An analysis of Jesus

Most atheists are happy to criticise God, because he is extremely unlikely to even exist, but we feel a little less comfortable criticising Jesus. This would be because Jesus seems more human, our criticism of him is likely to offend more personally, and it seems churlish and unsympathetic to criticise someone who died in such a horrible way.

But given that a faith in Jesus Christ directly is what sustains many Christians and provides the foundation of their faith, we should really have a very careful look at what this man supposedly said and did, and try to come out with an objective appraisal. It is Jesus, after all, who tells everybody about God and that they should worship him. Many people believe in God, it seems, because they follow Jesus.

Richard Dawkins is fairly sympathetic to Jesus – even wearing an “Atheists for Jesus” t-shirt – but I think he may be a little generous.

There is no proof (and scant evidence) that a Jesus ever even existed – all we have to go on are stories of a handful of people about whom we know little (The Gospels), which may well have been embellished beyond all semblance of truth. But taking these stories nonetheless, we can build a moral profile of Jesus.

Let’s see how it comes out:

Good things

• As Dawkins notes, he was unusual for his time in that he often urged kindness towards others.
• He encouraged less focus on material assets.

Bad things

• He believed (or at least claimed to believe) in God.
• He constantly urged others to believe in God.
• He claimed he was God (and the Holy Spirit, whatever that is), without clearly explaining how this could be the case. (John 14:6-11)
• He claimed he would give people whatever they wished for, then didn’t deliver. (John 14:12-14)
• He deliberately encouraged an exclusive, idolising cult worship of himself. (Matthew 10:37)
• He ordered people to sell all of their possessions (yes, all of them). (Luke 18:18-22)
• He claimed that nobody in the world was good. (Luke 18:19)
• He ordered people to hate their mother and father – and themselves. (Luke 14:26-33)
• He urged people to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:53-54). Even if this was metaphorical, it has to be admitted it was very weird.
• He had double standards by telling other people to love their enemy then failing to forgive his enemies and threatening unbelievers with eternal torment in Hell (which sounds remarkably man-made). (Matthew 7:23, Luke 12:5).
  
• He encouraged people to commit self-mutilation. (Matthew 18:7-9)
• He failed to present any convincing evidence that he was God when it would have been much more sensible to simply do so rather than rely on “faith”.
• He took things that didn’t belong to him. (Mark 11:1-3)
• He spoke in a silly cryptic manner instead of clearly saying what he meant. (Matthew 8:20 and many other places)
• He showed no sympathy towards the bereaved, instead putting himself first. (Matthew 8:21-22, Luke 9:59-60)
• He failed to condemn (thus silently condoned) many odious practices around him such as cruelty to animals, sexism and slavery (Luke 7:2).
• He promoted pacifism. (Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29)
• He proudly proclaimed himself violent and divisive. (Matthew 10:34)
• He was inconsistent.

I expected the “good things” list to be longer, but I couldn’t think of anything else (we have to ignore the feeding of the 5,000 and water into wine etc. due to standards of evidence at the time, their extreme unliklihood and our inability to validate them). In fact, even these two positive moral points were not original to Jesus and many before him (e.g. Aristotle and Plato) had developed much more sophisticated moral systems.

Jesus frequently appeals to faith, and prefixes nearly every improbable claim with the line “I tell you the truth…”. This is the kind of thing that inveterate liars say, since they cannot offer solid evidence for their claims. Tony Blair used to use to do this – make frequent appeals to his own sincerity – and look where it got us. Many people try this trick, but faith is not good enough, and it isn’t required if good evidence can be presented.

In summary, although there are a couple of good things, Jesus comes across as mainly just the same as cult leaders of today, like David Koresh and Charles Manson. And even if he was God (which is extremely unlikely), his teachings are so vague, self-contradictory and limited – morally crude, in fact – as to be of no use to us as we face today’s modern ethical dilemmas.

[Some of this article is drawn from these two sources.]

How to handle interviews

If you are being interviewed:

When a company interviews you, they are not doing so as a charity and they are not especially interested in what they can give you. They are seeing you because they effectively have a problem, and you have convinced them you might be able to solve it.

If you can indeed solve it, you have no particular reason to be meek and mild or to think of yourself as a lesser person or more needy than the interviewer. While you should not be arrogant, a meek and mild attitude is not going to do you any favours. If you want others to respect you, you should first of all evidently treat yourself with appropriate self respect. Don’t even care about “how you are appearing” and “what they think of you” etc. Just do what you know is right.

You are no less than the interviewer. I don’t even like to call interviews “interviews”. In fact they are meetings, and their purpose as far as I’m concerned is simply to establish whether there is a match of requirements. There might not be. You might not be skilled enough, the company might not be offering to put you where you want to go or they might not be paying enough. That’s fair enough. That’s a result. The company might also make a mistake – they might misjudge you. Well, if this happens and you’re worth having, it’s their loss. Don’t worry about it.

When I go into interviews I am totally relaxed. This tends to be disarming for interviewers, but it’s not deliberate, its just as a result of me having met hundreds of people. I am totally straight about what I know and what I don’t know, so as not to waste anybody’s time, and I am simply interested in explaining what I do and seeing whether it meets what they need. I am never interested in begging for something from them.

See interviews for what they are, don’t even take them personally, remember everyone is entitled to be treated with respect, and just relax.

If you are the interviewer:

I have been an interviewer so I know what this is like. My advice to you is be genuine, don’t try to play any ego games with your interviewee (or any other games), and remember that a person worth having probably knows they are worth having. Treat it like a meeting, that’s all. You are simply interested in assessing if this person 1) has decent social skills (should be obvious) 2) can do the work well 3) is going to stick with the company 4) is requesting an appropriate pay grade. Don’t be overly formal. Indeed if a conclusion one way or the other is becoming obvious even in the interview, then you might as well discuss it. Anything else will look false.

He should not be alone

Richard Dawkins has been speaking more obvious reason tonight on Channel 4. It’s a wonder they let him on among the utter rubbish they broadcast. Anyway, in “Enemies of Reason” he addressed the way that irrationality has an extremely unhealthy (even fashionable!) grip on society these days. Not only with regard to religion, but also astrology, dowsing and all the other rubbish that is unsupported (even directly refuted) by evidence.

It is unfair to let this man, great voice though he is, be alone in this battle. That’s why I, and others, feel the urge to back him up. And perhaps you should too…

Scientific method vs. religious method

What an excellent flow diagram…

Love Corporation

Check this out… Love Corporation’s Palatial: one of the very best dance records of the early 1990s.

When to fire your client

One of my favourite quotations from the “dot boom” era is this one:

“We had to fire Sony the other week. They weren’t listening to us, so we let them go. We actually had to get rid of Bad Boy [Entertainment] in the beginning, but they straightened up and came back. So did Sony. What the client sometimes doesn’t understand is, the less they talk to us, the better it is. We know what’s best.”

Gene Na, Kioken

Gene is right. If you employ someone for their expertise, of which you have seen evidence, let them get on with the job unhassled – otherwise employ someone else. Here’s further interesting discussion about this issue.

Pope has not read the Bible

Here’s the proof.

Gay Nigerians face Sharia death

BBC News story, picked up from the religious section of their site, ironically.

Eighteen men in Nigeria are to be stoned to death. Why? For being gay – this is the automatic sentence under Sharia (that’s Muslim, religious) law.

Now ask yourself: is this the kind of society we want in this country – in any country? No, it is not, and that is why it must be opposed wherever it raises its ugly head – vocally, economically, and even as a last resort militarily.

Astronomer Royal applies faulty reasoning

I would like to have a conversation with Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, because I heard him talking some nonsense on the religious Sunday Programme this morning. The man is an esteemed astrophysicist, and said some true things, but he also made a number of schoolboy errors:

1. He assumed that if we do not get our morality from reason alone then we must get it from religion (which we need not and do not).
2. He believes that science and religion can “join forces”, when they are actually fundamentally opposed.
3. He believes that the cause of problems is fundamentalism, when in fact it is the things we are fundamental about that need to be watched.
4. He described himself as a “practising but non-believing Christian”. What?

Martin Rees is probably a nice man, but he needs to think things through more closely.

The presenter of this programme, by the way, also wrongly spoke of Sam Harris et al as if they were writing their works cynically for financial gain and said Newton’s religious beliefs embarrassed some scientists these days, when they need not in the sense that she meant.

Erasure back on form

Erasure seem to be back on form after a long absence…

Jesus gay?

This Christian claims so. It is certainly rather curious that he used to hang around (if he existed at all) with 12 men and had no apparent interest in women. There is nothing wrong with being gay in itself, but the trouble is Jesus supposedly said a lot of strange things and there is a lot of gay-hating* rhetoric in the Bible.

*I do not use the cliché “homophobic” since just because people are prejudiced toward gay people this does not necessarily mean they are frightened of them.

The Real People

This is one of the best albums of the whole of the nineties, by one of the most under-rated bands of that decade. Virtually every track is worthy of being an A-side. The Real People’s fire was stolen by Oasis, who they heavily influenced, but they were one of the first “Brit Pop” bands, defining the genre, and this album remains a masterpiece. Do yourself a favour and buy it – or at least have a listen…

Any Questions

I have just been listening to Any Questions on BBC Radio 4.

The demi-muslim Yasmin Alibhai-Brown really is the stereotypical woolly-minded liberal (and therefore cannot be following the Koran properly), while neo-Con Douglas Murray (though some of his views do seem rather extreme) was making some sound points, notably about the savage dictatorship in Iran – and was booed by the audience for doing so. (I remember Murray, by the way, as being the precocious author of the biography Bosie.)

Some people really seem to live in a world of their own, some kind of fantasy utopia where everyone is nice, it’s all our fault and nobody really means us any harm. They need to wake up and smell the coffee, and some of the female apoligists for theocracies should perhaps try living in those societies and then see how much they like them.

Two kinds of Christian

There are two kinds of Christian, which I shall call “Type 1″ and “Type 2″:

Type 1 are those who make the error of confusing being moral with being religious, but have not read their texts closely and/or do not follow them properly. These are essentially good, but confused, people.

Type 2 are those others (fundamentalists), who really believe what the books say (and have therefore to a significant extent lost the power of rational thought), and agree with what the books say (and are therefore morally corrupt).

Due to their high number and implicit endorsement of the latter kind, however, Type 1 Christians are (as Sam Harris has pointed out) in some ways the more dangerous for the world.

Blast from the past

They don’t make ‘em like this any more…