British mentalist Derren Brown recently produced Derren Brown: Miracles For Sale, an interesting expose on faith healing. While some of the editing is a little poor and fast-cut and it has a reality show quality to it, it’s worth watching in my opinion.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
According to this article posted by the good folks over at RichardDawkins.net 75% of all Americans “are in agreement on one of the fundamental elements of the [Christmas] holiday: that Jesus Christ was born to a virgin, Mary.”
At first glance this might seem a startling fact about American culture, especially to the more secular-minded among us (present company included). But should one simply acknowledge this sort of data as true without question? Of course not. But even some of the commentors – though not all – at RichardDawkins.net seem to accept the information presented. There’s no doubt there is a high degree of religiosity in the United States, particularly when compared to other rich industrial countries. Significant numbers of Americans believe in miracles, angels, and that sort of thing. Of this we can be certain.
But is it true a full 75% actually see the virgin birth of Jesus as an historical fact?
To anyone reading the article, some interesting questions pointing to an answer quickly arise. Namely, how could 15% of atheists and agnostics believe in the virgin birth story as literal fact? If this doesn’t raise some eyebrows relating to the accuracy of the information presented, I don’t know what would.
The principle place to investigate, of course, is those purveying the information: the Barna Group. The author of the article describes this organization as simply a “Ventura, Calif.-based polling firm.” Yet according to their own site the Barna Group has a far less conspicuous and mundane purpose:
The ultimate aim of the firm is to partner with Christian ministries
and individuals to be a catalyst in moral and spiritual transformation
in the United States. It accomplishes these outcomes by providing
vision, information, evaluation and resources through a network of
intimate partnerships.
While I can’t say in absolute terms the polling data are wrong, it doesn’t take much to see how a group with such explicit aims might benefit from presenting a highly religious US population, an overwhelmingly Christian population that accepts, by supermajority, a literalist interpretation of principle New Testament tenets.
We all know how polling is often prone to inaccuracy and manipulation. Accuracy is highly dependent upon the questions asked and how they are formulated. A more detailed report on the Barna poll is at their website. But, unsurprisingly, they fail to give the exact wording of the questions asked in the way most scientific polling institutions do.
Thus our investigation can only go so far and we are left only to wonder.
Here’s an edited version of an email exchange I recently had with a Christian fundamentalist. I’m no expert in arguing against the existence of god, but the source I principally relied on makes some great points that the person I debated has yet to respond to. Questioning these basic tenets of the fundamentalist is an important stance to make from my perspective because quite often the next step they take is an argument based in “human nature.” It’s a way to explain why they believe humans as fallen beings, evil, hopeless without god’s grace. Perhaps more interesting – at least to me – is how this religious-based argument of a fallen human nature tends to pose as a justification of the status quo, gross inequalities, hierarchy, social control, even human rights violations, you name it. This pops up every time I get into any political exchange with a fundamentalist – though I think the human nature angle is at the root of most ideoligically-based arguments whether liberal, conservative, atheist, or not.
The following points I make basically paraphrase Dr. Niclas Berggren’s essay “The Errancy of Fundamentalism Disproves the God of the Bible”
The fundamentalist asks: Do you believe in the God of the bible?
From what I understand there are, and have been, many differing interpretations of what exactly the “God of the bible” is. The history of Christianity is a history filled with scism and disagreement – often leading to violence – about how to properly view what/who God is. Is god omniscient, all-powerful? Loving? Does (s)he intervene in everyday human affairs? Or only in important events? Or not at all? (You get the drift.)
So the question needs further explication. Is one talking about Catholic views? Babtist? Episcopalian? Pentecostal? Etc.? Dr Berggren makes a great point in naming only a few of the conflicts within christianity:
“…the list of intra-Christian controversies could be made much longer: suffice it to mention the papacy, the doctrine regarding Mary, the trinity, baptism, speaking in tongues (where, interestingly, Fundamentalist Baptists and Fundamentalist Pentecostals disagree), the issue of creationism, predestination, purgatory, consciousness after death, and so on.”
I asked my interlocutor what his biblical interpretation of God actually is, what it consists of, pointing out that whatever it was many Christians in the world would no doubt disagree with that interpretation – and not merely on inconsequential grounds, but in fundamental ways. That very fact shows me there are some problems with the god-of-the-bible starting point. Assuming something as self evident that is anything but.
Questioning my debater further I continued, if all the others are wrong – as I’m sure you believe – what proves YOU right? Why should I see your particular version out of many within christianity as correct and all the others as misguided? These are important considerations when discussing religion – all religions.
The fundamentalist: Do you think the bible is the inspired word of God?
No. The bible was obviously written by human beings with all the inconsistencies, contradictions and what-not this fact entails. Do you mean to insinuate the scriptures are inerrant, perfect, without fault? To prove such an extraordinary claim demands extraordinary proof if anyone is to believe it.
If god is perfect, wouldn’t god’s word be perfect? But what about translation? Why wouldn’t this perfect being ensure that the translations were perfect also, without difference or mistake? So it is up to you – the believer – to explain why this perfect being allowed imperfect translations to occur. If you cannot, there cannot be a god as you know it.
Also, wouldn’t an all-knowing, perfect god be able to provide the world with a way to unambiguously decide the veracity of the bible, without question?
I know you’ll answer some of this with the idea of free will and the centrality of faith. But if we have free will, how did god force humans to write his revelation without errors? The idea of force excludes free will. Also, doesn’t the bible say that no one can avoid sinning? (Rom. 3:23, Rom. 5:12 and 1 John 1:8-10) Free will and forcing one’s vision on others to write are not compatible. Why not present his word in another way, not counting on fallible human beings?
You would agree that humans are fallible right? So if god allowed humans to write his inspired word, isn’t there a better than good chance some mistakes were made?
I’m going to quote Dr. Berggre concerning something you’ve brought up quite a few times before concerning some of these problems:
“…are we not limited in our wisdom and capacity to comprehend divine matters? Even if the reasoning above appears correct, we may not be able to trust it. This is a rather frequent argument from Christians when they encounter things which they are unable to understand; these things are then termed ‘mysteries.’ However, if we surrender our ability to reason and make things intelligible, what can we possibly resort to in its place? Blind faith in ‘mysteries’ unsolved? That hardly seems a more reliable approach.”
There’s also some wonderful evidence the fundamentalist must address address. Evidence that proves the bible to be inconsistent:
“We will look at three Bible passages: Acts 13:17-22, 1 Chron. 29:27-28 and 1 Kings 6:1. The first two in conjunction inform us that Solomon’s reign began at least 530 years after the Hebrews left Egypt. But 1 Kings 6:1 claims that Solomon’s reign began 476 years after the Hebrews left Egypt – a discrepancy of at least 54 years.”
I think these are important points with regard to Christianity (and only touch a massive iceberg) and need to be addressed by all Christians, not just fundamentalists. Please try to enlighten me and show me the mistakes of Dr. Berggre’s essay. They could very well be wrong, but he makes excellent points using empirical arguments.
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