Topic: Commentary
I haven't posted in a while due to a busy personal life, but there is a lot in the news to discuss lately.

Utah Miners

This whole Utah mine issue unfortunately demonstrates a few issues. Granted these types of accidents are practically inevitable in this line of work, but this particular case I think illustrates much of what is wrong in the media, administration, and workplace today.

First of all, while the media have reported that there is a dispute over whether or not the accident was caused by an earthquake or by the mining practices, they haven't pressed the issue. Now that three more people have been killed in the rescue effort, the folly of not  holding the mine owner, Bob Murray, to task has become even more apparent.

When Bob Murray came out being defensive and shifting blame, and basically acting like he was engaged in a cover-up, that should have been a sign for government officials not to trust what he was saying and not to trust his judgment and not to allow him to direct, or have any say, in the rescue effort. By him claiming that the initial cave-in was caused by an earthquake he misrepresented the facts in such a way that actually matters to how the rescue effort went forward. Granted people still knew that the area was unsafe, but knowing that the cave-in was caused due to structural problems in the mine is different from thinking that it was caused by an earthquake, because an earthquake is a one-time event, whereas structural problems persist. By him claiming earthquake, that focused attention away from the inherent structural weakness of the mine.

Second of all, this Bob Murray fellow actually lobbied against legislation that would have required more safety equipment in mines, and has been a major contributor to the Republican party, opponent of global warming, and a general advocate of hands-off policy towards business regulation and he is anti-union.

Basically, this entire tragedy looks like chickens coming home to roost, and this is likely one reason why he was so defensive out of the gates.

Thirdly, Richard Stickler, the man put in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, a department that is supposed to be tasked with enforcing regulations on mining operations and looking out for the safety of workers, is a former coal executive whose, like many in the Bush administration, was more interested with doing the opposite of the charter of his department. Instead of enforcing safety rules and looking out for workers, under Stickler MSHA reduced it's oversight role and catered to corporate interests.

When this tragedy occurred, instead of MSHA coming in and taking over and taking a critical look at the operations, they let the mine owner run the show, allowed him to engage in his own campaign of mis-perception, and allowed him continue putting lives in danger. Meanwhile, the press mostly just sided with the mine owner and basically just became his mouthpiece.

There were a few exceptions to this, primarily the Salt Lake City Tribute, which actually did a good job and did some investigative reporting, and NPR, which basically picked-up in the job done by the Salt Lake City tribune. Basically all of the other national news organizations, though, were asleep at the wheel at best, and were accomplices in on-going mismanagement and in the spread of misinformation at worst. The government agency that is supposed to be tasked with protecting the public and the workers was instead protecting the mine owner, again aided by the cover of the news media.

At long last, now that things have turned sour and the writing appears to be on the wall, the national news organizations are starting to "question the events". (Kinda like they started questioning the Bush administration after we had been in Iraq for two years).

In the grand scheme of things this mining tragedy is a small event, but it once again demonstrates the real world results of the collusion and ideology of the right-wing agenda and the lack of objective reporting on such events.

For more on this see:

Memo shows mine already had roof problems in March

Handling of Mine Disaster Questioned

What's Wrong With America?

The illegal immigration issue

I keep hearing people talk about the illegal immigration issue, but it seems that most people simply don't get it. Now the Bush administration has recently started "enforcing the laws", which is exactly what the anti-immigrant crowd that prevented the immigration reform bill from passing Congress wanted (not that it was a good bill anyway).

What these anti-immigrant people keep claiming is that anything that would allow the illegal immigrants that are here to stay and eventually become citizens is "amnesty", and that these people are "law breakers", and should thus be "punished". They will often then go on to claim that these people don't pay taxes, yet they use taxpayer funded services, and they will talk about high crime in some communities where there are a high number of illegal immigrants, etc.

This issue can be addressed with a few simple truths.

#1 The US government does not currently grant enough legal visas to live and work in America, nor does it grant enough citizenship documents. The reason that there are so many illegal immigrants is that we don't offer enough legal means to enter the country to satisfy the demand, both of people to live here and of our economy to fill needed jobs. That means that "enforcing the laws that are on the books" is not a solution, because "the laws that are on the books" are the problem.

#2 Most of the problems that we do find among illegal immigrants are a product of their illegal status. They have to resort to criminal activity because they are denied by us the ability to engage in legal activity. This means that the fastest and easiest way to solve any crime problems that exist among illegal immigrant populations is simply to legalize them. Indeed the single best crime fighting measure that we could enact in areas with high numbers of illegal immigrants would be to grant them legal residency status.

This goes straight to the tax issue too. First of all, most immigrants, including illegal ones, do pay payroll taxes, meaning Social Security and other taxes, yet they will never receive the benefits, so in fact they actually pay more in taxes than they get back. They also pay sales taxes, etc., like everyone else. Any taxes that they don't pay are only not paid because they are illegal, but again the fastest way to fix this problem is simply to grant them legal status, which would then make it possible for them to pay taxes. Again, its our fault that they don't pay taxes, not theirs. It is our system that exempts them from paying the taxes.

#3 And as for "amnesty" and all the talk of these people having to "earn" the right to be Americans, I find this an absolute load of crap. What have people who were born in America done to "earn" being an American citizen? Nothing of course. These people have done more to earn being an American than most Americans and almost all of them work hard and for less pay than any American would take. The idea that these people haven't earned it is absurd, they have worked in farm fields picking our food for $2.00 an hour, if that isn't earning it I don't know what is.

The problem with illegal immigration is not the immigrants, it is our own immigration system, and thus the conservative mantra to "simply enforce the laws that are already on the books" is a doomed and flawed plan, as usual.

The presidential candidates

Well, I really wish that John Edwards had a better chance of making it and that he didn't have some of the personal foibles that he seems to have, because he seems pretty good on the issues, at least as good as one can expect from a real candidate, but there are just some aspects of his personality, such as his $400 hair cuts and frequently being late, and his general demeanor that aren't so great.

I have also come around to Barack Obama, despite his frequent discussion of his "faith" (especially since Hillary, and Edwards do it too anyway). I think that he was right-on when he said that he would meet with Castro, and other such blacklisted leaders, because obviously not meeting with them hasn't amounted to any good.

Overall this is what I like about Obama, he is a relative newcomer and not an insider, which is definitely a good thing, and I think that while he lacks foreign policy experience, he could do more for America's foreign policy that anyone else because he could present a totally different image for America, which is what we need. Face the facts, most foreign people, even though they may like America, don't like what is seen as the establishment in America, and someone like Obama could represent real change like none of the other candidates, and I think that simply by him being president it would improve our international standing.

I also think that Obama wouldn't have much problem attracting the right talent to help him out in areas where he lacks experience, such as in foreign policy. He would easily be able to build the right teams I think. Whether or not he would I don't know, but I think that out of all the major Democratic candidates he would have the easiest time getting anyone to sign up on his staff.

I just have a feeling that Obama would be more likely to do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy and that his administration would be able to succeed where so many others have failed, which is in the area of diplomacy and connecting with foreign leaders and foreign people who feel left out of the international system or stepped on by America, and I think that that would go farther than any hard-line or military action. People in most countries don't feel like America is a force for good in the world, and that is the biggest problem, and I think that Obama could change that perception as well as change the reality, and that that would be more effective than any war or any other possible show of force.

We need someone who can admit that America has made wrong decisions and taken wrong courses of action and who will actually seek to make changes and engender trust in the international community, and I think that Obama is the best candidate for that.

At the very least I hope that he ends up as a vice presidential candidate on whomever's ticket if he doesn't get the nomination himself.

The credit problem and the economy

Well, it took longer than I figured it would for the lending problems and the housing markets to impact the economy, but at long last some of the chickens are coming home to roost. I suspect that we haven't seen the end of the fallout from these financial problems and that this is going to continue to cause economic problems for at least months to come if not years. It is interesting how, once again, America was able to largely pawn it's problems off onto others though. What basically took place is that American borrowers lied and cheater on their loans and American mortgage lenders and rating agencies put together financial instruments that misrepresented reality and sold them to overseas investors, who thought that they were buying relatively secure investments, when in fact what they were buying was repackaged junk bonds that were still junk.

Now, interestingly enough, even though American borrowers and American lenders and American financial institutions are the root cause of this problem, it will primarily be overseas investors and overseas countries that pay the largest price. Once again we figure out a way to screw everyone else and gain at their expense.

That's not to say that American financial institutions didn't get hit hard as well, but by and large much of the financial risk was offloaded to foreign investors, and poor countries will be hit hardest by our financial misdeeds. Institutions in developing economies that thought that they were going to be able to start getting ahead by investing in a secure market will now find that they are back and square one and did no better than investing in troubled third world markets. Talk about being a bad ambassador to countries that we were trying to encourage to participate in a global economy on American terms or to adopt an American style economic system, I think we will find that over the coming months there will be a lot of international ridicule over this issue and criticism of America.

That will also be bad news long-term for our economy since we depend so heavily on foreign investment and foreign buying of our debt. There was already a developing trend away from buying American debt and investing in the American dollar, which has seen the American dollar decline steadily over the past year, and this is only going to accelerate that trend. The Fed is now stuck in a tight spot, which is the spot that I thought we would have gotten stuck in two or three years ago actually. The fundamental problem that the American economy faces is that both taxes and interest rates are low, and the lowering of taxes and interest rates has been used to keep the economy afloat, but at a certain point you can't continue to cut taxes and interest rates, indeed we need to increase taxes and interest rates, but the problem is that the economy can't really handle increases in taxes and interest rates.

Taxes and interest rates have been pretty steadily decreasing since the 1940s. Pretty much every decade since the 1950s has seen lower taxes and lower interest rates, such that much of the economic growth that has happened during that time has been facilitated by these factors. Well, at a certain point you can't continue to lower those things, and I would argue that during the Bush administration what we saw was a lowering of both taxes and interest rates below a sustainable level. Now we face the problem of how to continue to sustain and grow the economy while at the very least keeping taxes and interest rates at a steady and constant level, though at this point, due to Bush, we actually need to increase taxes and interest rates, something that the American economy hasn't really had to deal with since the 1930s.

What this current financial problem is showing us is that doing this is going to be difficult, and that the economic growth that occurred during the Bush years has not been "honest" growth, it has been growth that has been propped up with basically false accounting. So, I think that we are just now starting to see the edge of a much larger problem. Many other economic analysts out there are saying that the fundamentals are fine and everything is good, but I don't agree. The problem is that when you look at the monetary policy, the debt issues, the tax structure, the financial institutions, and the emerging economic competition abroad, things do not look good for America over the long term, and that doesn't even take into account the mounting health care, education, and energy problems.

At this point I think that technology is the only possible long term potential savior of the American economy. It is possible that increases in efficiency due to technological advances could actually make up for all this and basically make it possible to produce so much more value that we can effectively work 10 times harder over the coming 25 to 30 years to offset all of these other factors, but I think that's basically the only potential positive solution to this situation for America.

I think that what this current financial crisis is going to do is accelerate the rate at which foreign countries distance themselves from the American market and this is going to be the beginning of people taking a much harder look at investing in America and no longer seeing this as a secure and trustworthy place to invest and I think we will see a pullout of foreign money from American markets over the long term, largely spurred by this past week's financial events. Couple that with a crackdown on illegal immigration, and I think what we will see is shrinking GDP growth over the coming year. I think that between now and 2009, when a new president comes into office, the economy is going to take a downturn. The crackdown on immigration, the shakeup in the financial markets, the lack of confidence in American investments, the injection of money into the system by the Fed, the lack of funding for basic government infrastructure, the growing American debt, the beginning of the retirement of the baby boomers, this all lines up for some bad news.

Topic: Announcements

First let me say that I'll been very busy lately in my personal life, which is why I haven't updated the website in a while. Hopefully I'll get back to that soon however.

I recently did an interview on a podcast called Dogma Free America about my book, Jesus - A Very Jewish Myth. You can listen to the interview here:

Episode 33--Dogma Free America

My interview starts about half way through the show, around the 35 minute mark. 

Thanks to Rich from Dogma Free America for doing the interview with me.

There was one thing that I didn't touch on in the interview that I would have liked to, and that is some of the symbolism in the Gospels, especially the significance of the execution of Jesus during Passover. Passover, of course, is a Jewish holiday about the redemption of sins. They didn't execute people during Passover, and not only is Jesus supposedly executed on this day in the story, but so are other criminals as well. That Jesus would have been executed on the most symbolic day possible (except perhaps Yom Kippur), and a day which all of the evidence shows it was against Jewish law to execute people, is completely unbelievable and strikes of symbolism, not history.

Other than that I covered most of the other points that I wanted to cover during the interview.

Topic: Commentary
A few people had asked about the "documentary" America: Freedom to Fascism. I finally saw it because a friend was nice enough to send me a copy of it.

Here is my review of the film. I don't have time to go into detailed research and rebuttals as I have sometimes done in the past, so this will simply be an op-ed rebuttal.

Overall I think the film was a bunch of nonsense. A few salient points were made, and the issue of the legality of the Federal Income Tax is interesting and, from what I know, relatively accurately portrayed, at least the technical issues.

The biggest problem with this film was the use of hyperbole and the total lack of clarity and the muddled ideology. Are the Federal Income Tax and the Federal Reserve a conspiracy of Communism or Capitalism? The film  randomly blamed both. Ironically, the claims and ideologies expressed in the film exhibit the exact same mentality of the Germany Nazis. Nazism was founded on opposition to both Communism and the "international bankers", that was a major thrust of the movement. Ironically, this whole production could have been taken from Mein Kampf, indeed the reason that the Jews were targets was because "Jewry" was associated with banking.

Having said that, there are real issues and there are real concerns to be addressed, but this film did a horrible job at actually analyzing the real problems and producing coherent analysis.

First: The Federal Income Tax.

Who, ultimately, benefits from the system that the people in this film complain about? The wealthy property owners. Yet, several of the arguments against the Federal Income Tax that were put forward were complaints about "wealth redistribution". This, I assume, implies redistribution from wealthy to poor, but if this system is benefiting the wealthy, then how is this an issue?

The film showed footage of Reagan saying that the Federal Income Tax system had become "un-American", but what did Reagan do? Under Reagan income taxes were raised on the poor and lowered on the wealthy. If the Feral Income Tax is all a part of a manipulation to benefit the wealthy, then how exactly did lowering taxes on the wealthy and raising taxes on the poor make it "more fair"?

There was allusion to a "flat tax" system for income taxes, but again, this would only help the rich and hurt the poor, so how exactly would a flat tax be "more fair", if the Income Tax ultimately benefits the wealthy in the first place?

Prior to World War II, from the beginning of the country up to that time, virtually all taxation was on the wealthy. The poor certainly paid no meaningful level of taxes, and even the moderately wealthy paid almost nothing. Most taxation was on property, profits, and consumption, thus the taxes were raised almost exclusively from the wealthy. During and after World War II taxation was expanded to basically all classes of people thereby taxing the poor and middle class to a far higher degree than ever before.

In addition, corporate taxes were a much more significant part of the revenue system prior to Reagan. Indeed the founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, as some of the quotes alluded to, were ANTI-corporate. When the US was founded corporations were weak and mostly for things like schools and public institutions, and they typically only had limited life spans. Indeed Jefferson and others saw private corporations and the amassing of wealthy estates as among the greatest threats to American freedom, and certainly corporations as they exist today would be totally opposed by the founders according to the words of their time.

Then the film says that a graduated taxation system is a part of the Communist Manifesto, which it is, but what is their point? The point of the items in the Communist Manifesto was to oppose the interests of capital to allow, in theory, freedom to workers, the people who create value. The film complains that the income tax is a tax on labor, but then calls it Communist. Which is it? The Communist Manifesto was OPPOSED to taxation on LABOR. The purpose of the graduated taxation in the Communist Manifesto was to tax the profits, which it argued are really the product of the LABOR of the workers. Thus, being opposed to the Federal Income Tax is really taking the SAME position as the Communist Manifesto.

Second: The Federal Reserve.

Just like the Nazis and other early 20th century anti-Semites, the film, produced by a Jew, is opposed to the Federal Reserve. I'm not saying the film maker has anything to do with Nazism, simply that he is way over simplifying the issues and just jumping around to conspiracy theories and poor arguments.

The film maker, and others in the film, say that gold is "real money" and the paper issued by the Federal Reserve is "fake money".

Well, I agree that the Federal Reserve system is a corrupt system, but it is perfectly good in theory. You can't have an economic system based on gold, that's just idiotic. What makes gold "money"? Only that people have a social agreement to treat it as such, which is the exact same reason that paper is money. There is nothing special about gold that makes it "real money". The reason that gold was often used historically is that is doesn't corrode, thus you can store it for a long time without it physically degenerating. With book keeping, however, you can do the exact same thing. Money becomes a number on paper instead of a count of bricks. So what?

Value is relative, there simply is no possible way to create a de-facto constant measure of value, because value is subjective. Gold or paper, it doesn't matter. People say that gold is good because you can't simply produce more of it at a whim, but this is really nonsense. We could just as easily use marble or water or any other limited material to achieve this, but this is totally unsuitable for a modern economy. Yes, if you print too much money that will ruin the monetary system, which is why we have a Federal Reserve that manages that process. Is it as transparent and open and as honest as it should be? No. Would using gold solve the problem? No.

People like to complain about how horrible it was that the Federal Reserve was created, but the American economy has achieved its greatest strength and stability since the creation of the Federal Reserve. Prior to the Federal Reserve American banking was a disaster. The American economy had massive and erratic depressions, and currency was totally insane. Money was privately issued by small private banks, and you had to take your money to the right bank and not all stores would take all money. There was no universally accepted currency until the government stepped in and federalized the system. Money in one state wouldn't be accepted in other states, etc. Can you imagine today traveling to a different state and none of your money would be accepted. That's what it was like at one time.

In addition, people used gold and also tobacco for money prior to federal banking because there was so little trust in the banks. People also used foreign currency in America into the 19th century because the American banking system was so poor.

Who wanted the Federal Reserve? The corporations! Overall the federal banking system is a good system, and the idea of using gold is moronic. There isn't enough gold in the world to represent the value of other goods in the world today, unless the value of gold greatly fluctuates, in which case, what the hell? Even before the end of the gold standard they couldn't use gold anymore, they had to switch to silver, because even a spec of gold was worth too much to pay for every day items. Gold is limited, and we have to destroy the earth to mine for it. Talk about a cause for war. Nations would be warring over the gold mines, as they were doing in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Why do you think the Boer War took place in South Africa? Because the United Kingdom wanted control of the gold mines, one of the largest gold supplies in the world, because gold was money. So we would then fight for gold in addition to oil? Now securing gold mines around the world becomes another requirement of national security? An even greater reason to deploy the American army around the world? That's just plain stupid.

A country that naturally has no gold then is doomed to poverty and a country with a gold mine will be rich, if they can keep it...

Digital and paper currency is absolutely a good thing. Money is just a representative of value. The real value is in the other goods and services. The real value is all of the property, which money is just supposed to be a proxy for. Even if gold is money, gold is only then a proxy for the other stuff, the land, the cars, the movie rights, etc., that's all of the "real value". It doesn't matter what money is made of. The problem comes in with corruption, and gold doesn't put a stop to corruption. Plus, we will be able to fabricate gold at one point, the technology is on the way, and what then? Then gold will be just like paper anyway.

The film also complained about national ID cards, but then complained about illegal immigrants. When the Nazis issued national ID cards the majority of people liked it. Why? Because the cards were used against minorities and dissenters, thus for most people they were considered a good thing. They were only a bad thing for Jews and dissidents, but 90% of the population doesn't like dissidents anyway. So, if they issued national ID cards in America who would benefit? The average person. Who would be harmed? Illegal immigrants and dissidents.

Who is this film complaining about? Illegal immigrants. The position it takes is like a German complaining that the Jews should be expelled from Germany, yet complaining about the ID cards that would make that possible.

Next we have the issue of vote rigging. This is a real concern and I don't have any real complaints about how that was covered in the film.

Finally, we have the complaints about "world government". What exactly is the problem with "world government" anyway? Look at the example of the United States. What if all the states were totally "sovereign"? You could cross the border of a state, rob a bank, run back to the other state and never have to fear. Indeed this was a major problem until the creation of the FBI.

The reality is that as the world becomes more integrated due to technology we have to develop governing bodies that can adjust to this integrated reality. As it is I feel that we need stronger international regulations, not weaker ones. I would like to see an international minimum wage, and speaking of which, this would actually help to resolve the illegal immigration issue in America. The only way to reduce immigration into America is to raise wages abroad, yet corporations in America try to keep wages low abroad, so they can pay workers a low amount in foreign countries and then sell the products of their labor for high prices in America. Naturally people want to immigrate to where the wages are higher, which is America. This only demonstrates how regional problems are global problems and how there is a need for international governance. We have to tackle global problems, such as climate change, water supplies, pollution, labor markets, the drug trade, human trafficking, etc., with international governing bodies, there simply is no way around it.

Painting all forms of international governance as "evil" is just plain nonsense. The people who typically do this are people who are  defending certain types of exploitation and illegal activities that are easier to do with weak international laws.

Overall, what is the message of this film? Who are the "bad guys"? Bankers? Corporations? Communists? The UN?

It's just a jumbled mess of conflicting ideas and complaints. Among this jumbled mess there are a few real issues and valid points, but overall it is just a jumbled mess.

Americans are the "oppressed slaves"? In reality the World Bank and the IMF and the Federal Reserve system have greatly benefited America at the expense of other countries, primarily developing countries. Americans have it horrible? We get cheap goods made by people in Mexico, China, South America, India, etc. Who is getting the raw deal here, not us? We benefit from these exploitive systems. We are the beneficiaries of the global exploitation. The film portrays Americans as victims, when in reality we are the beneficiaries. Yes, ultimately American capitalists are the ultimate beneficiaries, at the expense of even the American working class, but even the American working class benefits from the system of global exploitation. Think of it like the American working class are the limo drivers and errand boys for the mafia. Yes, ultimately the mob bosses are the ones screwing everyone over, but even the low men on the totem pole in the mob get benefits by association.

The problems with the ideas presented in this film are typical of libertarians. They champion "private property rights", yet they fail to understand that it is private interests who are undermining their personal property rights.  They complain about the expansion of eminent domain, but eminent domain is being expanded to transfer property to private corporations.

One of the most telling remarks was when someone complained that America was "turned into" a nation of wage earners instead of independent business owners. They attributed this to the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve. What nonsense. This is a natural product of industrialization and capitalism. The amassing of private capital, and market competition, is what drives smaller independent producers out of business as economies of scale are established, thereby consolidating capital and necessarily producing a dichotomy of a large pool of wage laborers and a small pool of capital owners. This isn't a problem created by Federal Banks, this is a "problem" (if you call it that) created by private ownership of capital. It is inevitable in a capialist system.

What the people in the film fail to fully address is that the American government is ultimately a tool of private interests, so it is far more complex than simply saying that "government is bad and private property is good". Communism has nothing to do with this, indeed the whole objective of Communism was to overcome many of these very same problems that the film is complaining about. The wealthy are the people who benefit the most from the system, yet libertarians are often defending the wealthy and railing against the poor. They can't seem to get their agenda straight.

Once again the libertarians point the finger at a bogus bogeyman and secret cabals, while not addressing the real elephant in the room. They complain about "redistribution of wealth" to the poor, when in fact the wealth is being redistributed to the wealthy.

The reality is that things are nowhere near as simple as this film portrays them. As far as I'm concerned, eliminating the income tax would be fine, then replace it with a property tax and higher taxes on corporate profits and capital gains. Of course, we know that would never fly, because that would hit the wealthy. I want to see the Libertarians promote such a system. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but this film, while raising a few interesting points, doesn't even present a coherent analysis of the issues.

Topic: Semi-random Thoughts
There is a collective effort this Easter weekend to blog against theocracy, and I figured I would get my 2 cents in. I just watched the movie "Jesus Camp" last night, so this is a more poignant topic for me at the moment. If you have not watched "Jesus Camp" I encourage you to do so via the links at the bottom of this post.

There is an interesting split within the Christian community, and within many other religious communities, especially among Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). This is a very basic split along theocratic and secular lines. Of course there are an almost infinite number of splits within these religious communities, but one of the most basic splits is over the role of religion in government.

Christianity and Islam both stem from Judaism, and the Jews from which these religions sprang were indeed theocrats. All three of these religions establish theocracy as the only acceptable form of government. This fact has caused great struggle and contradiction and strife within societies dominated by these religions for as long as they have been around. In the 1st century the Jewish historian Josephus commented on this himself in a work that was directed against the critics of Judaism. He stated:

"Now there are innumerable differences in the particular customs and laws that are among all mankind, which a man may briefly reduce under the following heads: Some legislators have permitted their governments to be under monarchies, others put them under oligarchies, and others under a republican form; but our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a strained expression, may be termed a Theocracy, by ascribing the authority and the power to God, and by persuading all the people to have a regard to him, as the author of all the good things that were enjoyed either in common by all mankind, or by each one in particular, and of all that they themselves obtained by praying to him in their greatest difficulties. He informed them that it was impossible to escape God's observation, even in any of our outward actions, or in any of our inward thoughts."
- Josephus; Against Apion, 1st century

What many people don't realize is that prior to the rise of Christianity, most of the Western world was governed by secular government. The ancient Jews were not a secular people, and when Christianity split off from Judaism it retained the anti-secular values of Judaism, eventually taking over the Roman Empire and leading to the establishment of over 1,000 years of Catholic theocracy in Europe.

Eventually people had enough of the abuses and social destruction that reigned under this system and efforts to put and end to theocracy emerged, even among Christians. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were among the leaders of the movement for secular government. What they established, through great effort, both physical and intellectual, was a secular Constitution and a secular model for government, after over 1,000 years of European theocracy.

"The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both;"
- James Madison; Letter to Edward Everett, March 18, 1823

"Notwithstanding the general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Gov' & Religion neither can be duly supported: Such indeed is the tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst.. And in a Gov' of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject. Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together;"
- President James Madison, 1822

The problem for Christians, however, is that there will always be a conflict between secularism and theocracy, because at base the Christian religion really does call for theocracy. At base the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion of Europe was only possible under theocracy, and the continued dominance of Christianity over the long term is only possible under theocracy.

With the rise of Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity in America over the past 20 years many so-called moderate and liberal Christians have claimed that the Religious Right misrepresent the "true values" of Christianity, but I disagree. I think that the Religious Right in America are the true embodiment of Christianity, they are reading the whole Bible and taking it seriously. It is really the secular, moderate, and liberal Christians who misrepresent the religion. They are merely espousing modern secular values and then claiming that those values are reflected in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus, but in fact they are not. It is the secular Christians who fail to be honest about the religion.

The movie "Jesus Camp" offers the perfect example. In the movie "Jesus Camp" there is a well meaning "moderate Christian" who comes in at intervals and comments on how the "extremists" have twisted and distorted the "true message" of the Bible and Christ. If only that were true, but in fact I found that all of the ideas espoused by the extremists were solidly rooted in the Bible itself, indeed in the New Testament.

In the Jesus camp, "Children on Fire", children from toddlers to teenagers were fundamentally instructed to believe in authority, not to question, to take all belief on faith and on what they felt in their hearts. The issues go beyond the camp however, and into the fundamental basis of evangelical ideology. Fundamentally evangelical Christians preach that "truth" is determined by feeling, by emotion. "You know the truth when you feel the Holy Spirit come into you." That is the message of evangelical Christianity, and what does this really amount to?

Science is about looking for ways to objectively evaluate observations and data to determine objective facts. Science relies on impartiality, peer review, and intentionally trying to remove one's emotions from the equation. Religion, especially evangelical religion, is about the complete opposite of this. Evangelical religion is about feeling and emotion and "sensing" the truth. In addition to this, it is also strongly about social ties, hierarchy, and your status among peers. This is the real reason why the evangelical movement is so widely embraced by politicians, because evangelicals learn to believe and accept "truth" based on feelings and social pressures, not on objective observations, skeptical inquiry, and rational argumentation. No, for evangelicals, emotion is truth, and when emotion is truth that means that one's beliefs can be manipulated by charismatic people, dramatic presentations, and social pressures.

The thing is, the precedents for all of this are indeed in the New Testament itself. This was the core of Christianity in the very beginning, and indeed I do think that evangelicals are very close to resembling the beliefs, values, and traditions of early Christianity.

In early Christianity it was all about faith, believing what someone said was true because of who they were, how they made you feel, what social groups they were a part of, and the types of things they said. This is made very clear in both the letters of Paul and the later Epistles. These letters were indeed direct appeals to real living people, the real living congregations, they weren't stories about someone, like the Gospels, these were live documents.

Anyone who doubts this should read not only letters from Paul like 1 Corinthians, but also the later epistles, such as 1 John and 2 Peter.

1 John 2:
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
...
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
...
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For everything in the world the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.
...
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist he denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

24 See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is what he promised us even eternal life.
...
1 John 3:
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
...
11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. 13Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
...
24 Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
...
1 John 4:
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
...
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

2 Peter 3:
3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
...
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be burned up.

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

You can see here very clearly where the ideas of Evangelical Christians come from, they come straight from the Bible itself. This is not a religion that can be apologized for, and this is not a religion that ever was, nor ever will be, compatible with secular democracy. The only way in which Christianity and civil society can co-exist is through the common ignorance of Christians about their own religion and their lack of faith in it. Christians who actually take the time to read the Bible and believe in it and follow the religion are people like Evangelical Christians, who will only accept theocracy, and why shouldn't they if what the Bible says is true? If the Bible is true then theocracy should be the standard, democracy should be abolished as the way of the devil, secularism should be abolished, science should be destroyed, and we should look to our hearts and our feelings for the Holy Spirit to guide us to the truth.

John 8:
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

13 The Pharisees challenged him, "Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid."

14 Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me."

19 Then they asked him, "Where is your father?"

"You do not know me or my Father," Jesus replied. "If you knew me, you would know my Father also." 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his time had not yet come.

21 Once more Jesus said to them, "I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come."

The core problem of Christianity is that it is not an objective world-view and it is wholly incompatible with objectivity. From the epistles of Paul to the Gospels to the later epistles, everything is about believing in authority, accepting things as true because of authority, because of a feeling, because of faith, etc. There is no room in this religion for objective or skeptical thought. There simply is no logic or reason to the religion at all, there never was. It is a religion that at its core leaves followers open to manipulation because it has always been based on charismatic appeals, social pressure, faith, and emotions. It leaves people with no way to objectively evaluate "truth", they can only "feel it", and those feelings are of course nothing more than emotional strings that charismatic leaders can and do pull. That is why this religion became, and has remained, so popular with government and politics. Believers in it are eminently vulnerable to manipulation.

There is no way that secular society and Christianity can ever be compatible, not in the long run. It's time that the so-called moderate Christians wake up to this fact and reject this ancient cult for their own good, the good of society, and the future of humanity.

Segment on Jesus Camp from ABC News

Jesus Camp the movie

http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/

http://www.ffrf.org/ 

Topic: Commentary

The following is my letter to the editor at Scientific American in regard to their featured op-ed, Free to Choose, by Michael Shermer:

Free to Choose

I disagree with Michael Shermer's Libertarian op-ed on choice.

The marketing example that Dr. Shermer put forward is an example of how this type of information is and will continue to be used. The vast majority of people do not accept mechanistic explanations for human thought processes, and this fact is exploited by industry and marketing firms to their advantage.

The passage that he quoted from Milton Freedman displays the typical naivety of Friedman and "free market" concepts in general. I would counter the quote of Friedman with one by Thomas Jefferson, from the introduction of his "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" from 1777:

"Well aware that: The opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds..."

How does one define "freedom", what constitutes an informed choice, and how does one define manipulation? Friedman pretends that direct force is the only type of force that matters, while ignoring disparity of knowledge as a form of force. It is naive of Shermer to think that an understanding of how the mind works will not be, and is not being, used by privileged members of society, principally capital owners, to game the system and take advantage of other people. That is, after all, the most economically expedient "choice" for those with an intellectual advantage to make.

Topic: Commentary
I haven't had time lately to do the type of research that I normally do for this website, so this will be a somewhat "off-the-cuff" commentary, but it's something that I wanted to point out. I was recently watching a program about fuel technology on television and one of the segments was advocating so-called "bio-fuel". What really struck me was that they noted that the largest user of bio-fuel in the world is Brazil, and this program had nothing but praise for the "Brazilian bio-fuel revolution".

Here is the thing though. What this program failed to mention is that the rate of rain-forest destruction in Brazil has been consistently growing, and though I have not done the research on this issue to fully address the facts, I strongly suspect that bio-fuel plays a large part in "fueling" that destruction.

Bio-fuel is not a viable alternative to oil and gas, and I would say that it's not viable for any kind of use other than on a small scale when waste materials are used to create the fuel. Bio-diesel from waste vegetable oil is fine, as are other fuels developed from waste plant material, but growing plants purely to use them as fuel is neither energy efficient nor environmentally friendly.

The reality is that farming is more destructive to the environment than the extraction of oil and gas is. This is unfortunate, because it would be great in terms of politics and market competition to have more viable alternatives to challenge the oil and gas fuel monopoly, but bio-fuel simply isn't the answer.

Think about this for a moment. Oil and gas is basically millions of years worth of accumulated organic material that has been pressure cooked and concentrated into a super dense and highly energetic substance. There is no way to effectively match the energy in oil and gas from a plant crop. The earth has done work on tons and ton of organic matter already to transform it into something extremely energetically dense. It's like taking a million years worth of farm crops and compressing it into a new dense substance, where the calories per gram far exceeds the calories per gram of the original plant matter.

In this sense, oil and gas are highly efficient because the earth and time have already done a lot of the work for us. But, of course, these resources are limited and burning them contributes to global warming, so there are other factors to consider as well.

Bio-fuel does somewhat address the issue of renew-ability, but it does not address the issue of global warming or environmental destruction.  Indeed even if we turned the entire planet into nothing but farmland, we still couldn't produce enough fuel to meet existing needs.

Bio-fuels emit less carbon-dioxide when burned than oil and gas when burned in the same manner, and this is really one of the biggest advantages, as well as the fact that in theory you plant a crop that consumes carbon-dioxide to supposedly offset the carbon emitted when the fuel is burned, but if you are clearing natural habitat to plant the crops then this is not really a gain.

However, a more effective use of resources would be to design ways to make oil and gas burn more cleanly, as well as putting more research into wind, solar, and wave energy collection systems. I suspect the engineered fuels will emerge soon as well.

I drive a Toyota Prius, which has it's own environmental problems when it comes to producing the nickel for the battery, which is an environmental nightmare, but in terms of carbon emission the Prius still emits less carbon-dioxide than a typical car running bio-diesel.

What I suspect we will see happening is that countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and places in Africa will emerge as the major sources for bio-fuels and these fuels will be produced through massive environmental destruction. Bio-fuels could become the leading cause of environmental destruction very soon actually. The fuel market is huge and extremely competitive. There are billions if not trillions of dollars at stake here, and if environmentalists think that they can "manage" this market or keep bio-fuel producers honest, or whatever, they are kidding themselves.

As far as I'm concerned, bio-fuel is a bad idea and this whole bio-fuel business is just letting a genie out of the bottle that could turn into a very, very ugly genie. What I have discussed here so far doesn't even begin to address the impact that bio-fuel could have on global hunger and starvation, as crops are used to fuel machines instead of feed people.

While oil and gas are limited resources, the earth's surface is a limited resource as well, and growing low energy fuel is not a very good use of that resource.

These are things to think about. As I said, I haven't put in the research on this issue to fully comment on it. If anyone has information that contradicts what I have said here, please let me know.

Topic: Commentary
This "Lost Tomb of Jesus" issue is just like what happened after The Da Vinci Code was released all over again. In both cases bad "scholarship" and hype was used to promote controversial claims about Jesus, and in both cases the primary reaction of course came from conservative Christians. In both cases as well, the poor scholarship gave traditional Christians a way to beat-up on the claims of those "attacking their faith" and actually get away with it.

The problem with both The Lost Tomb of Jesus and The Da Vinci Code is that they suffer from huge gaping holes in scholarship, but rely on a variety of Christian texts as legitimate and true history, indeed they rely on a greater number of Christian texts being more true than even traditional Christians do.

These poorly constructed claims really do nothing more than give traditional Christians a platform and a rare opportunity to "be right" about the claims of their faith in a debate. This was already seen in the follow-up to The Lost Tomb discussion hosted by The Discovery Channel and it is seen across America in newspapers and across the Internet on blogs and websites.

I'll just use the claims of one representative Christian apologist as an example, Ben Witherington, who writes the following in his post,  THE JESUS TOMB SHOW--BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS REJECT DISCOVERY CHANNEL SHOW'S CLAIMS.

"Both William Dever and Jonathan Reed were not merely dubious about the findings of the show. Reed actually called it archaeo-porn, the worst sort of misuse of archaeological evidence to support a tendentious theory that is so speculative it requires linking one weak hypothesis to another to another to reach a conclusion."

Of course Reed did, he is a Christian, so he is immediately going to attack anything that challenges his faith, regardless of the merits. Did Reed call The Passion of the Christ "archeo-porn"? I'll wager that he didn't, yet surely The Passion of the Christ deserves the title more than Lost Tomb does.

"In other words, the show could not find the sort of experts in Biblical archeology which would have lent real credence to their theory.

This stands in contrast to when Andre LeMaire was prepared to put his good reputation on the line to say that the James ossuary is genuine (and this word just in. He still thinks that, and the recent evidence presented in the trial in Jerusalem of genuine patina from the word 'Jesus' on the James box inscription provides further evidence for this conclusion)."

Well of course. Almost all Biblical archaeologists are Christians, who else would bother specializing in this field? There are Jews in the field of "Old Testament" archeology, but even if they felt like commenting most would not due to fear of Antisemitism. Can you imagine a Jewish specialist claiming that the bones of Jesus were found that Jesus wasn't really God. Like, duh, they have been saying that all along, for which they have been persecuted by Christians for 2,000 years. They have learned to steer clear of this issue.

Of course people are willing to put it on the line in defense of the James ossuary, since that would SUPPORT the Christian faith, not undermine it, so this is an obvious double standard. Also, I don't agree with Dr. James Tabor, but he is putting his career on the line over this.

"1) The DNA lab in Thunder Bay was not told that they were testing alleged samples from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Why is this important? For the very good reason that the lab no doubt wishes to keep its good name, and not be associated with sensationalistic projects of dubious merit. Had they been told in advance, then at least they could have decided whether they wanted to be involved in the project. This is not how a free and open historical inquiry into a subject proceeds. It is not shrouded in secrecy until unveiled at a press conference in order to make big news, garner big ratings, and sell lots of books."

Not true. This is exactly how it should have been done to get an unbiased analysis of the data. There was nothing wrong with their methods and this type of thing is done all the time, though obviously with less controversial material, because this is the most controversial material there is. Their job, however, was simply to do the analysis. The fact that some labs might be afraid to do the testing if they knew what the material was is only evidence of how much religion corrupts free inquiry and intimidates people.

"2) Ted Koppel's own correspondence with the DNA lab, and with the statistician reported in the follow up debate finds those folks doing their best to distance themselves from the conclusions of the show, and insisting that it is only a remote possibility."

Of course, because of the stigma and repercussions that can be wrought by the religious community. This is an example of the fear and intimidation of religion and their effects on our society.

"4) Towards the end of the program itself, we discover that the intrepid amateur archaeologists, namely the film maker and his cohorts failed to even ask the IAA for permission to find and reopen the sealed Talpiot tomb. But this was an IAA controlled archaeological site now adjacent to an apartment complex. And when the IAA did find out about the snooping around in a tomb without permission, they came and put a stop to it."

Again we have fear and intimidation being used to try and cover up information. They probably didn't want to controversy and just hoped that this would go away, but right or wrong, the information deserves to be investigated and properly assessed, not covered up.

"But the most interesting thing found when the filmmaker was in the tomb was a very large Greek inscription inside the tomb. What does this suggest? It suggests to me this is not the tomb of the Aramaic speaking family of Jesus of course!"

That inscription doesn't prove this by any means, since Greek was the most widely used language even in Judea, and every single New Testament document we have was written in Greek. Also see the following article: Jewish Funerary Inscriptions - Most Are in Greek

The Greek text in the tomb doesn't really add or detract from the case, but I can assume that if it said anything that supported the case they would have mentioned it, so I assume that it didn't say anything that supported their case.

"5) Strong objection was taken in the debate program to the dramatizations in the show because they present the theory of the filmmakers as if they were facts. There are not, for example any dramatizations of other theories. What's the problem with this? Well as one professor from Virginia Seminary rightly pointed out, drama is powerful. It's a form of preaching and persuasion. If this really were an open ended historical inquiry and not an argument for a particular point of view, not a docu-drama, this sort of filming technique would not have been used."

I found this to be a totally hypocritical complaint. Their use of dramatization was no different from its use in every other historical program on The History Channel and The Discovery Channel, many of which make claims that are far less credible than the ones made on this program. Add to that the fact that Christians make major use of dramatizations to support their story, which we can certainly say is more outlandish and dubious than what these people are claiming. What can we say of Ten Commandments, when Moses parts the Red Sea and the army of the pharaoh is drowned? Oh, well that's a movie. What about all of the supposed documentaries about the life of Jesus that dramatize his whole life and the crucifixion, acting as though there is some kind of solid basis for their "enactments"? What about The Passion of the Christ, which was hailed by Christians because "it was so true"? Did you complain that drama should not be used to give people the impression that this is what really happened to Jesus? No, of course not. Not only that, but The Passion of the Christ isn't even based on the scriptures, and you can't even find support for many of its scenes in the scriptures. Passion plays have been used by Christians since the very beginning, indeed Paul himself may even have talked about these in his writings. Christians certainly use drama and reenactment to persuade people of the truth of their story, for which there is not only no support, but defies reason and believability.

"6) No mention at all is made of the fact that though we only have a few hundred ossuaries with inscribed names, there is in fact another ossuary with the inscription 'Jesus son of Joseph'."

This is a legitimate point and a point against the presentation. However, Christians take the exact opposite position if the claims are in their favor. For example, if the "James brother of Jesus" ossuary were authentic Christians, including Dr. Witherington, would surely tout it as proof of the existence of Jesus and corroboration of their story. They wouldn't abide the claim that these were just common names and could thus be anyone. No, they would be certain that this was "the James".

"Apparently this was not a rare combination of names at all, and in any case, as I have said Jesus of Nazareth is never called 'son of Joseph' by his family, or by his disciples. Notice how Luke pours cold water on that theory in Luke 3.21-- "Now Jesus himself was about 30 when he began his ministry, he was the son, so it was supposed/thought, of Joseph." Supposed by whom? Clearly not by Luke or the family whom Luke has just shown knew about the virginal conception of Jesus. Even the cousins knew about this miracle when Mary told Elizabeth. There can be no good reason Luke would put it this way if he knew the earliest followers of Jesus or members of his family had thought that Jesus was son of Joseph."

"Luke" (not even the real name of the author of the Gospel) can't pour cold water on anything, because "Luke" was a late 1st century or early 2nd century writer who was telling a very slanted story from secondary sources at best. "Luke" doesn't "show" anything. "Luke" is writing a story, for which we have no evidence to corroborate, and no reason to believe is true. Claiming that "even the cousins knew" is like quoting Wuthering Heights and claiming that Nelly knew about Catherine's relationship with Heathcliff.

"Here is but one more example of how normal interpretations of the Biblical evidence are ignored and rejected in favor of rewriting the text to support the theory, and much later non-eyewitness Gnostic evidence from the Acts of Philip is made crucial to the case, even when that evidence itself does not likely support the case at all!"

Most serious Biblical scholars don't consider any of the Gospels, much less the Gospel of John, to be an eyewitness account.

I have many problems with the presentation myself, and I don't think that this is the tomb "of Jesus", but once again poor scholarship has both given Christians a larger platform to crow from and greatly exaggerated the historical validity of the entire Jesus story. Instead of following the real developments in critical New Testament scholarship, which challenge the historical validity of most to all of the Jesus story, these claims present most of the Jesus story as more historically certain than it really is. The claims made by both Christians and this documentary often rest on single contradictory passages in stories for which there isn't one shred of independent verification, which are full of obvious fabrication and mythology, and for which there are obvious scriptural precursors that the passages are likely built on. The Gospels aren't history, and they should not be treated as such.

Topic: Commentary

Having watched The Lost Tomb of Jesus on the Discovery Channel and most of the follow-up commentary, I have many problems with the presentation. First of all, the presentation actually treats many pieces of Christian lore as more historical than even most critical Christian scholars.

The fact is that the first four hundred years of Christian writings are a nest of conflicting, legendary, and purely made up stories. The Christian stories include multiple different names for seemingly the same people, who are in reality only tied together by later legends and traditions in an attempt to try and make the conflicting stories fit together.

A perfect example of this is the use of the two different lineages of Jesus from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. A common apologetic claim is that one of the two genealogies is of Joseph and the other genealogy is from Mary. However, serious scholars do not believe this, even Christian scholars. The dominant scholarly view on this is that the authors of Luke and Matthew were unaware of each other's writings, having worked from the common "Q" source and the Gospel of Mark independently, and both simply made up different lineages that reflected the important families of their local communities.

Think about this for a second. How on earth could either of these two people, no matter who they were, know the genealogy of Jesus going back over 1,000 years? This is impossible, unless one resorts to miracles and divine revelation via the Holy Spirit, etc. The documentary claimed to be taking a historical look at this issue, but then was totally uncritical of the Biblical texts, because those same Biblical texts provided an abundant mine for names. Here we have two huge lists of names, from which just about every Hebrew name under the sun can be drawn, and so of course this is a convenient way to try and draw on the names that don't seem to fit into the "hypothesis".

The reality is that both genealogies were completely fabricated decades later based on scriptures and local politics, and thus should have no role in tying random names into this so-called cluster. The fact that an ossuary for "Matthew" was found should have been a point against the validity of this claim.

Secondly, you would have noticed throughout the presentation that they referred to "Christian tradition" often, when those Christian traditions supported their claim, however, most of those traditions are total bunk, and some of the ones they referred to are traditions that developed in the 4th century and later.

The stories about Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary carrying on ministries and things of this nature are all much later stories which are widely agreed upon as legends written by later writers based on fantasy and story telling. This became a popular subject in the 3rd and 4th century and later and you can find stories about all of the different figures, developing many different plot lines and involving a number of miracles and all kinds of wild acts and such things. We also have the 4th century writing about the Virgin Mary bodily ascending to heaven and things of this nature as well.

None of the Gospels even agree on who the supposed bothers of Jesus are, or the supposed disciples, as there are different names in each Gospel. There are a core of important names, but many of the lesser names are different in each book. So, with all of this, because of the confused and contradictory nature of the Christian writings, you have almost every name in the Hebrew language of the period to pick from, because just about every name is listed among the Christian sources when you start factoring in the different names for the brothers given in the different writings. Then you have the different "apocryphal" traditions, from which they also pull, and here we have further variants on names, etc.

My big disappoint, of course, was that the program actually treated the Christian sources as far more reliable than they really are. In fact the Christian sources are a mine field.

I think that their hand was also shown to when they started talking about "secret bloodlines", and things of this nature. So much of the dramatizations were based on assumptions that are completely unsupported, though indeed in line with Christian beliefs, such as the idea that (to paraphrase) "Jesus was considered a contender for the king of Israel, so those close to him had to be eliminated." This is Christian fantasy really. There is no evidence of any of this. They mentioned that Herod killed John the Baptist, but according to both the Christian and non-Christian sources this had nothing to do with his relationship to Jesus, and the idea that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus is only introduced in the Gospel of Luke (not a claim in any of the other Gospels) in order to tie into an "Old Testament" theme. This is a story element introduced purely on a scriptural basis and is not considered historically true.

Likewise, the documentary stated that Josephus spent more time talking about Jesus' "brother" James than he did about Jesus. Where to begin with this one? If indeed he talked about them at all, then this claim would still be false, since in the works of Josephus there are two passages that talk about Jesus, both of which are contested as inauthentic, and there is only one mention of James, which is also contested. But, assuming that the Testimonium passage is inauthentic, as is widely agreed, that leaves the one passage that mentions both James and Jesus in passing in the same sentence, and though I think that this is not talking about Jesus of the Gospels or the James of the Gospels, even if it were what the documentary said would be false. They would both have been mentioned once in the same sentence in passing, which doesn't comply with the claim that more was said about James.

It's interesting, because this documentary represents the view of those people who think that Jesus was a historical person but not a divine being. It is ironic that in supporting this view they have taken a completely uncritical view of the source material, basically embracing the flimsiest Christian material as historically authentic because it can be used to help account for the names in this tomb.

Most damning of all, perhaps, is the idea that if Jesus were a real person his tomb and his child could have gone totally unknown and unreported in all of the source materials. There isn't a single known writing about a tomb of Jesus, about evidence that there was no resurrection, or about any child. Of all the various heretical sects, of which we know a good deal about their basic claims, these two claims are not among any of them. That there could have been a hidden tomb of Jesus himself is not impossible, but a family tomb pretty much is, because this is a tomb site that would had to have been visited many times over a period of 20 to 40 years or more by multiple different people, and the idea that such a tomb would have remained unknown and unreported on by all of the various sects who talked about Jesus, along with a child of his as well, is pretty well beyond belief.

I do hope that more study is done on this and I would like to see the bones recovered and more analysis done. I don't think it should just be dismissed, but I don't think the evidence will prove the case out either.

See also:

The Talpiot Tomb Controversy 

Viewers Guide to Understanding the Talpiot Tomb ‘documentary’ to be aired on the Discovery Channel 

Topic: Commentary

A study was recently published reporting that vanity and narcissism are on the rise among American teenagers. This should really be no surprise, I think that most people have figured this out on their own, but what was most interesting was the analysis, at least what was reported of it. I have not been able to access the entire study yet, so this commentary is based on what has been reported in the news.

Interestingly, this study was done by the marketing department of San Diego University, but from what has been reported there seems to be very little self-reflection in the study. The study, somewhat correctly, attributes much of the rise in narcissism to school programs that have intentionally sought to increase children's "self-esteem". This is certainly a legitimate issue and one that needs to be addressed, but there is much more going on here than that.

Indeed marketing and a consumer driven capitalist culture are equally at the core of this "problem". As discussed in my article Understanding Capitalism Part IV: Capitalism, Culture and Society, capitalism promotes a self-centered narcissistic culture, as marketing itself encourages this behavior. Anyone who watches television knows that marketing is all about telling people what they want to hear, and also encouraging self-indulgence.

The study did point to one aspect of this, which is the use of the terms "my" and "you" in so many marketing tools. Pretty much every company now uses "my" in some kind of personalized marketing strategy. The study pointed out "MySpace", but you can also find MyFord, MyCoke, MyRewards, and just about every other "My" attached to a company brand. But what is all this "My" about? Well, it does feed into the narcissism, but it also creates a false sense of ownership. It's a form of pseudo-capitalism, where the companies, like Wal-Mart with their "associates", tell people that they are enfranchised, tell people that they are empowered, tell people that they have ownership, but in reality they aren't and don't. It's all just hype and propaganda.

This study was done by a marketing department, and the irony is, that even though they have concluded that increasing narcissism is a problem, what are the effects of this study going to be? Marketing agencies and corporation are going to see this information (not really, since they have their own private studies and know this already) and conclude that in order to be effective they need to develop increasingly narcissistic marketing campaigns, feeding the problem and making it even worse.

This is the type of problem that arises in a completely unregulated market economy where industry is not held accountable to society. Market forces will always tend towards narcissism and self-centered behavior, because market forces are always going to cater to "giving people what they want" and, all things being equal, people will always acts in their "self-interest" - that's what capitalism is all about after all.

A self-interested economy is going to yield a self-interested society, that should be pretty easy to figure out. Whereas our school systems and other social institutions should be countering the socially degrading effects of capitalism, they have instead been appropriated into the system and are actually feeding the situation.

There are many reasons that our schools have subscribed to the "increase self-esteem" mantra, but one of the most interesting, perhaps, was the idea in the 1980s, that there was a need to decrease sexual promiscuity among teenagers. The people who were pushing this program were conservatives and they viewed teen sex as bad, and in their moralistic world view they believed that people do bad things for bad reasons. Taking a totally unnatural view of sex and human behavior, these people thought that young people had sex because they had low self-esteem and used sex as a way to try and make themselves feel better or to be popular.

In reality, as reported in Scientific American MIND last year, the effects of this program have been to increase teen sexual behavior because the reality is that people with a low self-image shy away from sex or do not get into sexual situations, whereas people with high self-esteem and an inflated ego are highly sexually aggressive. So, in fact, this anti-sex program developed by moralistic conservatives had the total opposite effect of its intention, because these people have no clue about human behavior.

Sex, of course, is perfectly natural, it's not "bad" per-se, and people don't always do bad things for bad reasons anyway. High self-esteem leads to increased sexual promiscuity, not the other way around. This should be perfectly obvious, unless you are a moralistic conservative who thinks that sex is evil and only bad people who have emotional problems engage in such dirty acts.

New Age liberals no doubt added to this problem as well. They seem to suffer from the same basic mentality and lack of fundamental behavioral understanding, thinking that you can simply smile all your problems away and that loving yourself is the greatest good.

It would be interesting to see a comparative study between America and Europe on the issue of teen narcissism. I would be willing to bet that narcissism is lower in Europe, and I think it would be due to both the more secular understanding of human behavior there and the smaller impact of marketing and capitalism there, though of course Europe still has plenty of marketing as well.

The effects of neo-liberal economics are being felt everywhere though, from America to India to China to Europe. For a variety of reasons, however, people in America simply don't understand the social effects of capitalism, though in most other countries these connections are made and understood and thus somewhat addressed. Any criticism of capitalism in this country is so taboo, however, that these problems cannot be properly addressed. And, ironically, the conservative defenders of so-called "free market" capitalism continue to get more and more unhappy with society, yet they still feed they very root-cause of their unhappiness.

For more on this study see:
Study: Vanity on the rise among college students

Are Today's Students Too Self-Centered? 

Study Shows Narcissism Plus Social Rejection Equals Aggression

Topic: Commentary

Documentary Shows Possible Jesus Tomb

The recent announcement that "the bones of Jesus have been found", has made headlines and spurred much discussion, but it's not just Christians who are skeptical of the claim. Despite the fact that Christian critics have claimed that skeptics would like this to be true and are likely to believe it, the fact is quite the opposite, with most skeptics and non-believers that I have talked to not putting any credence in the claim.

There are, of course, many problems with the claim, though these are difficult to fully address until the documentary airs on the Discovery Channel on March 4th. Even the film maker claims, however, that the odds calculated for these names occurring together in a burial find are 100 to 1 to 1,000 to 1, but these aren't really very high odds, especially with thousands of known burials in the region.

Secondly, dating is an issue, and the dating is questionable.

More importantly, however, is the fact that if this were a burial cave for "the real Jesus" and "his family", then that means this site would have been accessed multiple times over a long period of time, and it is  quite unbelievable that if this were the burial site of "the real Jesus" that the site would not have become widely known and either venerated or attested to by someone.

Additionally, the site contained an ossuary for "Judah son of Jesus", but it is quite unbelievable that if the Jesus of the Gospels were real and had a son that this son would have been unattested to by the many different so-called "heretical" sects.

So, on the face of it, the evidence and the claim does not seem compelling at all, and indeed this does look like an attempt at profiteering, not scholarship.

Really, all that this find shows is how common these names were and why it can be very difficult to identify information about the characters in the New Testament stories, since all of the names used for those characters are among the most common of the time and place. It is as if the stories were written about Joe, George, Mike, and Bob.

I will watch the documentary with an open mind, but I'm highly skeptical of the claim, because, of course, I do not think that "Jesus" existed at all.