Ahhh...take your time...

This one is for all you IDers and Creationists out there.

The above image is of the 1000 band stage of chromosome 2 of (from left to right): Man, Chimpanzee, Gorilla, and Orangutan.

Take a very close look at the similarities...homology in science lingo...between us and the other great apes. What you are looking at is genetic evidence in favor of evolution, evidence that would be compelling even without the overwhelming supporting evidence from paleantology, embryology, and a dozen other scientific fields. (It is of the type of evidence that gets criminals convicted in our courts.)

Here's the thing...the image was first published as part of a paper in 1982.

In short, creationists, et al, have been closing their eyes and covering their ears for at least 27 years to evidence which they would otherwise readily accept as proof of someone's guilt if presented in a court of law.

And this is just one chromosome. The authors of the paper (reference below) also stated: "Except for differences in nongenic constitutive heterochromatin, chromosomes 6, 13, 19, 21, 22 and X appear to be identical in all four species"

Hello!

Science. 1982 Mar 19;215(4539):1525-30 The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. Yunis JJ, Prakash O.

Slaying the Tantamount...

A comment I read today on the richarddawkins.com website reminded me of a long-ago incident I thought I'd share with you.

While we were living in Gainesville, FL, Pat and I attended a United Methodist Church there. Pat was a "social Christian" at the time...in it more to meet folks and enjoy the picnics than anything else, and I was a "closet atheist"...you know, the go along to get along type. I had allowed Pat to convince me that it would be good to "expose" John Michael, our son, to religion so he might be better prepared to make his own decisions on the subject when he was "old enough". During this period never once did I express my doubts in front of John.

One sunny Sunday during the summer just before he turned eight, as was our practice Pat and I dropped John off at the church's "Sunday School" next to the sanctuary so he could "learn" with kids his own age while we attended services.

After the service we walked next door to pick him up, only to be pulled aside by one of his "teachers".

"John isn't cooperating," she reported.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, he seems disinterested, and won't participate in our activities or answer questions," she summarized.

We assured her we would talk to John, so as we walked to our car I said to him, "Miss Terri is upset that you're not being very cooperative in class. What is going on?"

He looked up and without a second of hesitation asked, "Daddy, you don't really believe all that stuff they talk about in there, do you?"

Embarrassed that my son was more willing to express his true feelings than I had been, I resolved we would never return to church again.

John Michael is seventeen now, and maybe the happiest I've seen him in a while was last weekend as he handed his copy of "The God Delusion" to Richard Dawkins for his autograph, and Dawkins glanced up at him and smiled back...undoubtedly pleased with his young fan.

Dawkins firmly believes that the indoctrination of young children into religion at vulnerable ages is tantamount to child abuse. At least for this one time, I could sense him thinking, the tantamount had been slain.

Ninety Days of Rights & Wrongs

How’s PBO doing so far?  One fella’s assessment…

Right: 

• Cuban Thaw – We engaged the Soviets and the Chinese politically, culturally, and economically.  In the end, that has turned out to be a good decision.  So why not Cuba?  Things can’t get worse.
  
• Pirate Takedown – Totally the correct call, in spite of some leftist media whining.  Now…does he have the intestinal fortitude to complete the job?
  

So Left it’s Really Wrong:

• Bailout – Free markets can only work when you give them a chance.  Using bailout money to control the inner workings of here-to-fore private companies can be explained in just one word…Fascism.
  
• Stimulus – Cannot work for any number of basic economic reasons, the two most important ones being:
  

o   Government spending saps economic growth, it never increases it, and

o   You can neither borrow, tax, nor spend your way out of debt.

• National Health Care – The problem is affordability, not availability.  (And that does not include the roughly 25% of all uninsured who have chosen to spend their money on other things who could otherwise afford coverage.)  The two Federal Healthcare programs today are a nightmare…Medicare is beset by $40-$60 BILLION dollars a year in fraud and waste and is facing a multi-TRILLION dollar shortfall, and the VA is just plain incompetent and kills people.  Do we really want the British/French model of triage healthcare?
  
• North Korea and Iran – All we had to do was to go to our adversaries hat-in-hand and let them know that we were sorry for our past arrogance and would from now on deal with them as well-intentioned equals, or so said candidate and novice President Obama.   Just how’s that working out for you, eh Sparky?
  
• No Tax Increase on “Bottom 95%” of Americans – The only thing he didn’t say was “read my lips”, but it took him just over thirty days to break his promise and screw over the very fools who voted for him by tripling the cigarette tax.  The only thing worse, he’s still going around and repeating the same lie as if it never happened.  Up is down, night is day, so says big brother Barry.
  
• Ignoring the FairTax – PBO says he wants a simpler, more fair tax code, except he wants to soak the evil rich while 50% of the American people not only pay no taxes, but most of them qualify for “tax rebates”.  Huh?  Instead of the ten TRILLION dollar liability he has racked up in his first 90 days, most of which is payoffs to supporters and will do nothing to right the economy, he could have solved the economic mess plus the future train wrecks in Medicare and Social Security by getting behind the FairTax.
  

Summary: 

I wrote several times, beginning during the Democratic Primary, that this fellow was quite obviously an empty suit, but the American people fell for “Change” hook, line, and sinker; never bothering to ask exactly what "Change" meant. 

H.L. Mencken once wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Bend over and grab your ankles, suckers.

The Infidels have landed!

Alrighty then...

John Michael and I have returned from the American Atheist Convention in Atlanta. The Convention was exciting and informative in and of itself, and JMS and I got to do a few fun things in addition to cavorting with the godless.

On Friday we did CNN, which may have been John's favorite part of the whole trip.

Satuday, we spent over an hour on the campus of Emory University, which John has identified as a "definite maybe". (The picture above is John Michael with the statue of Dooley, the student body's unofficial mascot.)

Saturday evening we had dinner with my daughter, John's half-sister, Katie and my soon-to-be son-in-law James. (Does that make him John's half-brother-in-law?) A December wedding is in the works.

But of course the big news was the Convention, and following are a few notes on what I felt were the highlights:

• Probably the single most informative session was the presentation by Dr. J. Anderson Thompson, a psychiatrist, who described the latest research in the area of the neuropsychology of religion. Greatly distilled down, the findings support the claims of evolutionists who have described religion as a highjacking of some of our earliest survival and hierarchial learned behaviors. His talk requires a seperate blog, and I will work on that soon;
• Richard Dawkins was at his best; humorous, gracious, and commanding in both language and detail. John and I got our books signed and deprecating reply when I thanked him for all he has done for the causes of science and reason; and
• The emotional highlight was a talk by Nate Phelps, estranged son of uber-hate monger and Baptist preacher Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Nate described the beatings, physical and psychological, that were and are a regular part of Pastor Fred's personal style of family relations, as well as his increasingly irratioanal ranting against and hatred for all that are not part of his own little cult. Nate is working on a book, which should prove an incredible read once published.

Daughter Kate - a moderately devout Catholic, asked if I thought it was a good idea to expose John Michael to a meeting such as this.

Yes Sweetpea, I believe it was a damned good idea. I'm only sorry you couldn't see fit to attend too.

A Gathering of Infidels...

Getting ready to take off for Atlanta and the American Atheist Convention. (And no, American and Atheist are NOT mutually exclusive terms.)

John Michael is going with me, most excited by the opportunity to hear and meet Richard Dawkins, who will speak on Saturday and do a book-signing. I'm getting my copy of "The Ancestor's Tale" signed - a marvelous journey back through time and evolution - and John has opted to get Dawkin's signature on a copy of "The God Delusion".

Also appearing, among others, will be Nate Phelps - estranged son of uber-crazy anti-gay wingnut Fred Phelps, and Brother Harry Hardwick of the infamous Landover Baptist Church. (www.landoverbaptist.com) 

Lest you fear our entire weekend will be spent wallowing in heathenism, you can relax. On Saturday we will be having dinner with daughter Kate and her betrothed, who are driving over from Birmingham, and on Sunday we will visit Emory University, one of the schools John is considering attending.

I will try to keep y'all posted on how it goes.

Obamanomics - They Don't Get It!

Yesterday the Federal Reserve reported that Americans had reduced their borrowing month over month by 3.5%, while at the same time increasing their savings.  This, of course, in response to the fiscal maelstrom swirling around us and its resultant recession.

All of which raises a question in my mind:  How is it that ordinary folks like you and me can figure out the proper response to the situation we are in, but all the PHDs, MBAs, and assorted other economic dream team members in Obama's D.C. insist on spending like there's no tomorrow?

But there will be a tomorrow, lots of them, and not only will you and I pay the price of this Government-as-the-Answer-to-Everything insanity in Obamaland through much higher taxes and greatly reduced economic growth (and jobs), but so will our children and our grandchildren...who by then may be paying rent to the Chinese Communists.

I'm Baaack...

.

OK, I've been missing for over a month, a combination of burnout and too much other crap going on.

But I'm back, for good or bad, and will begin to ease into my old pattern of an entry or two a week at least.

This Friday I will begin by blogging from the American Atheists' convention in Atlanta. Then, next week, I'll bring you up to date on what's been going on in my life, whether you give a shit or not.

Until Fridayish...Be well y'all.

All the Mythstakes in Eden

One need not delve deeply into the Bible at all before the contradictions and inanities come flying at you like the evening migration of dusky mammals (Note: not birds!) from a bat cave. Indeed, the conflicting creation stories in the first two chapters of Genesis offer an eye-opening prelude to what any half-alert observer can expect almost anywhere he or she turns in that so-called holy book.

In the next few paragraphs however, let’s skip over the conflicting twin creation myths and take a closer look at one of the more comical of the bronze-age fables to be found in Genesis: that of Adam, Even, and their eventual expulsion from what passes in the Bible for paradise. By way of a quick recap, Yahweh has created Adam and, sensing that he was lonely, a companion, Eve. 

They are happy in the garden and all is good…with plenty to eat, lots of beauty, and - one assumes - no tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, ice ages, or serious earthquakes.

Even better, the only price Yahweh extracts from this most fortunate of couples is that, although the full bounty of the garden is theirs to enjoy, they are not to eat the fruit of one solitary tree that grows there: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Item one for discussion: How could Adam be lonely? As a first and only, he had no experience with human interaction of any kind, could not possibly have known what he was missing, and so loneliness would not have been an issue. Besides, there were all those cuddly lambs and lions and dinosaurs (if you believe the creationists) to romp around with and keep him company. I know apologists can and will come up with a dozen or more explanations for this anomaly, none of which will be textually-based. However parsed though, it does raise a serious philosophical question, and one that apparently requires brand new revelations to clear up.

Then we get to the question of the tree. This takes less deep thought than the previous riddle, but is still of interest none-the-less. Simply stated, if Yahweh was omniscient and omnipotent, and the tree was such a big frigging issue with him, why did he put the darned thing there in the first place? Couldn’t he have anticipated the end result? Why muck up paradise with such an obviously destructive temptation? Would a caring parent provide a loaded handgun to a pair of toddlers and then leave them alone? And what judgment would society render on that parent – certainly not the children – when the inevitable occurred?

Which brings us to our next, closely related issue. Why was the snake there, given free rein to work his dastardly will? It was Yahweh’s creation for crying-out-loud! It’s almost as if the Creator intended to stir up trouble, waiting excitedly for why he knew had to happen. What a piss-ant this Yahweh guy seems.

Not only is what happens next no surprise, it’s damned near anticlimactic. The snake tempts Eve, Eve eats from the tree, Eve talks Adam into taking a bite, and voila…nothing will ever be the same. Even such an obvious plot, however, is fraught with questions that beg asking.

Take that part of the story where Yahweh… who apparently had been away in some distant part of Creation doing, well, God knows what…returns to the Garden but has trouble finding his deceitful playthings, who are hiding. They are hiding, now mind you, from the all-knowing and all-seeing Yahweh, the very same deity who today is aware not only of every action of every single one of the more than six billion “souls” on earth, but of their every thought as well. But he can’t find Adam, and has to call for him to show himself. Can I be the only one who has trouble with this picture?

In any event, Adam eventually comes forward and, to Yahweh’s dismay, he is wearing clothing fashioned from fig leaves. “Why”, Yahweh demands, as if he shouldn’t already know.

“ ‘Cause now we can see we’re naked”, Adam answers.

Here of course we find yet another problem with the story. We are supposed to believe that prior to eating whatever fruit it was, Adam and Eve couldn’t tell they were unclothed. Really?

Yahweh had previously created light, and had given his new toys fully developed eyes. (What good would a half an eye be, for crying out loud.) Are we to assume that until “the fall” Adam and Eve spent every waking hour of each and every day bouncing off every tree and tripping over every critter in their path? How unsophisticated, how devoid of consequential thinking, how “primitive” does a goat-herder have to be to accept, much less author, such a tale?

By now it should be quite obvious that the story contains more faulty logic than a Monty Python skit. The worst by far still awaits us however because only now do we arrive at the real crux of the problem with the story, and, indeed, the real problem with the ancients’ very conceptualization of Yahweh. Adam and Eve are to be punished for doing wrong, for sinning by disobeying Yahweh’s directive, even though up until the time they actually ate of the fruit they lacked any knowledge of good and (or) evil. How could they possibly be held responsible for their disobedience if they had no way of knowing eating the fruit was wrong? What kind of tyrant would extract punishment when the subjects of his wrath were without real culpability?

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Yahweh, a world of deceit, narcissism, and unrepentant vengeance. Deceit? Yahweh did lie, there’s no other way to put it, about the consequence of eating the fruit, threatening sure death. (Adam purportedly lived another 900 years, but I suppose in the long run the Almighty turned out to be right.) Narcissism? How else might one describe Yahweh’s role in the entire affair? Vengeful? How many times in just the first four or five books of the Old Testament does the Old Bugger get his loincloth all in a wad? The guy can only be described as a thug if you take the time to give it any thought.

Summarizing, in just the first three chapters of Genesis we find such glaring contradictions, illogic, deceit, poor planning and design, and unmitigated tyranny, that anyone possessing a whit of intellect and the ability to reason should have no difficulty at all in dismissing the entirety of everything that is to follow.

And some folks think becoming an Atheist is difficult.

And Mencken smiled...

.

H.L Mencken must be smiling upon the American electorate from his well-deserved resting place.

A new Rasmussen poll was released late yesterday, 26 January.  The results are, well…stupefying.  Here are some highlights:

• 59% of Americans worry that the Democrat Congress and Prez Obama will increase spending “too much” in the coming year.  (Well give me a big “No shit Dick Tracy”!)  A full 61% expect government spending to increase.
  
• 31% expect their taxes to increase – still a minority, but a plurality in the poll and double the number (16%) who felt that way during the election.
  
• Only 45% support the Obama-Reid-Pelosi stimulus plan, while 64% say tax cuts should be a priority.   (Sorry folks, but that train has left the station.) And, probably related
  
• A minority (45%) approve of Obama’s performance so far.  (Hell, his chair in the Oval Office isn’t even warm yet!)
  

So what does this poll tell us…other than the U.S. is far too generous with the right to vote?  While a multi-page rant may be justified here, I will simply quote the aforementioned H.L. Mencken: 

“Democracy”,  he wrote 75 or so years ago, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Ain’t it the truth?

Enjoy the next four to eight years, suckers.

Just asking!

73,000 years ago a super-volcano erupted at what is now Lake Toba in Sumatra. The energy released was at least 20,000 greater than the largest man-made (fusion) explosion, and plunged the earth into volcanic winter. That event, scientists believe, led to such a catastrophic decline in the human population that our ancestors were reduce to between several hundred to a few thousand breeding pairs worldwide; our species coming to within a hair’s breadth of going extinct.

I mention this cheery thought because over the past two weeks more than 250 earthquakes have shaken the Yellowstone Valley. Additionally, the valley floor, which sits atop a magma chamber that is less than five miles below the surface, has been rising at a rate more than triple its average since measurements were begun in 1923.

For those of you who do not keep up with such things, Yellowstone Valley and Park are in reality the caldera of a super-volcano eerily similar to the one at Lake Toba. Research indicates that Yellowstone’s volcano has exploded catastrophically at least seven time, at an average rate of once every 600,000 years. The last eruption? Just over 600,000 years ago.

When Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980 it expelled an estimated 1.4 billion cubic yards of ash that not only rained down over an area of 22,000 square miles but, because much of it floated cloud-like in the jet stream around the northern hemisphere, is credited for reducing global temperatures by more than a full degree and effecting our climate for over a year.

The last Yellowstone explosion, by comparison, expelled 2,500 time more ash and debris than the St. Helen’s eruption. While it is impossible to predict the timing or full magnitude of the next one, we can say with some certainty

1. It will occur – the probability of a future incident is a full 100%;


2. It will be massive – likely to cover up to half of the United States in a layer of ash as much as three feet deep;


3. It will have catastrophic consequences, both in the U.S. and world wide – a million or more may die in the original blast, with tens of millions or possibly hundreds of millions more perishing due to rapid, dramatic cooling that interrupts normal agricultural cycles as well as transportation and the delivery of goods and services; and


4. This grisly scenario does not include the minor but real possibility of the initiation of a new ice age, claiming an additional billion or more victims.

I must repeat…the explosion of Yellowstone along with its concurrent and/or longer-term consequences is not a maybe. It absolutely will occur.

Frankly, this scares the bejeebers out of me. My family is lucky – we have the resources to migrate away from what will surely be the worst of the aftermath; but we will not go unscathed…not by a long shot. No one will.

Which leads to some important questions: What does such a certainty say to the claims of so many about an omnipotent and benevolent sky god? How do such events square with a creator god who supposedly designed a universe, solar system, planet, and laws of nature just for us? And what sick, pathetic excuses will the faithful offer for such a tragic turn of events when it comes to pass?

Just asking!

When help is only minutes away...

I have written several blogs on the importance of the 2nd Amendment as it pertains to our right to defend ourselves, a right so self-obvious that only a damned fool would try to dispute it.

The documented facts speak for themselves: Nearly 3,000 criminals are lawfully killed each year by armed civilians - more than three times the number killed by the police. An additional 9,000 to 17,000 are criminals are wounded by civilians each year. In addition, 15 academic studies have shown that citizens use guns in self-defense between 800,000 and 3.6 million times annually (in the vast majority of cases merely showing the firearm wards off the attack or prevents the crime). Award-winning criminologists Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz estimated that defensive gun uses (DGUs) totaled more than 2.5 million per year. Another study sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and carried out by the Police Foundation found an even greater number of DGUs - approximately 2.73 million a year. Either figure is far larger than the number of crimes committed with firearms each year. Thus the savings to society from the crimes prevented is much greater than the cost to society of firearm violence.

In addition, a recent study by economists John Lott and David Mustard examining the impact of concealed carry permits found that:
Concealed handgun laws reduce murder by 8.5 percent, rape by 5 percent and severe assault by 7 percent.
Had liberalized concealed-carry laws prevailed throughout the country in any given year, there would have been 1,600 fewer murders, 4,200 fewer rapes and 60,000 fewer severe assaults.

Almost weekly, another tragic case occurs where the outcome may have been substantially different if the victim had only been armed. A few weeks ago, in a gun magazine, I saw an ad for a handgun manufacturer that said something like “When help is only minutes away…but all you have is seconds.”

The following is the most recent example.


Slain student called 911, but no one came in time


NEW YORK (CNN) -- Brittany Zimmerman, a 21-year-old college student who wanted to be a doctor, called 911 as she was being attacked by a stranger, police say.

But the police did not come for 48 minutes. By that time, Zimmerman was dead. Her fiance found her body.

Although the dispatcher claimed later to have heard nothing, the 911 tape captured screams, gasps and what sounds like a struggle, according to the court documents.


It’s a lesson you would think even liberals would eventually learn.

The Christmas Story: Not Quite What You Think!

The Bible is an ancient series of documents written over a long period of time by fallible men. Viewed in that light, it becomes possible to identify and understand the many discrepancies it contains.

During the celebration of Christmas, familiar images are recalled in hymns and scripture about the birth of Jesus. In the minds of the credulous, choirs of angels, shepherds watching over their flocks, the appearance of a star above Bethlehem, the virgin Mary giving birth in a stable, and the visit of three "wise men", have all been melded into "the Christmas story". In reality there are in the gospels two distinct and often contradictory stories of Jesus' birth, and anything other than a perfunctory reading of the Bible makes it obvious that so much about the accepted birth story of Jesus is no more than myth.

We might as well begin with the date of Christmas itself. Observing December 25th as the birthday of Jesus began only during the mid-fourth century, to provide Christians with an alternative to a popular pagan festival at this time of year. December 25th was recognized as the winter solstice under the Julian calendar, and it was then that Mithraism, a chief rival to Christianity, celebrated the birth of its god/savior, Mithra. (Who, by the way, predated Jesus by hundreds of years, had a "miraculous birth", gathered disciples, performed miracles, was executed, and "rose from the dead".)

It is unlikely that we shall ever know exactly when Jesus was born (or even if he was born, as there is no corroborating evidence for him or his ministry outside of the New Testament itself) or the real circumstances surrounding his birth. It is possible however by going straight to the source to separate potential truth from obvious fiction.

One thing we know is that the doctrine of the virgin birth, so essential to traditional Christian belief, was not a part of earliest Christianity (which at the time was simply a sect within Judaism). (See Luke 24:52-53)

The apostle Paul makes no reference to the virginal conception by the mother of Jesus when speaking of Jesus' origins and divinity. (His epistles were written during the 50's A.D. and predate all four of the gospels.) Although Paul never met Jesus (who reportedly died about 30 A.D.), he supposedly did know James, a brother of Jesus. Yet in spite of such an eye-witness link to Jesus, Paul’s letters indicate no knowledge of the virgin birth, for he states only that Jesus was "born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4) and was "descended from David, according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3), implying a normal birth.

Nor does the Didache, the oldest surviving document of the early "Jesus Movement", mention either a special birth, death, or resurrection for their lord.


The first gospel written was Mark’s, which most likely dates from the early 70's A.D. Apparently for Mark the birth of Jesus was so ordinary it was not worth mentioning. The silence of the earliest Jewish-Christian writers and documents about a miraculous birth is bewildering in light of their claim of divinity for Jesus. Such silence therefore casts doubt on any claim of historicity for the nativity stories with which we are so familiar.


The gospel of John, likely penned in the first decade of the second century, asserts that Jesus existed from the beginning of creation (a fact the authors of Genesis apparently overlooked). John states that this Jesus is the eternal Word, and that he was begotten of God and made human at a specific point in time (John 1:1-14). John also tells us that Jesus was the son of Joseph (John 1:45) and thus either ignores or rejects the miraculous birth stories found in the earlier writings of Matthew and Luke; for only in those two gospels do we hear of the miracle of a virgin woman becoming pregnant by an act of God and giving birth to a son.


Matthew was likely written in northern Palestine sometime in the late 70's or early 80's; Luke in Asia Minor sometime during the 90's…both close to a century after Jesus’ birth. So how reliable then are the gospels of Matthew and Luke? For most Christians the description of Jesus' birth as described in Matthew and Luke is not to be questioned. They believe that the Bible is the inerrant "word of God" and as such is an infallible history to be taken at face value. In spite of such claims however a careful analysis of the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke show that this "word of God" is rife with contradictions and inventions. The only logical conclusion to be reached therefore is that the extraordinary birth stories in Matthew and Luke are religious myths, intentional and clumsy additions to the earlier non-miraculous tradition about Jesus. Most likely they were borrowed from other "hero legends" (Mithras, Osiris, Hercules, etc.) common in the first century and added on to the original gospels by later apologists who were attempting to bolster the credibility of a man whom they considered divine. In doing so they also employed the familiar Jewish practice known as "midrash" to illustrate and lend credence to their claims; liberally interpreting and expanding on texts and prophesies in older Jewish scriptures.


The miraculous birth stories may also have served another purpose; to rebut inferences regarding the illegitimate birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:18-19, Mark 6:3, John 8:41). The most obvious example of suspicious interpolation is found in the divergent genealogies in Matthew and Luke supposedly tracing the ancestry of Jesus back to King David. Centuries old prophesies held that the messiah would arise from David’s line, and both Luke and Matthew attempted to make that connection. Upon further review (as they say in the NFL) however, the genealogies in the two gospels fall apart, riddled with errors and contradictions. For example, they disagree on the lineage of Joseph, the father of Jesus. Matthew traces twenty-eight generations between David and Jesus, Luke has forty-one. They also disagree on the name of Joseph’s father: in Matthew it’s Jacob, in Luke, Heli. You can claim all the faith you want...but they cannot both be right.

Likewise the claims in Matthew and Luke that Jesus was of royal lineage are found neither in Paul nor the other gospels. Certainly Jesus gave no such indication, rather appearing as a man of humble background from an obscure rural village in Galilee. (Note: Many biblical historians and archaeologists have expressed doubt that Nazareth itself even existed in the first century.)


Casting even more doubt on such claims, in Mark we read that Jesus himself seems to reject the belief that messianic legitimacy was dependent on descent from David (Mark 12:35-37). Matthew dates the birth of Jesus to the reign of Herod the Great of Judea, a puppet king of the Romans, who died in 4 B.C. Luke confirms Matthew’s dating, but then goes into even greater detail. He writes that Jesus was born during a census or registration ordered by Roman emperor Augustus at the time Quirinius (Cyrenius) was governor of Syria (Luke 2:1-3). This must be a fabrication however because Quirinius was not governor of Syria and Judea during Herod's kingship. Direct Roman rule over the province of Judea, where Bethlehem was located, was not established until 6 A.D….ten years after the death of Herod! If a census did take place, it must have been in 6 CE or later, long after the end of Herod's reign. Therefore, Matthew's stories of the Wise Men's visit to Herod and then Jesus, and his fanciful tale of Herod's massacre of the innocents that caused the holy family to flee to Egypt, are all historically impossible. (It should also be noted that Luke got his facts wrong about Roman censuses in general. Such an imperial census would only apply to Roman citizens of the empire, not to Joseph, a Galilean who was not under direct Roman rule.)

The gospels also disagree as to the hometown of Jesus’ parents. Matthew records them as living in Bethlehem in Judea, but Luke claims they lived in Nazareth in Galilee (See earlier note re: Nazareth). But wait, it gets worse…Luke describes Joseph taking Mary (nine months pregnant, mind you) on a difficult and dangerous four day journey by foot to Bethlehem because of the aforementioned non-existent census. Again, this is contrary to Roman census (registration) methodology. To believe Luke we must accept that Rome expected illiterate peasants to somehow trace their tribal and family heritage back to their ancestral birthplace, and then to report there for registration. The confusion and mass movement of population this would entail was, in fact, contrary to the actual Roman practice of registering men (women had no political or property rights) for a tax in either their current hometown or the chief town of the local tax district. What we have in effect is a clumsy attempt to "move" Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem because the gospel writers believed it was important that Jesus be born there, for it was the "city of David" from where the prophesy said Israel's ruler would come (Micah 5:2). In spite of that, John's gospel, directly opposed to Matthew and Luke, relates the common knowledge that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, and that he was not a descendant of David (John 7:41-42).

The star of Bethlehem is also a fabrication, consistent with legends of the ancient world that heavenly events announced the births of great men. In first century Palestine, indeed in all the Roman Empire, there was no understanding of astronomy and natural law as we know it. You only need to look up in the night sky to verify that no star high in the heavens can "shine" on a particular town, much less on a specific house as Matthew claims (Matt. 2:9-11). The ascribed motion of the Christmas star -- rising in the east, moving west toward Jerusalem, and then making a left turn to the south so as to come to rest over Bethlehem defies all the laws of celestial motion. Not so surprising by now, Luke knows nothing about the star, nor the magi, nor the birth taking place in a house. He has the baby being laid in a manger. (Note: there is no reference to a stable or animals. That scene is a product of later Christian creativity based on a text from Isaiah, "the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib (manger), but Israel, does not know, my people do not understand" (Isaiah 1:3)). Luke's reference to the baby being wrapped in swaddling clothes is copied from the birth of Israel's famous King Solomon, son of David (Wisdom 7:4-5). This sign sends an important message to Luke's Jewish-Christian readers that Jesus was to be even greater than Israel's wisest king. Luke's gospel describes the visitors to the baby Jesus as shepherds, not wise men, who had heard of the birth from an angel.


There are other differences in the nativity story which serve to lessen its credibility. For instance, in an attempt to parallel the importance of Jesus' birth with that of Moses, Matthew describes the massacre of the children of Bethlehem by King Herod as he attempts to kill the infant messiah. This extraordinary event is not corroborated by any contemporary source from the period, nor even referred to by Luke. (Nor was it possible if Luke is correct dating the birth of Jesus to the governorship of Quirinius.) Indeed, Luke has the family return peacefully to Nazareth after Jesus' birth in Bethlehem (Luke 2:22,39). If the massacre had taken place, how could it be that Herod's son later recalls nothing about Jesus nor his importance (Matt. 14:1-2).


Moreover, if Herod and all the people of Jerusalem knew of the messiah's birth (Matt. 2:3), why is it that later in Jesus' career, the same gospel writer claims that people had not heard of his miraculous origin and still questioned his miracles and his teachings (Matt. 13:54-56)? Palestine just wasn’t so large that word of such incredible events would not have quickly spread from border to border and beyond. Luke's story of the family of the newborn Jesus soon returning to Nazareth in Galilee, and Matthew's claim that the family of Jesus immediately fled to Egypt for several years to escape Herod's wrath (Matt. 2:13-14) are, again, irreconcilable. (Luke tells of Joseph and Mary presenting Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem when he was but forty days old, and then returning immediately to Nazareth (Luke 2:22,39). Additionally, Luke writes that each year the family went to Jerusalem for Passover (Luke 2:41), impossible if they were hiding out in Egypt as Matthew claims. Of course such a twist in Matthew was necessitated by his claim they were fulfilling still more Old Testament prophecies, both in Jeremiah’s (31:15), and Hosea's prediction that "out of Egypt I have called my son" (Hosea 11:1).

In ancient times it was common to claim miraculous births for important persons. Plato was said to have been born by the union of the god Apollo with his mother. Likewise, Alexander the Great was said to have been conceived when a thunderbolt fell from heaven and made his mother Olympias pregnant before her marriage to Philip of Macedon. In the book of Genesis we read that sons of gods had intercourse with women to produce heroes (Gen. 6:4). Even the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls tell of the miraculous birth of Noah and how his father Lamech was suspicious that his wife had been made pregnant by an angel. Therefore we should not be surprised that once the Christian movement spread beyond Palestine and into a Jewish-Hellenistic environment, the birth story of Jesus was influenced by those same ancient traditions. Such accounts were readily accepted in an age of superstition and ignorance.


Justin Martyr, one of the early Christian bishops (c. 100 -168 A.D.), reacted to (the truthful) charges that Christianity had copied earlier pagan virgin birth myths by claiming that these births were the work of the devil who anticipated this future Christian mystery by copying it in the past. He writes, "when I hear that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this."


As if his other mistakes weren’t enough, Matthew also uses a mistranslation of an Old Testament prophecy to support his claim for the virgin birth. He quotes from Isaiah, "therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14). The original Hebrew text of Isaiah, however, uses the word "almah", which refers to a young woman of marriageable age, not the word "bethulah" which means virgin. Matthew seems to have relied on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, which inaccurately used the Greek word "parthenos" for "almah", thereby strongly implying virginity. The actual text of Isaiah, however, makes no such reference. Some modern translations of the Bible, which are based on the original Hebrew text, have replaced the word "virgin" with the more accurate translation, "young woman". Reading Isaiah's prophecy in context makes it obvious that it doesn’t refer to the time of Jesus at all, but rather to the time surrounding a political and military crisis which faced ancient Judah 700 years earlier. Once again the gospel story is clearly contrived; Matthew has taken liberties with the Isaiah text to justify his claim of Mary's virginal conception.


Since the virgin birth story of Jesus makes the descriptions of his ancestral lineage to David in both Matthew and Luke superfluous, many biblical historians conclude that the virgin birth narratives were later additions and not part of the original texts (note especially in Luke, if the verses containing the birth story are omitted, how the prologue in chapter 1, verses 1-4, flows more consistently into the beginning of chapter 3). Even so, since descent was not traced through the female line in the Jewish law and custom of that time, readers would know that Joseph, as a descendant of David, secured Davidic succession for Jesus by formally acknowledging him as his son, even though these gospels claim that he was not his biological father.

The two gospels reveal further discrepancies concerning the annunciation of Mary's virginal conception. Matthew describes the annunciation of Mary's pregnancy only to Joseph, by means of an angel in a dream, but only after she has conceived (Matt. 1:18-21); whereas in Luke, the angel Gabriel explains it all to Mary, but not Joseph, before she has conceived Jesus (Luke 1:26-34). Yet later on, both Mary and Joseph are strangely astonished by the shepherds' tale about the heavenly host (Luke 2:18), and inexplicably puzzled by Simeon's affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah (Luke 2:33).

Then again, in that very same narrative in Luke, John the Baptist was a relative of Jesus and even knew of Jesus' divine nature when John was in his mother's womb (Luke 1:41,44). But in a later chapter, the adult John did not know who Jesus was when he approached him at the river(Luke 7:19-23). Luke also apparently uses Old Testament stories about the births of Isaac and Samson as models for the angelic annunciations to Elizabeth and Mary (Genesis 17:15-21; Judges 13:2-24). The description of Mary's divine vocation is in a format similar to Gideon's mission which is also announced by an angel (Judges 6:11-16). Likewise, the "Magnificat" or song of Mary (Luke 1:46-55) in which Luke has Mary acknowledge her special role in history, is hardly original, but based on the prayer of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10), who also allegedly gave birth through divine intervention. It is improbable that the illiterate peasant girl called Mary could have been so poetic.

These accounts all suggest more of a reliance on Old Testament parallels than eyewitness memories. (Indeed, none of the gospel writers were witnesses to any of the events about which they wrote, having penned their narratives from two to four generations after Jesus’ death.)


There are other indications that the virgin birth story was a late addition, given that it does not correspond with the original accounts of the life of Jesus. For example, in other gospel passages Mary shows little or no understanding of Jesus' special role. According to Luke, the message of the angel Gabriel made it clear to Mary that Jesus was ordained to be the messiah, the king and savior of Israel. This message was supposedly reinforced by the prophesies of Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:34,38). How could it possibly be then, that following such predictions and the miracle of her virginal conception, Mary didn’t realize who Jesus was and could not understand his reference to the temple as his father's house (Luke 2:48-50)?

Equally as puzzling, Jesus fails to venerate or accord any special status to his mother in spite of her supposedly divine role. When Mary is blessed by an admirer, he replies, "no, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it" (Luke 11:28). At other times Jesus shows impatience with her, as at the wedding feast at Cana (John 2:1-4), and even disdain when he replies "who is my mother?" when told that she wanted to speak with him (Matt. 12:46-50). Neither Mary's understanding of Jesus, nor his attitude towards her make sense in light of the assertion of a miraculous virgin birth.


It is also hard to believe that despite the supposedly extraordinary events surrounding Jesus' birth - from annunciations by angels and a heavenly host, to shepherds and magi seeking out the messiah, to Herod's wrath - that from the beginning, Jesus was not recognized by the rest of his family as God's anointed one (Mk. 6:4). Instead, there are times when they think he is insane (Mk. 3:21). Stranger still, why weren’t any of his brothers numbered among his disciples during his lifetime (John 7:5)?

Can’t we suppose, if both Joseph and Mary knew that Jesus had no human father, they would have told him so? If they did, why did Jesus not claim from the beginning that his miraculous birth was proof that he was divine? Why, if this man was hailed by so many at his birth as the savior of Israel, did the people of his hometown place no credence in him (Matt. 13:53-58); and why was his true nature such a startling discovery to his disciples so late in his career (Matt. 16:15-17)? The answer is simply that these situations during his adult life (in relation to the nativity stories) are not illogical if we accept that the birth narratives were a later addition in an evolving mythology.


In this light, the "Christmas story" is simply an attempt through allegory to promote Jesus' divinity from the moment of his conception rather than from his adult baptism as claimed by the earliest gospel (Mk. 1:9-11). It is as difficult to harmonize the Bible’s accounts of the birth of Jesus with the record of his adult ministry as it is to explain the inconsistencies in the birth accounts themselves. Instead of taking the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke literally we should accept them as the religious myths they are: beautiful legends embodying faith in the supernatural and the efficacy of prophecy, and completely consistent with what credulous people in ancient times commonly expected. Careful examination of the record however gives lie to any claim of divinity for Jesus. He becomes, at most, an itinerate rabbi who got himself crosswise with the Roman authorities. Maybe…for there are just as many inconsistencies surrounding Jesus’ death and supposed resurrection as there are with his birth, but that is a story for another time.