, no backdrop against which to evaluate the Christian record.  He does not prove abuse was worse in churches at any period, let alone down through history, as he implies.  He cherry-picks.  He points at every piece of data that supports his thesis, and ignores all those that fail to do so, or that disconfirm it.

Such an approach is fundamentally irrational.   It is precisely the kind of pseudo-argumentation I am seeking to overcome in How Jesus Liberates Women.   If the New Atheism is going to grow up, it needs to learn how to argue rationally, bravely, with all the evidence on the table.

"And it doesn’t end there." (18) 

(18) Reasoning hasn't started, yet.

American Evangelicals lobbied for the mass murder of gay people in Uganda.(19)  Hundreds of thousands of American voters have in recent years supported “kill-the-gays” candidates even in the U.S.(20)   See my section on “Equivalence” in my article on Islamophobia for that and more. And again, that’s just one example. (21)

(19) Is this like the claim that "the majority of evangelicals are perpetually pushing for war?"   Did all of us lobby to murder all the homosexuals in Uganda?  I don't recall hearing anyone I know recommend murdering gay people in Africa.  I'd have had strong words for them, and so, I think, would most serious Christians.

(20)  Hundreds of thousands?  Out of hundreds of millions?  You can get some people to light their own shoes on fire.  Voting for fools hurts less, short-term, and is therefore even more popular.

Meanwhile, one quarter of the French population sometimes voted for communists.

(21) Anyway, that's two examples if we're charitable, none if not.

"Homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, prejudices galore, all get rationalized, defended, and spread by conservative Protestant sects (and Orthodox sects and every other kind). On every political issue I’ve ever tried lobbying for, (22) from environmentalism to peacekeeping to fighting poverty to women’s rights to stem cell research to abolishing vice laws to death-with-dignity legislation to improvements in tax and social welfare policy—literally everything—one group was always in my way: conservative Christians. Always. Their opposition to human betterment and social progress is extensive, multi-faceted, well-documented, and shameless. Faith. Belief. They create and feed that monster. And that’s why they must go."

(22) Richard is such a light in the darkness.  I'm sure if he's for a given piece of legislation, there can't be anything to be said against it.  I mean, how could legislation encouraging old people to die more quickly possibly go wrong?

But where does Carrier want us Christians to go?

I'll go to my school, tomorrow, the mother school of which was founded by Presbyterians.  The last school I worked at in China, completely secular like this one, belonged to a network founded by missionaries from Yale, who also started the main medical hospital in that province.

It really is shameless, how these Bible-thumpers are so constantly opposed to human progress.

"But this has already been thoroughly demonstrated, on countless different dimensions. Marlene Winell’s advocacy for “Religious Trauma Syndrome” is but one example. For many, many more, see John Loftus’s Christianity Is Not Great, Hector Avalos’s Fighting Words, Valerie Tarico’s The Dark Side, Janet Heimlich’s Breaking Their Will, Billy Wheaton’s Hooks and Ladders, Darrel Ray’s Sex and God, Jerry Coyne’s Faith Verses Fact. (23) You know. Just for starters."

(23) I've refuted numerous bad arguments along these lines by Loftus, Avalos, Tarico, Ray, and Coyne on this site, on Amazon, and in some cases in print, "just for starters."  I won't pause to link them right now; feel free to look around.  Refuting such books isn't difficult, because most such attacks are as vacuous, one-sided, ill-informed, and poorly reasoned as the present harangue by Dr. Carrier.  

"Conservative religion not only damages the individual believer with false, harmful, even hateful beliefs about themselves and the world, it is “also highly correlated with violence and physical and emotional abuse, and the suppression of the liberties and well-being of others” (Problems with the Mental Illness Model of Religion).(24)  It therefore must be opposed."

(24) This link goes to another long blog piece by Carrier.  The evidence I've seen, for instance in Patrick Glynn's God: the Evidence, and in Arthur Brooks' Who Really Cares, points in the opposite direction.  Glynn shows that committed believers in America tend to be far happier and mentally healthier than their peers.  Brooks shows that they are also several times more generous, on average, in giving to charity, and even more apt to give blood.

But as far as opposing "religion," whatever that is (my prediction was right, Carrier has offered no definition so far), I am sure he is preaching to the converted.  His fans are against the thing already, whether or not they know what it is.

"But what about “nice” religions?

"Why All Theologies Are Dangerous

"First, all religions are systems of lies, designed to keep us trapped and controlled by fear. (25) Liberal, conservative. Doesn’t matter."

(25) Maybe that's the definition of "religion" I've been looking for?  A "system of lies, designed to keep us trapped and controlled by fear?"

Hmmm.  Carrier has made dozens of errors so far in his over-the-top attempt to instill fear of "religion" in his followers.  So is Carrierism also a religion?  There may be something to the notion that Carrier intends to trap secularists in his systems of lies by means of fear.

This was supposed to be an argument, by one of the world's greatest philosophers and historians, if you believe his press releases. (And Carrier does.)   But all I've found so far is an emotional harangue with hardly a single element of rational reasoning in the whole piece: no definitions, qualifications, methodologies, control populations, or mention of contrary evidence vast as it may be -- one begins to tap one's foot and look at the clock.

How long is this sermon going to go?

Let's cut a bit of the blather, and see if we can find some morsel rationality or serious argumentation in Part II, Carrier's attack on liberals:

"We should be appreciating those we love while they still exist, enjoying our loved ones’ company more now, (26) knowing full well it will end, rather than deferring it to a fictional future; we should be dealing with our grief and loss so we can move beyond it, rather than bottling it up in fear and false hope."

(26)  Those religious people, they just don't appreciate their loved ones like Richard Carrier does!   And by "appreciate" I mean, run off on your wife after she works you through grad school and chase other women!

Because if Christians did care for their loved ones, they might -- I don't know, build hospitals to take care of them? Start hospices?  Carve statues of saints on churches?  Name holy days for those who continue to inspire them?

Some scholars say what distinguished the early Christians was precisely their willingness to care for their loved ones.  Two of my last articles at The Stream paid tribute to Christians who have meant a lot to me: my Mom (and father), and Don Richardson.  So I wonder that Carrier seems to think the idea of showing people appreciation while they still live was an idea that is so foreign to the Christian tradition: western culture is filled with monuments that prove the opposite.

"If you really think religion’s only utility is in comfort, then you should condemn all religions that carry any dangers and discomforts, and fully support everyone fabricating any belief system that makes them happy. Lovable faerie worlds. Benevolent polytheism. Post-mortem solipsism. We get to live forever in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. (27) Anything. It’s all the best thing ever. All other religions, a curse. That should be your position. If it’s not, then you don’t really believe we should believe false things merely because of the comfort they bring us." 

(27) Bugs Bunny cartoons are amusing to watch, but would be a nightmare to live in forever.

This paragraph is part of a long rant against the notion of believing in religion merely because someone supposedly finds it comforting.  I've been saying that for decades, and leading Christian thinkers, for millennia.

Carrier follows with the usual unevidenced conceit that Christians believe by means of blind faith.  Without, of course, offering any real evidence.  But he then offers an interesting complaint about religious liberals:

"They may be on the right side of most things, unlike conservatives; but they often still stand in the way of future advances in social wisdom, with their own peer pressuring and passive-aggressive judgmentalism—such as punishing anyone who becomes ethically nonmonogamous (28), or reinforcing mainstream everyday “benevolent” sexism."

(28) Gee, what might Carrier mean by "ethically non-monogamous?"  Could he refer to his own sleeping around while deluding his wife?  Because nothing says "ethical" like finding willing women on the road and then coming home to tell your loved one fairy tales.

But notice the contradiction in Carrier's arguments here about Christianity and sex.

Apparently the problem with Christianity is that it both allows sexual predation, and criticizes it.   Unless we are to believe that Richard Carrier has treated women like a gentleman, which notion just made my BS-detector blow up and take out half the floor.

But then Carrier says something interesting (almost done, don't leave!), citing the radical Religious Studies prof Hector Avalos:

"Liberals are also less able to really debate conservatives, which is why they almost never do. Because the liberals “have no text.” That is, they do not use the Bible as written (unlike the conservatives claim to).  They use human interpretations—which means any interpretation can replace it. In truth, the conservatives always do this too; but they pretend they aren’t, giving them an often impenetrable self-righteous edge . . . What the liberal theologian insists is true, is no longer anchored to any evidence, any proof, anything that could persuade . . . In its practical effectiveness, it’s worse than atheism."

Rather than cite a liberal Christian to prove how weak liberal Christianity is, though, he quotes an atheist Jew:

"When (in Does Christianity Harm Children?) Phil Zuckerman tried explaining the basic Christian doctrine, which even liberal Christianity endorses and graphically depicts in its own ways, to his young daughter, a child, he had to confess, “The whole thing is so totally, horrible, absurdly sadistic and counter-intuitive and wicked. (29) Not to mention baldly untrue.” 

(29) Oddly, when Zuckerman interviews secular people in Scandinavia and asks them what shaped their progressive beliefs, again and again they credited their "sadistic, wicked" Christian heritage for their moral virtues.  I cited him when we debated in California, and Phil didn't deny the quotes.  I could have given many more.

Anyway, Zuckerman is an odd person to cite here, as if one of America's most anti-religious sociology professors "had to" admit he didn't like religion.  Of course Carrier is also famous for downgrading the "Argument from Embarrassment:" his use of it is certainly uncommonly weak.

At the end of his piece, Carrier returns to his First Hate: orthodox Christianity. Liberalism is bad, but Christianity in its original state was ghastly indeed:

"This should be one of the most obvious lessons of the last three hundred years: the secularization of governments and human rights has created a context in which religion could be moderated by dissent over time.  (30)  Which is precisely why Christians aren’t waging crusades and inquisitions anymore (31-32), and though hundreds of thousands of Americans still want gays executed, they are now but a tiny and shrinking fraction of Christians in America, most of whom find these murderous peers repulsive and would never support their passing of laws." 

(30)  Oddly enough, Jesus himself told his followers to stand down when they got that murderous twinkle in their eyes.

This is because he was deeply influenced by the Enlightenment.  Or was it the other way around?  It's so hard to keep track of whether the past influences the future, or vice-versa, especially while reading skeptics like Richard Carrier.

(31)  If secularization stopped the Inquisition in 300 years, why did Christianity take 1200 years to start it in the first place?  And why did the Soviet Union and China, which proudly promoted the story of the Enlightenment and the death of God as announced by Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Marx's buddies at Berlin University, kill more people in a couple days of their inquisitions than the Spanish killed in 300 years?  Can we call a forest fire a "moderation" of the light that a firefly put out?

(32) As for the Crusades, I think the first of the bunch saved Western Civilization, which seemed a good idea, at least until the likes of Richard Carrier and his friends came around.

Now the preacher gets that distant gleam in his eyes, as he peers through the fog of war towards the Celestial City, the promised, post-Christian Valhalla:

"We sometimes forget how enormous a shift this is from the Middle Ages. (33)  If it can happen to Christianity, it can happen to Islam, and anything else. And really, that’s the only way it’s going to happen. You aren’t going to convert a billion Muslims to atheism. But you can create a context in which they will gradually liberalize themselves over the next two hundred years. Like we did. Because that’s the only way we did it. That then opened the way, gradually to be sure, for atheism to have breathing room, and eventually itself grow. This all simply requires the secularization of governments and human rights—such as accepting freedom of religion and freedom of speech as fundamental rights."

(33) The paradox is, there are far more Bible-reading and believing Christians today, as a percentage of the world's population, than there were in the Middle Ages.  Churches were fairly empty, and few even knew what the gospels said, as Stark shows in Secularization, RIP. 

Not, of course, than the Middle Ages were the hell-hole so many secularists believe.  They represented probably the greatest civilization the world had yet seen: greater freedoms, more food, inventions, commerce, and art.

Carrier also ignores the fact that Islamic fundamentals focus on Mohammed, who modeled child abuse, slave-trading, war-mongering, and mass murder.  He is reifying the word "fundamentalism," like the idol of a demon by which to terrify children -- his very definition of "religion."  
  
"But for all that, even liberal theologies pose their own dangers we must still continually oppose. We should not want these faith-based systems of false-beliefs to continue. They are handy as a gateway. But that bridge ultimately also needs to go. Because liberal theologies saddle us with dangerous epistemologies, they hold back our growth as human beings, they leave us more vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse; indeed more vulnerable to causing and spreading abuse ourselves. They distract us from what we really ought to be doing, which is building evidence-based, testable, revisable worldviews. Meanwhile, conservative theologies pose far greater and even more obvious dangers we must oppose in every civil way possible.

"So when someone asks, “What’s the harm?” The answer is that. All that."

An impassioned sermon, but without a trace of real thinking behind it.

Carrier's concession at one point in another part of his article that even things we don't call religion exhibit the pathologies he decries, is framed as a "trump card" moment, but really ruins the whole sermon, if you think about matters reasonably.

This concession reminds us that (as predicted) Carrier never bothered to define "religion."  So the word means "belief in God" when he wants, but "ideology of all kinds, like those supposed atheists on the other side of the Iron Curtain," when that definition seems more useful.

It reminds us that people often do bad things in groups, whether you call them "religious" or not.

It reminds us that Carrier has not once tried to differentiate intellectually between the harms Christianity may have caused by virtue of its teachings, and the harms it may have caused by virtue of creating human institutions -- often originally positive and useful ones.

Which further reminds us that all the good Christianity has done -- nations reformed, educated, healed, liberated, wars ended (yes), slaves liberated (yes), crops sown, science encouraged, the opposition to evils like human sacrifice, widow burning, foot binding, and individual lives immeasurably enriched -- are completely ignored in this long article.  Not one word of all that is mentioned.  Not a single of my friends is mentioned, who overcame drug addiction, were liberated from forced prostitution, gained an education, or were healed under the sign of the cross.  Still less does he cite Robert Woodberry's studies showing that Protestant missions led to the institutions of civil society and democracy around the world.

Carrier has also cited no control groups: civilizations apart from Christianity, where children are never abused, group think is absent, and science progresses from glory to glory without the dead weight of theology dragging it down.

Still less, of course, has Carrier given us a methodology by which to compare Christian to non-Christian societies in a fair and systematic way.

Richard Carrier's harangues are, indeed, always bad: this one worse than some, if not (in my opinion) quite the worst.

But this sloppy mess of flow-of-conscious argumentation reminds me what I need to do better, to make a real historical argument:

a. However frightening, you must consider contrary evidence if you wish to persuade reasonable people.

b. Define key words properly before use.

c. Argue from systematic data, rather than mere ear-tickling anecdotes.

d. Beware of your own biases, and guard against them.

e. Compare the Christian track record to that of other traditions.

f. Read up on missions, if you wish to write about Christian history!

g. Distinguish carefully before the effects of human nature and of particular moral teachings. If something is universal, it wasn't caused by one particular faith, though it might be exacerbated by it.

h.  Remember that causes generally come before their effects.

i. But you also need to show that the cause was proximate enough to credibly lead to a given effect, either because the first event happened shortly before the second, or because it led to a credible chain of events ending in that end result.

Those are a few of the elementary principles that the great historian and philosopher Richard Carrier has utterly neglected in this half-baked argument.

Not that he's alone in committing such oversights.

That evil Bible, again.

Neither do car repair manuals usually mention the

Makah Indians or totem poles.  What could they  

possibly be for?   

As in most memes, inanity and error battle for supremacy here.

Answering Nicholas Kristof's Questions on Faith

I've always liked Nicholas Kristof, though not reading the New York Times, I seldom see his essays.  I find something sincere and earnest about his work.  Traveling around the world on assignments, he seems to view people with real compassion.  I probably disagree with his politics, but he is one liberal whom I really respect -- what one would hope for from someone who calls himself a "liberal."  (Though I don't know if Kristof uses that word.)  

This morning someone posted a series of questions which Kristof posed to the New York City pastor Tim Keller.  (I won't give the poster's name, since this was on a closed forum.)  He asked us to try to answer Kristof's questions without looking at Keller's replies.   While I wasn't planning to write a blog piece this morning, the questions proved interesting, and on important issues that I've pondered a lot.  Here's what I came up with.  

What difference did Jesus make? (Goldingay on History.)

Fuller Old Testament scholar John Goldingay wrote (or at least published) a book last year called Do We Need the New Testament: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself.  By all accounts, the book is well-written and thoughtful.  I have not read more than a few paragraphs and some reviews, but I suspect I would agree with some of what Dr. Goldingay writes. 

Yesterday, Goldingay kindly sent me a copy of Chapter Two, Why Jesus is Important.  He did so because the radical anti-Christian Religious Studies professor at Iowa State, Hector Avalos, had posted some lines from that chapter, which seemed to concede a lot about Christian history that probably most Christians would not want conceded.  Avalos' point was that Christianity hasn't really done human society much good.  I wanted to see if Goldingay really thought that.  

Looking the passage in question over, it appears that indeed, Dr. Goldingay has overlooked some enormous, and enormously important, historical patterns.  I have noticed the same lacunae in high school history texts in both America and in China.  But it is troubling that a thoughtful, good-hearted senior professor at Fuller, where Ralph Winter once taught (who was deeply familiar with these facts) would remain unaware of the rich contributions of the Gospel to human civilization.  Or that he would approvingly cite so virulent a hater, and so unreliable a scholar, as Hector Avalos on the subject.  

I will quote relevant portions of the surrounding passage first, putting the portions that Avalos quotes in italics, enumerating points I intend to discuss below.  

Goldingay's Argument

"The most distinctive feature of the situation after Jesus came is that the Spirit drove people like Paul to traverse the world to tell the story of Jesus among other nations . . . 

"What difference did Jesus’ coming make to the world? It has been argued that “The Church has made more changes on earth for good than any other movements of force in history,” including the growth of hospitals,(1) universities (2), literacy and education (3), capitalism and free enterprise (4), representative government, separation of political powers, civil liberty (5), the abolition of slavery (6), modern science (7), the discovery of the Americas (8), the elevation of women (9), the civilizing of primitive cultures (10), and the setting of languages to writing (11).  It is easy to dispute this claim. The church resisted some of the developments just listed (12), some are not particularly Christian (13), and all were encouraged by humanistic forces and reflect Greek thinking as much as gospel thinking (14).10

[Footnote 10]: On slavery in particular (even when one allows for overstatement) Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011).”  

"One can alternatively do another thought experiment. Imagine we were still waiting for the

Messiah, that the first coming of Jesus has not yet happened.  How would things in the twenty-first century be different from what they are? In the twenty-first century world there is (among other things) much war, oppression, family dysfunction, marital unfaithfulness and divorce, sexual exploitation and sexual slavery, and economic slavery (16). It is difficult to claim that the world is in better shape than it was two thousand years ago. (17)  I am not clear that the coming of Jesus made much difference to these aspects of how the world is. That fact does not mean Jesus has failed to have the effect he said he would have. He said nothing about the world getting better in these ways (18). Indeed, he said they would continue the way they were and if anything get worse. Abolitionist Theodore Parker declared his faith that the arc of the moral universe “bends towards justice,” and Martin Luther King and Barack Obama have repeated his conviction. It’s sometimes possible to see evidence of that fact in the short term, but I am not clear that there is evidence to justify Parker’s faith when one looks at history more broadly. After all, freedom and civil rights did come to be granted, but first they had to be taken away, and fifty years after Martin Luther King matters look less encouraging to some African Americans than they did thirty or forty years ago. (19)

"The difference Jesus’ coming brought about is that there are billions of people in the world who acknowledge the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who would likely not otherwise have done so. This fact is in keeping with a New Testament emphasis. It is also the case that when these people die, they have a basis for knowing that they will rise from death on resurrection day, because Jesus’ death and resurrection initiated the bringing into being of a resurrected people to which they will belong. The result of Jesus’ coming was the preaching of the gospel to the world and the providing of the basis for a confident expectation of resurrection." (20)

I think this passage is mistaken, both historically and theologically.  I think the approach exhibited in these paragraphs does harm to the Christian witness and shows a lack of appreciation for the tens of thousands of Christian reformers, in the spirit of Christ, who have rocked this world to its foundations over the past two thousand years -- and apart from whom the world would in fact be a much darker place.  I think Christianity ("the Church" in the broad sense) has deeply inspired and brought about "changes for the good," probably more than any other institution, but certainly which ought not to be downplayed.   

It is only right, and filial that we give the saints who went before us proper honor, as the author of Hebrews does, in Hebrews 11.  Even the secular world would not, should not, dishonor say, the Confucian tradition as Dr. Goldingay does his own in these paragraphs.  

Not to mention unwittingly, and no doubt through the best motives, giving aid and comfort to some of Christianity's most virulent enemies, like John Loftus and Hector Avalos.  (Who never display a trace of such "fair-mindedness" in their own propaganda -- it is dirt on the Gospel, all day and every day.)  

Let us go through these twenty items, point by point.  

The Difference Jesus Makes

(1)  It has been argued that “The Church has made more changes on earth for good than any other movements of force in history,” including the growth of hospitals . . . 

Is it not a clear historical fact that devoted Christians have built thousands of hospitals on every continent, and developed the medical sciences resulting in the direct physical well-being of billions of people?  

One can hardly get away from Christian hospitals.  Never mind that the closest hospital in your American or French town is likely to be called "Providence" or "St. Lukes."  When I lived as a single man in Taiwan, I remember meeting dates in front of what seemed the most prominent local landmark: the MacKay Hospital, which continued the excellent work of the Canadian Presbyterian missionary, George MacKay, who set up clinics across the north of the island.  (Among other good works.)  That may be the leading medical institution in a country some 90% Buddhist, but it is far from the only Christian hospital.  Similarly, when I taught in Changsha, China, the school network I taught in was founded by the same people who founded the first medical school in the city, missionaries from Yale.  (Though the communists don't brag about those roots, aside from the word "Yale," of course.)  Similarly, Japan, India, Africa, and much of the rest of the world, are chock full of hospitals founded by Christians who took their savior's medical work seriously: I have met many of such missionary medical personal myself, including the much-beloved Paul and Margaret Brand.  

And this pattern goes back to the first centuries, and all through the Middle Ages. 

If Dr. Goldingay is unaware of that glorious, and often sacrificial, history, he should visit the Fuller School of World Mission, and listen to some stories.  

 (2 universities, 

The same is true of universities.  While admittedly in the 20th Century, secular humanists and communists largely took over the Christian work of founding universities (or gutting Christian colleges spiritually), the first were religious institutions, usually Christian.  Again, one can liberally furnish examples even from non-Christian countries.  Stark is good on the rise of universities during the Middle Ages, even among Nestorians in the Muslim world. Goldingay might also benefit from reading Vishal Mangalwadi.  But sources are numerous, because the facts are well-known and undeniable: almost all European and American universities before the Civil War were founded by Churches, and a remarkable number in Asia and Africa as well.  Any history of Christianity in China or Japan worth its salt will be liberally sprinkled with accounts of how such schools got started: in my wife's little city of Nagasaki, there were three or four universities with Christian roots.  

(3) literacy and education

For every university that missionaries founded, they generally started numerous primary and middle schools.  In one study of women who had attained higher education in a region in coastal China, something like 98% gained that education from church schools.  Even Joseph Stalin and Voltaire were educated by Christians, however unfortunate the use they put that education to.

My wife, as a Japanese Buddhist, went to Catholic schools as a girl.  Hundreds of millions of people around the world have done likewise.  

(4) capitalism and free enterprise 

Rodney Stark, following Max Weber, has made this case.  Perhaps they are wrong: I admit that this fact is less clear-cut or perhaps well-known to me than some of the others.  But at the least, such a case has been made, citing quite a bit of evidence.  

(5)  representative government, separation of political powers, civil liberty

Robert Woodberry has made the case for Christian influence on these institutions extremely effectively, in my view.  He argues that missions, especially Protestant missions, is the single most important variable in determining the growth of free civil institutions in countries around the world. 

(6) the abolition of slavery 

In The Truth Behind the New Atheism, I recount sitting in a seminar room in Merton College (I believe it was, or perhaps Corpus Christi), Oxford, with 30 or so other historians, who were discussing (among other things) the impact of evangelical Christianity on the abolitionist movement.  Not one questioned that the influence had been profound or decisive.  At the same time, not one expressed any personal Christian proclivities.

Six years ago, Hector Avalos attacked me, and some of the claims I made in those pages (not specifically about that meeting in Oxford, however) in a long and virulent Debunking Christianity article.  (He was mad at me for having debunked some of his own arguments.)  I then responded in two posts, first here, then here.  I do not think that in the course of our exchanges, the football moved down the field towards Avalos' goal, despite much heavy breathing on his part.

Avalos has since written a long book attempting (apparently) to debunk the claim that Christianity was responsible for ending slavery.  I have not read that book yet, partly because I haven't had the time or need so far, but also largely because I find Avalos' use of citations so unreliable.  Like Loftus' other ally, Richard Carrier, one almost suspect he seeks out obscure citations in the hopes that no one will discover how badly he has abused them.  (Though to be fair, he's not much more reliable when he cites more common texts, so perhaps this is more a case of confirmation bias than of intentional slipperiness.)  Other examples can be found in my series on his book on Christianity and violence.

This is, admittedly, an argument with an ad hominal warp to it.  "Avalos has a pattern of bogus citations, therefore his long arguments on slavery, which I have not had time to read and which attempt to overthrow or undermine truths accepted by most historians, pose a lower priority in my reading than other topics for the time being."

Personally, I don't think any amount of evidence can overthrow the facts as recognized by numerous scholars of the period, and not just at Oxford.  Avalos may find errors in Stark's well-known account in For the Glory of God, but given his record, and the facts as I know them (and describe them to some extent here), I'd put my money on Stark for the big picture.      

(7) modern science

Stark's For the Glory of God provides chapters on both slavery and the origins of modern science that provide good starting points for discussion.  (Though I know Avalos would challenge Stark on some details, and Stark's history is not infallible.  See my review of Loftus' The Christian Delusion for a response to Richard Carrier's essay, "Christianity and Science.")  James Hannam's God's Philosophers / The Genesis of Science offers a more thorough and less polemical account of the same history.  Charles Thaxton, Stephen Barr, Paul Davies, David Landes, and Oxford historian of science Allan Chapman are among those who have further demonstrated the intimate linkage between Medieval Christian theology and the rise of modern science.  I don't think there is good cause to dispute the general thesis, any longer.

(8) the discovery of the Americas

I am not sure Christians should want credit for this item, given how Columbus and his ship-mates treated the natives.  But Christianity did lend the Spanish a banner around which to rally, helping Iberians cast off 500 years of Muslim domination, and saving Europe from Muslim conquest. That's a great boon, I do believe.  Columbus sailed, and the last Muslim kingdom was conquered, in the same year, both under the sponsorship of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.  While Columbus' motives may be questioned (and I would have much to learn, here), the fact that Christianity played a crucial roll in allowing Europe to throw off their would-be conquerors, permitting the explosion of science, technology, and civilization that followed, is I think hard to dispute.

(9)  the elevation of women

That Christianity raised the status of women around the world, I have demonstrated on this site, beyond (I think) reasonable doubt.  Indeed, while hundreds of skeptical responses have been posted at Christ the Tao and elsewhere, none of my essential points has I think been robustly challenged.  Most responses have been more like these ones.  

(10) the civilizing of primitive cultures 

It is indisputable that the Gospel has often had this effect.  That was certainly true through the Middle Ages in Europe: see Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion, for an overview.  How else did the Vikings become peaceable Scandinavians?  For modern examples, some related first-hand, see the works of Don Richardson, and biographies or autobiographies of James Fraser, Eugene Morse, and Mary Slessor, to give just a few examples. Again, Goldingay might consider consulting the faculty at Fuller School of Intercultural Studies, or perhaps some of the doctoral dissertations that used to adorn the office there.  

(11) and the setting of languages to writing.  

This general claim, too, is impossible to knowledgeably deny.  Many European languages, beginning perhaps with Gothic, were indeed set to writing by Christians for evangelical motives.   At least portions of the Bible have been translated into at least 2,500 languages so far: I have held some of those Bibles, the first written book in a variety of languages, and met some who translate others.  If Dr. Goldingay is unfamiliar with these facts, he may also like to visit the US Center for World Missions on the other side of Colorado Avenue in Pasadena from Fuller.

It is easy to dispute this claim. 

It would be interesting to see someone who knows the facts, try.  At best one might challenge the comparative quality in which Goldingay frames the claim.  I suppose one might argue that the communists ultimately set more languages into writing, or founded more hospitals, while admitting that Christians inspired by the life of Jesus got the ball rolling.  But I am not sure that math would pencil out, and I've never seen such an argument attempted.

(12) The church resisted some of the developments just listed 

Who is "the Church?"  Given that "the Church" has included billions of people down through the centuries, this claim may be either true or false, depending on how you interpret it.  But that is neither here nor there.  People generally resist change to their core cultures.  It might therefore be true BOTH that most Christians were resistant to a given redemptive change (though one would have to cite evidence for that claim), AND that the Gospel provided the reformist spur that set billions of people free.

For instance, most American southerners resisted the abolition of slavery, obviously.  And most were "Christians" in some sense.  But it was in their strong self-interest to keep slaves, and a blow to their pride to meekly obey the North.  So the fact that they did resist abolition, in no way undermines the evident historical truths that abolition arose in a Christian society, and was led mostly by serious Christians for religious reasons.

(13) some are not particularly Christian 

I don't suppose discovering America is particularly Christian, true.  But that does not conflict with the thesis that "the Church" set into motion the events that resulted in that discovery.  

Most of these items are, I think, particularly Christian, though.  Jesus was a healer.  Jesus was an educator.  Jesus loved women in a healthy, redeeming manner.  Jesus told his disciples to make the world worshipers of the One Creator God, whose universe is discovered through science.  Since "Christian" means "Christ-like," it is by definition Christian to act like Christ.  

 (14) and all were encouraged by humanistic forces and reflect Greek thinking as much as gospel thinking

This seems, on the surface, to contradict (13).  If some of these movements were not "particularly Christian," then to say that they reflect Greek thinking "as much as gospel thinking" is to say they are also not particularly Greek.  

But perhaps that is a mere debater's point.  More importantly, I dispute Goldingay's historical point.  No, pre-Christian humanists were not generally inclined to liberate slaves or raise the status of women.  And they did not: Jesus and his followers did, around the world, as the articles and books cited above demonstrate. 

(15) [Footnote 10]: On slavery in particular (even when one allows for overstatement) Hector Avalos, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011).” 

While this particular book may ultimately prove a model of careful scholarship, I wouldn't bet on it.  See my response to (6), above, and linked articles.   

(16) "One can alternatively do another thought experiment. Imagine we were still waiting for the Messiah, that the first coming of Jesus has not yet happened.  How would things in the twenty-first century be different from what they are? In the twenty-first century world there is (among other things) much war, oppression, family dysfunction, marital unfaithfulness and divorce, sexual exploitation and sexual slavery, and economic slavery. 

This strikes me as a very bold, and very wrong-headed, claim.  Before Christ, almost half the population of Athens were slaves.  What is it now, 0.2%?  If this article is correct, one in two hundred, not one in two, modern humans is something of a slave.  Shouldn't we distinguish between forest and shrubs?  Isn't it an improvement if we rid the world of 99% of something bad?  

Warfare is much less severe than it used to be, too.  Among some tribes in Amazonia or New Guinea, about a third of young men were killed in battle or in village rivalries.  That percentage went way down, after those tribes accepted the Gospel.  The same tamping down of violence seems to have occurred in Scandinavia, indeed in countries around the world.   War has not been abolished, of course - human nature remains what it was, and most people are not Christian.  But let us not pretend that things are just as they once were.  We do not do gladiator fights in Yankee Field, or set animals on slaves in Tiger Stadium, or cut out human hearts on the Washington Mall, or even sell slaves at the Mall of the Americas.  That's progress.


(17) It is difficult to claim that the world is in better shape than it was two thousand years ago. 

It certainly is not.  "Human society has become vastly more civil in the past 2000 years, thanks in large part to the Gospel of Jesus Christ."  There, I just did it.

And I have backed that up.  Slavery has shrunk to a tiny remnant of what it was.  Human sacrifice has been almost banished.  (Despite post-Christian revivals among the Nazis and Communists.)  No one builds pyramids and cuts out thousands of hearts, then feeds the meat to the waiting upper castes.  Lower castes in India are not totally free, but their condition is vastly improved.  The feet of women in China are no longer bound.  Women are no longer imprisoned in their homes in India.  (They are in some parts of the Muslim world, but that is only because the influence of Jesus has been checked.)

Hospitals and schools dot the countryside in almost every nation on earth.  Polygamy is engaged in by a small minority.

One could go on and on.  Did I mention medicine and technology?  Hot baths and medicine and sanitation and sewers?  Are we not communicating on the World Wide Web?  Men and women are still sinners.  But to deny social improvement (along with, in some cases, regression), and to get such a denial past editors at IVP, is pretty amazing.

 I am not clear that the coming of Jesus made much difference to these aspects of how the world is. 

Well I am clear about that.  

(18) That fact does not mean Jesus has failed to have the effect he said he would have. He said nothing about the world getting better in these ways. 

But God told Abraham, who had just offered up Isaac in a shadow of Jesus' redemptive death on the cross: "I will bless your seed, and through your seed I will bless all the nations of the world." 

And Jesus told his disciples to follow him, doing the things he did - which can only mean healing, bringing peace, teaching, feeding the hungry, casting out demons, saving the marginalized from oppression, redeeming sinners.  Shalom is a sign of the Gospel of Peace.  I am surprised that a Christian professor would seem to deny the visible reality of that sign, obscured as it often is (this is also part of the Gospel) by our sins.   

(19) Indeed, he said they would continue the way they were and if anything get worse. Abolitionist Theodore Parker declared his faith that the arc of the moral universe “bends towards justice,” and Martin Luther King and Barack Obama have repeated his conviction. It’s sometimes possible to see evidence of that fact in the short term, but I am not clear that there is evidence to justify Parker’s faith when one looks at history more broadly. After all, freedom and civil rights did come to be granted, but first they had to be taken away, and fifty years after Martin Luther King matters look less encouraging to some African Americans than they did thirty or forty years ago.

Subjective appeals to how some people see matters do not change the long-term historical facts.  2000 years ago, slavery was ordinary: now it is recognized as an abomination.  G. K. Chesterton predicted that it would be revived, and it has been, by the Nazis and Communists.  And other ills -- the breakdown in the family, which is the greatest problem in the African American and now European and Euro-American communities, and the source of other ills -- reflect a failure on our part to continue to live out the Gospel.  If we neglect the Gospel, all bets are off.  But on numerous levels -- Rene Girard is also worth reading on this -- the Gospel of Jesus continues to secretly control and inspire reform in every generation. 

(20) "The difference Jesus’ coming brought about is that there are billions of people in the world who acknowledge the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who would likely not otherwise have done so.  This fact is in keeping with a New Testament emphasis.  It is also the case that when these people die, they have a basis for knowing that they will rise from death on resurrection day, because Jesus’ death and resurrection initiated the bringing into being of a resurrected people to which they will belong.  The result of Jesus’ coming was the preaching of the gospel to the world and the providing of the basis for a confident expectation of resurrection." 

True, the New Testament does not simplistically promise us a rose garden, or if it does, only one with thorns that are numerous and painful.  Jesus promises his followers that they will be hated, persecuted, and even killed.  And those promises have often come true.

Neither human nature nor the plots of the Evil One have changed.  We saw in the 20th Century how evil could metastasize and assume forms that rival the Aztec pyramids for sheer evil, and on a far grander scale -- even in the country where Luther preached, indeed Luther himself was not guiltless in that evil, as Avalos rightly points out.

And yet Jesus told his disciples they were the "salt of the earth." Isn't salt supposed to bear some preserving or flavorful qualities?

Jesus also called his disciples the "light of the world."  Alexander Solzhenitsyn compared Christians in the Gulag to candles, casting light into the small sphere around them.  He himself received that light, converted to Christ, and went on to help inspire the overthrow of Soviet tyranny.  (With other followers of Christ, like Pope John Paul II: George Weigel tells part of the story in The Final Revolution.)  Isn't light something one can see?  Isn't that Jesus point -- that the Gospel would inspire good acts by Christians that would cause even non-Christians to stand up and take notice?

And haven't Jesus' words come true?  (So long as we do not help our enemies obscure the best that the Gospel does through Jesus' most faithful disciples!)

Jesus instructed his disciples to "Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  Shouldn't that teaching, which centered (Matthew also tells us) on "love God, love your neighbor as yourself" have some affect even on this world?  Isn't that what Jesus taught us would also be among the signs that would follow the impact of his ministry?

And are not the great things the followers of Jesus have indeed accomplished -- healing, teaching, reforming, creating civil society even new sciences -- worth glorifying God for?  Are they not also part of the witness we should bear to the world?  (As sincerely as we must also acknowledge our sins?)

It would be unfair to judge Dr. Goldingay's whole book by these few careless passages.  But they point to the need for Christians to make the historical case for the Gospel far more effectively than we have done so far -- not to paper over sins, but to tell an enormous and important story that the world refuses to relate, and often lies about, instead.  

My Opening Statement (Marshall-Zuckerman I)

It's great to be here tonight!

I think there are probably at least four kinds of people here tonight: Some of you grew up in a Christian family, and your family made Christianity central, and you know from personal experience that a society, even a small society built on Christian principles can work.  Others, your family went to church, your parents maybe even quoted the Bible, but it was a disaster.  Maybe there was even some abuse, and you have some doubts.  A third kind of person -- maybe you grew up in a secular humanist family, or maybe you spent some time in Scandinavia like Dr. Zuckerman, or in Japan like I did.  And you saw first-hand that a society where there's not much talk about God can work -- it seemed to be functional.  Or maybe you grew up in a disfunctional Secular Humanist family, maybe you escaped from a concentration camp in North Korea, you have doubts. 

All these are possible.  I'm not going to be claiming tonight that Secular Humanism is the same as Nazism, or that it's the worst possible belief system in the world -- or communism, though communism may be a form of Secular Humanism.

But I belong to the first category.  I would come down at six o'clock in the morning, and my parents would be reading the Bible and praying.  They lived it, they loved us, and they cared for people in the community.  If you've seen something else, tonight I'd like to give a bigger picture. 

Like Dr. Zuckerman, I prefer an empirical approach.  That means looking at the facts as we find them in the world around us. 

I would like to make four claims tonight.   

One: The gospel has changed the world for the better in dramatic ways, making life far better for billions, or tens of billions of people. 

Two: What Christianity has done before, it can do again. 

Three: Modern society has many flaws or needs which the Gospel also addresses. 

Four: Secular Humanism does not have a clear and independent record of building great societies, nor does it offer the best solutions to modern crises.  There are some troubling signs. 

Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity provides a far better foundation for a healthy, happy, free, and prosperous society than does Secular Humanism.

First of all, What Christianity has done for the World?

The Gospel has provided seven great gifts., at least. 


Number One: Charity.  Jesus was kind. 

Historian Will Durant said the world had "never had seen such a dispensation of alms" as was organized by the Roman church.  She helped "widows, orphans, the sick or infirm, prisoners, victims of natural catastrophes; and she frequently intervened to protect the lower orders from unusual exploitation or excessive taxation." 

Historian James Hannam said  the Church "acted as the Medieval welfare state." 

So there is ancient, medieval, and then in modern times sociologist Arthur Brooks says, 

"Religious people are, inarguably, more charitable in every measurable non-religious way, including secular donations, informal giving, and even acts of kindness and honesty, than secularists." (38)

And that includes both North America and Europe. 

The second gift -- Jesus was the original feminist, as Dan Brown, ironically, put it. 

This may astound people who rely on media propaganda, or even what is commonly taught in public schools.  But the record shows that nothing has liberated women throughout history more than the teachings and example of Jesus Christ.  Briefly:

A United Nations study in1988 showed that out of 99 countries in the world, the 40 that had the highest status of women, employment, health, education, marriage and children, 40 top countries, 39 had Christian heritage.  The exception was Taiwan, which was also deeply influenced by the Gospel through missions.

Rodney Stark, the sociologist, says that in the late Roman period,  Christian women married later, they had more choice in marriage than Roman pagan women; the "double standard" was rejected, and they were not forced to abort babies. 

The great Chinese scholar, who I think was an atheist, Hu Shi, said:

"Let women serve as oxen and horses." This saying is not sufficient to describe the cruelty and meanness with which Chinese have treated women . . . For a thousand years, Confucian philosophers talked about love and benevolence day after day, yet never noticed the cruel and inhumane treatment of their mothers and sisters.

"Suddenly from the West a band of missionaries arrived. Besides preaching, they also brought new customs and new ways of looking at things. They taught us many things, the greatest of which was to look at women as people."

The third gift (is) human rights.  Jesus cared for the oppressed.

When I first arrived in Asia, I found myself in a northern Thai tribal village where girls were sold as prostitutes to visiting tourists.  While a drama presenting the gospel was being performed in that village, I went behind the bamboo hut where they were performing it outside, and prayed for the drama, and for the people in the village.  It was while in prayer that I felt called to help such girls, and spent a few years trying to do that.  I was prepared for this by the Book of Isaiah, which I had been reading, and probably by the example of Jesus, as well in prayer. 

This is how most great reform movements have in fact started -- against abortion, infanticide, sacrificing of widows in India, human sacrifice, and slavery.  Maybe I'll have the time to tell the stories of people like John Wesley, William Wilberforce, William Booth, Benigno Aquino, later.   

The fourth great gift is science. 

According to Richard Carrier, a radical atheist whom I debated earlier this year, and an historian of ancient science, in ancient Greece: "Most intellectual polytheists believed in a Creator who had intelligently ordered the cosmos, that this order could be discovered by the human mind, and that such discovery honored God."  And he noted that even in the ancient world, scientists already began to draw on their faith in God, to invent what is now called science. (The Christian Delusion, 407)

In the Middle Ages, the same thing is true.  Rodney Stark has done a survey, and found that most of the early founders of different fields were pious Christians,

The Harvard historian David Landes said that "Important in all of this (invention -- DM) was the Church as custodian of knowledge and school for technicians."

The Judeo-Christian respect for manual labor, subordination of nature to man,  and a sense of linear time, all contributed to the birth of modern science in Europe. 

Number five: education.  Jesus, you may have noticed reading the New Testament, was a teacher.

Around the world, schools have been founded by the followers of Jesus, including many of the great universities of Europe and Asia. 

Robert Woodberry, a sociologist at the University of Singapore, said: "The earliest places with near universal literacy (including Scandinavia, New England, Protestant cantons in Switzerland . . . ) were typically economic backwaters, but had Protestant-sponsored literacy campaigns." (250)

Number six: Jesus was a healer. 

Again, go around the world, and you find hospitals founded by followers of Jesus who healed in the name of Jesus.  I have had the privilege of knowing some of those doctors.  And of course the Red Cross, with its emblem of the cross, symbolizes that influence. 


The seventh gift is the gift of freedom.  Jesus came to set his people free!

Dr. Donald Treadgold wrote, in Freedom, a History: "Hebrew society was unique in the ancient Near East in managing to avoid the techniques, devices, and institutions of despotism." 

Dr Landes again, on Medieval Christianity, said "the concept of property rights went back to biblical times and was transmitted and transformed by Christian teaching." And he gave some examples from the Old Testament where that came from.  And he pointed out that all of this made Europe very different from other civilizations of the time, especially when the Bible was translated into the local languages of Europe  (Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 35)

The "Peace and Truce of God" -- French historian Georges Duby says that "In the eleventh and twelfth centuries many a village grew up in the shadow of the church, in the zone of immunity where violence was prohibited under peace regulations." (Wikipedia)

And finally I'd like to cite a very eminent authority, Dr. Phil Zuckerman, who points out that Christianity also provides many goods to Scandinavians, in his book Society Without God.

Religious ritual "feels special . . . it gives their lives a sense of rhythm and poignancy . . . it brings families together . . . it makes them feel like they are part of something grand and auspicious . . . it is fun . . . it . . .  connects them with previous and future generations . . . they like the music . . . it enriches communal bonds." (155) 

So even among secularists, (Scandinavians) are still benefiting from the Gospel in those ways.

Christianity has, then, served as the foundation not only of the best aspects of Western civilization, but I would argue of world civilization.  The Gospel has literally saved billions, probably tens of billions, of lives by educating, healing, training civilizations in kindness and faith in a God who makes sense of reality, educating future scientists and teaching the world that "It is the glory of God to hide truth, and of kings to seek them out," as Francis Bacon quoted Scripture, in launching modern science. 

Christianity has a proven track record.  For two thousand years, the Gospel has helped billions and transformed the lives of people around the world for the better -- even India, China, and Japan.  This is not just abstract theory.  The examples and teachings of Jesus are the foundation of much of the best in modern society. 

That's my first point.

My second point is, what the Gospel has done before, it can do again. 

Next up: Phil's opening statement.