The Easter Story: Where the "Trinity" Becomes an Absurdity

Someone at work awhile ago told me that her Sunday School, or maybe her fundy college, taught that the Trinity is like the three forms of Water.  Each has its own "identity" but they're all H20.  So I asked why Jesus referred to God in the third person.  Her answer:  "good question."

 

She didn't have a good answer.

 

Tonight I had the opportunity to go to a Good Friday concert at a Methodist church.  They requested no applause, and there was a prayer/mini-sermon at the beginning, but otherwise it was just a concert with a peculiar theme.

During the brief speechifying, I sensed some awkwardness, as if they were embarrassed to tell such a ridiculous story.  Or maybe I was projecting.  *shrug*  Anyway, during the more boring parts of the concert instead of thinking about Christ's suffering and his love for "each of us," (except many groups he slams in the gospels), I found myself thinking of how the concept of the Trinity makes no sense in light of the Easter story.

The basic story is that we are stained by original sin, or sins we've committed, or by being sinful beings by design, and only animal sacrifices could save us from God's wrath until Christ allowed himself to be betrayed, marched through the streets of Jerusalem in shame, and then killed by crucifiction.  .... then he gets put into a tomb (typical of the time) and then disappears from it, and then appears to people, Elvis-style, for a time... and then goes to live with God.

...except that he is God.  And in the story, he cries out to God, "Why hast thou forsaken me?"  Now, if he was so powerful that he could have liberated himself if he'd wanted to, why would he say that?  And why refer to God in the second and third persons?  And if he could decide to forgive us via his "sacrifice" of being dead for part of a weekend, why not just decide to forgive us just cuz?  They're his rules.  He can change them... unless he's not all-powerful.

So... the Trinity is problem for several reasons:

• Jesus refers to himself as "Son of Man"
• Jesus refers to God in the second and third person
• Jesus didn't have the power to jump off the cross
• Jesus was expecting God to intervene for him
• Jesus as half-God and half-human was more in keeping with stories of his time
• Jesus didn't willingly sacrifice himself - he could have turned himself in rather than be betrayed
• In the cannibalistic meal he references himself as a sacrifice, but sacrifice to whom?  Can a god be sacrificed to appease himself?  That's just plain messed up.
• Jesus says the "father" acts through him, not that he is  his own father
• Jesus "sits at the right hand" of God.  How can God sit next to himself?

Well, at least that many reasons.  Even if you accept everything else as historically true in the Bible, the Trinity seems like a big stretch.

Why does it matter?  Well, the reason this came up with my coworker is that when I asked why Baptists don't consider Mormons to be Christians despite the words "Jesus Christ" being right in the title of their denomination, she brought up the Trinity.  She said they can't be "Christian" because they don't believe Jesus is God.  Apparently, even though they say that believing in salvation through Christ's sacrifice is key to being a Christian, there's a whole list of things they will hold other Christians to. 

 The Nicene Creed, which was codified in 325, is still kind of central, but you'd think that you could drop one or two without being ex-communicated by fundies.  But... take a look at this other version, known as the Apostles' Creed, which goes easy on the Trinity crap.  Yet fundy theology doesn't say that the people who say those words aren't Christians.

What a fucked up theology and fucked up bunch of followers.  If there really were an all-powerful deity behind this, couldn't he have fixed it?

That Idiotic Duggar Family

Duggar baby #20 died in utero.  They dug the thing out and gave her a funeral, complete with photos of mom holding the fetus' hand.  My Christian Facebook friends were bawling their eyes out.  Yes, the stupid TV show exploiting these crazy people showed that shite.

Oh puh-leeze.  That woman should have had her tubes tied years ago.  Instead, she's allowing her body to be used by Jebus to show America that Christians should increase their numbers by, well, increasing their numbers.

How can someone who is 45 years old and has had 19 children really expect #20 to be healthy?  #19 had problems.  Focus on that one.   In fact, focus on all the ones that are still little enough to need their real parents, not teenage siblings acting as surrogate parents so the parents can focus on babies.  The whole arrangment is sick, sick, sick.

Not to be outdone, TLC is starting a "reality" show about their goofy "friends"called the Bates family.  I wonder if they own a motel.  With 18 kids they'll need that many rooms.

This "be fruitful and multiply" movement is really creepy.  And curiously, not every mom is happy to be used as a breeding mare.

This brings up a little-known cult called "Quiverfull" that believes in population explosion of Christians by using woman as breeders.  One of their successful moms was Andrea Yates, who was so determined to keep her kids sin-free that she drowned all five of them to keep them from going to Hell.  Andrea Yates has sought permission to escape from state custody every Sunday to return to the slavery of her church for an hour.  That's like letting the Manson girls visit Charlie in the hoosegow for an hour a week.  Really?  WTF?  Her attorney describes this as a "baby step" towards rejoining the community.  uhhhh which community?  Why should anyone who has killed FIVE children be taking baby steps anywhere but within the walls of the nut house?

Another One Bites the Dust

http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Minister_Steps_Down__145835335.html?storySection=story

Dateline:  Tallahassee:  Minister Steps Down, Says She's An Atheist

A local minister stepped down from her post just before announcing she is an atheist.

A member of Lake Jackson United Methodist in Tallahassee says Teresa MacBain left the church Friday, March 30.

A day later, a video was posted online from a recent American Atheist Conference.

In it, MacBain came out as an atheist to the crowd.

Church members are meeting tonight to discuss leadership plans in her absence.

MacBain was with the church since 2009.

Very courageous of her to "come out" in public that way.  I hope we'll be hearing more from her in the atheist blogosphere!

The Decorah Eagles

 

Two babies have hatched and the third one is trying to break out of his shell today!  Very exciting! If you get a chance, check out the live webcam:

Broadcasting live with Ustream

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

Book Review: How We Decide

http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0618620117

I bought this book for my Kindle because I was having a hard time deciding what book to download and read next. And surprisingly, it applies to atheism! Doesn't everything apply to atheism?

This book is about the neurology of decision-making. Each chapter addresses certain types of decisions, and I admit to being totally bored by some of the examples. I'm a girl. If you want to use a football play as an example in a book, keep the description under a paragraph, mmkay?  There's a multi-page description of some Superbowl play, which could have been described in about a paragraph but for some reason had to start years earlier than the actual play.  I dunno what the point of that chapter was.  My eyes glazed over and I just had to skip to the next chapter, ...which has an overlong description of some military event. I dunno what it said. I skipped that chapter too. There was probably some point to it, but you wouldn't know from the beginning of the chapter.

So, skipping to something of more universal interest, there's a chapter on moral decisions which of course refers to religious prescriptions, but also points out that the interpersonal parts of the 10 Commandments specifies not doing harm to others. I never made that connection before, perhaps because so much of O.T. interpretation got rewritten by people who didn't want us to touch ourselves.  We've all heard the contradictory self-congratulatory versions of what the 10 Commandments are supposed to mean:  1)  If not for those we'd be raping, stealing, and telling lies and generally running amok.  If some Christians are actually sociopaths who need to be told these things and then actually restrain themselves... hahaha who am I kidding?  That "explanation" is total bullshit.  2) says that there is a universal morality given to us by Gawd.  This #2 explanation is the neo-apologists' way of accommodating evolution and multi-cultural perspectives.  The secular #3 is more like that but without the Gawd crap, and this book basically says that.  They make the point that getting along in society is the reason for rules like the non-theological commandments.  (Well, of the Big 10 -- doesn't say anything about the other 600+ commandments in the OT)

There's also the famous fake-mom hugging rhesus monkeys of Harry Harlow.    I already knew about the study that resulted in the "discovery" (duh) that babies need a warm and nurturing mom to hug, but there were many other studies with rhesus monkeys.  One was even more revealing than the fake mom one.  A clique of monkeys in separate cages but who knew each other, learned that one lever dispensed super yummy foods and another one dispensed less fun food.  After they had learned it, the researchers had an unrelated monkey scream from being shocked when the good lever gets pulled.  After the first time, all the monkeys stopped eating the yummy food and two even starved themselves.  It seems that not wanting to harm to others is hard-wired into primate brains, but only assuming normal childhoods and not having something like autism or sociopathy.   Autistics wouldn't understand the communication of pain by others; sociopaths wouldn't care.

So... as I'd suspected, religious proscriptions and prescriptions about morality are really aimed at people with no internal moral compass, i.e., sociopaths, autistics, and people who got bad parenting as children.  Having watched way too many hours of "The First 48 [hours]" I've seen several instances when a detective gets a confession out of a suspect by appealing to religion or the supernatural.  "Your dad is watching you from Heaven.  What would he say to you  now?"

[I'm not just making that up:  Cal Thomas wrote as much in the Washington Post this week.  Without his religion he would be "lost" and he thinks non-believers are lost.  He doesn't bother to ezplain why so many believers commit crimes despite their moral compass, or why atheists are no more inclined to criminality than anyone else.]

The basic conflict, as described in this book, is between the amygdala, or the emotional and fearful part of the brain, and the frontal cortex, which can calm the amygdala and sort things out rationally.  Curiously, there is a limit to what the rational brain can handle.  The author's advice: gather information, and if there are more than 4-10 (depending on whose research you believe) factors, then you're better off deciding with your "gut."

I have made life decisions this way and been embarrassed because of it.  Like my current rental.  After all my checklists and research about what the features of the place are, I went with my gut. I did the same when i decided which college to attend.  But... without all that research to help me rule out no-go places, my gut could have misled me.

Dusty of youtube fame closes his videos with "Logic," even though his videos are often very emotional.  I have never believed that logic could dissuade most believers that their religions were bogus.  Their amygdalas put amygdala fingers in their frontal cortex's ears and sing "la la la la I can't heeeeeear youuuuu."  And they are better and better at willful ignorance because of techniques of modern churches, but I'll save that for the next post.

Futurama vs. William Lane Craig

On the question of free will vs. Craig's "A or Not A" circular argument:

Someone from the "Discovery" Institute reviews a book by an "atheist"

http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/2012/03/aping-mankind-an-atheist-professor-of-medicine-exposes-weaknesses-in-darwinian-tales-about-the-human-mind-10/

uhhhh there's something very very wrong with this article, and with the book if it's being quoted accurately:

Darwinism, therefore, leaves something unaccounted for: the emergence of people like you and me who are indubitably sighted watchmakers. If there are no sighted watchmakers in nature and yet humans are sighted watchmakers, in the narrower sense of making artefacts whose purpose they envisage in advance, and in the wider sense of consciously aiming at stated goals, then humans are not part of nature: or not entirely so.

So, apparently you can be an atheist and still believe in the supernatural?  uh sure.  As long as you remain willfully ignorant of actual sciences, the God of the Gaps makes sense.