Writing Journal—Sunday writing prompt

As he’s taking out his garbage before work, a neighbor kicks your protagonist’s dog. In a twist of fate, the neighbor forgets to close his garage door as he drives off. How might your character get revenge?

One Stop for Writers

Guidance & Tips

Write the scene of discovery (i.e., tell a story), or brainstorm and create a list of related ideas.

Here’s five story elements to consider:

Character
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Resolution

Never forget, writing is a process. The first draft is always a mess.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

Drafting–Millie & Molly visit the law firm of Bird & Foley

It was almost noon Monday when the heating & air guys showed up. Millie and Molly’s two nights and one day without heat hadn’t been unbearable but still left them with that ‘tent-camping’ feeling of tiredness, not to mention Molly’s irritability.

Like yesterday, they each had stayed under the covers until there was an interruption. Sunday’s was the super knocking on the door, just checking in and updating them on when to expect the repairmen. This morning, at 10:30, it was Alisha’s text. To Molly’s chagrin, the notification beep had spawned an instant lie.

“Who’s that?” Millie had asked three feet away head barely visible from beneath a mountain of covers.

“Oh, someone offering psychic reading services.”

While untangling from the twisted coverlet and thermal blanket, Millie had responded with a multi-sentence castigation of Google and its ‘listening’ ability. “Dang, it must have picked up on our conversation last night about psychiatrists in New York City.”

Molly dared not reveal she’d used her new phone to communicate with Alisha during the last leg of her and her mother’s bus ride. The battery in Alistar’s secret phone had been low and Molly couldn’t wait to tell her best friend they’d almost reached the Big Apple.

“Me first.” Molly was out of bed in a flash, running to the bathroom, iPhone in hand. “I’m about to bust.” Millie just stared and walked to the kitchen.

Inside, on the commode, Molly sent Alisha a text. “Me here, you here. Morning. Can’t talk now, and don’t use this number. I used it Saturday by mistake. I’ll text you later from Alistar’s phone. Love you.” The lack of privacy was definitely going to be an issue, Molly thought as she stood, washed her face, and rolled her eyes as Millie knocked on the bathroom door.

Molly and Millie took showers, dressed, and were out of the apartment by 12:30 PM, leaving the hard work to the two heating and air guys.

Yesterday afternoon, Millie had called her new boss as he’d requested. Like Matt in Chicago, Stephen Canna was polite, respectful, generous, and anxious to acclimate Millie to her new work home, a few of her associates, and a summary of her initial job assignments. The two had agreed on 1:15 as a convenient time for all parties to meet.

With Molly’s help, Millie had decided the best way to travel to (and from) the law firm of Bird & Foley at the Woolworth Building in south Manhattan was New York City’s subway system; it definitely was cheaper than Uber or a taxi. The journey planning, with the aid of Google Maps, was relatively simple, although it included two walks, a nine minute one from their apartment building at 334 East 79th Street to the 77th Street subway station, and a second one, five minutes at the tail end, from the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall Station to the Woolworth Building. The cost, each way, per person, was only $2.75. Even better, Millie had discovered the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) offered a monthly discount card for $127.00 which provided unlimited use of the subway system. Again, per person.

The walk to the 77th Street station was enjoyable with a blue sky and an unusually warm temperature. Thank goodness the snow had stopped and the streets and sidewalk were clear. Two things caught Molly’s attention during the nine minute walk: the Yorkville Library on 79th Street just before turning left on 3rd Avenue, and the Spectrum Store on 3rd Avenue before turning right on East 77th Street. To her, it wasn’t too early to start thinking about things to do after school and while waiting on her mom to arrive home from work, which, from past history, could often be as late as six or seven PM.

Millie and Molly descended the stairs to the subway tunnel at 12:33 PM. A train was departing as they approached. Per the overhead digital sign, the next train would arrive in four minutes. Both Millie and Molly had downloaded the OMNY App (One Metro New York) to use in paying fares. They approached a turnstile and tapped their smart phones. The dings meant they’d successfully paid the $2.75 fare.

Molly wasn’t really surprised at the eclectic mix of strangers busing around the platform: business professionals in suits, pink-haired teenagers with piercings and tattoos, mothers pushing strollers, vagrants sleeping on the benches along the concrete walls, and older men or women with tattered back packs likely containing everything they owned.

Like Greyhound bus-lines, the next train arrived on time. The second it stopped the narrow doors opened. Although there were available seats, Millie insisted they stand next to one of the vertical poles equally spaced along the center of the train, and hold onto the leather hand loops dangling from the ceiling. Her reasoning was this would be good practice for the time they’d have no choice given a large crowd of weary travelers.

Molly counted thirteen stops along their twenty-two minute ride; none took longer than a minute or two. Over the creaks and squeaks of the metal tube shimming at high speed, Millie was lost in thought the entire trip, mostly imagining a typical day once she started work at Bird & Foley. What she dreaded and hated the most was Molly having to fend for herself. Although the two would leave the apartment at the same time each morning five days per week, their walk paths would diverge at 2nd Avenue where Molly would go left and walk three blocks to Robert F. Wagner Middle School, while Millie continued onward to the 77th Street station. She made a mental note to search for another student who attended Molly’s school. Maybe the two could become friends, but, at least walk together the seven minutes to and from school. Somehow the air changed directions and the putrid smell of body odor racked Millie back into reality. A greasy haired man in a dirty hooded jacket stood beside her anxious to exit the train.

As expected, the train ride ended at the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall Station. After waiting for a dozen other passengers to depart, including two well-dressed professionals, three older women lugging shopping bags, and a young mother clutching a young child, Millie and Molly exited the train.

After ascending the stairs, Millie immediately recognized the Woolworth Building although they were a five minute walk away. It was grand, beautiful, and no doubt, commanded a premium monthly rental. Bird and Foley had to be a financially solid firm. From Millie’s research, she’d learned the neo-Gothic structure was built in 1913, and once was the world’s tallest building. No doubt, it remains an architectural landmark.

After their five minute walk, both Molly and Millie shed their jackets. The wind had calmed and the temperature was approaching sixty degrees.

They were several minutes early so they took the time to stare at the Woolworth Building’s unbelievably beautiful lobby. It was ornate to say the least, not only for its marble floors and granite walls, but for the various sculptures, mosaic ceiling, and other architectural touches. In a word, it was dazzling.

Millie’s favorite sculpture was rather grotesque, one depicting the building’s original owner, Frank W. Woolworth, with him holding one of the nickels that created his five-and-dime empire. Molly liked the sculpture depicting Cass Gilbert, the architect of the Woolworth Building, holding a model of the tower.
During the elevator ride to the twenty-eighth floor all Millie could think about was the boring, uncreative design of the Chicago skyscraper that housed Matt’s office. She hoped the Woolworth Building foreshadowed a new and exciting world, one intricately designed to shed wonder, hope, and vision to its occupants. When they reached their floor, Molly asked, “what world did you go to?”

The elevator doors opened, and a tall, thin man with close-cropped red hair stood smiling in the hallway outside double mahogany doors. When Millie sent Stephen a text announcing they were in the building she hadn’t expected him to give them such a welcome. He took three steps toward them and held out his right hand as though to shake but quickly removed it and gave Millie a hug.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you.” He turned to the precocious twelve-year-old. “Gosh, this can’t be Molly. You could pass for my ninth grade daughter.” Instead of hugging, they did a fist bump.

After a few questions about the new apartment, and both Molly and Millie thanking Stephen for the groceries, he guided them through the giant mahogany doors to the law firm of Bird & Foley.

“This is Candice, our receptionist.” Stephen said as he walked toward a sixty’ish looking woman with narrow eye-glasses perched on her nose, wearing a denim jacket, and standing behind a semicircular counter built to match the heavy wooden front doors. “If you’re ever in doubt who to ask for something, start with Candice.”

“Hello Millie and Molly, welcome to Bird & Foley.” Candice said, smiling, but quickly returning her attention to a document she’d been reading.

The office was huge, encompassing the entire twenty-eighth floor. Stephen’s tour consisted of two phases. First, he quickly led them past an assortment of multi-sized conference rooms, associate attorneys offices that were as nice as any at Quinn Law in Chicago, a giant room filled with cubicles for support staff, and through another set of double-oak doors, and past ten offices with great views along the south and west sides of the Woolworth Building. These larger offices were reserved for the partners. So far, other than Candice, neither Millie or Molly had seen another person.

The second phase started with a brisk walk to the eastern side of the building and into a large room that housed the firm’s kitchen and dining room. There, Stephen paraded Millie and Molly around and introduced them to at least forty people of all shapes and sizes, many wearing Santa hats. Obviously, the casually dressed hoard was enjoying a final party and exchange of gag gifts before departing early for a long Christmas holiday.

Not once did Stephen attach a label to identify what the person’s role was within the firm. There was no, “Ken is a partner”; “Sally is Ken’s secretary”; or, “Billy is our custodian.” The same feeling Millie had sensed when Candice welcomed her and Molly, instantly recognizing them, was how she felt. Wow, every employee was aware of her joining the firm.

Before exiting the dining room, Stephen, who seemed to possess detailed knowledge about each of the firm’s employees, introduced Millie and Molly to a man named Ed, whose daughter, Elizabeth, is an eighth grader at Robert Wagner Middle School. “Give me your number and I’ll have Lizzie call you.” Ed said looking at Molly, who looked at Millie before announcing her phone number.

Surprisingly, Stephen’s office was the most unkempt of all the partners. Unlike theirs, created, designed, and selected, Stephen’s was random, chaotic, and accumulated. The bookcases on two walls were anything but neat and orderly. The two arm chairs facing his giant, drawer-less desk were piled with an assortment of multi-colored folders. The small round table in the corner was strewn with pencils, markers, opened envelopes, and both letter and legal size documents in disarray. Even the couch that backed to the floor-to-ceiling windows was a mess. A New York Giants coverlet that likely was intended to lay across the length of the couch was pushed to one end and titled. The thermal blanket and two pillows in white cases loudly declared its occupant spent nights in the office.

Stephen quickly removed the bed items, tossed them into one of two chairs at the round table, and motioned for Millie and Molly to sit on the couch. “I’ll grab some water.” Stephen said without asking. He walked to and opened a small refrigerator on the credenza behind his desk. Millie hadn’t noticed it before. He returned, handed each of them a bottle, and repositioned the remaining chair to face Millie and Molly.

“I won’t take long since I know you have tons of things you need to do. But, I wanted to give you an idea of what to expect on the sixth when you start. Millie was thankful for two weeks before the roller-coaster ride of work and life outside the Woolworth Building began.

“First, if it’s acceptable to you, I want you to work on the civil side of the practice.” Millie recognized Stephan’s politeness and consideration. She was his employee, her work assignments didn’t have to meet her approval. Anyway, it was the thought that counted. He digressed a little and gave an overview of the firm’s practice: pretty much equally divided between the law’s two main divisions, criminal and civil. “Oh, to start with, you’ll be in the trenches, that’s what we call the large room we walked by with all the cubicles. This is where all the paralegals and other support staff have their homes. Except for the four supervisors. These experienced paralegals direct a team that corresponds to the four main practice areas, criminal, blue-collar; criminal, white-collar; civil, personal injury, non-death cases; and, civil, personal injury, death cases.

Molly raised a hand as though she was in class. “Where’s the nearest restroom?” Millie made a mental note to ask her daughter if she was having any health problems. It seemed she’d been going to the bathroom a lot lately.

“Through that door.” Stephen pointed to an oak door beside his credenza at the opposite side from the small refrigerator. Molly thanked him and left Millie and Stephen alone. He leaned forward and asked, “I want you to tell you in person that you can confide in me, about anything. I can only imagine what you’ve gone through and continue to go through.”

Millie thought about Matt’s caring and compassion. Now, Stephen seemed to be a spitting image. How fortunate could she be? “Thanks so much. That means the world to me, but I don’t want to be a burden. It’s imperative for me to do my job and become an asset to your firm.”

“Our firm. It belongs to all of us. You’ll see when you receive your first bonus. But, let’s talk about that during orientation.” Molly returned and started surfing her phone.

There was a soft knock on the door next to the hallway. It was Candice. Millie and Stephen had arranged this yesterday afternoon. Candice would take Molly to the front desk and start introducing her to the phone system. His ninth grade daughter was already adept at receiving and transferring calls and had offered the same to Millie on behalf of Molly. “We’ll be along in thirty or forty minutes.” Stephen said as Molly followed Candice.

“Now, here’s my plan. The supervising paralegals all have private offices. They’re scattered among the associate offices we passed. The other partners and I have agreed to create a whole new division, which will necessiate another supervising paralegal. The placeholder name, for now, is civil, personal injury, churches. Notice, I didn’t distinguish death and non-death because these lawsuits ….” Stephen paused as though to catch his breath, he seemed so excited, or to scan his mind for what he hadn’t previously said but should have. “Bird & Foley is a criminal defense and plaintiff’s firm. We do not represent defendants in civil cases. Now, back to this new division.

“Over the past few years we’ve represented a number of individuals who have been hurt by the church and other religious organizations. Of late, we’ve been inundated with cases against Southern Baptist Churches. I don’t know if you’ve heard but the Southern Baptist Convention has recently released a report that details widespread sexual abuse cases. We have several new cases in this area. But, that’s not the only type case we’re involved with and continually trying to add to our inventory.

One such case, a fairly new case is the wrongful death case brought by the family of Deanna Parisi. Here it is in a nutshell, obviously, we’ll discuss it at length on the sixth. Our claim is Mount Zion Baptist Church and its lead pastor, Carl Warren, were negligent in the counsel they provided Ms. Parisi, which later committed suicide. There’s also a claim of sexual misconduct against a currently unidentified person, who also was or is still a member of Mount Zion.

Stephen paused to give Millie a chance to speak. “I assume I’ll do typical paralegal work on this case, things like conduct legal research and write memos that will go to an associate for review; prepare discovery requests, review discovery requests, and index depositions.”

Stephen raised a hand, palm out. “Of course, but I’m interested in you becoming much more involved. For now, let me just say, I’ll want you to do some investigating on your own. Nothing dangerous mind you, but scouting out and interviewing potential witnesses.”

This is something Millie didn’t have much experience in. “Isn’t this normally done by the firm’s investigative team?”

Before Stephen could answer, Ed from the dining room, stuck his head inside and asked if he could have a few minutes. Stephen nodded and motioned him inside, and looked again at Millie. “Our investigators are currently swamped, and, I hate to say, pretty well known in Manhattan. I need you to be more incognito, and disarming.”

Ed seemed anxious to speak with Stephen alone so he dismissed Millie but not before reminding her to call if she had questions or needed any help at all.

03/11/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I’m currently listening to: McNally’s Secret, by Lawrence Sanders

He was a tremendously talented writer.

Amazon abstract:

First in the series starring the sleuthing Palm Beach playboy from the #1 New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author.
Inveterate playboy Archy McNally gets paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s power elite. But keeping their dirty little secrets buried will take some fancy footwork in McNally’s latest case. A block of priceless 1918 US airmail stamps has gone missing from a high-society matron’s wall safe. Lady Cynthia Horowitz, now on her sixth husband, is a nasty piece of work who lives in a mansion that looks like Gone With the Wind’s Tara transplanted to southern Florida. McNally’s search takes him into a thickening maze of sex, lies, scandal, and blackmail. When passion erupts into murder and McNally must dig even deeper to uncover the truth, he unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons.

Top reviews from the United States

Linda G. Shelnutt

5.0 out of 5 stars Cure Cultural Volcanics with Bubbling Champagne. Design Life To Suit Taste & Times.

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2006

Verified Purchase

This book didn’t merely capture my reading interest. It became a book of my heart…

In McNally’s SECRET, the pilot to this series, we’re informed that the pater McNally is not an “old-money” man. Okay. I get that and I like it. (That’s not the secret.)

Having reviewed 4 of the original 7 McNally books by Lawrence Sanders, I had accepted the face value (not realizing the facade) of the Palm Beach mansion and the genteel lifestyle of pater Prescott McNally, Yale graduate, leather-bound-Dickens-reading, attorney-at-law. Upon reading (in McNally’s Secret) the illuminating passages of Archy’s grandparent’s ways into money, I began to wonder what other Secrets this novel might expose.

Usually, if possible, I prefer to read a series in order, pilot first. I can’t explain why, but, in this case I’m glad I read 4 of the original 7 McNally’s prior to reading SECRET (though I believe this series can be satisfyingly read in any order).

The opening of this novel was classic, and felt to be the initiation of what Sanders was born and itching to write, beyond the sagas of his other fine works. The introductory remarks were exquisite in mapping the reasons for, “Can’t you ever be serious, Archy?” I’d love to quote that paragraph, but maybe I should allow you to read it with the book in hand. I will quote a few other passages, however, which might serve as appropriate appetizers to this banquet of a book.

Comparing himself to S. Holmes, Archy says:

“I can’t glance at a man and immediately know he’s left-handed, constipated, has a red-headed wife, and slices lox for a living. I do investigations a fact at a time. Eventually they add up – I hope. I’m very big on hope.”

Archy’s description of the start up of the Pelican Club were the best type of soul food. This is how and why such a club should be started (then survive through a near hit of Chapter 7). Of course you really should read the book to get the whole of that brief history, but here’s a prime paring:

“We were facing Chapter 7 when we had the great good fortune to hire the Pettibones, an African-American family who had been living in one of the gamier neighborhoods of West Palm Beach and wanted out.”

They “wanted out” and they deserved a chance where their skills could and would save not only themselves, but those who hired them. Isn’t that the type of win/win the world needs now?

I almost sobbed at the below passage, I felt such a deep surge of “right on” (definitely did a breath-catch hiccup and heart moan):

“… we formed a six-piece jazz combo (I played tenor kazoo), and we were delighted to perform, without fee, at public functions and nursing homes. A Palm Beach critic wrote of one of our recitals, `Words fail me.’ You couldn’t ask for a better review than that.”

Yep. This is a book of my heart. Words don’t often fail me in reviews; too much the contrary. But I’m getting better at refraining from using my critic hat with a steel-studded-bat accessory, which is what Archy was getting at.

Some might wonder why a person in my position, with my un-hidden agendas, would take so much time to write raves on a series by a deceased author. Mostly, I love Archy. But, possibly the live spirits of the dead are sometimes more able to be helpful than dead souls of the living? Keeping my tongue in cheek, I might add that freed spirits probably have better connections for helping an author into the right publishing contacts for a character series with ironic assonance with this one.

Moving quickly onward and upward, though not with wings attached yet…

In contrast to the other 4 I’ve read, I noticed that this Archy is less bubbly-buffoonish (though the buffoon is always endearing) and slightly more serious, sensitive, and quietly contemplative. I like both versions of Archy, though I prefer the slight edge of peaceful acquiescence in the pilot, and I can’t help but wonder, as I do with all series, how much reader feedback, and editor/agents’ interpretation of it, directed the progression of balance of certain appealing or potentially irritating qualities. I wonder how each series would have progressed if the feedback had been balanced and pure (as a species, we’re not there yet, but forward motion is perceptible), rather than inevitably polluted by the “life happens” part of the sometimes perverted, capricious tastes of us squeaky wheels, and the healthy ego needs of professionals in positions of swallow and sway.

I’m still trying to understand why honesty is the most appealing human quality to me, yet honest criticism does not speak to my heart, nor to my soul, not even to my head. Often, though, it does speak in perfect pitch to my funny bone. And, of course true Honesty (with the capital “H”) leaps beyond speaking the “truth” as one happens to “see” it on a good or bad day. Cultural honesty, of the type dramatized by Stephen King, Lawrence Sanders, Tamar Myers, Barbara Workinger, Joanne Pence, Sue Grafton, (and others) is what most often pushes me to stand up and cheer.

Somewhere.

One of the best spots I’ve found is on the edge of the clear cliff of ozone found in Amazon’s sacred forum of Customer Reviewers.

Of course the first lines in SECRET, the sipping of champagne from a belly button would snag the attention of even the most sexually skittish reader of the nose-raised, neck-cricked, personality persuasion. But, truly and honestly, what sunk me with every hook were the few lines exposing why Archy could never be serious. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I have to quote this passage, beginning on page 1 chapter 1. For me, it’s one of the main selling points of the series:

“I had lived through dire warnings of nuclear catastrophe, global warming, ozone depletion, universal extinction via cholesterol, and the invasion of killer bees. After a while my juices stopped their panicky surge and I realized I was bored with all these screeched predictions of Armageddon due next Tuesday. It hadn’t happened yet, had it? The old world tottered along, and I was content to totter along with it.”

I’d bet my fortune (which is based on a skill of “make do”; there are no bananas in it) that the above passage is what captured a collection of readers so absolutely in a “right on” agreement that this series spanned the grave of the author and is still spewing pages and stretching shelves. And, of course, this attitude of “if you can’t lick `em; flick `em” which Archy aimed toward “kvetch-ers” as he terms them, continues from the above, with relish accumulating, throughout the book.

Archy is a rare sane person swimming along nicely within the insanity of a last-gasp-culture (which is “drowning in The Be Careful Sea” as I described and termed that syndrome in one of my sci fi manuscripts titled MORNING COMES).

To Jennifer, of the champagne sea in her belly button, Archy answered why he wasn’t an attorney:

“Because I was expelled from Yale Law for not being serious enough. During a concert by the New York Philharmonic I streaked across the stage, naked except for a Richard M. Nixon mask.”

That answer brought to mind the bright side of Howard Roark (from Ayn Rand’s FOUNTAINHEAD, see my review posted 10/14/05) who was arrogantly unconcerned about his and the Dean’s reasons for Roark’s being expelled from architectural school. You’d be right to wonder where I got that comparison, since Roark could never be accused of being anything but serious. Syncopated irony? Assonance?

You be the judge. Get the SECRET of the McNally collection.

As I relished the final chapters and pages of SECRET, I had a thought about the beauty, warmth, lovely literary melancholy, and subtly complex richness radiating from those concluding textual treasures:

In retrospect, this novel doesn’t feel like a planned pilot to a mystery series. It feels to be a singular novel, like but not like, the ones Sanders had written prior to it. What it feels like to me is that Lawrence hit upon a “soul speak” story which couldn’t halt the cultural conversation it had initiated, however serendipitous that initiation may have been.

Yes, I do recall that in some of my other reviews (“reveries” according to my Amazon Friend, L.E. Cantrell) I speculated on something which could seem contradictory to the above mentioned “thought.” I had wondered if Parker’s Senser series might have been somehow a spark for this McNally series. I continued to see references to Boston in this book (as in other McNally’s I’ve reviewed), which, of course, is the city for which Spenser did the Walkabout. So possibly SECRET was somewhat an antithetical homage to Spenser, possibly even a hat “doff” with a friendly, competitive “one-better” attempt, meant only to be a single novel rather than a never-die series.

Based on Agatha Christie’s official web site, Miss Marple was not originally intended to be another Poirot, and look what happened there (see my Listmania of the Miss Marple series).

To me, Archy appears to be a gatekeeper for pure and primal, hidden wishes and dreams. Living home comfortably, guiltlessly at 37, on the top floor of his parent’s mansion in Palm Beach; eating drool-food from a house chef; having established a club like The Pelican as a side atmosphere to partake in daily; working at a cushy, just challenging enough, engaging career for discreet inquiries … If an author’s (or reader’s) going to retire that would be da place (or at least an entertaining option).

It’ll be interesting to see if/how I’m able to bridge the gap from Lawrence Sanders’s Archy to Vincent Lardo’s. I’d love to know how that bridge was built and continues to be maintained.

Though a perfectly acceptable, gorgeous reprint in a mass market paperback was (probably still is) available on Amazon’s Super Saver Special, I felt lucky to find a vender on Amazon (a-bookworm2) holding a used G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover of this novel, a first printing of the 1992 copyright. What an honor it will be to have this version of the pilot of such an auspicious series from such a life-perceptive author, Lawrence Sanders. The glossy-black jacket provides a luscious background for the name and title printed in thick, gleaming, copper ink, with the artwork of an antique magnifying glass and fancy-brass scissors weighing down the million-dollar-valued, 1918 US Stamp of the Inverted Jenny.

This pilot is a rare find in a rare series.

Linda G. Shelnutt

Is the God of Job Worthy of Worship?

Here’s the link to this article by Bart Ehrman.

March 11, 2023

Is there any way to consider the God portrayed in Job as a morally upright being who deserves complete devotion? Read the account yourself. I have summarized the “folktale” of Job (found in Job 1-2, 42) in my previous post. This is a tale that portrays God, Job, and the reason for human suffering very differently from the (different) composition of Job 3-42, a set of dialogues between Job and his friends and eventually God that I will discuss in my next posts. For now I’m interested in the reasons God crushes the righteous Job with suffering in the tale.

The overarching view of suffering from the story is clear: sometimes suffering comes to the innocent in order to see whether their pious devotion to God is genuine and disinterested. Are people faithful only when things are going well, or are they faithful no matter what the circumstances? Obviously for this author, no matter how bad things get, God still deserves worship and praise.

But serious questions can be raised about this perspective, questions raised by the text of the folktale itself. For one thing, many readers over the years have felt that God himself is not to be implicated in Job’s sufferings, since after all, it is the Satan who causes them. But a close reading of the text shows that in fact it is not that simple. It is precisely God who authorizes the Satan to do what he does; Satan could not do anything without the Lord directing him to do it. Moreover, in a couple of places the text indicates that it is God himself who is ultimately responsible. After the first round of Job’s sufferings God tells the Satan that Job “persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason” (2:3). Here it is God who is responsible for Job’s innocent sufferings, at the Satan’s instigation. Moreover, God points out that there was “no reason” for Job to have to suffer. This coincides with what happens at the end of the tale, where Job’s family come to comfort him after the trials are over, showing him sympathy “for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him” (42:11).

God himself has caused the misery, pain, agony, and loss that Job experienced. You can’t just blame the Adversary. And it is important to remember what this loss entailed: not just loss of property, which is bad enough: but a ravaging of the body and the savage murder of Job’s ten children. And to what end? For “no reason” – other than proving to the Satan that Job wouldn’t curse God even if he had every right to do so. Did he have the right to do so? Remember, he didn’t do anything to deserve this treatment. He actually was innocent – as God himself acknowledges. God did this to him in order to win a bet with Satan. This is obviously a God above, beyond, and not subject to human standards. Anyone else who destroyed all your property, physically mauled you, and murdered your children – simply on a whim or a bet– would be liable to the most severe punishment that justice could mete out. But God is evidently above justice and can do whatever he pleases, if he wants to prove a point.

What then are we to make of this view of suffering, that it sometimes comes as a test of faith? I suppose people who have a blind trust in God might see suffering as a way of displaying their devotion to him, and this could indeed be a very good thing. If nothing else it can provide inward fortitude and a sense that despite everything that happens, God is ultimately in charge of this world and all that occurs within it. But is this really a satisfying solution to the pain and misery that people are compelled to endure? Are we really to imagine a divine being who wants to torment his creatures in order to see whether or not he can force them to abandon their trust in him? What exactly are they trusting him to do? Certainly not to do what is best for them: it is hard to believe that God inflicts people with cancer, flu, or AIDS in order to make sure they praise him to the end. Praise him for what? Mutilation and torture? For his great power to inflict pain and misery on innocent people?

It is important to remember that God himself acknowledged that Job was innocent – that is, that he had done nothing to deserve his torment. And God did not simply torment him by taking away his hard-earned possessions and physical health. He killed Job’s children. And why? To prove his point; to win his bet. What kind of God is this? Many readers have taken comfort in the circumstance that once Job passed the test, God rewarded him – just as God rewarded Abraham before him, and Jesus after him, just as God rewards his followers now who suffer misery so that God can prove his case. But what about Job’s children? Why were they senselessly slaughtered? So that God could prove a point? Does this mean that God is willing – even eager – to take my children in order to see how I’ll react? Am I that important, that God is willing to destroy innocent lives just to see whether I’ll be faithful to him, when he has not been faithful to me?

Possibly the most offensive part of the book of Job is the end, when God restores all that he has lost as his reward. Including additional children. Job lost seven sons and three daughters, and as a reward for his faithfulness, God gave him an additional seven sons and three daughters. What is this author thinking? That you can replace children? That the pain of a child’s death will be removed by the birth of another? That children are expendable and replaceable like a faulty computer or DVD player? What kind of God is this? Do we think that everything would be made right if the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust were “replaced” by having six million additional Jews born in the next generation?

As satisfying as the book of Job has been to people over the ages, I have to say I find it supremely dissatisfying. If God tortures, maims, and murders people just to see how they would react – to see if they would not blame him, when in fact he is to blame – then this does not seem to me to be a God worthy of worship. Worthy of fear, yes. Of praise? No.

Commentary on D. James Kennedy’s book Why I Believe–Introduction & Chapter 1

Here are the links to the articles included in this post. Author’s outline. Introduction. Chapter 1.

D. James Kennedy is the founder of Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida. A television show exists by the same name, although I have not seen it. Dr. Kennedy is an evangelical Christian who has written several books, including Evangelism Explosion and Why I Believe. The latter book was given to me by a friend in an effort to explain to me her reasons for holding to her faith.

Why I Believe is a concise, easy-to-read book containing most of the typical Christian arguments about the subjects below, in one convenient place – making it an excellent instrument for use as a jumping-off point for critical and honest commentaries on these subjects.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Why I Believe in the Bible

Chapter 2. The Stones Cry Out

Chapter 3. Why I Believe in God

Chapter 4. Why I Believe in Creation

Chapters 5-6. Why I Believe in Heaven/ Hell

Chapter 7. Why I Believe in Moral Absolutes

Chapters 8-13

Conclusion

Appendices

The Fabulous Prophecies of the Messiah (1993) by Jim Lippard

Analysis of the Teleological Argument by Eric Sotnak

Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution by Mark Isaac (Off Site)

Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions” [about creationism] (2003) by Tom Scharle (Off Site)

“A Parable” [about the deity of Jesus] (1909) by M. M. Mangasarian

Introduction

“Anachronist”

This book inspired me to embark on a long search for knowledge and truth. I studied books on history, theology, and the sciences, researching many things Dr. Kennedy considered and many other issues he ignored; I examined some of his references; and I engaged in lengthy electronic debates with several learned individuals. In this series of commentaries, I present some of the things I learned in my quest. As with the book’s chapters, each successive commentary builds on the previous ones. Many of the chapter commentaries include a separate appendix. These appendices consist of supporting material not written by me.

A word about my point of view: I am nonreligious, and I can be classified as “weak atheist” in the sense that my mind harbors no beliefs regarding deities; however, I personally do not reject out-of-hand everything spiritual. Therefore, an atheist might object to my attempt in chapter 1 at formulating a rationale for liking the Bible, or to my proposing reincarnation in chapter 5 as an alternative to Kennedy’s Heaven/Hell argument. In the former case, I merely try to show how Kennedy could have made a more bulletproof argument without resorting to doubtful examples prophecy. In the latter case I simply discuss the plausibility of an alternative which Kennedy ignores, especially because the references he cites do mention it (and one actually advocates this alternative).

A Christian, on the other hand, might object to my heathen’s point of view. Even so, I believe that no honest Christian can object to my treatment of Dr. Kennedy and his book.

Originally I wrote this commentary for my own benefit, and as a result, it may not be as “scholarly” as I’d like for general worldwide distribution; nevertheless I do cite many references and in some cases make suggestions for further reading.

Before I begin with chapter 1, let me say that I loved the introduction to Why I Believe. D. James Kennedy said in a concise way things I have often tried to articulate in the past. Stand ready with reason for your beliefs. Examine the evidence on all sides, and hold fast to that which is good. This captures, in part, the essence of how I try to live my life! With this heartening advice in mind, I plunged into the book.

CHAPTER 1: WHY I BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE

(Composition Argument)

Dr. Kennedy begins his book with a chapter on the why he believes the Bible. I must say, a right proper beginning. After all, the Bible forms the whole basis for his beliefs; therefore he must establish the validity of this basis. Before I even opened the book I was most curious about how he would go about doing this.

I found it interesting that he relies on fulfilled prophecies as a foundation for his belief in the Bible. He makes a good case, but one can’t help feeling uneasy about it. Prophecy is an area so full of snakes that it’s hardly a strong point for the faithful. It’s almost a skeptic’s paradise; nearly everything that can go wrong could easily have gone wrong in terms of provability of the Bible. Kennedy wrote his book to provide believers with “ammunition” to counter challenges from nonbelievers, but intelligent skeptics, or even Biblical scholars, can easily dismiss many of the examples he presents.

I think I can provide a better rationale for believing in the Bible, which may stand up to challenge better. I will try to do so later.

The Bible does indeed contain many fulfilled prophecies. It contains both hits and misses, however, but Dr. Kennedy doesn’t say so. In this chapter he relies on a logical pitfall known as the “fallacy of composition”; i.e., assuming that a property shared by parts of something must apply to the whole. In other words, he implies that if some things in the Bible are demonstrably true, then that is sufficient reason for trusting the soundness of the entire book. Unfortunately the converse is equally valid, so this kind of “ammunition” does not convince.

Examples of prophecy in chapter 1

Let’s get on to the interesting stuff: the prophecies. There are many the author could have selected as examples. He chose first Ezekiel’s prophecies concerning the destruction of the city of Tyre, so I will do the same. I must confess amazement at the use of Ezekiel 26-28 as an example here, since it is in fact an excellent instance of unfulfilled prophecy. Here’s the account in an old standard textbook, Introduction to the Old Testament, by R. H. Pfeiffer:

In a series of oracles against Tyre (26-28), Ezekiel in 585 BC anticipated its capture by Nebuchadnezzar (26:7-14). In reality, Josephus, quoting Philostratus . . . and Phoenician sources report that Nebuchadnezzar vainly besieged Tyre for thirteen years. . . . Accordingly, a later oracle dated in 571, when Nebuchadnezzar had abandoned the siege, states that as a reward for his services against Tyre, for which he had received no wages, the Babylonian king would conquer Egypt (29:17-20; cf. 30:10-12). This Babylonian conquest of the Valley of the Nile, anticipated also by Jeremiah (43:10-13), remained a dream. . . . the victory of Nebuchadnezzar over Amasis did not result in a conquest of Egypt; at most it barred the Pharaoh from interference in Palestine.[1]

Why does Kennedy consider this prophecy about Tyre a hit rather than a miss? Ezekiel predicts disaster, sacking of the city, etc. by Nebuchadnezzar, but after 13 years (or 15, depending on which Bible you have), the city wasn’t sacked. He reached a settlement with Tyre instead, so the terrible destruction in Ezekiel 26 and 27 was a bit less than predicted (the siege probably did great harm, but Tyre had put up with this sort of thing off and on throughout its history). God relents in Ezekiel 29 and gives Nebuchadnezzar Egypt as a consolation prize for trying to do God’s will. In reading the prophecy, however, one gets the distinct impression that Tyre would be taken, sacked; the prediction is long, poetic, but also impossible to mistake. It just didn’t happen, and the Bible even admits this. Perhaps Ezekiel’s prediction simply illustrates his overenthusiastic loyalty to Babylon (he said nothing against Babylon, only against its enemies including Judah).[2] In the grips of nationalist pride, a prophet could make mistaken predictions.

But Kennedy insists that this prophecy was fulfilled after all, 250 years later when Alexander the Great came through and leveled the newer island city of Tyre after building a road using the ruins of the old mainland city of Tyre. This is irrelevant. Ezekiel quite plainly named the conqueror, saying of Tyre (26:7-12) that Nebuchadnezzar and his troops would bring down its towers, enter its gates, kill its people, and break down its walls. That did not happen, as we know from other sources including a later statement by Ezekiel himself. What Alexander may have done two and a half centuries later has no bearing on it. It’s like predicting that the President will die this year of liver disease. If he actually dies of a heart attack fifty years from now, that does not “fulfill” the prediction.

More serious, though, is something easily missed: Dr. Kennedy misrepresents Alexander’s conquest of Tyre. Let me sketch a bit of the city’s history. There’s a whole book about it, by W. B. Fleming; for Alexander’s siege, there are several ancient sources, notably Diodorus.[3]

This walled city stood on an island; it also controlled some territory on the mainland coast, about a half mile away. It passed peacefully into Persian control before 500 BC. After Alexander defeated the Persian king Darius at Issus (late 333 BC), he turned south toward Egypt, and Tyre held out against him. Unwilling to leave hostile forces in his rear, he laid siege to Tyre. He adopted the unprecedented stratagem of using stone and wood from the mainland to build a wide path to the island, and he conquered the city within less than a year. Women and children had long since been evacuated, but he did sack the city, and a good part of it burned. He then marched on south.

Alexander used stone from the mainland to build the path to the island. But of course it wasn’t rocks from the actual walls of Tyre; these were on the island, and Alexander hadn’t yet conquered it when he built the path. Furthermore, we know that the city not only recovered quickly but was being besieged again (by Antigonus) less than 20 years later – proof that the walls still stood! In fact, Tyre remained a major city for another millennium and a half. Thus Dr. Kennedy’s defense of the prophecy is not only illogical but depends on an outright falsehood.

Kennedy also mentions Micah’s predictions of doom for Jerusalem around 700 BC (the date is identifiable from the kings mentioned). These predictions also were not realized. In fact, this example became famous, and a century later Jeremiah refers to it, quoting Micah 3:12 and adding the “explanation” that “the LORD repented of the evil which he had pronounced against them.”

A fundamental problem exists with prophecies of a regime’s downfall: they are generally self-fulfilling, and therefore can’t be considered as bona-fide prophecies, especially when they don’t give dates. Look how easily the downfall of a regime can be predicted:

I hereby prophesy that the United States of America will be on the ash-heap of history.

Sad to say, it will, hopefully centuries hence and only because we dream up something better. Civilizations come and go, governments come and go, countries come and go, borders change. There’s nothing remarkable about this example, but by the standards of many believers, one would call it a “hit.”

You might ask, what about those truly clear prophecies that require no force-fitting? Surely they cannot all be lucky guesses. Well, chance is underrated by most observers. I find that most people seem a little too eager to claim “hits” that don’t withstand skeptical scrutiny. Perhaps as important, “misses” are either ignored or explained away.

Some prophecies not mentioned [4]

Let’s begin with Daniel. The book describes a figure with a head of gold, upper body of silver, lower body of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. The Bible says that these all represent four kingdoms from “gold” to “iron,” each inferior to its predecessor, and then goes on to make various predictions about their fates.

The trouble is, scholars throughout history have been force-fitting this into several lists of governments. They do this because the time-frames for these four kingdoms are vague and to the extent they are specific, no one has tied them convincingly to world events. They argue over which four kingdoms are meant and arguments are taken largely on the grounds of making the prophecy look good or look bad, or at least match one’s own view of history, depending on one’s preconceptions.

Or take Jeremiah; possibly the best example of a false prophet. In Jeremiah 22:24-30, Jeconiah was cursed of God. According to Jeremiah, God had doomed Jeconiah to childlessness. Yet according to I Chronicles 3:17-18, Jeconiah did indeed have children. In Jeremiah 34:45, Jeremiah predicts that King Zedekiah would die in peace. In reality, his son was killed before his eyes, he himself was blinded, and he apparently died while languishing in a Babylonian prison (II Kings 25:7). Finally, Jeremiah 29:10 predicts that the Exile would last 70 years. It actually lasted 48.

How about Matthew? Thomas Paine, one of our country’s founding fathers, went through all of Matthew looking for passages that were claimed to be fulfillment of prophecy, and debunked each one (see the chapter 1 appendix for a more in-depth exploration of messianic prophecy[5]). One example is Matthew 2:23, “He shall be called a Nazarene.” Paine writes: “Here is good circumstantial evidence that Matthew dreamed, for there is no such passage in all the Old Testament; and I invite the bishop and all the priests in Christendom, including those of America, to produce it.” [6]

Now let’s look at the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. This is a spectacularly undiscussed topic. In fact, there were two exiles. The first, the Assyrian, deported 27,000 Israelites, traditionally known as the Ten Tribes, into another part of Assyria. The Judeans were left in charge, probably because they didn’t oppose the Assyrians. These inhabitants of Judah were exiled two centuries later. It was touch and go, but in the end the Judeans survived.

The Assyrians were brutal and heavy-handed. The ten tribes they took ended up disappearing from history. However, the Bible is full of prophecy that assumes and presumes they will someday return in spite of their apostasy. Or, at least, a lot of folks over a lot of centuries expected them to return; the sanest story comes from the Jewish historian Josephus who reported that the Ten Tribes existed as a powerful nation beyond the Euphrates. Most likely the Ten Tribes intermarried with the people of a new region and vanished by assimilation.

In any case, their disappearance raises many difficult problems that are not easy to explain or resolve even if one takes the standard line that they got the covenant curses they deserved. So did the Judeans, but they somehow survived. What the difference was isn’t really clear, because the Judeans weren’t really any more pious monotheists than the Israelites.

See how pliable Biblical prophecy can be? In short, it’s a lot less impressive than it looks. I am told that these critiques are well-known in seminaries but seldom seen or heard outside of them.

General problems with prophecy

Self-fulfillment has already been discussed above in relation to predictions of ruined regimes; also vagueness in the case of Daniel. In general, prophecy supplies fertile ground for the proliferation of other quandaries:

1. Uncertain time periods.

Isaiah is often regarded as two or even three different individuals, separated by a significant amount of time and space. This is not so odd as it sounds. There are many ancient manuscripts which purport to be by Moses or some other ancient worthy, but which are so obviously written later in time. Older books of the Bible had ample opportunity for such accretions, because the most ancient Bibles we have are circa 150 BC (i.e. the Masoretic texts for the Old Testament) and even these aren’t the source of most modern translations. Much of one’s view of Biblical prophecy could hinge on whether one takes Isaiah in particular at face value. Many scholars do not, but traditionalists do.

2. Shrewd predictions.

A wag once wrote “If you must predict, predict often.” What is needed is a demonstration that prophecy works on a level that cannot be explained by chance. Note that if someone predicted the fall of Fidel Castro “within five years,” that would be a reasonably specific prophecy, but the odds of it coming true are better than 50/50, too. We must not discount ordinary shrewdness in the matter.

Long-range prophecy presents problems; it’s hard to find a genuinely convincing unarguable hit. For closer-range prophecy, one has the problem that it’s not always correct (see Tyre for a splendid example) or that it’s often a pretty shrewd bet. So, distinguishing it from chance is not an easy proposition.

3. Non-fulfillment or allegorical fulfillment.

Much of what is touted as prophecy sometimes comes true and sometimes does not; hardly a proof of anything. Kennedy contends that Biblical prophecy is absolutely reliable. But, there are many prophecies in the Bible that have not come true or did not in the time frame one would expect, reading the text straightforwardly. It is not convincing to argue that these will come true later on or did come true later in some allegorical sense. And in some cases, there is no real evidence that the predicted event ever happened at all (for example, the casting of lots for Jesus’s clothes at the Crucifixion).

4. Intentional fulfillment.

Biblical prophecy also stumbles against the fact that people of various cultures paid some attention to divination in those days (astrologers frequently held powerful positions in government) and they may have tried to fulfill known prophecies. It could hardly hurt for a politician to fulfill cheerfully a well-known old prophecy, since this might demoralize his political opponents. Possibly the Three Wise Men came, not necessarily because they were Jews (they probably weren’t) but because as scholars in foreign parts, they studied everyone’s prophecies. These things are hard to prove or disprove, but undeniably, there’s nothing remarkable about people of those times paying attention to the prophetic literature of others.

5. After-the-fact editing.

The above discussion and examples highlight some difficulties with Biblical prophecy without even mentioning the painful possibility that a prophecy was made to look good after the fact! Ample scope for tampering clouds the credibility of Biblical prophecy. Our earliest Old Testament texts date to circa 150 BC, centuries after what appears to have been the original era in which they were first written. Our current reverence for antiquity was not yet fully developed in this age, and in the Bible, signs of a certain amount of editing abound, if you go by the average scholar. The most accessible is the book of Jeremiah; the Septuagint text varies substantially from the Masoretic text, in sequence and even in the number of chapters.[7] Another example is a prophecy concerning Josiah in I Kings 13:2, but evidence inside the Bible itself indicates that much of the Old Testament was not written until the time of Josiah (II Kings 22:8+, in which the book of the Law is conveniently “found” in the temple, and contains some laws that nobody had heard of before). Another example: the end of the Book of Mark has or has not the last chapter, depending on which ancient manuscript one uses. Certainly, when one looks at 20th century prophetic claims, the same sort of problems (vagueness, after-the-fact “improvements”) occur.

Let’s look at Daniel again. The Book of Daniel contains outright errors about its own time-frame, supposedly contemporaneous to “Darius the Mede” (who was actually Persian, not Median, and who was preceded by Cyrus, not the other way round as written in Daniel), and also contains apparent confusion about the historical relationship of Chaldeans and Medians. However, it makes some stunningly accurate prophecies about the future. How is it that Daniel is so fuzzy about its own “present” and so accurate about the “future”? Well, there are clues (such as referring to angels by name) that the book was actually written in what it claims is the future, and contains a hazy history as the “present.” The clues indicate that the writer was probably a man of Greek times. In fairness, I doubt that the book disguises history as prophecy with intent to deceive. In this view, it was likely never meant as it is so often taken today, but rather as stories to comfort the Jews in more modern times.

It should be obvious by now that one cannot possibly regard prophecy fulfillment as a validation of the Bible. Too many uncertainties, unanswered questions, and examples of non-fulfillment clutter the Biblical prophecy landscape.

Other issues related to chapter 1

In reading his book, I noticed that Kennedy sometimes succumbs to another major pitfall, or fallacy, of logical argument by citing Scripture as proof of concepts originating in Scripture. This is known as circulus in demonstrando, or circular reasoning, in which a premise is used as the conclusion one wishes to reach, as in “Biblical prophecy is true because God says so in the Bible. And the Bible is true because it is the word of God.”

Fundamentalist Christians go one step further by insisting on the inerrancy of the Bible. Lloyd Averill (Professor of Theology and Preaching at Northwest Theological Union in Seattle) describes it like this:

What the Bible says is true without exception.

One of the things it says is that it is errorless.

The Bible must therefore be errorless because it says it is.

However much that flawed syllogism may read like a caricature, it is not. There is no need to caricature what is already so egregious that its exaggeration cannot be improved upon.[8]

The Bible is inerrant? Kennedy appears to think so, although he doesn’t actually say it outright. He is very selective in what he presents to support his reasoning, and he completely ignores the abundance of Biblical inconsistencies that have jumped right out at me. Because he says he wrote the book to help Christians deal with challenges from unbelievers, and the Bible is often challenged on its inconsistencies, I ardently hoped he would address them somehow. Contradictions are understandable for a hodgepodge collection of documents, but not for a carefully constructed treatise reflecting a well-thought-out plan. Here are just a few Biblical inconsistencies; those that relate specifically to God I will leave for a later chapter:

Were man and woman created after all other creatures (Genesis 1), or was man first and woman last with all other creatures in between (Genesis 2)? And how can there be light and days before the Sun was made?
After young Joseph was thrown into a pit by his brothers because they resented their father’s favoritism toward him, did his brothers draw him out and sell him (Genesis 37:23-27), or (in the very next verses) did his brothers leave him in the pit to die where he was rescued by a band of merchants who happened along?
Did Jesus drive the money changers from the Temple at the end of his public ministry (Matthew, Mark, Luke), or did this occur at the beginning of that ministry (John)?
How long did Jesus stay in Jerusalem, a couple of days or a whole year? (John vs. the other three)
When Mary Magdalene and the other Mary entered Jesus’s tomb (all the gospels disagree on how many women were there), did they find it occupied by one Angel (Matthew 28, Mark 16), or rather, were two angels on guard? (Luke 24) Did the women share with the disciples a message from the Angel(s) (Matthew 28, Luke 24), or did they really say “nothing to anyone”? (Mark 16)
Is it true that the disciples wouldn’t let Paul join them until Barnabas interceded and “brought him to the apostles” (Acts 9:26), or did Paul instead spend 15 days alone with Peter but saw no other apostles save James? (Galatians 1:18-19)
How many of each kind of animal were brought into the Ark? One pair of each or seven pairs each of the “clean” ones?
What is the ancestry of Jesus, the one given in Matthew or in Luke? Both trace back to David, but the lists of names are quite different in length and very few names are common to the two lists. The usual explanation of identifying one genealogy as Mary’s fails to explain the convergences and divergences in the two lists, or why one list is twice as long as the other, or why Mary’s parents Joachim and Anna (according to Catholics) aren’t there at all.
What about the virgin birth? As a physiological fact, it fails from the weight of scriptural evidence and the test of Christian orthodoxy. Consider:
- In only one place the New Testament reports unambiguously the miraculous birth of Jesus. In Matthew, Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Matthew associated this condition with Isaiah’s prophecy that “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” But he used the Septuagint version of Isaiah, a Greek translation prepared for non-Hebrew-speaking Jews, which mistranslated the original Hebrew word meaning only “young woman” to the Greek word for “sexually innocent female.” Matthew made a mistake. Isaiah knew the Hebrew word for “virgin” for he used it elsewhere in his writings.
- Luke’s account is ambiguous. He doesn’t eliminate the possibility that Joseph could have impregnated Mary (only that the Holy Spirit will “come upon” her, and the power of God will “overshadow” her). Nor does he say if Joseph was embarrassed that his betrothed had become pregnant without his help. Neither Luke nor Matthew mention the birth again, and Mark and John say nothing about it at all, a strange omission for such a miracle. Paul’s close association with Luke should imply that Paul knew of it, but he obviously thought it unimportant.
- The people around Jesus were not led to expect anything unusual about him. Matthew, Mark, and Luke make it clear that Jesus performed miracles only reluctantly, lest the sensation-seeking crowds miss his great spiritual message. Word of his own miraculous birth would have drawn those crowds just to see the human oddity rather than to hear his words.
- Mary and many others considered Jesus mad, probably because he spent much of his life roaming around in the desert as a holy man. But such behavior would be expected for a “son of God.” Furthermore, if Mary ever told anyone of his miraculous birth and was believed, Jesus would have had followers since birth — but he had none until he acquired some from John the Baptist.
- From the beginnings of the early post-New Testament church, Christian orthodoxy insisted that God’s gift is trivialized if either the divine or the human character of Jesus is weakened. Hope for humankind’s redemption could be realized only if God really revealed himself in real man, and the church considered as heresy anything that made Jesus less than human. And it’s impossible to affirm full humanhood for one who was born as no other man has come forth.[9]

The Virgin Birth story was almost certainly inspired by the numerous tales of pagan gods making mortal women pregnant. Even such historical people as Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great were imagined to have divine paternity – Apollo for the first two and Zeus for the third.

How did Judas die? What were Jesus’s dying words? So many incongruities! I’m getting into too much detail here and feel the urge to run off on tangents. I’d better stop now. Even the great 3rd century church father Origen declared that some passages in the Bible “are not literally true but absurd and impossible.”[10] An exhaustive list of all the inconsistencies would require a whole book (and such a book does exist: The Bible Handbook by W. P. Ball and G. W. Foote, though I haven’t seen it myself).

A Better Approach to Challenges

Despite the way it’s advertised, Why I Believe fails to supply adequate answers to challenges from nonbelievers. I would like to suggest an answer the specific question “Why do you believe in the Bible?” that a skeptic would have more difficulty arguing with. There is a price, however; although honest Christians should not find it too steep: One must admit that the Bible is imperfect. If the documentation I have presented so far seems antagonistic, let me first offer more palatable evidence based on the Bible’s own witness to itself:

The Bible does not witness to its own inerrancy. The author of 2 Timothy wrote about “all scripture” being “inspired by God.” This does not apply to the New Testament. Keep in mind that the Old Testament was the only scripture that existed for Christians at the time (the term translated as “scripture” in 2 Timothy was commonly used among Greek-speaking Jews to refer to the Old Testament). Similarly, the passage in 2 Peter that speaks of the “prophecy of scripture” clearly refers only to the Old Testament messianic anticipations. Also, 2 Peter itself was not originally part of the New Testament in the second century when many churches came to accept a Christian canon of 20 books. Neither passage speaks to the issue of scriptural inerrancy, but rather only to that of scriptural inspiration and authority.

As far as the Old Testament goes, Jesus himself was clearly not tied to the reliability of the Jewish scriptures, although he revered them. Averill writes:

He felt free to differ from their precepts when he thought them wrong, and to urge upon his followers similar nonconformity (healing on the sabbath, gathering food on the sabbath, refraining from ceremonial cleansing before meals, for example). Even more, he declared unequivocally the inadequacy of some Old Testament moral teaching (“You have heard it was said to the men of old . . . . But I say unto you. . . .”). From his teaching we must conclude that he found the Law and the Prophets to be insufficient in themselves. . . . The best evidence that Jesus differed from the prevailing scriptural view of his time lies in the fact that his interpretation of that scripture resulted in the charge of blasphemy leveled against him by religious authorities.

Even if one accepts “Thus saith the Lord” as authentic communication from God, that doesn’t guarantee the accuracy Leviticus’s endless legalisms or the Chronicles’ monotonous begats. And Paul makes it clear four times in 1 Corinthians that what he is writing is not the word of God but rather his own opinion (7:6, 12, 25, 40). Lastly, there’s the issue of begging the question: One cannot claim that the Bible is in all respects true because the Bible says it is, since the truth of what the Bible says is precisely the thing to be proved.

Now, to answer the question “Why do you believe in the Bible?” Remember, the discussion so far has been restricted to belief in the Bible, without addressing the related issues of belief in God or Christianity. Those beliefs are more difficult for me to justify. For the Bible, here is an answer I, as a nonbeliever, propose would satisfy a skeptic better than any other:[11]

I believe the Bible expresses higher truth than literal history or science. What the Bible has to say about the meaning of our human existence is not tied to having all of its facts straight about the structure of our human existence.

I believe that the main business of the Bible is to deliver an authoritative message. That message stands independently of whether or not there was such a man as Bildad the Shuhite; whether or not Daniel actually wrote the book that bears his name; whether or not the original creation was accomplished by God in six 24-hour days; whether or not a flood covered the earth, whether or not Revelations has any truth to it, or whether or not God inspired every word. I understand and accept the flaws in the Bible, but those things only distract, not detract, from its message.

The Bible has much to say on the nature of humanity, which makes it a book worth reading, enjoying, and learning from. The central message, embodied in the life, ministry, and teaching of Jesus, is that we are made by Love for love. About that, historical and scientific scholarship are silent and unknowing.

In other words, stick to the main message; the rest is excess baggage. Just as important, those who make this argument should make their views explicit, should not try to defend the Bible as history or the literal word of God, and should not complain about criticisms of it as such. Besides, considering the Bible as sacred and perfect amounts to idolatry, and isn’t that a sin?

My proposal is far from perfect. A Jew might make the above statement more easily than a Christian. The main message, or fundamental core of worth, might be disputed. You are likely to receive objections to this answer: Why the Bible then? Why not some other book that expresses higher truth? Can you prove that universal truth cannot exist independently of God? What is the Bible’s real core of worth? These are extremely difficult questions to answer. But at least it moves the debate to a deeper level, into a more constructive direction than bickering over historical accuracy, unfulfilled prophecies, and contradictions.

I can suggest possible answers to some of these deeper questions.

Q. Why the Bible then? I can get the same message from the writings of other religions.

A1. Why not? As long as it fulfills my needs, I’m satisfied.

A2. If you want, I can show you how it has helped me. . . .

Q. Why not some other book that expresses higher truth?

A1. They don’t appeal as strongly.

A2. Why do you use what you use?

A3. I do use other books. For example. . . .

Q. Can you prove that universal truth cannot exist independently of God?

A1. I didn’t claim that I could know, absolutely, the Universal Truth (which I believe does exist). The Bible, however, seems like it should be close enough, however short it might fall.

A2. I didn’t claim the existence of a universal truth. The Bible provides a subjective truth to which I can relate personally and intensely. This I consider to be more important than a Quixotic quest for a Universal Truth.

A3. What if Universal Truth does exist independently of God? What does that mean for the Bible? The answer is “not much.” [But it might mean something for the nature of God.]

A4. [A nonbeliever’s answer] I don’t need to believe in the God of the Bible, or any personal God for that matter, in order to have my life enriched by the spiritual truths I find in the Bible. The Bible and its teachings gives my life more meaning here and now.

The subjective basis of believing in the Bible, or for adhering to any belief system, is unavoidable. It is important to deal with this by pointing out how a belief system, in this case the Bible, can give life meaning where history and science might not. If you want meaning in life, you’ll have to develop it somehow, get it somewhere. If meaning is not objective, but subjective, then the Bible is as good a place as any, depending upon how it affects your life. If meaning is objective and not subjective, then it’s still impossible to prove that this meaning is not in the Bible somewhere.

It is important to remember that belief systems are essentially subjective. Choosing one or another depends upon personal tastes, circumstances and goals. Aside from healthy objective skepticism, there is no objective reason for preferring strong atheism to theism, or vice versa, only subjective reasons (however, those who have no belief at all, one way or the other, will argue that their system is most objective). If you take the position that beliefs are subjective, you do not need to provide independent confirmation for a “personal experience with God.” Instead, you need only point out that it is a part of your own belief system and that you have made your choice, despite the possibility of alternate interpretations. Taking this position does not require you to prove that the Bible is right with any of these “higher truths,” but merely requires you to show how you are better off for believing in them.

An Unexpected Intimacy, by Joyce Carol Oates

This is a must read for all writers, and especially for those even faintly considering this life-changing art.

Here’s the link to this article. Click here for more by this master-writer.

Some Thoughts on Writing Through the Decades

Joyce Carol Oates

Edited and arranged by Robert Friedman

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and wherever you are—in public, in solitude, in motion, utterly still—you can still be writing, because you are in that private space.

My “study” in Berkeley—at one end of the sofa in a large living room; my late husband Charlie had a desk in a farther corner at a window overlooking San Francisco bay in the distance. Photo by Henri Cole.

When writing goes with painstaking slowness—frustration, dismay—then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly—why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be very foolish to stop. Consequently one is always writing.

“Genius is not a gift, but the way a person invents in desperate circumstances.” —Sartre

(My epigraph for “Blonde” which is the innermost truth of my heart.)

Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfect. Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind.

I tell my students to write of their true subjects. How will they know when they are writing of their true subjects? By the ease with which they write. By their reluctance to stop writing. By the headachy, even guilty, joyous sensation of having done something that must be done, having confessed emotions thought unconfessable, having said what had seemed should remain unsaid. If writing is difficult, stop writing. Begin again with another subject. The true subject writes itself, it cannot be silenced. Give shape to your dreams, your day-dreams, cultivate your day-dreams and their secret meanings will come out.

Life and Biography – Celestial Timepiece — *A long-ago photo of me with what appears to be a “pixie” haircut, teaching an introductory literature course at the University of Detroit*

Writing is a consequence of being “haunted” by material. You know that you are “haunted” when nothing else can retain your attention—when your thoughts swerve, in obedience to an inner gravity, to the one true subject that will bring terror and comfort.

I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”—Henry James

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to “overcome” doubt.

Fiction that adds up, that suggests a “logical consistency,” or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery.

I’m drawn to failure—stories of struggle, failure, even defeat—and the aftermath of defeat. For only someone who attempts something beyond their reach can “fail.” There can be nobility in this, a strange sort of dignity. Never having failed means never having tried. Subscribe

Writing a first draft is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor. Only when you get to the farther side of the room do you see where you were going—now, you can try again, and you will move much more swiftly!

Revising is the blissful state subsequent to the circle of Hell that is the “first draft.”

I am drawn to write about rural and small-town upstate New York in the way in which a dreamer’s recurring dreams are likely to be set in childhood places. Our oldest memories are the most deeply imprinted in our brains—the first to be absorbed into our physical being, in neurons; the last to be lost, as consciousness fades to black.

Beset by economic crises, as by extremes of weather, upstate New York is emblematic of much of American life in the present day: its urban centers are relatively prosperous, educated, “liberal”—its rural areas, much the greater part of the state, are relatively impoverished, under-educated, “conservative.”

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lockport_New_York_-_Erie_Canal_Locks_34_35_-_%22siamese_twins%22%2C_where_the_upper_door_of_Lock_34_is_also_the_lower_door_of_Lock_35_-_Flickr_-_Onasill_~_Bill_-_103_Million_Views_-_Thank_You.jpg/640px-thumbnail.jpg — *Erie Canal locks, Lockport, New York*

The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you’ve done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well. (She wants to think!)

Starting a novel is like standing in a field and waiting for lightning to strike…

The Lightning Field, Catron County, New Mexico

I encourage my students to write a great deal. Keep a journal. Take notes. Write when you are feeling wretched, when your mind is about to break down…who knows what will float up to the surface? I am an unashamed believer in the magical powers of dreams; dreams enhance us. Even nightmares may be marketable—there is something to be said for the conscious, calculating exorcism of nightmares, if they give to us such works as those of Dostoyevsky, Celine, Kafka. So the most important thing is to write, and to write every day, in sickness and in health: who knows but there will come a time when you reread what you have written, not as the writer but as a reader, and a revelation comes to you in a flash—So this is what it has meant! Now, you can begin.

I’ve never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate to that effort.

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

The crucial difference between the critic and the reviewer is: one takes time, the other must meet a deadline.

Words are like wild birds—they will come when they wish, not when they are bidden. And they may suddenly explode into the air—and disappear.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/British_Wildlife_Centre_Apr_2015_-_Geese_%2817169605088%29.jpg/640px-British_Wildlife_Centre_Apr_2015_-_Geese_%2817169605088%29.jpg — *Photo by Garry Knight*

I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of “working” at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don’t think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.

It’s up to the writer and the artist to give voice to these people. There are two impulses in art: one is rebellious and transgressive—you explore regions in which you are not wanted, and you will be punished for that. But the other is a way of sympathy—evoking sympathy for people who may be different from us—whom we don’t know. Art is a way of breaking down the barriers between people—these two seemingly antithetical impulses toward rebellion and toward sympathy come together in art.

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

To be entranced, to be driven, to be obsessed, to be under the spell of an emerging, not quite fully “comprehended” narrative—this is the greatest happiness of the writer’s life even as it burns us out and exhausts us, unfitting us for the placid contours of “normality.”

There are those—a blessed lot—who can experience life without the slightest glimmer of a need to add anything to it—any sort of “creative” effort; and there are those—an accursed lot?—for whom the activities of their own brains and imaginations are paramount. The world for these individuals may be infinitely rich, rewarding and seductive—but it is not paramount. The world may be interpreted as a gift, earned only if one has created something over and above the world.

A literary work is a kind of nest: an elaborately and painstakingly woven nest of words incorporating chunks and fragments of the writer’s life in an imagined structure, as a bird’s nest incorporates all manner of items from the world outside our windows, ingeniously woven together in an original design.

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called “culture”—and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species.

https://www.kwls.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Oates-Joyce-Carol-cr-Beth-Garrabrant-cr-Brydges-Mackinney-Agency-crop.jpg — *Photo by Beth Gabbert*

Through the local or regional, through our individual voices, we work to create art that will speak to others who know nothing of us. In our very obliqueness to one another, an unexpected intimacy is born.

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Writing Journal—Saturday writing prompt

Your protagonist is a serial killer on the hunt for a new victim. Write the scene from his point of view as he homes in on a target and prepares for the abduction.

One Stop for Writers

Guidance & Tips

Write the scene of discovery (i.e., tell a story), or brainstorm and create a list of related ideas.

Here’s five story elements to consider:

Character
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Resolution

Never forget, writing is a process. The first draft is always a mess.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

Mind Games to Protect Almighty (?) God

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison, 03/10/2023

The vulnerability of god is the biggest mystery

In a few of my article here I have mentioned one of the worst mind games ever used to defend god. A few days after the 2012 murder of 20 children at the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut, a devout woman was sure it had happened because “God must have wanted more angels.” Clergy and theologians know better than to say anything so blatantly grotesque, yet they feel the same obligation to get god off the hook. Why is there is so much suffering, cruelty, agony on a planet supposedly under the care of an omni-god: all good, all wise, all powerful? “This is my father’s world”—so they say. Our awareness of the everyday reality disconfirms this suggestion—at least it disconfirms the idea that a caring father-god is paying attention.

Professional theologians work hard at devising excuses to explain the obvious absence of god, and secular authors come right back at them to puncture their arguments. In John Loftus’ 2021 anthology, God and

Horrendous Suffering, there are two essays that describe some of these efforts, David Kyle Johnson’s “Refuting Skeptical Theism,” and Robert M. Price’s “Theodicy: The Idiocy.”

At first glance, skeptical theism might sound like a step in the right direction. Johnson points out that we may be tempted to assume that it means believers edging toward agnosticism, or those who “barely believe.” But No, skeptical theism is a clumsy attempt to rule out evil and suffering as a reason for denying that a good god is in charge. Johnson sums it up this way:

“The problem of evil suggests that the seemingly unjustified (i.e., senseless or gratuitous) evils that exist in the world serve as evidence against god’s existence. But since god is so much ‘bigger’ than us—more wise and powerful and perfect—he could have reasons for allowing such evils that we simply cannot see or comprehend. Consequently, no evil, no matter how gratuitous it seems, can serve as evidence against god’s existence.

“In other words, because we should be skeptical of our ability to fathom god’s reasoning (hence ‘skeptical theism’), the problem of suffering is no problem at all. For all we know, god has a reason to allow evil, and thus the existence of evil cannot bolster the atheist’s argument” (p. 212).

So the skeptical theist argues that we should be skeptical about our knowledge of god, who is assumed to be “more wise and powerful and perfect” than we are. But this is tiresome theobabble: theological assumptions—actually guesswork—the product of speculation for thousands of years, based on no hard data whatever.

Among devout believers there is a tendency to embrace possibilities instead of probabilities. Especially when they’re trying to defend miracles: because their god has such extraordinary power, it has to be possible that the many divine wonders reported in the Bible actually happened, whether it’s Jesus turning water into wine, or feeding thousands of people with just a few loaves and fishes. But what is more probable? That such things actually happened, or that such stories derive from magical folklore of the ancient world—about which most laypeople seem to be unaware? If critical thinking skills are locked in neutral, of course it’s easy to take these things on faith—as devout have been trained to do since childhood. But the laws of probability don’t go away. Johnson devotes six pages to a section of the essay titled, “Skeptical Theism Is Logically and Mathematically Invalid.” There you will find what he identifies as a Simple Version of the math, then the Bayesian Version.

The math may be daunting for many people, but the facts of evil should be even more daunting. But I suspect that the full scale of evil falls outside the horizon of awareness of most humans—except for evils that affect them directly.

A careful study of history can be a cure for lack of awareness.

The current issue of BBC History Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 2) includes an article by John Bulgin, titled, “How the Holocaust Began,” pp. 46-51. We read this:

“Within a matter of weeks, the targets of this mass murderer moved from military-aged men to include women, children, and the elderly. Children were spared none of the horror. Mothers were required to hold babies in their arms as both were shot, sometimes with the same bullet.

“By the end of September 1941 the massacres reached an appalling

apex at Babyn Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Over the course of two days, the Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators murdered more than 33,000 people in a single Aktion. Each consecutive group was marched to the murder site and forced to lie on top of the still-warm bodies of those who had just been killed before they were shot themselves” (p. 50).

Bulgin notes that “Senior Nazis became concerned about the emotional burden the killings were placing on their own men” (p. 50).

Clergy and theologians also are aware of the emotional burden on believers that acute awareness of evil and suffering would bring. So this becomes the strategy: divert attention, obfuscate, come up with shallow excuses that might convince those who have already been deceived by doctrine. John Bulgin has pointed out that more than 33,000 people were murdered in two days at a ravine on Ukraine. “Oh, but god must have had some greater good in mind—he’s much wiser than we are—so hold onto your faith no matter what!”

This provokes utter confusion, not clarity, however, as Johnson explains:

“…because people everywhere profess to have moral knowledge—to know that some things are morally good and others are morally bad. Indeed, if I can’t know that the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust was a morally bad thing, what can I know? If I can’t lament the 2004 Indian Tsunami which killed an estimated 230,000 people in one day (because, for all I know, somehow it inexplicably prevented even more deaths), then I can lament nothing. In short, my objection here goes like this: 1. If the argument of the skeptical theist is sound, then moral knowledge is impossible. 2. Moral knowledge is possible. 3. Thus skeptical theism is not sound” (p. 222).

Skeptical theism is based on deity inflation: god is so much bigger, better, wiser than we are—his ways, his ultimate goals, are beyond our understanding (but again, please show us the data to justify this claim).

Johnson drives home the point:

“If…god has different moral standards that make him conclude that genocide, burned fawns, and raped children are acceptable, our terms ‘loving’ and ‘moral good’ cannot apply to him—at all! Indeed, it would seem that the only words that would apply are those like ‘deplorable’” (p. 224).

“If god really is too big to understand—so big that we cannot even know whether he condemns child rape—then we really should profess to know nothing about him at all, including whether he exists” (p. 228).

“…the skeptical theist would not only have to admit that moral knowledge is impossible, but also that skeptical theism is hypocritical, irrationally unfalsifiable, and entails (at best) religious agnosticism and (at worst) global skepticism” (p. 229).

To even try to make a case that 33,000 people murdered by Nazis in two days can’t be called evil, because a god will see to it that a greater good will eventually emerge, is a foul mind game; it is just as grotesque as “God must have wanted more angels.”

It was a smart move by the editor of the anthology to place Robert Price’s essay, “Theodicy: The Idiocy” right after the Johnson essay. It’s an additional slam-dunk—in just ten pages. Price notes that theodicy was Gottfried Leibniz’s word (coined in 1710) to describe the attempt to “vindicate God’s supposed goodness in spite of all appearances.” Price says that “the real game is to protect one’s faith in God at all costs, and that cost is great indeed” (p. 233).

Theologians are up against the wild incoherence in Christian belief, and so many incriminating Bible stories. Price includes unanswered prayer in his discussion, since Jesus-script in Mark 11:24 presents a major challenge: does god keep his word? “I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and you will.” Don’t we hit a brick wall here in protecting faith? How can this not be awkward for sincerely devout folks? Price refers to it as “… a peculiar condition of having to deal with the failure of expected divine intervention. Why has not God blessed me as I asked? Did not Jesus promise that he would? You see, here we have an unstable combination of magic and religion” (p. 235). Oh, that the devout could see to what a sweeping extent their beliefs derive from ancient magic, e.g. eat this, drink that (the eucharist) to get right with god—these are magic potions. How could a good, wise god have invented or approved of such superstitions?

The apostle Paul was a master of bad theology, and Price calls attention to that. The Old Testament vividly depicts the wrath of god on those who disobey his laws. Paul savored the wrath of his god (I Corinthians 10:6-11):

“Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did, as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.’ We must not engage in sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents.And do not complain, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.”

Paul was a master at mind games: if you put Christ to the test, you might get destroyed by serpents; shape up, maintain your personal purity—by no means should you eat, drink, and rise up to play—because the “end of the age has come.” Well, No it didn’t, and theologians and clergy who aren’t looking to the sky for the kingdom to come have to invent even more mind games. How tiresome, as Price notes: “It is so very ironic that the massacre stories present a stumbling block only to biblical literalists who are stuck believing that every story in the Bible must be true. Everyone else can breathe a sigh of relief!” (p. 241)

Yes, of course, many devout Christians don’t engage their minds with such issues. As Price kindly puts it at the end of the essay, “…they are too busy attending to good humanitarian works of mercy in the name of their faith to waste time with theodicy…” (p. 243) Unfortunately the incoherence of their faith falsifies the entire belief system. In a footnote at the end of essay, John Loftus notes the challenge that Christopher Hitchens presented to believers: “…come up with one moral action they could do that nonbelievers could not also do…” (p. 243)

Loftus also points to a stark, cruel reality: “If readers want a complete picture of the deeds of Christians then seriously consider the many morally atrocious deeds their faith-based morals have caused. Christianity is red with blood in tooth and in claw. Throughout most of its history violence was its theme, its program, and its method for converting people and keeping believers in the fold. Its history is a history of violence. There is no escaping this” (p. 243).

Which begs the further question: How can all of this grievous Christian misbehavior have been tolerated by a good, powerful god? It seems especially grotesque to argue that it has all been part of this god’s bigger plan that we’re incapable of grasping.

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (2016; 2018 Foreword by John Loftus) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available.

His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.

03/10/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I’m currently listening to: McNally’s Secret, by Lawrence Sanders

He was a tremendously talented writer.

Amazon abstract:

Top reviews from the United States

Linda G. Shelnutt

5.0 out of 5 stars Cure Cultural Volcanics with Bubbling Champagne. Design Life To Suit Taste & Times.

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2006

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Tenacity, the Art of Integration, and the Key to a Flexible Mind: Wisdom from the Life of Mary Somerville, for Whom the Word “Scientist” Was Coined

Here’s the link to this article.

Inside the hallmark of a great scientist and a great human being — the ability to hold one’s opinions with firm but unfisted fingers.

BY MARIA POPOVA

This essay is adapted from my book Figuring

A middle-aged Scottish mathematician rises ahead of the sun to spend a couple of hours with Newton before the day punctuates her thinking with the constant interruptions of mothering four children and managing a bustling household. “A man can always command his time under the plea of business,” Mary Somerville (December 26, 1780–November 28, 1872) would later write in her memoir; “a woman is not allowed any such excuse.”

Growing up, Somerville had spent the daylight hours painting and playing piano. When her parents realized that the household candle supply had thinned because Mary had been staying up at night to read Euclid, they promptly confiscated her candles. “Peg,” she recalled her father telling her mother, “we must put a stop to this, or we shall have Mary in a strait jacket one of these days.” Mary was undeterred. Having already committed the first six books of Euclid to memory, she spent her nights adventuring in mathematics in the bright private chamber of her mind.

Mary Somerville (Portrait by Thomas Phillips)

Despite her precocity and her early determination, it took Somerville half a lifetime to come abloom as a scientist — the spring and summer of her life passed with her genius laying restive beneath the frost of the era’s receptivity to the female mind. When Somerville was forty-six, she published her first scientific paper — a study of the magnetic properties of violet rays — which earned her praise from the inventor of the kaleidoscope, Sir David Brewster, as “the most extraordinary woman in Europe — a mathematician of the very first rank with all the gentleness of a woman.” Lord Brougham, the influential founder of the newly established Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge — with which Thoreau would take issue thirty-some years later by making a case for “the diffusion of useful ignorance,” comprising “knowledge useful in a higher sense” — was so impressed that he asked Somerville to translate a mathematical treatise by Pierre-Simon Laplace, “the Newton of France.” She took the project on, perhaps not fully aware how many years it would take to complete to her satisfaction, which would forever raise the common standard of excellence. All great works suffer from and are saved by a gladsome blindness to what they ultimately demand of their creators.

As the months unspooled into years, Somerville supported herself as a mathematics tutor to the children of the wealthy. One of her students was a little girl named Ada, daughter of the mathematically inclined baroness Annabella Milbanke and the only legitimate child of the sybarite poet Lord Byron — a little girl would would grow to be, thanks to Somerville’s introduction to Charles Babbage, the world’s first computer programmer.

When Somerville completed the project, she delivered something evocative of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska’s wonderful notion of “that rare miracle when a translation stops being a translation and becomes… a second original” In The Mechanism of the Heavens, published in 1831 after years of work, Somerville hadn’t merely translated the math, but had expanded upon it and made it comprehensible to lay readers, popularizing Laplace’s esoteric ideas.

Solar System quilt by Ellen Harding Baker, begun in 1869 and completed in 1876 to teach women astronomy when they were barred from higher education in science. Available as a print and a face mask. (Smithsonian)

The book was an instant success, drawing attention from the titans of European science. John Herschel, whom Somerville considered the greatest scientist of their time and who was soon to coin the word photography, wrote her a warm letter she treasured for the rest of her days:

Dear Mrs. Somerville,

I have read your manuscript with the greatest pleasure, and will not hesitate to add, (because I am sure you will believe it sincere,) with the highest admiration. Go on thus, and you will leave a memorial of no common kind to posterity; and, what you will value far more than fame, you will have accomplished a most useful work. What a pity that La Place has not lived to see this illustration of his great work! You will only, I fear, give too strong a stimulus to the study of abstract science by this performance.

Somerville received another radiant fan letter from the famed novelist Maria Edgeworth, who wrote after devouring The Mechanism of the Heavens:

I was long in the state of the boa constrictor after a full meal — and I am but just recovering the powers of motion. My mind was so distended by the magnitude, the immensity, of what you put into it!… I can only assure you that you have given me a great deal of pleasure; that you have enlarged my conception of the sublimity of the universe, beyond any ideas I had ever before been enabled to form.

Edgeworth was particularly taken with a “a beautiful sentence, as well as a sublime idea” from Somerville’s section on the propagation of sound waves:

At a very small height above the surface of the earth, the noise of the tempest ceases and the thunder is heard no more in those boundless regions, where the heavenly bodies accomplish their periods in eternal and sublime silence.

Years later, Edgeworth would write admiringly of Somerville that “while her head is up among the stars, her feet are firm upon the earth.”

*Milky Way Starry Night* by Native artist Margaret Nazon, part of her stunning series of astronomical beadwork.

In 1834, Somerville published her next major treatise, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences — an elegant and erudite weaving together of the previously fragmented fields of astronomy, mathematics, physics, geology, and chemistry. It quickly became one of the scientific best sellers of the century and earned Somerville pathbreaking admission into the Royal Astronomical Society the following year, alongside the astronomer Caroline Herschel — the first women admitted as members of the venerable institution.

When Maria Mitchell — America’s first professional female astronomer and the first woman employed by the U.S. government for a professional task — traveled to Europe to meet the Old World’s greatest scientific luminaries, her Quaker shyness could barely contain the thrill of meeting her great hero. She spent three afternoons with Somerville in Scotland and left feeling that “no one can make the acquaintance of this remarkable woman without increased admiration for her.” In her journal, Mitchell described Somerville as “small, very,” with bright blue eyes and strong features, looking twenty years younger than her seventy-seven years, her diminished hearing the only giveaway of her age. “Mrs. Somerville talks with all the readiness and clearness of a man, but with no other masculine characteristic,” Mitchell wrote. “She is very gentle and womanly… chatty and sociable, without the least pretence, or the least coldness.”

Months after the publication of Somerville’s Connexion, the English polymath William Whewell — then master of Trinity College, where Newton had once been a fellow, and previously pivotal in making Somerville’s Laplace book a requirement of the university’s higher mathematics curriculum — wrote a laudatory review of her work, in which he coined the word scientist to refer to her. The commonly used term up to that point — “man of science” — clearly couldn’t apply to a woman, nor to what Whewell considered “the peculiar illumination” of the female mind: the ability to synthesize ideas and connect seemingly disparate disciplines into a clear lens on reality. Because he couldn’t call her a physicist, a geologist, or a chemist — she had written with deep knowledge of all these disciplines and more — Whewell unified them all into scientist. Some scholars have suggested that he coined the term a year earlier in his correspondence with Coleridge, but no clear evidence survives. What does survive is his incontrovertible regard for Somerville, which remains printed in plain sight — in his review, he praises her as a “person of true science.”Phases of Venus and Saturn by Maria Clara Eimmart, early 1700s. Available as a print.

Whewell saw the full dimension of Somerville’s singular genius as a connector and cross-pollinator of ideas across disciplines. “Everything is naturally related and interconnected,” Ada Lovelace would write a decade later. Maria Mitchell celebrated Somerville’s book as a masterwork containing “vast collections of facts in all branches of Physical Science, connected together by the delicate web of Mrs. Somerville’s own thought, showing an amount and variety of learning to be compared only to that of Humboldt.” But not everyone could see the genius of Somerville’s contribution to science in her synthesis and cross-pollination of information, effecting integrated wisdom greater than the sum total of bits of fact — a skill that becomes exponentially more valuable as the existing pool of knowledge swells. One obtuse malediction came from the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who proclaimed that Somerville had never done anything original — a remark that the young sculptor Harriet Hosmer, herself a pioneer who paved the way for women in art, would tear to shreds. In a letter defending Somerville, she scoffed:

To the Carlyle mind, wherein women never played any conspicuous part, perhaps not, but no one, man or woman, ever possessed a clearer insight into complicated problems, or possessed a greater gift of rendering such problems clear to the mind of the student, one phase of originality, surely.

Somerville’s uncommon gift for seeing clearly into complexity came coupled with a deep distaste for dogma and the divisiveness of religion, the supreme blinders of lucidity. She recounted that as religious controversies swirled about her, she had “too high a regard for liberty of conscience to interfere with any one’s opinions.” She chose instead to live “on terms of sincere friendship and love with people who differed essentially” in their religious views. In her memoir, she encapsulated her philosophy of creed: “In all the books which I have written I have confined myself strictly and entirely to scientific subjects, although my religious opinions are very decided.”

Above all, Somerville possessed the defining mark of the great scientist and the great human being — the ability to hold one’s opinions with firm but unfisted fingers, remaining receptive to novel theories and willing to change one’s mind in light of new evidence. Her daughter recounted:

It is not uncommon to see persons who hold in youth opinions in advance of the age in which they live, but who at a certain period seem to crystallise, and lose the faculty of comprehending and accepting new ideas and theories; thus remaining at last as far behind, as they were once in advance of public opinion. Not so my mother, who was ever ready to hail joyfully any new idea or theory, and to give it honest attention, even if it were at variance with her former convictions. This quality she never lost, and it enabled her to sympathise with the younger generation of philosophers, as she had done with their predecessors, her own contemporaries.

Shortly after the publication of Somerville’s epoch-making book, the education reformer Elizabeth Peabody — who lived nearly a century, introduced Buddhist texts to America, and coined the term Transcendentalism — echoed the sentiment in her penetrating insight into middle age and the art of self-renewal.