Smorgasbord Debating

by Farrell Till

A reply to
OH-SIGH-RIS
The Pagan Origins of Resurrection Refuted!

by Mark McFall

Till's comment:

I can't help wondering about the title of McFall's response to my article. Is he claiming that the concept of resurrection from the dead did not originate prior to the advent of Christianity? Is it his position that prior to the resurrection of Jesus, there were no concepts of returning from the dead in any of the religions that had preceded Christianity? He needs to clarify his position.

New Testament Family Values (5 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / May-June:

by Farrell Till

By request, the series on biblical family values is being extended another issue so that we can look at what the New Testament teaches us on the subject by both example and decree. For some reason, Christians seem to believe that Old Testament accounts of atrocious conduct on the part of God and famous biblical characters are unimportant, because, after all, those things were written in the Old Testament and not the New, as if the two testaments are not inextricably bound together in the traditional Christian claim that everything in the Old Testament happened to lead the way to God's plan of salvation in Jesus Christ. Christianity, then, must be held accountable for the god and biblical heroes in whom their own religion is firmly rooted. Christians can't just wave aside matters like those noted in previous articles in this series by saying, "Oh, well, that was in the Old Testament."

Family Values (4 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / March-April:

by Farrell Till

The Christian Right touts the need for biblical family values in modern society, but when the lives of famous biblical characters are examined, as was done in previous articles in this series, we quickly see that they were not the kind of role models that most parents today would like for their children to emulate. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob were all listed in Hebrews 11 as great "heroes of faith," but their individual stories in the Old Testament depict them as people who lied and practiced various other types of deception, who granted sexual favors for personal gain and sometimes engaged in polygamous relationships, who showed favoritism to their children, and did many other things that no decent family today would consider morality worthy of emulation.

Family Values (3 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997 / January-February:

by Farrell Till

Our last quest for biblical family values left us contemplating the public promiscuity, deception, sibling rivalry, parental favoritism, and ethnic prejudice of the family of Isaac and Rebekah. When we left them, Rebekah, fearing that her favorite son Jacob might be killed by his twin brother Esau for having cheated him out of his birthright, had convinced her husband Isaac to send Jacob to live with her brother Laban in Paddanaram, ostensibly to look for a wife among the daughters of Laban but actually to protect him from Esau, who had threatened to kill him.

Yahweh's Failed Land Promise

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1991 / January-February:

by Farrell Till

In their desperate efforts to prove that the Bible was verbally inspired of God, inerrancy believers often point to prophecy fulfillment. In my debate with Bill Jackson, he referred to "multiplied dozens of Old Testament prophetic utterances, fulfilled in minute detail in the New Testament, and in such a manner that there could be no contrivance at all," (Jackson-Till Debate, p. 3). As is true of all who use the prophecy-fulfillment argument, Jackson could only claim "multiplied dozens" of prophecy fulfillments; he could not cite a single verifiable example of a fulfilled OT prophecy.

Family Values (2 of 5)

From *The Skeptical Review* 1996/ November-December:

by Farrell Till

In our first article on family values, we left Abraham and Sarah in Gerar collecting the proceeds from Abraham's second attempt to pass Sarah off as his sister. Each time, she caught the eye of a king, and each time Abraham was given sheep and oxen and servants, both male and female, but the second time King Abimelech gave him a thousand pieces of silver as a "covering of the eyes to all that are with you" (Gen. 20:16). Hmmm, it sounds a lot like hush money, doesn't it? But such was the way of "family values" in those days.

Jacob an Old Geezer?

From *The Skeptical Review* 1996 / November-December:

by Farrell Till

There is no scarcity of fanciful tales in the Bible. An especially quaint one tells about the duel of the handmaids when Jacob, the grand patriarch of Israel, was siring his sons who subsequently became heads of the twelve Israelite tribes. It is a story that simply cannot pass the how-likely-is-it? test that was discussed in the Autumn 1993 issue and applied to the Israelite Exodus.

Did Marco Polo Lie?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1996/July-August:

by Farrell Till

We often hear biblicists argue that there is as much proof for the historicity of Jesus and the events attributed to him in the New Testament as there is for the existence of Julius Caesar and other historical characters. They claim that those who reject biblical characters and events have no logical basis for accepting anything that we have learned through historical records. A recent controversy surrounding a well known historical character will illustrate the erroneous thinking of those who so argue.

Family Values (1 of 5))

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1996 / September-October:

by Farrell Till

We hear a lot these days about family values. The Christian right has made this such an issue that political candidates have been conditioned to believe that mentioning family values frequently in their campaign speeches is an easy way to score points with voters. Of course, if a candidate also associates "family values" with the so-called biblical principles on which our country was founded, he is certain to score even more points with the Christian right. It has become a cheap way to get votes.

Talk to the Animals

Number 17 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone*series:

A silly tale about a talking donkey.

by Farrell Till

A popular movie last year [1996], which even received an academy-award nomination for best picture, was Babe, a story about a talking pig. Even with animated cartoons aside, talking animals have not been at all uncommon in movies and TV. Years ago we had Francis, the talking mule, and later came Mister Ed. Doctor Dolittle, a movie about a man with a special affinity with animals, even gave us the popular song "Talk to the Animals."

Child Abuse Yahweh's Way

Number 16 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
A great "hero of faith" considered loyalty to an oath more important than the life of his own daughter.

by Farrell Till

Only in the Twilight Zone of biblical times could one become a "hero of faith" by killing his daughter in order to keep a foolish oath. In in our last trek through the twilight zone, we saw that vows were serious business in those days. None of the Israelite fathers, for example, felt free to give their daughters in marriage to the 600 males who had survived the massacre of the Benjamites, because "the men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpah, saying, `None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife'" (Judges 21:1). In the law of Moses, it was written, "When you make a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay to pay it; for Yahweh your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you.... That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God what you have promised with your mouth" (Deut. 23:21,23).

Pioneers of Loophole Religion

Number 15 of 17 in the *Twilight Zone* series:
The Israelite rationalization of a problem they had created shows that loophole religion is as old as the Bible.

by Farrell Till

Our last trip into the Twilight Zone left God's chosen people grappling with a terrible problem. They themselves had virtually wiped out the tribe of Benjamin in a battle described in Judges 20, only to realize that they were responsible for practically destroying a tribe of Yahweh's pet nation Israel. Six hundred had survived the Benjamite massacre, but these were all males, soldiers, who had retreated to the rock of Rimmon (20:47). Our last trip found the Israelites in the "house of God" pondering what they could do to rebuild the tribe of Benjamin. They couldn't give their own daughters to the Benjamite survivors, because they had sworn with an oath at Mizpah before the massacre that "(n)one of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife" (21:1,7), and neither could the Benjamite survivors violate Yahweh's holy law and marry foreign women (Dt. 7:3-4; Ex. 34:12-13).

The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1990 / Jan.-Feb. Issue:

by Farrell Till

Many fundamentalist Christians sincerely believe that the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God. As believers in verbal inspiration, they see the Bible much differently from those who respect it as a book with only concepts and ideas that were divinely inspired. Christians who believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration think that God directed the writing of the Bible on a word-by-word basis so that the authors of the original manuscripts were protected from writing even as much as one word that might inadvertently mislead readers or incorrectly communicate the truths God wanted man to know.