It has long been known that Mormons periodically indulge in that freaky sounding practice known as "Baptizing for the Dead". However, far from being a voodoo-esque ritual involving rotting corpses and the exhuming of graves, I think they merely baptize volunteers standing in for the deceased. Now the Catholic Church is weighing in on the issue. According to John Pieret, the Vatican is refusing to hand over baptismal and death registries, which are commonly used for genealogical research, for fear that the LDS Church will use the information to re-baptise good dead Catholics. This is a far cry from the slaughter than ensued during the 16th century when the Anabaptists tried to do the same thing to the same people, albeit while they were still living. I'd say the Catholics are slipping a little.

Of course baptising dead people is a completely loony activity, but it is not without biblical support. There is one puzzling and unexplained mention of the practice in I Corinthians 15:29; "Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them"? It is such an offhand reference with no explanation or supporting documentation for the practice that theologians and biblical scholars have wondered about the issue ever since. I think the only way to understand such a weird practice is to see it in the light of a brand spanking new religion. Hence the Mormon example is crucial to understanding what factors and motivations were likely present in the early church.

Joseph Smith actually invented the current practice in answer to a personal dilemma he was faced with. His parents had been very supportive of his new religious direction, but they had tragically died before he had fully evolved his thinking and doctrines. One of the major doctrines of his new found LDS church was that a person could not obtain salvation unless they had been properly baptized, the Mormon way. Yet, if that were true, the prophet's own parents would burn forever in hellfire, even though they likely would have accepted if they had lived just a few years longer. Rather than admit that his whole premise was ridiculous and unjust, Smith scoured the bible looking for some hint of a way that this problem could be resolved. It was at that time when the Mormon leader stumbled onto the verse about baptizing for the dead and realized he had found an escape clause. He immediately instituted the practice and saved his parents from eternal damnation. I think it is pretty obvious that the exact sentiments were swirling around the early church and leaders would have had to find a way to placate new believers concerned about previously deceased relatives who had not had the opportunity to accept the gospel.

Of course after the church had been the dominant religious force for a couple of generations these concerns largely faded and the catholics eventually replaced the baptism of the dead with the practice of baptizing newborn infants ASAP (just to make sure). Yet both systems still manage to make a mockery of the original idea of baptism being a personal choice to dedicate oneself to god, to immerse oneself symbolically in death and rise from the water as a new, born again creature - which was kind of the point of the thing in the first place.

These days most theists seem to view god as good and loving and beneficent, ceaselessly putting himself out for the benefit of mankind. I was reminded of this in a post over at Atheist Revolution where VJack is attempting to make the point that "religious belief is part of the human condition". It wasn't directly spelled out that way in the post, but it just struck me as I was reading that the idea of god being compassionate and merciful has become so ubiquitous in modern society that we scarcely remember that the ancients didn't always view him with the same tenderness.

To put it bluntly most of the gods of past were complete assholes. They lived their own lives up on Mount Olympus or in the feasting halls of Asgard and didn't really spend a lot of time worrying about the welfare of us mortals. In fact, the occasional human who did get singled out for divine attention usually ended up suffering horribly as a consequence. Let's face it; there is a reason the Old Testament emphasizes the need to fear god.

I think Bernard Cromwell says it best in his Aurthurian triolgy, The Warlord Chronicles, "To the gods we are like mice in the thatch. The less they notice us the better". Modern theologians anxiously wrestle with the problem of how evil can exist side by side with a benevolent and omnipotent god. That wasn't really much of an issue in the brutal world of the bronze age when the gods regularly entertained themselves with our misery. That's why nobody blinked an eye when they first invented the doctrine of eternal hellfire. What else could one expect from a god?

The idea of god really caring about our welfare only recently emerged with our growing awareness of social justice and says more about evolving human moral values rather than anything about the divine.

This story begins, like so many other creation myths, with castaways floating on an endless ocean with no beginning nor end in sight. In the Hindu version it is a giant cobra somehow drifting with the tide while the immortal Vishnu sleeps soundly within its coils. It is night and all is quiet and at peace. It is only at dawn when things begin to get a little weird(er).

At the first crack of daylight Vishnu awakens and immediately proceeds to sprout a giant lotus flower from out of his bellybutton (at least he didn't pull it out his ass). But that's not the really weird part... the blossom happens to have none other than Brahma himself sitting on it. Since Vishnu is too lazy to create the world himself, he makes poor Brahma do all the work; making the land, sky and the cosmos out of the three parts of the lotus, then planting all the grass and trees and forming all the beasts and bugs and fish and birds.

Many modern Hindus take this story metaphorically, as a way of understanding the formation of the cosmos. "Vishnu is the personification of the eternal multiverse that exists forever without any beginning or end. Brahma is the personification of our temporary physical universe that was created in the big bang".

The search for porn continues to drive my blog traffic. A few week ago I posted a quick note mentioning that it was my 18th wedding anniversary and I foolishly put the title as "18 years". At the time I didn't even consider how that title would show up as a Google search term (sometimes I'm can be kind of naive).

Now I find myself suddenly inundated with people googling for legal-aged teen pornography. Oh well... at least it's keeping the kiddie porn dealers away.

I've written a number of times about how faith healing is stupid and ineffective. And it seems like every time I do, I get some anonymous commenter showing up to share some impossible miracle story with me. Here is the latest one I received:

"I am the mother of a medically documented miracle. My son was born without lungs and given ZERO chance of survival.There was nothing the doctors could do. They took "death" pictures of him. They tried to convince us that it was IMPOSSIBLE for his lungs to grow after birth. They thought we were a bunch of Jesus Freaks (we are). He is now a HEALTHY seven year old".

Okay, let me get this straight. Your child was born without lungs and somehow didn't instantly die at birth, you prayed for him and then he grew a complete set of new lungs? And this is all perfectly documented? I can't help but wonder why wasn't this in the news and written up in medical journals everywhere? I can't speak for other atheists and skeptics, but a person spontaneously growing a whole new set of lungs is exactly the kind of miracle that would convince me that there was actually something to this whole faith healing thing. Of course it is one thing to leave an anonymous comment on a blog and another to provide the actual proof.

So here is my challenge, open to anybody who thinks they have a medically documented account of an actual faith healing (no stories of sore backs feeling better or of people surviving cancer - it has to be something impossible to have happened on its own): Send me copies of the documentation and any medical reports or official write-ups and I will admit to the world that I was wrong and that faith healing is true. I will then apologize for my stupidity and turn from being an atheist.

So today is the National Day of Prayer down in the States. I wasn't going to comment seeing as how it's not my country being swept up in a wave of sectarian religious nonsense, but it was interesting to note that what started out as an ecumenical endeavour has now changed into a narrow conservative Christian event in which other faiths are excluded.

It brings home the point I made last week, that fundamentalist and evangelical Christians don't really believe in Freedom of Religion. They seriously want their religion to be imposed on everyone else by the government. That is the goal and they will stop at nothing less, for they feel that god will surely bring judgement against America if they allow other religions (and non-religion) to flourish.

Stop me if I've already told this one, but the whole attitude reminds me of an episode from my teenage years. Our family was driving down to Vancouver for the weekend when we passed the new Sikh temple that was still under construction in view of the highway. My parents became visibly agitated: "How dare they be allowed to build that monstrosity in plain view", they said. "If those people want to do stuff like that they should go back to their own country. Canada is a Christian nation". The ironic part? We were on our way to a missions conference which was raising money to help build churches in India.

In the beginning there was only water and sky. There was no land and all the creatures floated on the sea with nowhere to set their feet. Even the gods wondered what was below the water, but nobody knew.

Finally Napi decided to find out. He called over Duck and asked him to dive down as far as he could to find out what was at the bottom of all things. The duck went down, down into the water, as far as he could go, but he was unable to reach beyond the depths and at last came gasping to the surface empty handed. So Napi called Otter, but the same thing happened once again. Then, presumably because he had run out of animals known for their swimming ability, he sent down Badger. Unsurprisingly, Badger failed at the task as well.

Finally, Napi saw a muskrat floating by and pleaded with him to go down to the very bottom of the ocean. So Muskrat took a deep breath and dove beneath the surface. He was gone a long time and the others had almost given him up for drowned when he suddenly came bursting out of the water grasping a small pawful of mud.

Napi took the ball of mud, dried it and formed it into the earth we know today. He carved out the mountains and the valleys, the rivers and lakes and forests. Then the creatures rejoiced and made their home on the good earth. So the next time you find yourself enjoying some beautiful scenery, thank Napi - and his muskrat friend.

I got a bookstore gift card recently and finally got around to buying a book. I really wanted to get Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin but I'm cheap and it's still only in hardcover for a whopping $28 at the store. So I decided to console myself with The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond instead. I've only read the first chapter but I'm loving it already and I thought I would occasionally post my thoughts as I read.

Two points really grabbed my interest so far:

The first point is that not only is the chimpanzee our closest relative in the animal kingdom, but we are it's closest relative as well. It's something we often overlook because it doesn't fit our ideas about our natural place in the hierarchy of things, but chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas or other apes. As I read it and the realization of what it meant dawned on me, it actually felt like the ground under my feet started shifting and my perspective seemed momentarily skewed.

The other point that took me aback was the timeline of human evolution which Diamond briefly goes over. It was nothing I hadn't heard before in other places but it just struck me as I was reading how very recent our cultural acquisitions are. Sure we've had big brains and the corresponding ability to control fire and to create rough stone tools for a couple of hundred thousand years, but the imagination needed for abstract thought (the thing that really separates us from other animals) has only existed for about 40,000 years. That may sound like a big number by Young Earth Creationist standards, but it's minuscule compared to 6 to 8 million years that have passed since the hominid and chimp lineages broke apart.

I'll post more as I read. In the meantime check out this article from ScienceDaily on the latest genetic evidence helping to pinpoint human population changes over the past 200,000 years (the time of our last common ancestor known as Mitochondrial Eve). It seems that about 150,000 years ago two distinct lineages of humans broke apart (one in Southern Africa and the other in Eastern Africa) and evolved separately for about 100,000 years. By 70,000 years ago human populations hit a low point, numbering only around two thousand - basically one disaster short of becoming extinct. Soon afterwards the population began to surge and, as their territories expanded, the two groups began to merge together once again. This rapid expansion is also thought to have led to the out-of-Africa migrations about 60,000 years ago.

I had a commenter complain at me the other day that I wrote the name Yahweh in a post. They made the (technically correct) point that god's name is actually an unpronounceable YHVH, a sort of ancient version of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Of course, if it was really so unpronounceable then why did all those people get stoned for blasphemy on the Life of Brian? (That was a documentary right?) I'm going to overrule my anonymous complainer and keep using Yahweh despite the criticism because it is the common English rendition of the word.

The reason I mention it here is because it relates to a topic I've been thinking about the last few weeks. I think that we give Christians too much credit when we refer to god as if his name was actually "God". And I'm not even talking about the capitalization thing. The generic word, god, is very ill defined and can mean anything from a petty dictator with superpowers living on Mount Olympus to some nebulous spirit-force existing outside of time and space.

The thing is that Christians often conflate the two in their arguments and make appeals to the nebulous version to justify their claims about a specific being who is described in great (if sometimes conflicting) detail in the bible. They shouldn't get to have it both ways and I think we are at fault for letting them get away with it. The fact is that they believe in a god named Yahweh. The evidence shows that that particular god is descended from a Canaanite deity - one of the Elohim, the seventy sons of El.

I've always felt awkward explaining to someone that I am an atheist because I felt that I had to instantly justify my non-belief to the nebulous version of god (to which I am somewhat sympathetic yet don't believe in for lack of evidence). Now I just like to say that I don't feel there is any more evidence for Yahweh, the god of the bible, than there is for any other of the thousands of gods ever proposed by mankind. Wording it that way forces them to defend their belief in that one specific version of god - "Yahweh is the one true god because... ". It changes the entire shape of the conversation very quickly.

Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars posted an interesting theocratic quote the other day. The quote is from Gary North and dates all the way back to 1982, but it really sums up the thinking behind theocratic efforts.

"So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God".

It is clear that such theocrats not only want to dispose of secular government, but they also want the power to exterminate all other religions from the land. They explicitly do not believe in freedom of religion. They plan to use the "doctrine of religious liberty" to gain power and then take away that same liberty from others. I remember learning this disturbing fact as a young man at a bible study discussion group when the topic of freedom of religion came up. I was quite surprised to learn that I was the only one there who believed in freedom of religion.

So where do these ideas come from? It may surprise people who don't see any inherent conflict in a secular civil government existing side by side with a plurality of religions, that theocracy is actually a key biblical doctrine (at least of the Old Testament). The Old Testament is chock full of stories about the nation of Israel turning its back on god by allowing people to worship false idols. The pattern is always the same circle of disobedience and punishment, repentance and reestablishment: Israel would turn to god and he would set his chosen people free. Then they would get complacent and before you knew it idolaters weren't being properly put to death. Soon idol worship became rampant and god would get angry and bring devastating judgement against the land (usually in the form of either famine or being slaughtered by other idol worshipping armies). Inevitably the cycle would start again with a "good" king taking the throne, smashing down the heathen altars and forcing everyone back to worshipping Yahweh.

The lesson of these stories is clear: a nation that forces its citizens to worship the true god will be prosperous and invincible, while those that allow freedom of religion will inevitably falter and collapse. Sadly, this thinking still pervades a significant amount of fundamentalist thinking. No matter that they have dispensed with most of the rest of the Old Testament (the parts they don't like) or that the New Testament has exactly the opposite message (all that "render unto Caesar"stuff). No matter that forcing someone to say they believe something they don't is not really an effective evangelization strategy. No matter that every theocracy in the world has been an economic and human rights disaster - the theocrats still think that they are capable of bringing heaven down to earth.

I notice (via Sandwalk) that the Discovery Institute has posted a review applauding the makers of Expelled. The article is is filled with the typical lies and nonsense that we have all come to expect from the official mouthpiece of the Intelligent Design movement. Here are a few of the more outrageous things the institute's president, Bruce Chapman, had to say:

"The over-the-top attacks of most official reviewers--offended by the film's message, not its quality--may turn out to help in some quarters. These are the exact same reviewers who commonly tell us not to object to offensive Hollywood products, but just to judge a film for its production quality. By now a large share of the population is wise to such hypocritical standards".

The only shred of truth in that whole statement was the admittance that the movie is being trashed by film critics everywhere. The rest is a typical tactic of conservative religious blowhards, trying to pin the "sleaze merchant" label on some mysterious entity by the name of Hollywood, as if there were a conspiracy of media elites who are out to destroy christianity and turn innocent children into sexually depraved sodomites. You know, it might be a more convincing argument if he could give us just one example of a reputable film critic telling their audience to ignore the message of a documentary (any documentary) and to just watch the pretty pictures instead. Film critics just don't do that.

"This film is going to be a classic and there is nothing the fulminating opposition can do about it. (In recent days they even resorted to threatening lawsuits, just confirming their growing reputation for ill-liberal spite.)". Those lawsuits aren't coming from us evil Darwinists, but from the companies whose property the makers of Expelled shamelessly stole and used without permission or licence.

There is no way that we, for our part, could have persuaded the evangelizing atheists in science--that is, the big guns of Darwinism--to let their true personalities appear in front of a camera so people actually could witness their furious, unreasoning contempt. Hmm... you'd have trouble getting outspoken atheists like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins to tell you what they really think about religion? Have you even read their blogs? You can say what you want about those two, but shy and retiring are not usually the first words that come to mind.

And that brings up another point. Chapman is basically admitting that the producers used trickery and deceit to gain those interviews. He goes on, unwittingly, to confirm that a few paragraphs later when he says, "Frankly, I not only was skeptical, but also suspicious when I first heard about the film project a couple of years ago". This shows that the producers, as well as insiders at the Discovery Institute, knew what the true intentions of the film were more than a year before those interviews were done under false pretenses. This proves unequivocally that the producers were flat out lying when they said that they changed the film's direction after the interviews were collected (as if we didn't already know it was a lie).

There is so much more in the review that I could pull apart (like when they try to make it seem that evolutionists all believe that space aliens came down in flying saucers to create life), but I'll leave a few bones for others to pick. You know, one of the main reasons I ended up leaving the church was because of all the "liars for Jesus" I kept coming across as I began a serious study of the issues. The Discovery Institute is one such organization that turned me off religion for good. I don't see how spreading empty propaganda and falsehood is going to help their cause in the long run. I just don't get why people who claim to be purveyors of truth would resort to such outright fraud to make their case. It makes me wonder if they even really believe it themselves anymore.

This is the seventh and final post in an ongoing series on the Book of Enoch:

The last section of the Book of Enoch is all about the judgement that god is planning to inflict upon the earth in the last days. You see, god is concerned about all the violence on the earth and wants to put a stop to it, so he decides that "all the idols of the heathen shall be abandoned, And the temples burned with fire, And they shall remove them from the whole earth, And they (i.e. the heathen) shall be cast into the judgement of fire, And shall perish in wrath and in grievous judgement for ever". Yep, killing and torturing everybody - that will solve the violence problem.

Most of this section is filled with repetitive and unimaginative threats of doom and woe against us sinners, but there are a few small gems like this one: "Thus I speak and declare unto you: He who hath created you will overthrow you, And for your fall there shall be no compassion, And your Creator will rejoice at your destruction". I love the way Enoch unabashedly celebrates the imminent destruction of the human race at the hands of a wrathful god. If you're gonna worship a delightfully misanthropic asshole, don't pussyfoot around it the way most modern christians seem to do - embrace it or get off the pew. It's nothing personal, it's just that god hates you.

One final note: at the very end there is a small, leftover fragment describing the birth of Noah. It is an absolutely hilarious account in which baby Noah somehow pops out of the womb completely white and completely red at the same time ("And his body was white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose"). The infant is also described as having long white hair and beautiful eyes that shone beams of light as bright as the sun. When the midwife tried to pick baby Noah up for the first time, he stood up and started talking directly to god. The father, Lamech, got so freaked out at the spectacle that he went running to find the exorcist. Methuselah eventually calmed Lamech down and managed to convince him that his wife hadn't been cheating on him with some renegade angel. And so they all lived happily ever after.... until it started raining.

Have you heard about China's crazy plan to stop the rain from falling on the Olympic opening ceremonies? A few days before the beginning, organizers plan to blast rockets loaded with silver iodide into the rain clouds in a preemptive strike against the weather. Meteorologists are hoping the chemicals will start the rain flowing earlier than expected and thus will "pre-drain" the clouds.

Well it's official, China is the new superpower. Once a nation starts controlling the weather they have taken over god's rightful position of master of the earth. If that drought in the southern US gets any worse they'll need to start praying to the Chinese instead. And maybe now we can start blaming natural disasters on someone who really exists.

This is the sixth post in an ongoing series about the Book of Enoch:

This section of the Enochian delusion is the craziest by far. It starts off with Enoch coming down from heaven to talk to his son Methuselah about some bad dreams he has been having. Like all nightmares these seem, at first glance, to be nothing more than gibberish - the fragmented remains of irrational childhood fears. However, in Enoch's case they apparently have symbolic meaning of a prophetic nature.

The main one is obviously a recap of the story about the angels coming down to mate with the "daughters of man". The dream-vision, however, features stars falling from the sky and turning to bulls of various hues with "privy members like those of horses" (I guess angels really do have big dicks). The stars-turned-bulls soon begin to mount the cows which then give birth to elephants, camels and donkeys. But these are evidently not just regular elephants, camels and donkeys, for they quickly start to devour all the regular oxen in the fields.

It is at this part of the dream that the earth begins to flood. Luckily for the regular cattle a white bull gets turned into a man and, noticing a boat floating by, hops in and sails away while the rest of the world drowns; including all of the carnivorous beasts birthed from the stars-with-horse's-genitals. After the floodwaters drain away and the boat settles back down, the white man gets out followed by three young bulls - a white one, a red one and a black one from which all the races of men are descended (this makes so much more sense than monkeys).

Now this is when the nightmare gets kind of confusing. The three bulls began to bring forth all kind of different animals (lions, tigers, wolves, dogs, hyenas, wild boars, foxes, squirrels, swine, falcons, vultures, kites, eagles, and ravens) Sadly, all the different kinds of animals started biting and eating each other. And just when you thought things couldn't be going worse, a sheep is born which then gives birth to twelve more sheep (the 12 tribes of Israel), which decide to live with some wolves, who start chasing them and trying to kill them. But the sheep keep multiplying and start to overrun the pasture so the wolves resort to throwing the newborn lambs into the river to get rid of them. At this the shepherd arrives and starts punishing the wolves for their behaviour.

The rest of the nightmare continues on in this way. I won't bog you down with the details (long story short - lots of weird animals running around slaughtering each other and ascending thrones), but it supposedly matches the yet-to-occur history of the nation of Israel up to the time of the Maccabeans, after which comes the final judgement at the end of time.

Here is a science story that creationists will love. Paleontologists have unearthed the fossilized remains of a snake with legs. The specimen is 95 million years old and the legs are nothing more than vestigial little stubbies dangling from it's heinie. From a scientific point of view this find is yet another good example of a transitional species and it fills in a crucial gap in the record of snake evolution from mere tunneling lizards to limbless wonders.

At first glance it seems to be one more bit in the growing body of evidence which plainly supports the validity of evolutionary theory. Still I predict that the creationists will love this one, because they will claim that such a creature is told about in the bible.

Genesis tells the story of how the wily serpent tricked Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. As punishment for this treacherous engineering of the downfall of mankind, god punished the serpent, telling him that he would "crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:14). Many creationists believe that this means that the serpent originally had legs and feet but lost them because of this curse. I guess it must have died after having walked from the Garden of Eden to Lebanon where it became fossilized just as the last of its legs were withering away.

I can guarantee that many a fundamentalist preacher will be boasting about this discovery from the pulpits on Sunday, blithely ignoring any of the scientific facts and thinking that it confirms their crazy beliefs.