Conspiracy Du Jour

A few years ago there was some kind of internet award running, and PZ Myers and Phil Plait were both in the running for it, along with a bunch of other sites. PZ started up a big song and dance about how much more deserving he was and how everyone should vote for him, and soon there was quite a contest going. PZ eventually won by a small margin, but the interesting things was that the two of them completely streeted the field. No-one else was close. People love the controversy.
This occurred to me recently when I was reflecting on the current fuss over gay marriage. When I was younger marriage was supposed to be in decline; marriage rates were falling, divorce rates were rising, more people were cohabiting. Marriage was supposed to be a relic of the past. Now one of the arguments I frequently hear is that countries that have legalized gay marriage have seen rising rates of marriage generally - far from seeing straight marriage destroyed.
What if it's deliberate? I imagine a small cabal of Christians and Gay activists meeting in the nineties to discuss a campaign. "We'll make a huge fuss about marriage. Christians, you do everything you can to keep the Gays out. Gays, do everything you can to get in. Christians, you might lose the battle but you'll win the war (and soon enough everyone will forget you even lost) - Gays, you get to fight for widespread public acceptance on grounds that are entirely respectable."
The best part about this for the Christian side is that the fundamentalist nutters can be let off the leash - in fact, the more intemperate the better. The most ridiculous arguments will bring in people from both sides to an ever-growing public issue, and ensure that even if gay marriage is legalized, the fight will continue for a long time afterwards. The best part for Gays is that the focus is on aspirations that in themselves are admirable from everyone's point of view.
The only ones marginalized are those who are anti-marriage.
Like all good conspiracy theories its chief failing is the difficulty of keeping a secret shared by so many people; although in this case the conspirators would have no trouble (on both sides) whipping up supporters without telling them anything. And, of course, the attribution of foresight, intelligence and cooperation to groups of people who show scant evidence of it.

Actually, I kind of wish it were true; it would raise my opinion of a great many people on the Christian side of the debate, and make me worry less for the future. And such a brilliant piece of social engineering! The alternative is that so many people really mean the tripe they spout, and that really is depressing.

The Laws of Internet Christianity

As a counterpart to David Heddle's "inviolate laws of internet atheism", here are a few inviolate laws of internet Christianity (not theism; I hear very little from non-Christian theists, for reasons that are undoubtedly cultural). Heddle, of course, does not subscribe to any of these laws, and neither does anyone he knows.

The Law of Real Knowledge: There are no actual atheists. Everyone who says they are, is either angry at God or denying him so they can practice their heinously depraved lifestyle.

The Law of Biblical Knowledge: Atheists know little or nothing of the bible and would be instantly converted if they would only read it.

The First Law of Inclusivity: This is a Christian country. Almost everyone in it is Christian and it was founded by Christians on Christian principles. Therefore it should promote Christianity as much as possible, no matter what those pesky laws say.

The First Law of Exclusivity: Many people claim to be Christians but hold deeply un-Christian beliefs - even though they claim to have arrived at them via careful and faithful study of the Bible. For instance, the following are not real Christians (or shouldn't be taken as any sort of representative): Catholics, creationists, mormons, JWs, Adventists, Christian Scientists, trinitarians, believers in an anthropomorphic deity, Calvinists, believers in the existence of heaven or hell.

The Second Law of Inclusivity: Good people who make any comment even slightly positive about theism are Christians.

The Second Law of Exclusivity: Bad people who make any comment even slightly disparaging of mainstream Christianity are Atheists.

The Third Law of Inclusivity: Science was invented by Christians and is based on the existence of Laws, which implies a Lawgiver. All the best Scientists were Christians, like Albert Einstein.

The Third Law of Exclusivity: Science is run by Atheists in an evil conspiracy, which is why so many anti-Christian things like evolution are taught in schools these days.

The Law of That's You Told: The most important verse in the Bible is Psalm 14:1 "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God." Because "if you don't believe me, you're an idiot" is an unrefutable argument.

The Law of Dark Brightness: The worse the behavior of an atheist, the more honest the atheist is.

The Law of Specified Ignorance: anything that can't be completely explained by well-understood natural principles is proof of the existence of the Christian God.

The Law of Specified Knowledge: The fact that so many things can be explained by well-understood natural principles is proof of the existence of the Christian God.

The Life Extension to the Law of Specified Ignorance: It is impossible for life to have evolved in this universe, therefore the Christian God must have done it.

The Life Extension to the Law of Specified Knowledge: The universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow life to evolve, therefore the Christian God must have done it.

...no doubt there are more that I've forgotten.

The Broken Compass

Over at Reasonable Faith, William Lane Craig has a post explaining why it was OK for the Israelites to commit genocide in the Promised Land. Craig has apparently taken a strong position on Euthyphro's dilemma: a thing is good because it is commanded by God. God himself "has no moral duties to fulfill"; human moral duties are "constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God".

So it's OK for the Israelites to commit genocide. In fact, it was "morally obligatory", because God told them to do it. This makes Craig an unsafe person to live near. If he gets it into his head that some group of people are an affront to God and he's been called on to kill them, he has no morals that will stop him doing that. Worse, as a prominent theologian, he has now transmitted this position to everyone else that looks up to him. If someone who follows him starts to hear voices in his head telling him to kill - or voices from some rabble-rousing preacher - then there will be deaths.

It's worse than that, in fact. What was it that made the Canaanites worthy of death?

"By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice."

But why would they do these things? Because, presumably, that's what they thought God wanted. So Craig's own argument shows them to be perfectly justified in carrying out such things, as far as they knew. So what's their crime? To have the wrong religion. Yes, William Lane Craig has just told us it's OK to kill off the infidels, the basis of religious wars since time immemorial. Even when those inciting them have non-religious reasons for wanting them, that doesn't mean the religion itself can't help or hinder such wars; Craig has gone for "help".

And for icing on the cake, God's own reasoning for this killing is:

"that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18).

But the Israelites failed in their attempts to wipe out the Canaanites (for various reasons) and these crimes were in vain.

But Craig brings up an interesting point at the end:

"So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing."

He doesn't go far enough. The wrong here does not stop with the Israelites; it includes everyone since who has followed Jehovist religions (which is more than half the planet at present). They follow a religion that includes a command from God to exterminate some other group of people, and they must cast about for explanations for that or else know (as Craig is apparently happy to do) that God might come back and demand the same of them. And it includes all the people have been victims of those who have followed Craig's position and therefore decided that it was morally right to kill people off, singly or in groups, for following the wrong religion, or the right religion the wrong way.

In his introduction, Craig says:

"The command to kill all the Canaanite peoples is jarring precisely because it seems so at odds with the portrait of Yahweh, Israel’s God, which is painted in the Hebrew Scriptures.".

That's not my impression. When I read the Old Testament I was struck by how violent it was, and how much of that violence was at God's command; and for Craig to observe that:

"You can’t read the Old Testament prophets without a sense of God’s profound care for the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the orphaned, and so on."

is merely to say that like any demagogue Jehovah (or more accurately his prophets) know to pretend that they care for the masses. How else to get those masses to do what they want?

Imagine what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be like if the Israelites had been instructed that in entering the Promised Land, they were now responsible for the care and protection of its original inhabitants. If Jehovah wanted some violence to show off his powers, no doubt some of the Canaanites would have attacked the newcomers and been destroyed; and then there would have been an opportunity to show genuine care for the relatives of the dead, in not attempting to visit the sins of the warriors on them despite the obvious temptation.

I don't really understand how anyone who has read the Old Testament can stay a Christian. But I do have sympathy for those who - attracted by the positive side of Christianity - try to ignore it as a mystery and get on with living the "love thy neighbor" parts. People like William Lane Craig, who read it and try to pretend it's all morally reasonable and justifiable, disturb me. It is them, and the people they influence, who genuinely poison the religious well.

If your moral compass won't point you away from wholesale genocide, what good is it?