Saturday 4 August 2012

Resurrection Of The Dead

Over the next few weeks, I will be taking a look at what I consider to be some of the most powerful arguments that theists have in favour of belief, and in particular those arguments used by evangelical Christians. 


Arguably one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that religious believers - and especially fundamentalist Christians - often use in suport of their beliefs is the testimony of people who claim to have died, seen the afterlife, then returned to live again on Earth.  The list of people who have died and returned is extensive, their testimonies are consistent, and often their resurrection has taken place in circumstances that appear to be the miraculous result of divine intervention. 


A few years ago, I was made aware of the testimony of Ian McCormack.  McCormack was scuba-diving off Mauritius when he was stung by box jellyfish.  (As an aside, part of the story told about McCormack when I heard it stressed how venemous box jellyfish are; as I recall it, it was claimed that even given his excellent physical health at the time, he would not have been expected to survive.  Their Wikipedia entry, however, describes them as 'extremely painful and sometimes fatal' (my emphasis).  I may, of course, have mis-remembered.)  Although rushed to hospital and treated, he was declared dead.  Fifteen minutes later, he returned to life with a story of having been in a black void which he somehow knew to be Hell.  He then followed a tunnel of light to a paradise where he met Jesus and his own dead mother, before being offered the chance to return to Earth. 


Clearly, there are some aspects of McCormack's story that could be investigated further (Was he really an atheist, as he claims?  How strong was the influence of his mother's Christian faith on his upbringing?  Can anyone at the hospital verify his claims?),  


More recently, the subject has come back to my attention due to the media attention to footballer Fabrice Muamba's survival after his heart stopped for 78 minutes.  Although there was nothing mysterious about his survival, and he did not return with stories of post-mortem divine encounters, his family very publically attriubted his survival to their own Christian faith.  This fits in with what appears to be a growth cottage industry in 'afterlife tourism' books as a form of evangelical Christian (for want of a better word) propaganda with titles such as Heaven is for Real or The Boy who Came Back from Heaven


There are two aspects of this that I would like to look at.  The first is whether these visions give us a good reason to believe in the literal truth of a Christian afterlife.  The second is whether there is good evidence that people can miraculously return from the dead as a result of prayer. 


The first of those points can then be split into two challenges to sceptics to be explored.  Most obviously, for those who do not believe in Christianity, there is the direct challenge of how this evidence can be explained away, given that deliberate fraud seems implausible (though of course cannot be absolutely ruled out).  But there is also the question of why we would feel the need to 'explain away' this evidence.  Where we see multiple eyewitness evidence in other cases, we are happy to accept this at face value, so why should we not also accept these claims about the afterlife?  If the answer is simply that the conclusion we would draw goes against our pre-existing assumptions, we would seem to be on sketchy ground indeed. 


Why Not Just Believe The Testimony? 



'Hey, Dad, did you know Jesus has a horse? [...] a rainbow horse. I got to pet him. There’s lots of colors.'
- Colton Burpo


Firstly, let us address the question of whether this subject actually needs attention at all. 


The problem here is that there are so many theories of life after death, each of them apparently supported by eyewitness testimony.  Much of the testimony from Christians is indeed remarkably consistent, even where young children are involved.  Colton Burpo and Paul Eicke, for instance, were just 3 years old when they has their (separate) experiences, and Alex Malarkey was 6. 


All of these told remarkably consistent stories - winged angels, God, pearly gates (no, really) and encounters with deceased relatives who instruct them to return to their lives.  (Ted Harrison, writing in Fortean Times #291, August 2012, cites blogger James Morrow as pointing out that Burpo doesn't seem to understand the orthodox Christian concept of the Trinity, instead viewing Jesus and 'his Dad' as two separate people.)


Yet if we move outside of the cases promoted by specifically Christian media, this consistency breaks down entirely.  This link is fairly typical - a young boy who seems to know more about WW2 fighter planes than we would expect, and who also seems to know details about the life of one particular pilot.  Were we presented with that case (and there are many other similar examples) rather than the Heaven and Hell visions, we would by the same logic be justified in believing them.  Yet surely both cannot be true (though both could be false).  If we are prepared to accept two contradictory things based on the evidence, surely we have set our standards of proof too low, and we need to raise them.  Yet if we raise them, it is hard to see why we would accept either of the options, since neither seems to have markedly more evidence in favour of it than the other.  (This is a slightly simplistic approach; in fact we should be looking for a third theory that can explain both sets of experiences.  I will suggest one such theory below, but I should also note that it may be possible to integrate the two beliefs - Christianity and reincarnation - in some way.  Perhaps some people are reincarnated and others go to Heaven?  Of course, even if we allow this possibility, it is not Christianity as understood by proponents of the 'afterlife tourism' school.) 


Although we might come to various conclusions here, the idea that we should just accept the testimony at face value is, it seems to me, fatally undermined by the fact that the available testimony is contradictory.  To select only certain testimonies to believe would be unconscionable (although that is, of course, precisely what most religious groups do). 


So How Can These Experiences Be Explained? 


'Directly behind Jesus was a circular shaped opening like the tunnel I had just traveled down.  Gazing out through it, I could see a whole new world opening up before me.  I felt like I was standing on the edge of paradise, having a glimpse into eternity. 
'It was completely untouched.  In front of me were green fields and meadows.  The grass itself was giving off the same light and life that I had seen in the presence of God.  There was no disease on the plants.  It seemed as though the grass that it would just spring back to life if you stepped on it. Through the center of the meadows I could see a crystal clear stream winding its way across the landscape with trees on either bank.  To my right were mountains in the distance and the sky above was blue and clear.  To my left were rolling green hills and flowers, which were radiating beautiful colours.  Paradise!  I knew I belonged here. I had traveled the world looking for paradise, and here it was.  I felt as though I had just been born for the first time. Every part of me knew I was home. Before me stood eternity - just one step away.'
 
-Ian McCormack



So I am satisfied that we need not take these reported experiences as literal guides to the reality of life after death.  There remains the question of how these people have come to report the experiences they have done. 


The simplest explanation, of course, is that they are simply lying; they are motivated by profit, the need for celebrity, or a simple desire to promote their own faith.  And of course, this can never be disproved, and would certainly fit all the available evidence.  It is very likely that in at least some cases, this is what has happened. 


But do we really need to jump directly to this conclusion about all - or even most - such testimonies?  My experience is that very few people actively lie about things.  If at all possible, we should seek to understand how the McCormacks, Burpos, Eickes and so on can genuinely believe they are telling the truth, even if their visions do not conform to the actual facts as we understand them. 


The 'party line' among rationalists and skeptics seems to be that many of the features commonly observed can be explained by a lack of oxygen to the brain - anoxic euphoria causes the feelings of calm and peace, the better resistance to oxygen starvation of the cones (near the centre of the retina) than the rods (which give peripheral vision) leads to the perception of a 'tunnel of light', and the remainder is filled in by the experiencers' cultural expectations of what an afterlife should look like.  Indeed, so well-rehearsed is this argument that I am slightly wary about advancing it unchallenged, and have put some effort into researching it, starting with the frequently bandied around 'fact' that people from non-Christian cultures have non-Christian experiences of the afterlife. 


A quick search of the internet (not, I realise, necessarily the best way to come to conclusions on the relative statistical frequency of such things) brings up an awful lot of very similar Christian images of the afterlife, alongside a lot of reports of reincarnation (which is arguably not an 'experience of the afterlife' at all).  It is noticeable that accounts by Muslims, for instance, are almost totally lacking.  Could this then be evidence that there is something unique about the Christian experience (the slightly forced reason for dropping reincarnation notwithstanding)? 


Well, interestingly, although I have been unable to locate any Islamic testimonies, I have found a group of Hindu examples - though I had to search hard to find them.  This suggests that Christians are rather better at promoting their stories than Hindus are (at least via the Internet and 'western' media), which in turn suggests that the apparent uniformity of Christian experience is due to a form of 'anthropic effect' rather than the nature of the experience itself - in other words, although we think we are looking at a random sample of afterlife reports when we look at the Internet, the fact that we are using the Internet actually means that the sample is heavily biased in favour of 'western' religions such as Christianity and 'new-ageism'. 


So although Hindu testimonies are rare, I think those that exist are extremely informative.  (Why accounts of afterlife experienced - like reports of miracles - seem to be entirely absent from Muslim thought requires an explanation which I do not have.) 


On the whole, then, it does seem that the formula of oxygen starvation plus cultural indoctrination is the best available explanation, and does seem to cover all the evidence.  But within that 'cultural' label, there are many confusing aspects that I would like to see explained. 


Can Prayer Raise The Dead? 



'Affected by these extraordinary events, everyone waiting outside including my mother entered the mortuary and saw that I was alive! My parents praised the Lord for his love, greatness and faithfulness through this momentous event. And I give all the praise to the Lord, for he is the only one who deserves it.'
-Tim Yattara


My final remaining query is based on the testimony of those who did not themselves 'die'.  In some of the more remarkable cases, the recovery of the victim seems to coincide very closely with (usually Christian) prayer.  At least on the face of it, this seems to be more than we would expect from coincidence alone.  So is there any non-religious explanation for this? 


The only recognised medical explanation for 'Spontaneous Restoration of Circulation' (aka 'Lazarus Syndrome') is that although heartbeat may have been undetectably weak or slow, 'true death' has not actually occurred. 


It is of course virtually impossible to actually check whether the patient was 'truly dead' when the events occurred.  So let us first consider what we would expect to see if miraculous recoveries from 'true death' did not in fact occur. 
  
There would, of course, still be very occasional mis-diagnoses.  We should expect that these (and therefore reports of post-mortem recovery) should be more common in certain circumstances: when no obvious or uncontroversial cause of death is present (for instance, poisoning rather than decapitation); when medical examination has been cursory or non-existent, for whatever reason; when the latest medical equipment is not available.  This is not to say, of course, that modern medical practice can completely eliminate mis-diagnoses of death, but it should significantly reduce them; we might also expect that those cases that do arise in 'modern' countries might be better documented and more widely circulated.  We might also expect that cases will arise based on urban myth, chinese whispers and so on; again, such cases should be more common when they are hard to pin down in terms of verifiable names, dates, etc.  Finally, there are cases - such as that of Muamba - where heartbeat and respiration may have ceased for an extended period, but exceptional circumstances allow survival and resusciation.  This might be due to immediate access to advanced medical support, or simply extreme cold slowing the metabolism. 



As a final note, we might also expect that if a resurrection is truly miraculous - the result of supernatural intervention by an intelligent, all-powerful agency - there will be no lasting side-effects or handicap.  Although this is difficult to argue from first principles, it seems intuitively obvious that a divine being capable of miraculously granting renewed life can do so perfectly, without the niggling side-effects that plague conventional medicine. 


A genuine statistical analysis is beyond me, and I suspect that no-one has collected such data.  Flicking through the Fortean Times article mentioned above, we see the following: 


  • The Biblical story of Lazarus.  Clearly, this ticks virtually every box listed above, being long before any medical examination was usual or modern medicine available, and so poorly documented that we cannot be certain it was a real incident at all.  (For some reason, no other Biblical resuscitations - that of Jesus, for instance - are mentioned.) 
  • Fabrice Muamba, who although technically 'dead' for 78 minutes, received immediate and comprehensive medical attention meaning that his blood never stopped circulating.  There is no particular reason to look for any literal supernatural cause here (despite the comments from his family in the newspapers). 
  • Arun Bhasin (London, 2010), who was revived after 3 1/2 hours.  In this instance, both low temperatures (-10 C) and possibly advanced medicine ('a revolutionary new cardiac support machine', according to FT) apply.  Again, this would seem not to be a miraculous raising, particularly given the lasting brain damage and personality change that Bhasin seems to have suffered. 
  • Ng Swee Hock (Malaysia, 2011).  Collapsed after an argument (so no obvious cause of death), was declared dead in hospital and then revived 2 hours later. 
  • Michael Wilkinson (UK, 2009).  Found 'collapsed in bed', rushed to hospital, pronounced dead but pulse returned 30 minutes later.  Unfortunately, Wilkinson died 2 days later (it is not specified whether he regained consciousness); a post mortem found an undiagnosed (and unspecified in the article) cardiac condition.  The A&E consultant at the hospital attributed the recovery to the drugs that Wilkinson had been given. 
  • Dr Sean Thomas George (Brisbane, 2008).  Heart attack, dead for 85 minutes, attributes his recovery to 'a simple prayer' said by his wife.  George was in a modern hospital and was treated by well-qualified doctors during this period, without result. 
  • Tim Yattara (Mali, 1985), three years old.  Died from yellow fever, came back to life in a morgue five minutes after his mother prayed over him. 
  • Annonymous (Columbia, 2010).  Apparently died from 'a nerological condition' and later recovered. 
  • Judith Johnson (USA, 2007).  Heart attack - she was taken to the morgue before breathing was noticed, but a timescale is not given. 
  • Oran (Scotland, 6th century).  Exhumed alive a day after being buried - then burned for heresy after saying he had seen visions of Heaven and Hell. 
The first half of the article concludes with some words on possible medical explanations for 'Lazarus Syndrome':


'Several explanations for the phenomenon of Lazarus Syndrome were explored in [the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia].  One suggestion was that the heart might start following a delay in a previously administered dose of adrenaline reaching it.  Another explanation involved a gradual intracellular shift of potassium after previously administered bicarbonate.  [...]  Outside the hospital, a misdiagnosis of death might be a more likely explanation, probably due to a pulse being too faint for an untrained person to detect.'  It goes on to note that the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has suggested that 'Rapid manual ventilation without adequate time for exhalation can lead to dynamic hyperinflation of the lungs [...] leading to delayed venous return, low cardiac output and even cardiac arrest.'  In other words, normal circulation might return after artificial respiration is ceased. 


We can add to the above other cases, such as that of Daniel Ekechukwu, who was apparently killed in a car crash in Nigeria, certified dead, and injected with embalming fluid (!) before being resurrected by the prayers of a German missionary called Reinhardt Bonnke.  We are told that the timescale leaves little room for doubt: 'On the third day after the accident, Ekechukwu's body was taken in its coffin to a church in Ontisha, where Bonnke was preaching at a service. The body was taken out of its coffin and put on a table in the church's conference center, where several pastors began to pray [...] pastors lifted Ekechukwu from the coffin in which he had been laid, and were amazed when the man started to breathe again as they prayed for him' (again, my emphasis.) 


Some of these are more suspect than others.  The Ekechukwu case, for instance, seems to have numerous inconsistencies (not leastly that Ekechukwe was apparently alive and conscious for around 3 hours or more before being declared dead from a physical trauma that has left no external marks; and that he appears to be a church minister associated with Bonnke, who has been accused of fraud in the past).  Some, like Muamba, do not seem to require any supernatural explanation at all.  Others are harder to argue with, such as the cases of George and Yattara.  (Though I note that the Yattara case relies on the testimony of Yattara himself, now a pastor - who appears to have reported a story of persucution of Christians in Mali that turns out not to be true.  Whether this inaccuracy casts doubt on the 'resurrection' case I can only leave to the reader's judgement.) 


So on this final point, perhaps the decision is too close to call.  Without a proper statistical analysis (and it is hard to see how such a thing could be done, crossing multiple cultures worldwide equally), it is impossible to tell whether the 'difficult to explain away' cases are more common than we would expect from chance, or more common in the circumstances cited.  All we are left with is our more general objection to (or, for some people, acceptance of) the idea of medical miracles and a mind/body distinction. 

The Documentary Hypothesis

This is Week Twelve of Giford's Bible Study Programme.
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth...
- Gen 1:1 - 4:1+
Length: 5/5
Controversy: 5/5
Top Verses Rank: 7 (The most popular verse in this series, by some way!)

There are two main words used to refer to God in the OT. The first is Elohim, which simply means 'God' (or 'the Gods', but let's not go there). The second is YHWH (sometime given as Jehova or Yahweh), the four letters that represent the personal name of the Hebrew God. In the KJV - and most other English Bibles - the former is translated as 'God' and the latter as 'LORD' or 'LORD God'. Now flick through the first few chapters of the Bible (or better still, go through with two coloured highlighters). It is noticeable that - with the exception of the words spoken by the serpent - Elohim is used throughout Gen 1:1, whereas YHWH is used for the next few chapters.

Why might this be? There certainly seems to be some significance to it. If nothing else, it shows a break between Gen 1 and Gen 2-3. So it seems that there is some kind of break here. It is noticeable that this coincides with a break in the narrative. Up to Gen 2:3 is one complete, self-contained creation story. From Gen 2:4 onwards is another, separate story that contradicts the first. (For instance: in the famous six days of creation of Gen 1, the animals are formed before Adam; in Gen 2, they are formed after him and he names each one as it is created.)

So it appears that the first few books of the OT are compiled from several sources which are not always in agreement. This is supported by other evidence from other parts of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). One of these sources is called the Jahwist and another the Elohist, and of course there must have been a Redactor (editor) to combine them, and who seems to have left a few contributions of his own. Although there is still discussion about how many sources were used, how reliably they can be identified and in what order they were combined, it is generally accepted among OT scholars that this is how the first five (or six, seven or even eight) books of the OT came into their current form. Most also believe that another two sources - called the Deuteronomist and Priestly sources - can be detected

The Synoptic Problem


This is Week Eleven of Giford's Bible Study Programme.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
- Matt 27:45
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
- Mark 15:33
It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour,
- Luke 23:44
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom
- Matt 27:51
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
- Mark 15:38
and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.
- Luke 23:45
Length: 5/5
Controversy: 1/5

I did promoise in Week Two that we'd come back to the death of Jesus. I would now like to introduce a slightly more complex idea than we've been dealing with up to now. Let us break with habit and actually look at the texts describing Jesus' death.

We were looking, if you recall, at Matthew's claim of the dead rising at Jesus' death. By looking at the first three Gospel accounts side-by-side, we can see that Matthew, Mark and Luke are identical or near-identical in several places, such as those quoted above.
It beggars belief that such close parallels could arise by chance in separate retellings of the same events. If we were police officers looking at witness statements with this kind of similarity, we would certainly believe that the witnesses had colluded. Teachers marking exam scripts like these would naturally assume plagiarism. So we can safely assume that there is some link between the three Gospel accounts, more than just having been written by witnesses to the same events. Exactly how that happened is not so clear - it might be that two of the gospels are copied from a third; that one is copied from a second which is in turn copied from the third; that all three are copied from some now-lost source; or so on. But what is clear is that there is a link between the texts, more than can be explained simply by them being different eyewitness accounts of the same events (although this does remain the claim made by some fundamentalists).

But there is a further problem. Let's look at the text following the above two sections and before the mention of the centurion:
...torn in two, from top to bottom and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion...
- Matt 27:51-54
Mark has no text here:
...was torn in two, from top to bottom. When the centurion...
- Mark 15:38-39
...torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!' And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion...
- Luke 23:46-47
Clearly, these are not copies of each other. Indeed, they are rather contradictory - Jesus is already dead by this point in Mark and Matthew, with his last words being 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'. In Luke, Jesus lives until after the curtain has torn and his last words are very different.

Although I have chosen Jesus' last moments to illustrate this, it is a problem that recurs throughout the Gospels (you can look for youself by scrolling up and down on the link above). In places, the 'Synoptic Gospels' - Matthew, Mark and Luke - are so close that they must surely be based upon each other. Yet in others, they are so different that they must equally surely not be based on each other. And the Fourth Gospel, that of John, is never in such close agreement with the first three as they are with each other - in this example, we have no curtain, no 'darkness' and no centurion in John's version - and a third set of last words for Jesus.

This is the 'Synoptic Problem'.

The most widely accepted solution is that Matthew and Luke are each basing their gospels on Mark, plus separate (different) sources. So in the example above, Matthew has added the story of the earthquake and mass resurrection, whereas Luke has added the extra set of last words (and removed Mark's version of the last words). This makes more sense than (for example) thinking that Luke and Mark both independently decided to edit out the same section of Matthew, both here and in many other places. There are other lines of argument pointing to Mark as the earliest Gospel, but they are beyond the scope of this week's lesson.
There are a few problems with this idea, which we will come to in future weeks, but this idea of 'Markan priority' is firmly established among New Testament scholars. Of course, it follows from this that Matthew and Luke (and therefore Acts, which is universally regarded as being by the same author as Luke) are not eye-witness accounts. There are many levels to the Synoptic Problem. 

Sunday 15 July 2012

The Problem of Evil - Solved

This is Week Ten of Giford's Bible Study Programme.
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, 'Whence comest thou?'
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, 'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.'
And the LORD said unto Satan, 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?'
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, 'Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.'
And the LORD said unto Satan, 'Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand.'
So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

Job 1:6-12
Length: 3/5

Controversy: 0/5

The Book of Job is one of the truly great philosophical treatisies of the ancient world. It deals with timeless questions, such as how people of religious faith can understand the existence of suffering in a divinely ordered world, and why good people suffer while the evil prosper; and the author does not seem to feel compelled to come to easy answers.

Unfortunately, it appears that a later writer has added a prose introduction and coda to the poem, in which we are given a simple reason for Job's suffering: Satan has made a bet with God. So the book as it stands today offers a trite and simplistic vision of a cruel and whimsical deity as the explanation for evil.

The central, and much longer, part of the book (also believed to contain a lengthy insert by a third author) deals with Job's friends trying to explain to him why a just man such as himself must suffer. They try a range of arguments, with a heavy emphasis on 'You must have done something to deserve this, God must have His reasons for torturing you, and it is not for you to know them.' With the addition of the introduction quoted above, we can of course see the answer to this. God's reason for torturing Job is because of a pompous bet with Satan, and God Himself later shows up and refuses to explain this to Job in what can only be described as a rant:
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? [...] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; [...] Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? [...] Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? he that reproveth God, let him answer it.
- God
The foundations of the Earth are a subject we will be returning to.  There will be more on unicorns in Week 15.

Daily Mail Turns 50 Shades of Puce

As is so often the case, what the Daily Mail finds 'outrageous', I find quite amusing. 

I notice that (as so often seems to be the case in Daily Mail articles) it is not actually specified who is 'outraged'.  Presumably not any avid reader of the Bible, who will be familiar with passages such as
My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.
I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.
I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone

Saturday 7 July 2012

The Real Ten Commandments

This is Week Nine of Giford's Bible Study Programme.
And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: Ye shall destroy their altars.

For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.

Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.

Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

Exod 34:10-28
Length: 3/5
Controversy: 2/5

It will come as no surprise that there is one - and only one - set of commandments described in the Bible as 'The Ten Commandments'. What might be slightly surprising is that it's not the list that most people think of.

Although these are clearly described as 'the ten commandments' in the text, and the more familiar set (of which there are not ten) are not, this is a step too far for many Christians. I have yet to hear of any Christian group demanding that these be displayed in courtrooms in the US, for instance.

For more details, see here and here.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Bath Forum

Now here's a funny thing that I noticed in the press recently. 
There is an organisation local to me known as Healing On The Streets, or HOTS.  I have come across them a few times, setting up banners offering faith healing in the local city centre, and sending a delegation to a local Creation / evolution debate (ironically serving to undermine the Creationist, who was trying to argue that Intelligent Design is not a religious viewpoint).  They seem to include members of Bath City Church, based in the Bath Forum - hence the title of this post. 

It seems that they have been taken to the Advertising Standards Agency over claims made on their website and some of their fliers.  An article appeared on a local news website.  Under the headline 'It's official: God does heal say Advertising Standards Authority ruling', it reads in part:
A Christian group is to be allowed to claim that ‘God can heal’ following a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority yesterday. 
But Healing on the Streets has been told it can only use the phrase on its website and cannot include it on printed material.

[...]

Speaking after the ruling, a spokesman for Healing on the Streets, which is based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, welcomed the ruling and said the group would “continue to express our beliefs”. 
He said: “The revised adjudication does not apply to what is on our website, meaning we can continue to express our beliefs that God can and does heal, as well as providing information and testimonies explaining all about Healing on the Streets.

“HOTS Bath will continue to fulfil its commitment to demonstrate the love of God through healing of body, mind and spirit on the streets of Bath and elsewhere.”
A spokesman for the ASA confirmed: “We acknowledged that HOTS volunteers believed that prayer could treat illness and medical conditions, and that therefore the ads did not promote false hope.

“However, we noted we had not seen evidence that people had been healed through the prayer of HOTS volunteers and concluded that the ad could encourage false hope in those suffering from the named conditions and therefore were irresponsible.”
So how does that sound?  A win for the faith-healers?  A bit 50/50? 

Well, flick over to the actual verdict from the ASA

There were three points of complaint brought against HOTS.  The first of these was:  
the claim that the advertiser could heal the named conditions was misleading and could [not] be substantiated
and the second:
the ad was irresponsible, because it provided false hope to those suffering from the named conditions ['Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction ... Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness' were mentioned in the leaflet] 
Ruling: 1. & 2. Upheld
The ASA acknowledged that HOTS sought to promote their faith and the hope for physical healing by God through the claims in the ad. However, we were concerned that the prominent references to healing and the statement "You have nothing to lose, except your sickness" in combination with the references to medical conditions for which medical supervision should be sought such as arthritis, asthma, MS, addictions, depression and paralysis, could give consumers the expectation that, by receiving prayer from HOTS volunteers, they could be healed of the conditions listed or other sicknesses from which they suffered. We concluded the ad was misleading.
Pretty clear-cut.  So it must be the third point that was the win for HOTS, right? 
The ASA challenged whether the ads could discourage essential treatment for conditions for which medical supervision should be sought.

Ruling: 3. Upheld
We understood that HOTS volunteers were instructed to give a letter to the recipients of prayer which told them they should not stop taking their medication or following the advice of medical professionals. However, we considered that, because the leaflet made claims that through the prayer offered by HOTS volunteers people could be healed of specific medical conditions for which medical supervision should be sought such as arthritis, asthma, MS, addictions, depression and paralysis, the ad could discourage people, and particularly the vulnerable or those suffering from undiagnosed symptoms, from seeking essential treatment for medical conditions for which medical supervision should be sought. We concluded the ad breached the Code.
Erm, so hang on a moment.  What the ASA has actually ruled is that the advert is misleading, that claims of healing cannot be substantiated, that it breaches 'CAP Code rules 1.3 (Social responsibility), 3.1 and 3.6 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), 12.1 and 12.6 (Medicines, medical devices, health-related products and beauty products).'  But the ASA has ruled that websites do not fall under its jurisdiction. 

So this is the great victory leading HOTS to claim that 'God can heal' - that misleading, unsubstantiated and socially irresponsible advertising is outside the remit of the ASA when placed on a website.  Colour me unimpressed.