What Christianity Needs Is another Daniel

Many Christian churches encourage their members to just accept what the preacher says and to not ask inconvenient questions. This is not, however, the attitude that is praised by some parts of the Bible. There are parts of the Bible that encourage critical thinking and an experimental approach.

The best example is from a portion of the Bible that is no longer part of the Protestant canon (although it was included in the original King James Bible of 1611). The Catholic Bible usually includes it as a separate fragment, Bel and the Dragon. With a name like that, how could you not want to read it? Part of this fragment is the story of Bel.

Daniel is one of a few Hebrews in the court of a pagan king, and the king is not pleased by the fact that Daniel refuses to believe in pagan gods. Daniel tells the king that the great god Bel is nothing more than bronze and clay. Rather than simply to condemn Daniel for disagreeing with him, the king cites evidence for the divinity of Bel. He points out that Bel eats twelve measures of flour, forty sheep, and six vessels of wine every day. How could a mere statue do this? Furthermore, the king agrees to put the divinity of Bel to an experimental test. (Note: if you do not want your religious beliefs put in danger of being discredited, you had better not agree to such a thing.)

The hypothesis was that if Bel is a god, then he is capable of eating food, as his priests claim. The king had his servants place a day’s food in Bel’s temple, and then shut it, to make sure that Bel, and only Bel, was inside. The king sealed the temple shut with his own ring. He also placed a high standard of compliance: if Bel does not consume the offerings, the priests were to die, but if Bel did consume the offerings, Daniel was to die.

After the priests had left but before the temple was sealed shut, Daniel scattered ashes on the floor. He was convinced that there was a secret door, through which the priests entered and carried off the food for themselves and their families. This was his alternative hypothesis.

The next morning, the food was gone, and the priests claimed that they had been vindicated. Then Daniel pointed out the footprints on the floor. Daniel had done what four teenagers and a big dog in a van would have done. The king had the priests arrested. They confessed what they had done and showed the king the secret passage that they had used. The king put the priests and their families to death, and allowed Daniel to destroy the temple.

Numerous studies of the Near Death Experience and of intercessory prayer have shown that there is no clear evidence for miracles or an afterlife (more on this later). This is not an intrusion of science into a place where it is not welcome. Scientific hypothesis testing of a spiritual claim was, at least in this fragment of a Biblical book, praised.