What is Hell Like? Come to Church and Find Out, or Not

I think this is the third time I have posted photos on this blog from the marquee of the church down the street from where I live. In the first photo, the marquee indicated, “Big Bang Theory: You’ve Got to be Kidding—God.” Interesting that God should actually provide a direct quotation to this particular church without providing it to other churches. I kind of thought they believed the Bible was God’s word, but apparently God sends them direct quotes. I used this photo in my 2012 book Life of Earth: Portrait of a Beautiful, Middle-Aged,Stressed-Out World. At first I thought God was ridiculing cosmology, but I have gradually come to realize that what really disturbed God was the television series by that name. Apparently God really hates TV shows with geeks in them. In the second photo, the marquee announced, “Evolution: The Science of Calling God a Liar.” I made a YouTube video of this sign, and it got copied around the FaceBookosphere.

Note of caution: There is a website that makes fake church marquee images. They are funny but don’t take them seriously. For example, the church sign that said, “God to President Bush: Those little voices are not from me. Check your meds,” was funny but not genuine. And that joke about the church marquee that said, “What is Hell? Come to church and find out” is likewise apocryphal.

But in this third example the marquee looks, at first, not too different from other church marquees. It is not outrageous, but subtly misleading in a way that I think is interesting enough to discuss at this point. There is a website called “ExploreGod.” In their videos, being shown at this church, they ask important questions, such as Does God exist? or (as in this photo) Why does God allow pain and suffering? These are good questions. But how a church approaches them and how scientists might approach them reveal a fundamental difference between religion and science.

First note that science itself cannot answer either question. But scientists as people frequently wonder about such questions and come up with personal answers to them.

When a church asks, Does God exist?, there is only one possible answer. And everything that leads up to their conclusion is forced into lockstep march toward that conclusion: the answer of Yes. But when scientists ask, Does God exist?, you get a whole range of answers. Science does not force its arguments into a lockstep march toward the answer of No. Many scientists answer Yes, many answer No. But many scientists, myself included, cannot answer this question. Instead we ask, what do you mean by God? If you mean a supreme being who controls all the details of the universe, the answer is clearly No. But if you mean a spiritual essence of love, the presence whereof can never be tested but which many of us would really, really like to believe in, the answer is a resounding I hope so for those of us in the middle. Scientists are always questioning our assumptions and biases. The churches answer the question like an army; scientists answer it like a herd of cats.

Similarly, when churches ask the question in the photo, you know that they will reach some kind of answer or other that leaves God both merciful and all-powerful. They might answer it (especially this church), “God allows suffering because there are Democrats in the world.” Others might answer it, “Because God is testing and strengthening us.” But both of these answers fail to match the evidence, because (in response to the first) even Republicans suffer now and again—there are some forms of pain from which even assault weapons cannot protect them—and (in response to the second) because pain and suffering is way, way, prodigiously, lugubriously, supercalifragalisticexpialadociously, abominably greater than is necessary for strengthening a person’s character. We all expect life to be challenging, to find thorns in a rose garden, but for many people (so far, not for me) suffering has been overwhelming. A little Palestinian kid getting killed by an Israeli mortar, or getting killed because she was used as a human shield by an Islamist terrorist, does not promote that kid’s spiritual development. (See, here is common ground between Israel and Hamas: they both believe that Palestinian civilians are expendable.)

The one answer a church will not permit is to say, “Shit happens and God doesn’t stop it.” There may be a God-essence that wants us to overcome struggles to the extent that we can, and this can be considered a potential Christian answer, but no church would say this, because then people would stop coming and bringing their money. That is, if you can’t get God to alleviate your suffering, then what is the point of prayer and church involvement?

But scientists as people are open to a range of responses to such a question.

As Bart Ehrman has pointed out in his book God’s Problem, the Bible offers about four different answers to the question of why God permits suffering, depending on which part of the Bible you read. The answers all contradict one another. Scientists, as people, would note this range of Biblical answers without trying to force everyone to believe just one of them, without screwing the scriptures that say otherwise into confirming the belief decided in advance.

And of course there are lots of religious answers outside of Christianity. Christian Scientists (who are not Christian scientists) claim that suffering is an illusion.

Conservative religion says, “We have the answer, and we will force all evidence, even scriptural evidence, into confirming it.” Scientists as people say, “There are different possible answers, and we may just have to accept the fact that we cannot know which if any are correct.”

In closing, I point out that this photo was taken on September 22, 2014. Notice that the sign is still advertising a God-loves-guns-and-wants-you-to-have-assault-weapons seminar they sponsored the previous May. The seminar is over enough already and you should take the sign down. But they don’t, because this sign—apparently a permanent fixture now—expresses that they think the Gospel is really about: not Jesus, not God, but guns.

A Survey of Religious Belief and Knowledge at a University in Oklahoma

I teach many general biology classes, for students in all different majors, as well as biology students in my botany and evolution classes, at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. For years, I have known that my students had religious beliefs that covered the whole range from agnosticism to fundamentalist Christianity, and scientific perceptions ranging from evolution-only to young-earth-creationism. Since we are in the middle of the Bible Belt, I assumed most of them were creationists. But I never asked them.

Until now.

A couple of weeks ago I administered a survey (with institutional approval) of religious knowledge and beliefs. The survey was voluntary and anonymous. The religion under consideration was Christianity, because it is the most common religion in rural Oklahoma. I wanted to know how many of the students accepted evolutionary science and how many believed the Bible to be a, or the, holy book. And if they did believe the Bible to be holy, just how much did they know about it? Most of the questions I asked had something to do with biology: the age of the Earth and Noah’s flood (evolution), Old Testament dietary laws (nutrition), the Sabbath of the Fields (ecology), slavery (the genetics of race relations), and violent miscarriage (relating to the question of when human life begins). I will now report the results from the 49 respondents in my general biology classes.

The first thing that I discovered is that student beliefs were more evenly spread than I had anticipated; they were not overwhelmingly young-earth creationist.

Belief General Biology Fall 2014	Number	Percent	Belief in literal six-day creation	Belief that Noah’s Flood covered the whole Earth
Evolution produced the diversity of life.	6	12%	0%	0%
God allowed or used evolution to produce the diversity of life.	14	29%	44%	67%
God supernaturally created diversity over a long period of time.	13	27%	60%	100%
God supernaturally created diversity over a short and recent period of time.	10	20%	100%	89%
Declined to state	6	12%	50%	100%

There were 20 students of 49 who accepted some form of evolution, and 23 who did not. As it turns out, the “declined to state” category answered most questions in a creationist fashion, so it might be safest to assume 20 students of 49 (41%) being open to evolution in some form, and 29 students of 49 (59%) rejecting evolution. Belief in a literal six days of creation and a Flood that covered the whole Earth were higher in the creationist categories, but, perhaps surprisingly, not completely pegged to 100%; Noah’s Flood seemed more popular than the six-day creation.

Seventy-nine percent of the respondents who said that God allowed evolution to occur believed that the Bible was a or the holy book; in the creationist and declined-to-state categories it was 100%. The following information is based only on the students who identified the Bible as holy.

Of these students, only 15 percent had actually read the Bible. The others had read parts of it, or relied on their preachers to quote passages to them. That is, 85 percent of the people of faith relied on their preachers to edit the Bible for them: to either conveniently ignore certain passages, or to actually give them misinformation about what the Bible said.

General Topic General Biology Fall 2014	Specific belief	Percentage answering “yes”
Evolution, Earth history	Genesis 1 contains the account of Adam and Eve.	65%
	God raised up new mountains after the Flood.	80%
	God created new life forms after the Flood.	24%
	God put the fossils in order during the Flood.	21%
Health and diet	The Law of Moses says eating shellfish is an abomination.	34%
Ecology	The world will end soon.	62%
	The Law of Moses says that agricultural land should lie fallow (uncultivated) every seventh year.	79%
Social and racial	The Law of Moses says debts should be forgiven every fifty years and land should go back to its original owners.	26%
	Children born into slavery remained slaves even if their parents were freed.	25%
	Israelites could own other Israelites as slaves.	40%
	The Law of Moses says, “The slave is his money.”	27%
	Injuring a slave, who dies later, is not a punishable offense.	50%
	The Law of Moses says that there should be no resident aliens in Israel.	42%
Life before birth	The Law of Moses considers that injuring a woman so as to cause a miscarriage is manslaughter or murder.	59%

First, consider the beliefs about evolution and Earth history. Among the difficulties of creationist explanations are: first, there are two creation accounts in Genesis, not just one; second, why do you have fossil deposits high up in mountains; third, how could animal genetic diversity come from just two of each kind in the ark; fourth, why do the fossils show an evolutionary order. These are things that creationist pastors may wish that people would not ask. How convenient it would be if churchgoers would ignore the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, or to think that God solved these problems by putting the fossils in order, raising up mountains, and creating new genetic diversity. Large percentages of believers the respondents did in fact believe these things, even though they are not in the Bible. They just made these things up. No wonder so few religious students notice that the facts of science contradict a literalistic view of the Bible; they do not know what a literalistic view of the Bible is.

Next, consider beliefs about Old Testament dietary laws. Only 34 percent knew that Leviticus 11 condemns eating shellfish as an abomination. It is very common for conservative preachers to quote the Old Testament to say that homosexuality is an abomination. But they almost never say that the Old Testament uses the same word to refer to eating shrimp.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding is that 62 percent of the respondents believed that the world is going to end soon. This one result is enough to make me almost stop worrying about evolution education and focus on environmental education. If you believe that the world is going to end soon, then at least subconsciously you are going to be unconvinced that it is important to prevent global warming or to protect endangered species or to recycle or to conserve energy or anything else. Go ahead and make a mess of the world, since God is going to destroy it very soon anyway. Of course, politicians who say to not worry about the Earth will NOT say to not worry about terrorists or deficit spending. It’s just the Earth you can ignore.

Most of the respondents (79 percent) knew about what is popularly called the Sabbath of the Fields, which is a primitive form of soil conservation commanded in the Book of Exodus. Most of them know that the Law of Moses addresses stewardship and conservation of the land. But only 26 percent knew about the year of jubilee, in which debts are forgiven and land goes back to its original owners every fifty years. Such a law would be the death-knell of capitalism. It sounds like socialism, and that is probably why preachers almost never talk about it.

Most respondents had a very unclear idea about what the Old Testament said about slavery. They thought that Biblical slavery was benign and more closely resembled an employer-employee relationship than actual ownership of a person. But the Old Testament clearly indicates that a child slave remains a slave even if the parent is given freedom and that it says “the slave is his money” (Exodus 21:21). If an owner kills a slave outright, it is manslaughter, but if the owner injures a slave and he or she dies a few days later, it is not a punishable offense, according to the Law of Moses. Most Bible believers appear to be unaware of this.

The Law of Moses says that resident aliens in the land of Israel should receive the same rights as the Israelites; one law for both. Almost half of the respondents were unaware of this. When conservative preachers rail against “illegal aliens,” they conveniently ignore this part of the Bible.

Finally, you hear conservative preachers all the time saying that, according to the Bible, abortion is murder. Therefore, if someone injures a woman so that she has a miscarriage, then the death of the fetus constitutes at least manslaughter. But the Law of Moses does not say this. Exodus 21 says, "And if men strive together, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that her child comes out, and yet no harm follows; the one who hit her shall surely be fined, according as the woman's husband shall impose on him; and he shall pay a fine as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth." It is unclear whether “harm” refers to the fetus or to the mother. While his passage does not actually sanction abortion, it does possibly indicate that the death of the fetus is not manslaughter. Over half of the respondents are unaware of this.

The conclusion I take away from this is that people who are most strongly convinced that the Bible has religious authority over science and daily life are unaware of what the bible actually says about these matters. This undoubtedly comes from people getting their Bible knowledge from preachers who twist what the Bible actually says and then assume (correctly) that their followers will not bother to look at the Bible themselves.

I also gave this survey to my evolution class (consisting mostly of upper division biological science majors). I only had fourteen respondents, which is not enough of a sample size to justify closer analysis except for these overall results. First, the most common belief in this class was theistic evolution (43 percent of respondents). The next most common belief was that evolution produced diversity (29 percent). Only three of the students (21 percent) were young-earth creationists, and only one was an old-earth creationist. This course is an elective, which most creationist students avoid. Second, acceptance of evolutionary science does not require rejection of the Bible. Of these respondents, 71 percent accepted some form of evolution, and 79 percent believed the Bible was a, or the, holy book. To them, these views are not mutually exclusive.

For me, there were three conclusions from this survey, of which the first two were surprising:

First, young-earth creationism was not the most common belief even in the Bible belt of Oklahoma.
Second, over half of the respondents thought the world was going to end soon.
Third, most Bible believers do not realize that the Bible does not support their beliefs.

I will continue administering this survey and eventually I hope that I will have a large sample size. In my approximately ten remaining professional years, I might get close to a thousand respondents.

New video

I just posted a new video on StanEvolve. It has not shown up on the main page yet but the link works, just click on StanEvolve. Rick Perry prayed for rain. Did God answer that prayer? Can you ever know? Science and falsifiability...

More Scriptural Justification for Killing

In previous entries, I have criticized fundamentalist Christians for using the Bible to condemn people who disagree with their doctrines. In fact, the Old Testament often calls for the killing of people who disagree with them.

These fundamentalists seem to ignore the distinction between the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament called for the stoning of people having sex outside of marriage. But when hard-line religious people brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, Jesus forgave her. (One of course wonders what happened to the man, whose sin was apparently excused by the religious authorities.) Clearly Jesus was preaching a message of forgiveness rather than of condemnation: a code for a church rather than for a government. But modern Christian fundamentalists continue to quote Old Testament condemnations of people they do not like, especially gays and lesbians, even though the man whom they revere as Lord and Master disregarded Old Testament condemnations.

In most cases, this takes the form of white conservative Christian preachers condemning other people. But not always. Let me mention some counter-examples.

Many white fundamentalist preachers are infamous for using their oratory and organizational structure to defraud money from their followers. There are more examples of this than you can shake an assault weapon at. But there are a few examples of black evangelists bilking their poor black followers also. One example is from Tulsa, where I live. Willard Jones, a black Baptist minister, defrauded the community center that he led of $933,507 and he had $390,061 of unreported income in 2011. He got caught in 2014.

But the most famous example of religious oppression outside of white Christian fundamentalism is from radical Islam. I have written little about it, since it is a relatively minor force in the United States, especially the fundamentalist Christian stronghold of Oklahoma. But I want to discuss it briefly now. Islam, like Christianity, has many moderate adherents who do not believe that God, or Allah, wants them to condemn all the people that their religion condemned many centuries ago. My comments, therefore, are limited to Christian and Muslim fundamentalists.

The Koran does not have Old and New Testaments. It has version of one book, authoritative and inerrant for all time, according to conservative believers. All the following quotes are from Quran.com. And here are some of the things that the Koran says:

8:60: And prepare against them [unbelievers, according to verse 59] whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows.

8:65: O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. [Unlike Jesus, Mohammed did not say that “my kingdom is not of this world,” thereby indicating a spiritual battle.]

9:5: And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. [At least, we can take comfort that this is followed by “But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.” But Muslim extremists kill other Muslims more often than they kill people of other religions.]

9:30: The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah;” and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?

9:123: O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness.

22:19-20: But those who disbelieved will have cut out for them garments of fire. Poured upon their heads will be scalding water by which is melted that within their bellies and [their] skins. [This is in the context of Hell for non-Muslims.]

47:4: So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command].

It seems to me, then, that one of the principal dangers in the world is fundamentalism, in which people use their sacred writings as a justification for oppressing or even killing people of other religions, particularly pagans. And some creationists (especially at the Institute for Creation Research and Creationism.org insist that evolutionary scientists are pagans. There is no hope for the world unless the adherents of all religions agree that God is love, rather than believing that God wants all followers of other religions or of no religion to be dead.