Archive for Religion

The Reason for the Season

December 4, 2009 / Admin / One comment

By: Derek Dyson

I was recently sitting with friends, discussing life and love, and invariably the subject of religion came up.  This was not the usual “so, you don’t believe in god?” religion speak that I am so used to.  No, in this room were four educated people each in their own stages of non-belief (or at least very liberal belief by most standards) where my atheism would neither be a shock nor a reason of concern for anyone present.  Actually, I doubt religion would have come up at all if it weren’t for the fact that we were listening to Christmas music in a roomed decked for the holidays.  A discussion started on our love and/or disdain for these holiday jingles when someone jokingly said “well, Jesus is the reason for the season”.  That phrase really got me thinking. Is Jesus really the reason for the season?  In America Christmas is a large part of our culture.  It drives our retail economy and gives most of us a reason to see our extended family at least once a year.  It encourages giving and makes hot chocolate a romantic alternative to cheap beer on a blustery December night.  Things like these make me enjoy the holidays and I think that when it comes down to it, it’s what rings true for most Americans.  But Jesus? Really?

Technically, I would argue that the reason for the season is the Winter Solstice.  This is simply the shortest day of the year, where the sun is at its furthest possible point from the Earth.  It has been celebrated by civilizations across the globe from as early as the Neolithic period and tends to signify the renewal or rebirth of the crop cycle.  There is no doubt that the renewal of the crops would be a worthwhile reason for celebration to any agrarian society.  Later this celebration would be adopted by any number of Pagan cultures and elaborate myths would be created around it to give their particular gods and goddesses of choice an active role in the process.

In Egypt (around 2500 BCE) the birth of Osiris was celebrated during the Winter Solstice.  Osiris was the son of the god of Earth.  He was born of a mortal virgin, died at the brutal hands of the state and was resurrected three days after his death to judge all of mankind in the afterlife.  Osiris was one of the few “resurrected” Egyptian gods and many scholars believe that was added to the story to help re-edify the significance of the oncoming harvest.

In Greece (around 600 BCE) Dionysus was the winter solstice god of choice.  He was seen as the son of Zeus who miraculously died and was “born again”.  He was commonly known as the god of wine and was noted on multiple occasions for turning water into the magical substance making him a very special deity indeed. At this point I am assuming that most of you are noticing a pattern here.

The Persian god Mithras is quite possibly my favorite god born during the winter solstice mostly because he was present around 100BCE and was a major competitor to a new Jewish godman who stumbled onto the scene around the same time (some of you may be familiar with his work).  Mithras was very popular in the Roman Empire during the First Century CE, because of his Zoroastrian concepts on good and evil.  He too has a questionable birth that was prophesized by an unexplainable astrological event and was commonly celebrated by the drinking of wine to symbolize blood.

I use these examples only to argue that each of these gods should be recognized as at least part of the “reason for the season”.  I mean they have just as much to do with it as Jesus right?  Now assuming that most Christian apologists would read this and dismiss these “fake gods” just as easily as they would dismiss Islam and Scientology I am going to explain this from the only angle that will truly speak to their Christian sensibilities, through the use of scripture.

Believe it or not, the New Testament is basically the only “historical source” on earth that talks about Jesus. Sure there are a couple of early Roman historians that briefly mention things that could be construed to be talking about Jesus, but the validity of these writings are shoddy at best.  For this reason, if you wish to learn about Jesus you basically have to look at the 27 books in the New Testament, most notably Paul’s letters and the gospels, to come away with a coherent understanding of the most influential human ever to exist.  Since for this occasion we are talking about the “reason for the season” our list of references is going to be narrowed quite considerably.  We basically have the gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke to shape our entire understanding of the Christmas Story.  I find it quite interesting that Mark’s gospel would leave out the birth of Christ entirely, especially considering that it was the first gospel written, of which the other gospels borrow heavily from its contents.  If Mark didn’t know about it or didn’t think it was important enough to mention, how exactly do the writers of Matthew and Luke justify their points of view from decades later?  Either way, if we put the historicity issue aside, one could imagine that with two separate references that we have (assuming that they are both historically accurate) we should be able to come up with a pretty coherent understanding of the Christmas story.  Or can we?

The first thing at issue here is that Matthew and Luke tell what should be the exact same story (if historically accurate) in very different ways and in some instances ways that directly contradict one another.  They both have the virgin birth happening in Bethlehem, but Mathew says it happened during Herod’s reign, while Luke contends that it happened while Quirinius was the governor of Syria.  We know this cannot be correct because all historical data from the period shows that these men ruled at least ten years apart from each other.  Logically speaking, both accounts cannot possibly be correct. It can be one or the other, but that makes at least one of them completely false.

Another slight discrepancy between these two accounts is where the three of them (Joseph, Mary and Jesus) go after Jesus’ birth.  In Mathew they flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, but in Luke they go directly to their family home in Nazareth to register for Caesar Augustus’ census.  Again, logically the two accounts cannot both be correct because they contradict one another entirely.  In all actuality this a moot point because historically there is absolutely no evidence to back up the claim that Herod was slaughtering babies or that Augustus ordered a census, but that doesn’t change the fact that the two accounts contradict each other, deeming at least one of them completely false.

So why exactly are a couple of slight discrepancies so damning to this whole Christmas story anyway?  Well, like I said earlier if Jesus has more of a right to be the “the reason for the season” than does Osiris or Dionysus, than he better have some concrete evidence to back it up.  If that evidence is solely relegated to the Christian Bible (which it is) and more importantly the validity of his story as told by Mathew and Luke, then showing that one or the other is completely false might actually be saying something significant.  If anything it proves that the supposed divine book is flawed logically as well as historically.  If nothing else Mathew and Luke’s accounts are irreconcilably different in at least a couple of ways, which should make any logical reader question either of them as an authority on the subject.

In short, I contend that the reason most people give for this season isn’t reasonable at all.  We in civilized society don’t tend to worship sun gods on New Years Eve or crop cycles during the solstice.  We don’t think that ancient Egyptian Gods are saving us from damnation or that the Greek God of Wine deserves even an hour of thought, let alone an entire season. The fact that so many people believe in the Christ story over the multitude of others lends no more credence to its validity.  Sure, it may have ended up being more significant to Western culture, but that fact alone does not make it any less of a myth.  So, if you still feel that Jesus is your reason to celebrate, you’ll at least have to acknowledge that history is not on your side.  As for me and my “reason for the season”….I’ll stick to food and drink with friends, decorating trees and kissing under mistletoe because those are the kind of Pagan traditions I can reasonably get behind.

Category: Religion / Tags: , ,

Barack and the Bible

October 4, 2008 / Admin / No comments

By: Derek Dyson

Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has recently come under fire from a leading Evangelical leader because of his stance on Biblical texts and the role that he believes these texts should play in public affairs.  As reported by the Associated Press, James Dobson (Evangelical Leader and founder of the Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family) has publicly decried Obama’s understanding of the Christian Bible as “confused theology” and a “fruitcake interpretation”, implying that the Harvard Educated Lawyer and otherwise highly intelligent man we know as Barack Obama has somehow failed to truly understand the content of this ancient book.  What could Barack Obama possibly have so wrong that Mr. Dobson seemingly has so right?  More importantly, how does a Harvard Educated politician who was raised in a purely secular and some would say borderline Atheist home, pander to the skewed views of the religious community in order to win over their much needed Evangelical vote?

In 2006 Obama gave a speech to the liberal Christian group “Call to Renewal” where he explained that it would be foolish to solely delegate morality to a book that continuously promoted the institution of slavery, yet condemned the eating of shellfish.  For these presumably logical statements and others like them, Dobson has attacked Obama’s faith and has taken a stand against what he sees as a liberal interpretation of the bible.  For Dobson the bible is the infallible word of god and should be read and understood accordingly.  If the bible (or god) says jump, Dobson asks nothing more but how high? Transversely if god were to say something like jump into owning other human beings and then gives you instructions on how and when to beat them, Dobson would again say….well what exactly would he say?

Well, if you are James Dobson and you are confronted with a question about any number of biblical inadequacies found between Genesis and Revelation you simply blame it on the Old Testament (a common low blow to the Jewish text that has been dealt endlessly for the last 1500 years or so).  This is the basic deflection tactic employed by most if not all religious extremists and biblical literalists when confronted with damning evidence on the subjects of not just slavery but also scientific discovery, morality, intolerance and countless other issues that seem to contradict our post-enlightenment sensibilities. So, is this an adequate explanation as to why god could be so horribly flawed on his views toward so many vitally important subjects of humanity?

If we were to only look at the subject of slavery and then were confined to James Dobson’s reasoning behind gods views on this subject, we would have to make some considerable assumptions.  First, when “god” says things like Leviticus 25: “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves, it is important to understand that god only meant for this to ring true for the 198,000 years of modern human existence that predated the point where he changed his mind some 2,000 years ago.

After recognizing this much needed change of heart that god encountered (somewhat late in the game I might add), we must also assume that gods new book of morality and justice contains no passages that promote or even allow the institution of slavery.  So when versus like Luke 12: ….that servant, which knew his lord’s (masters) will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes, start popping up in the teachings of Jesus and the writings of his followers, teachings that obviously recognize the act of slavery and then fail to condemn it as morally deficient, we are forced to make yet another assumption.  Either god doesn’t mind if one human being owns another human being, or (on a somewhat lighter note) Abraham Lincoln was actually the second coming of Christ (for Americans only).  This would allow god to change his infallible mind once again and finally put him on the correct side of this important issue.  I added the second assumption only as a joke, but it would be somewhat ironic considering the Southern Baptists pro-slavery and eventual pro-segregation stance that was held throughout the civil rights movement.  Imagine, Southern Baptists so adamantly defying the will of Savior 2.0, unknowingly citing the manual from Savior 1.0 all the while.  Sadly, when you really think about it, this scenario wouldn’t be all that far fetched compared to some of the other things these people already believe.  So, either god told us in his divine book of morality that slavery has been and will always be an acceptable practice or possibly, just possibly, modern societies have overlooked the short comings of “gods laws” and have taken morality into their own hands essentially overwriting thousands of years of Bronze Age cruelty and human injustice.

This brings us to the final question.  If people of  faith are going to attack Barack Obama because he reads the Bible as he would any other book, objectively and reasonably, how could he possibly convince these same people (roughly half of the voting populace in the U.S.) to look beyond this  slight discrepancy and still vote for him despite the fact that he reads their moral textbook liberally?

In his most recent book the Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama explains how he was raised in a secular home.  His mother, an anthropologist and avid humanist and to a lesser extent his father an outspoken atheist, had both played a role in his upbringing.  He remained secular throughout childhood and into college, not officially “finding god” until he took a job with a Chicago Church after graduating from Law School.  Straight out of Harvard Law and ready to make a difference, he took this job because it was the best opportunity to help the struggling black community that he was likely to find. He eventually placed his faith in this church, not because it was leading him to everlasting life, but because it afforded him the opportunity to make a difference in his community.  To most this would seem like a noble cause. To most, fulfilling a lifelong dream and helping out those who are less fortunate would be viewed as anything but a fault, after all isn’t this exactly what Christianity is supposed to be about? But, for some this is not the case.  In fact, many Conservative Christians will fault Obama for this fact alone (well, at least the ones who aren’t already leading the “Obama is a Muslim” campaign of fear and intolerance) either of  which seems to be a little contradictory to the whole followers of Jesus scenario, but I digress.

In the end Barack Obama is a progressive, liberal Christian who sees merit in many philosophies, not just in those espoused by a highly Western and Christian ideology.  This biblical and religious liberalism flies in the face of many of the religious extremists who make up the Evangelical Right and threatens to diminish the political stronghold that they have held on Washington for the last 25 years. If men like James Dobson can attack a highly intelligent and prominent figure in American culture for being too logical or too reasonable on a subject that when taken literally is anything but reasonable, what do we as American citizens have left?  We have nothing but the same dogmatic fervor, religious intolerance and enforced ignorance that has been upheld by the current administration for nearly a decade and will presumably be extended into another eight year period of war mongering and diplomatic ineptness, unless the minds and voices of the American public can be changed.

Category: Politics, Religion / Tags: , , ,

Oral’s Magical Touch

June 12, 2007 / Admin / No comments

By: Derek Dyson

In 1958, Mary Vonderscher was coming to her wits end. She had been diagnosed with spinal cancer years before and had been continuously undergoing medical treatment in attempt to cure her ailment. Although she had been seeing signs of improvement through her therapy and medication, it was not happening as quickly as she had wanted. After hearing of the miraculous faith healings performed by the traveling televangelist Oral Roberts, Mary decided to seek out a higher power to cure her cancer. Meeting the Roberts congregation late in the year, Mary made her donation to the cause and was then afforded the anointed touch of Oral himself. Mary used the customary Pentecostal screeching and uncontrollable body movements to bring on the healing as Oral tapped her on the forehead yelling “Through the Power of Christ!” as she fell into the expecting arms of the “catchers”. Mary went home that day feeling alive with the Holy Spirit and thought she had been completely healed of her ailment. She continually wrote to the Roberts organization sending money and telling them how thankful she was. When they returned to her home town nearly one month later they invited her to come and give a testimonial. In the tape Mary appears happy and energetic explaining how god had touched her through Oral and how magnificent it was. Less than 12 hours after leaving the taping, Mary lay dead in her home in Burbank, her body no longer able to fight the cancer alone. One can only wonder how much longer she could have lived if she had continued to take her medication and visit her doctor.

Much like this story, there are at least 4 other cases where Oral “healed” diabetic patients who then stopped taking insulin and subsequently died within days of their supposed healing. There are multiple incidents where terminally ill patients were brought in by ambulance for dramatic effect, who would then die on the set because their bodies were not able to cope with the traumatic situations that would arise. With Orals many supposed “resurrections” one must wonder why he never raised these people from the dead on national television. It’s not too difficult to see the dangers of such superstition. What could possibly drive someone to believe that they can heal the sick with a single touch, or speak medically of a condition that they have absolutely no classical training in? Lets first look at Oral Roberts as a person and then you can come to your own conclusions as to why he would do such a thing.

In the early 1940′s Granville Oral Roberts started preaching the good word to all that would listen in a sort of traveling tent revival that would move up and down the Mid-West performing miraculous faith “healings” and bringing people to Christ. By the 1970′s Oral had amassed a $500 million empire that had been centered around the newest and most productive means of marketing, the television. Oral used this means of communication to reach the pocketbooks of millions of viewers across the globe. This furthered his empire, eventually leading to the construction the “city of faith” right here in Tulsa, OK. This multi-million dollar piece of real-estate was comprised of an Evangelical College, and a now defunct 30 story hospital and 20 story medical research center. With the failure of Orals hospital in the near future, he saw the need for additional funding. It would appear that with all of the miraculous faith healing being done, he must have diminished the market of paying sick patients that would need real medical attention, causing his hospital to go under. Another humorous explaination could be that he recieved some bad financial advice from God in one of his many one on one conversations. We may never know which it was, but what we do know is that Oral had yet to diffuse his greatest asset, leading to an appeal for money that could not be ignored.

On January 4th, 1987 Oral appeared to his vast TV audience, eyes already shrink wrapped in tears, proclaiming that if he were unable to raise the sum of $8 million by the 1st of March, god himself was going to take Oral from this earth prematurely. Oral then started a mass mailing campaign and televangical tyrant that eventually caught the eyes of the National Press. In a 1987 issue of Time magazine, an article on Roberts is headlined “Your money or his life”, with the author pointing out the various absurdities in Orals antics. Oral eventually got the money he had asked for and was not murdered by god.

What is it about these men that drive them to the faith healing business? Well considering that Oral needed merely $8 million in 1987 to be spared gods wrath, one should wonder why he didn’t simply sell of some of his personal real-estate to meet the financial needs of the empire. Oral surely could have raised most of the funds by selling some of his various homes in Beverly Hills, Palm Springs and Tulsa, or possibly putting some of his prize cattle up for sale. The two winter homes in California alone could have raised a whopping $1.2 million if the city of faith really needed the money. All in all, Oral didn’t need to spend his own money (although every cent he had ever made was coming from his faith-healing marketing campaign) because he had millions of god-fearing believers out there willing to empty their pockets to ensure their seat next to the almighty.

It should be said that of all the supposed “healings” performed by Oral over the last 50 years, not a single one of these instances have ever been verified by medical science. Oral continuously drew attention to himself by proclaiming such absurdities as “raising the dead” or witnessing a 900 foot tall Jesus lift “the city of faith” into the Tulsa skyline proclaiming “see how easy it is for me to lift it Oral?”. This drew many skeptics to the great state of Oklahoma, many of which followed him across the nation to witness his trickery. They would then follow up on the patients that he had “healed” to track their progress. Allen Spraggett, a journalist that followed Orals crusade of healing throughout the eighties reported that although the Roberts officials had publicly claimed hundreds of healings to their television audience while he was with them, there had not been one cure administered in that time. Journalists and scientists spent countless hours on the subject and still could not come up with a single verifiable case of a miraculous healing. Who needs evidence when you have faith?

It is absurd to believe that a man such as Oral Roberts is anything more than a charlatan. He used the same gimmicks and tricks that any supposed psychic would use to appeal to his audience and then packaged his “miracles” in a neatly marketed bundle that could be shipped all across the nation. This man amassed millions of dollars pretending to heal the sick, which in many cases would lead to their death when they decided to forfiet medical attention in light of their supposed healing. This is but one example of what a “man of god” can truly accomplish when given the right resources and the ability to devoid his own conscience.


The history of faith healing is a very interesting subject and if you wish to delve into it at a much deeper level, you can find the book The Faith Healers, By James Randi. This book cites many of the historical aspects of faith healing and tricks used by its proponents

Category: Religion / Tags: , ,
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