Hearsay Evidence

The following is an excerpt from Part First, Sections 1 and 2 of *The Age of Reason*, by Thomas Paine:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.

 

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind of hearsay [hearsay, def. from answers.com, 1. Unverified information heard or received by another; rumor. kwh] evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this — for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so — it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

Responsibility, What Is Yahweh's Policy?

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Christian:
"God didn't bring sin into the world."

My reply:
But if he is all-knowing didn't he know this would happen? Didn't he know that if he went ahead and created humans knowing their obviously flawed nature that things would go terribly bad? And that would have to be the biggest understatement ever made. Here he is before he ever created the first human, and he looks into the future and sees that if he creates man--under these circumstances--that billions of them will wind up in his eternal--ETERNAL hell. And he creates them anyway!? Did he need something so badly that he had to create man under these atrocious circumstances? No, because he is billed as being perfect and complete--therefore he needs nothing. So that means he was willing for all these billions of humans, that he allegedly loved, to be tortured in hell for eternity for some reason that wasn't even necessary! No loving [human] would go ahead and conceive a child they knew was destined for eternal hell. And God is supposed to be ALL-loving. God should be better than any human...No, sorry, this just doesn't add up.

This was my reply to a Christian on the Debunking Christianity blog. The Christian was basically saying that God didn't bring sin into the world, Adam and Eve did. So it's man's fault, not God's that most people will wind up in hell. But an honest search for truth demands that one go all the way back to before Yahweh allegedly created the first human. One has to wonder, responsibility, what is Yahweh's policy? (in this video look at the expressions on the faces of the people who have just witnessed someone acting responsibly--the example set by the responsible actions of these people is wonderfully contagious.) Now ask yourself what type of an example is the "perfect" Yahweh setting. When people are more responsible than the being who is alleged to be the omni God, something is terribly wrong.

If [Fundamentalist] Christianity Is True

This article is from Leaving Christianity from some time ago. I regret that I can't find it on that site anymore and I don't know who wrote it, but it is an excellent article. Although I think his/her 80% figure is quite low :

 

Let's assume for a moment that I'm completely wrong and evangelical Christianity is true. Let's look at some ridiculous conclusions that you must arrive at if this is the case. But first, a few clarifications from the Bible:

"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." - Matthew 7:13-14.

"But He will say, 'I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.' There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth...." - Luke 13:23-28

"Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."" - Rev 20:15

Assuming the above statements are true, statistically this means that the vast majority of people born will end up suffering in hell for eternity. I hate to place a figure on it, but let's assume 80% of people are not believers (Feel free to adjust as required). - since the world population is now around 6.6 billion, and to keep the calculations simple, let's assume that number of people are born & die each century. That means that by the year 2100 roughly another 4,800,000,000 people will have entered the eternal torments of hell. Assuming a projected world population of 9 billion in 50 years from now, that means that by the year 2200 the staggering figure of another 7,200,000,000 (that's over 7 billion) people will be added to Yahweh's fiery torture chamber. Assuming Jesus doesn't come back and call a halt to the whole sorry saga, after another 2000 years another 144 billion souls will be burning in the flames. If the human race lasts another 100,000 years (the estimated time Homo Sapiens has been on Earth), the unimaginable number of 7,200,000,000,000 (that's 7.2 trillion) people will have been added to the tormented population of hell (assuming a stable world population). ["...but He loves you!"--George Carlin, kwh]

If this is the case, it is a tragedy every time a new baby is born into this world, as statistically this new human being has an 80% probability of ending up suffering dreadfully for eternity. Surely it would be better for it not to be born? I cannot help but think that this leads to the following bizarre conclusions:

• We should aim to prevent any more babies from being born, ever. Every adult human being should be sterilized immediately. All currently pregnant women should have abortions.
• All babies/children under the age of 10 (or whatever age people grow up and decide to reject Jesus) should be immediately killed to ensure that they don't reject Jesus as an adult and end up in hell. I'm assuming that Jesus doesn't punish non-believing children.
• We should aim to ensure the immediate and total extinction of the human race, preferably by employing our best scientists to create a lethal chemical or biological agent that only wipes out the humans and leaves the plants & animals alone.
• If these measures don't work, as a last resort we should detonate all the world's nuclear weapons at once - the instant annihilation of a few billion people and the absolute end of life on earth would be a trivial price to pay to prevent over 7 trillion people from entering hell for eternity. Not a single human being, or even a fragment of human DNA must be allowed to survive - every person alive, including all the tribes in distant jungles, must be exterminated to prevent Adam's curse of original sin from inflicting any more damage. We would need a titanic global thermonuclear war, or better still, we could try to knock the earth out of its current orbit and into the sun - that should do it.

Conclusion
If Christianity is true, it logically follows that engineering our total extinction would prevent untold suffering by vast numbers of people in the future. Are there any Christians who disagree with my conclusions? Is it better to leave things as they are & allow trillions of souls to suffer the horrors of everlasting damnation? Of course, the Christian would argue that the correct thing to do is to evangelize more & convert those people, but consider this - after 2000 years of Christianity, the vast majority of people *still* don't believe in it therefore this is extremely unlikely to change in the future.

[And, according to Jesus in Mt.7:13-14, it never will change--there will always be "few" who enter in by the narrow gate and "many" who enter in by the wide gate. This writer's plan sounds logical only if fundamentalist Christianity is true. Fortunately, there's not a shred of unimpeachable evidence that would indicate that it is. kwh]

Mr. Deity And the Promised Land

This video is on The Original Mr. Deity Fan Blog and on YouTube at this link. The expressions on Larry's face are priceless, and spot-on.

Proving Bible Inerrancy

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
Bible inerrantists tend to talk in smug terms, sounding so confident that they can prove the inerrancy of the Bible. To hear them talk you would think that Bible inerrancy is the most obvious thing on earth, and that only die-hard skeptics would dare say otherwise.

Actually, it is just the opposite. It is mostly die-hard fundamentalist Christians who are hanging on to the claim that the Bible is inerrant. Instead of being smug, they need to be practicing a little more humility. But don't hold your breath. They only look for reasons to believe that the Bible is inerrant and that is irrational enough, but they carry the irrationality even further by committing even more invalid reasoning.

One of the most obvious examples of this is that they don't understand the impossibility of proving such a claim. As Farrell Till has noted, "...it would be IMPOSSIBLE to prove that the Bible is inerrant, because there must be millions of bits of information in it, much of it very commonplace and ordinary that involve no claims of the miraculous, that would be impossible to verify. Yet to prove that the Bible is inerrant, one would have to verify the truth of ALL of these millions of bits of information, and I consider that an impossible task...Genesis 19:23 [is] an example of an ordinary, uneventful statement that would nevertheless be impossible to verify: 'The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot came to Zoar.' Now if you think bits of information like this can be proven to be true, I would like to see you do it. In view of the fact that there are thousands of statements like this in the Bible that are unverifiable, it is utterly ridiculous for anyone to assert that the Bible is inerrant, because that is a claim that can never be known."

Remember, they are claiming that the Bible has no inaccuracies or false information. And that they have to prove, and that they cannot do.

"...[God] Doesn't Want Us to Go [To Hell]"

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
The title of this post is from a fundamentalist Christian church website. The full quote is, "God has told us about [hell] because He doesn't want us to go there."

The New Testament doctrine of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving, all-compassionate, sovereign, complete and perfect God, who created man with the knowledge that he would be sending the majority (Matt. 7:13-14) of his beloved humans to his eternal hell, is a Bible teaching that deserves serious attention. This New Testament concept of an omni God and his eternal hell is fraught with problems.

I have a challenge for anyone who may be reading this post. Write down some questions that this problematic doctrine brings to mind, with consideration given to the above quote from the church website. Please share them with us in the comments section, doing so anonymously if you like. Try to be objective and use your critical thinking skills. After several days I will list some of my own questions on this subject with some comments.

Does The Bible Claim to Be God's Word?

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
Does the Bible claim to be God's word, and if so, in what sense and to what extent?

Old Testament prophets often made the claim that the words of God had come to them and that they were speaking God's words:

Jeremiah 1:9  Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me:"Behold, I have put My words in your mouth."(NKJV)

Jeremiah 2:1  Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 "Go, and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem saying, 'Thus says the LORD... (NKJV) 

Former Church-of-Christ preacher Farrell Till notes that the words the prophets spoke as well as the words the prophets wrote were claimed to be the words of God:

In addition to hundreds of passages in the Old Testament that refer to the "word of Yahweh" [Yahweh is a transliteration of a Hebrew word for God, KH] coming to so and so and claims of "thus says Yahweh," there are also claims that the words that they wrote were the words of Yahweh.

Exodus 24:3 Moses came and told the people all the words of Yahweh and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that Yahweh has spoken we will do."

Moses told the people what he called the "words of Yahweh," and the people accepted them as "all the words Yahweh has spoken." Then the text claims that Moses wrote down the words of Yahweh.

 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh....[edited, kh]   7 Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that Yahweh has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." 8 Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, "See the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all these words."

Moses wrote down what the Exodus writer claimed were the "words of Yahweh," so that later when he read what he had written, the people understood that they had heard him read not the "ideas" of Yahweh but the WORDS of Yahweh. Jeremiah, whose claim that Yahweh touched his mouth and put his words into the prophet's mouth we have already noticed, later claimed that he wrote down the words that Yahweh had spoken to him: "The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh: Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: ‘Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you’ (30:1-2). (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part Two. See link below.)

In the New Testament, the authors of Matthew and Luke have Jesus telling his disciples that when they were brought before kings and rulers not to worry about what to say, that he and the Spirit of the Father would give them the actual words to say:

Mt. 10:19  "But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." (NKJV)

Luke 21:12  "But before all this occurs, they will take you into custody and harass you because of your faith. They will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will provide you with an opportunity to testify. 14 Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance. 15 I'll give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to counter or contradict." (CEB)

Farrell Till notes that if the words that were preached by the apostles were claimed to be verbally inspired by God, then it would necessarily follow that when these words were written down for people who were not able to hear the message, that verbal inspiration must also be claimed for this written message also:

What was said in these passages is not the kind of "inspiration" that is being taught by the new fundamentalists. It is a very clear description of verbal inspiration, so if the apostles were verbally inspired whenever they were preaching or defending the gospel before rulers, when what they said would be heard by their audiences and then gone forever, how likely is it that when they wrote epistles that were allegedly intended to be the "word of God" all through the Christian era, God would simply have given them the "thoughts" and "ideas" they were to write but leave the selection of the words up to them?

Such a premise seems preposterous. It would mean, for example, that the sermon Peter preached on the day of Pentecost was verbally inspired but the account of it that Luke recorded wasn't, that Luke had been given only the "ideas" of what to record or perhaps had learned about it by "oral tradition," whereas Peter had been given the very words that he spoke. Such a view doesn't agree with what the New Testament teaches. (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part Two. See link below.)

The author of the book of John has Jesus claiming that his apostles would be guided into all truth by the Spirit of truth who would only speak what he hears from God. And if the Spirit is so careful to speak only what he hears from God, certainly Jesus would not allow his apostles or others who were also inspired to do any less:

John 16:13,  "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come." (NKJV)

The author of I Corinthians claims that he and others who were inspired by God "speak the wisdom of God". And that this wisdom was revealed through the Spirit of God and the words they spoke were not man's words but words the Holy Spirit taught them. And that because of this, "we have the mind of Christ":

I Corinthians 2: 6  However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. ⁷ But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, ⁸ which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ But as it is written:

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

 Nor have entered into the heart of man

 The things which God has prepared for those who love Him." [Isaiah 64:4]

¹⁰ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. ¹¹For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. ¹³ These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. ¹⁴ But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ¹⁵ But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. ¹⁶ For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" [Isaiah 40:13] But we have the mind of Christ. (NKJV)

Paul, the alleged author of the book of Ephesians, claimed that the Spirit was making revelations to God's holy apostles, of which he claimed he was one, and to God's holy prophets and that he was conveying the message in writing:

Ephesians 3:1  For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles-- 2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, 3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, 4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), 5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: (NKJV)

The author of II Timothy claimed all scripture was given by inspiration of God, i.e., literally, God-breathed (referring specifically to the Old Testament scripture, but by logical necessity the New Testament scripture was to be treated the same because the New Testament writers claimed they were speaking and writing the very words of God):

II Timothy 3:16  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.(NKJV)

The following verses from the book of Revelation show how serious the author claims God is about anyone adding or subtracting even one word from this book:

Rev. 22:18  I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. (NASB)

Farrell Till further notes that if the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God, then it would logically follow that it would be inerrant:

Why would total inerrancy have to be a logical necessity or consequence of verbal inspiration? Well, first of all, an entity that is omniscient would know everything that it is possible to know in matters of science, history, geography, chronology, etc., etc., etc. If this omniscient entity should also be omnipotent, then he would be able to do anything that is logically possible to do. So if an omniscient, omnipotent deity verbally inspired the writing of a text, it would have to be completely inerrant unless deception was a characteristic of the omniscient, omnipotent deity who verbally inspired it. In the case of the biblical god Yahweh, the Bible claims that truth and honesty are features of his nature. If an omniscient, omnipotent deity should verbally inspire an errant text, the errors would have to be intentional, because the inspirer is omniscient (so he would have to know that he was guiding the writers to put errors into the text), and the inspirer is omnipotent (so he would have the ability to keep the errors out of the text). Therefore, if errors are in a text that was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, they would have to be there because of an intentional act to deceive or mislead. However, the Bible god is allegedly "omnigood," which would exclude dishonesty and deception from his nature. There is only one conclusion that all of this could lead to: If the Bible was verbally inspired but contains errors, then the entity who inspired it was not omniscient or not omnipotent or not omnigood. It would be logically impossible for the verbal inspirer of an errant document to have all three characteristics. (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part One. See link below.)

It is plain to see that the Bible does not claim that God only inspired its writers in the sense of stimulating creative thought in the way a poet might be inspired by a beautiful landscape, or that God only inspired the "ideas" to its authors and left the authors to choose the words, or that the Bible merely contains the word of God. If any of these lesser degrees of inspiration were true it would mean that God would be bringing his declared important message of salvation to man in the form of an untrustworthy, unreliable text. And it would make liars out of the Bible writers who claimed they were writing the very words of God.

If the Bible's authors' claim is true it must also be true that the Bible text is inerrant, because of the omni characteristics they claim Yahweh has. If the Bible is not inerrant then Yahweh is not the omni-God that the Bible and fundamentalist Christians claim him to be, and the Bible is not the verbally inspired word of God. Which would mean that the alleged omni-God Yahweh doesn't exist and the Bible is nothing more than a religious book written by fallible men.

(For further reading see Farrell Till's Traditional Biblical Inerrancy Part One, Part Two, Part Three).

Church-of-Christ preacher Curtis Cates on what is at stake:

The situation is this--remove the inerrant, supernatural Book, and there is absolutely no substance to the claims of Christianity; it is but another world religion without portfolio, without credentials! (The First Annual Gulf Coast Lectures, Church of Christ, Portland, Texas, 1993, pp 34-35. See full quote in Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part One--Emphasis added by Farrell Till. See link above.)

If the claim of inerrancy cannot be proven to be true or if the Bible can be shown to contain at least one error then it logically follows that the Bible is not the verbally inspired word of God, and as Church-of-Christ preacher Curtis Cates says above, "there is absolutely no substance to the claims of Christianity."

An Introductory Note

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Many Christians make extraordinary claims about the Bible, God, sin, hell, heaven, salvation, miracles, etc, and put pressure on others to adopt their beliefs. In other words, they are trying to sell us an extraordinary bill of goods that they think we need. And we, as potential buyers, have every right to be skeptical and ask hard questions  and expect rational, convincing answers. If these types of answers are not forthcoming, we have every right to reject what they are selling. Always remember that the burden of proof is squarely on the person making the claim, especially an extraordinary claim.

This blog is about whether the Bible is the inerrant, verbally inspired word of God or not, and by extension whether Christianity is valid or not.

I plan to post articles that I have written as well as articles written by others. Some posts may be nothing more than a short quote that I think is interesting, informative, or gets a point across in a  humorous or incisive way. I will also probably comment on articles from church websites, especially those close to where I live. The blog will probably do some evolving.

I especially wanted to start this blog because there is a lot of information that Christians, especially fundamentalist Christians, are not aware of.