Jesus Christ vs. Captain Kirk: A Study of Mental Models (or “A Modern Example of Binary Beliefs and Cognitive Dissonance In Everyday Western Culture”)

Hah. Halfway through I thought "hmm I bet he said that so that people would react defiantly to prove they are the exception".

I think your argument rests on a faulty premise though, it's not a firm, absolute binary. It's more like an ambiguous word that can be twisted if need be. Christians are notorious at modifying and cherry picking their belief systems to suit themselves (though as you would fairly point out, this is a human trait, it's just more egregious when they claim theirs to be the infallible divinely inspired truth).

It's not a difficult stretch at all to claim that the "earth' is a metaphor for any lands humans dwell on. There's not even one authoritative version of Christian eschatology, it's mixed even among denominations.

The actual text in the book of Revelation refers to the Valley of Armageddon in the Middle East. The belief is that is where the final climactic battle will take place - it's a physical location like Detroit or Tokyo. To stretch that would take some mental acrobatics that would surprise even me ( wait ... nope. no it wouldn't). It's nearly 3:15 in the morning here and I don't want to go get the verse of the shelf to reference it (you're smart, you'll be able to find it in a few seconds), but it doesn't talk about Christ returning to earth, he returns to THAT SPOT and steps down on the Mount of Olives and kicks the anti-Christ's a**. (okay, that is the short version).

If someone believes in the literal Bible, it is binary. The Mount of Olives in Israel is a physical location. Also, you have to realize there are some crazy folks here in the United States when it comes to *literal* translation of the scriptures. To illustrate: A few states away, there are groups of people that take certain passages of the Bible so literally they spent tens of millions of dollars to build a "Creation Museum" that shows mankind is only 6,000 years old and has exhibits of humans riding on Dinosaurs as pets even though they lived hundreds of millions of years apart. That is my target audience. They teach their children that if you accept dinosaurs were here hundreds of millions a years ago, it means the Bible is a lie and you are damned. They react with such hostility to even the notion that mankind might be older, even when we have ruins under the Ocean of cities that date back to 14,000 B.C. that have been found in the past 10 or 20 years. They think it is all an evil plot meant to tempt mankind into doubt.

See it for yourself. It is a sight to behold: http://creationmuseum.org/

Oh, and I forgot: They believe Adam was white, too. Even though we are a global minority, don't come from the Middle East, and we know from genetics all humans started out with the pigmentation skin color of modern day Africans (that is, black as night). See for yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/singingwitness/4648255796/

Could you please upload another link? This photo was removed.

I'll be honest, I'm loath to read the bible and go through it's mess (if I had written it, it'd be a hell of a lot more concise and clear than it is, plus it's late here as well and my day isn't anywhere close to finished) so I will take your word for it (not that I doubt you). But simply because it says that Jesus will fight the final battle on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem doesn't mean that there can't be battles elsewhere on other planets.

For instance in Star Wars, the final battle of the Clone Wars was fought on.....that planet (ugh I'm making such a compelling argument), but the scope of the war engulfed the entire galaxy. There's no reason any eschatological war couldn't be the same, the final blow struck on earth, but battles everywhere humans exist.

What would really put a dent in it is if the Earth was to be destroyed (which is an assurance, the universe will outlive our beautiful little blue marble by many orders of magnitude) before any of this was to take place.

I wish I could say what you said about American Christians was news to me and it wasn't prevalent enough that a foreigner (albeit one with a keen and inquisitive eye) would know all about it. To my eternal shame, the man that founded the Creation Museum comes from my country, Australia. Good riddance I suppose? Although i really wouldn't wish him on any country.

On another note, since you're such a bibliophile, would you be able to recommend a good foundational book to learn about Economics? Preferably one without a pervasive, expressed bias, I know you're a fiscal conservative, but I trust in your judgement and integrity enough to believe that you will recommend me the most helpful book with the least bias that you are aware of.

Really? Even if one doesn't believe a single word in it, I would think the Bible would be interesting reading solely from the perspective that it is one of the few documents, or rather collection of documents, that has survived as a window into past civilization. But, it is true what you say: I'm a bibliophile and I also follow the rule that I try to never discuss anything with a strong opinion unless I've read it myself and formed my own opinion. That includes the controversial health care law in the United States, major religious books, essays, studies, etc.

I've always enjoyed reading the Bible, with the Book of Proverbs probably being among my favorite texts anywhere (although there are a lot of entreaties in it against visiting prostitutes so I'm guessing that was a problem at the time Solomon penned most of it ...) I try to live most of my life by the Bible, though I fundamentally reject some of Paul's teachings (e.g., the idea that it is okay to own slaves and that they should willingly submit to their masters - I think the ownership of one human being by another is demonic).

One area I do find particularly interesting is that the entire idea of accepting interest on money loaned to anyone except foreigners and a few other special cases is wholly and completely unBiblical. Our entire western banking system is against scripture - people who take interest on their money are, for the most part, repeatedly called wicked and ungodly. But you'll never hear that taught in a Church anywhere. Interestingly enough, the entirety of the Bible repeatedly and constantly calls wealth a sign of God's blessing so I do find it ... quirky, shall we say ... that God apparently considers dividends okay from successful businesses but not renting money out to others. That perplexes me, or rather the thought process behind it perplexes me. If Coca-Cola wants to pay you 8% in exchange for you lending money so it can build a factory and earn a higher return, I don't see the problem when two willing counterparties are involved. Nor do I think my grandmother, the one who owned the sporting goods store, is going to hell because she used to buy certificates of deposit. But that is another case of us just blithely ignoring the parts we don't like.

Personally, I've never understood how so many people consider themselves a Christian without having read the entire document. If a man or woman is really staking your soul upon the divinity of Christ, which is the entire theological underpinning of the gospel, it seems important to read the book cover-to-cover. I haven't met many people who have, though, so when something comes up and I start talking about something that isn't served at "Church Lite" in nicely packaged formats, they just look at me like I'm crazy.

I think the biggest problem I have is with the publishers and translators of Bibles, who purposely edit out differences in the text. For example, there is a reason some Churches omit the book of John from the gospels. It is completely inconsistent with the other books in the original translation because John is considered a first-hand account, whereas the other three books are thought to be written much later by people who weren't there to witness the events. If it is filled with so many errors that don't match Matthew, Mark and Luke, that would indicate that it the latter three couldn't be divinely inspired because, it stands to reason, God wouldn't make factual errors, right? That should at least be discussed. Instead, some of the major Bible publishers remove the offending passages without telling anyone and hope no one notices. But mention that to all but someone who went to seminary and they freak out. Most pastors know this - well, the good ones do anyway - but they don't want you to mention it in front of those who are "weak in the faith".

For example: Take when Jesus was brought to Pilate. Matthew 27:11-14 says that Christ remained absolutely silent and didn't respond to a single charge. Yet, in the same account of the same event, John 18:33-37 says that Christ responded to all of the charges and answered Pilate.

Now, one of those has to be factually inaccurate. They cannot both be true. But the average Christian is so lazy they will not read the book, at least enough to have an intelligent conversation about it. I would very much like to have an answer to the contradictions that occur in several of the gospels.

Likewise, the final last words of Jesus are different in each of the four gospels. In Matthew & Mark, they are, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" with differences in "God" (Eli vs. Eloi), Luke says his final words were, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" and John says his final words were, "It is finished". Now, final words are the last thing you say. Only one of those can be correct.

On the issue of conciseness, to be perfectly fair, the Bible contains between 66 and 81 books depending upon which version you read (the 66 book version is the one used by modern-day non-denominational and protestant Christians after Martin Luther took out a pen and started scratching out books during the reformation - but, again, that is the short version since it was a bit more complicated than that, with the latter figure being in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church).

As this rundown of the Books of the Bible shows, different denominations of Christianity have entirely different Bibles, some with some books, others with other books.

Plus, those books were written over a span of thousands of years and multiple languages. We only call it "The Bible" because the Catholic church packaged the important scriptural books together in one easy-to-carry format. Before that, each book was kept by itself on scrolls. There was no "Bible" proper as we know it until a couple of centuries until after the time of Christ.

As for economics, there are two main books with which to start. First, "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. Sowell writes extensively as a far-right wing commentator on a variety of social issues but as an economic thinker, that book does a better job of explaining the fundamentals of how the world functions as it is (not as we think it should) than almost anything I've ever read. It is clear, concise, and accurate. I've recommended it to members of my own family who wanted to learn about economics.

Another popular choice: Greg Mankiw at Harvard is considered to be one of the best economics writers in the world but over the past 5 years, his opposition to a few major pieces of left-wing legislation have resulted in some parts of the fringe writing him off as partisan (which you should be aware of since you are concerned about bias). For example, Paul Krugman accuses Mankiw as using right-wing "talking points" against health care because Mankiw says it is "schlocky" to use life expectancy relative to percentage of GDP spent on health insurance as a measure of productivity because Americans eat so unhealthy and are so incredibly fat that it skews the data. Krugman says you can't just say something like that with a waive of the hand but, on this point, I think Mankiw is correct. Not factoring in how the world *is* - not how we *want it to be* - is an enormous mistake. Americans are fat. Strike that. Americans are obese. To think this doesn't factor into our inflated health care system and result in a significant part of the cost structure is naive and disingenuous.

He has several economics textbooks, each of which are geared to a different course level (so you'd want to start with freshman-entry obviously since that is going to carry about 90% of the water in understanding how the world functions). That book would be "The Principles of Macroeconomics" which has like 8 or 9 editions. The most recent one just came out this month.

If you want a shorter version, every time "The Principles of Macroeconomics" is released, they also release a companion book called "Brief Principles of Macroeconomics" which is a more concise version of the book aimed at high school honor students with the same concepts and ideas. Depending on your needs, either would work. The downside is, they are expensive. Really expensive for a book.

A point worth keeping in mind (as Joshua Needleman points out in Money and the Meaning of Life), is that prior to Capital markets, which allowed money to be loaned as a risk, with the possibility of reward, money was generally borrowed as the result of some catastrophe which had befallen someone (a crop failure for instance).

Thus, the charging of interest in biblical time would have most often implied earning a profit, from instances of another's misfortune, and in circumstances where they may have been entirely at the mercy of the lenders, and this may be why the biblical injunction against charging interest (at least, to member's of one's own tribe )arose.

That is an absolutely wonderful, fantastic point, paxnorth. You are completely correct! Capital markets as we know them weren't functioning then so our paradigm isn't appropriate to understand it.

Thanks for commenting! That made my day.

Oh, and thanks for the book mention. I'm adding it to my reading list.

Ah Joshua. How I love your epic replies. I can get very verbose (although I'll try not to this time) and I can do so here without feeling guilty that I'm making peoples eyes glaze over, well at least If I am, you are as well!

I should clarify that I was loath to read the bible at the time I had written it, although I do have a distaste for it in general. When I was a christian I agonized over what the bible said about homosexuality and it....upset me to say the least to know that the text I had always been taught was the voice of god demanded people (like my adolescent gay self) to be stoned to death for being gay.

Re. Paul, I would hope that you reject his writings for other reasons as well, he was quite the misogynist on top of his other flaws. I suppose his one redeeming aspect would be that he declared circumcision unnecessary (I believe it was Paul, I don't know for sure) and thus saving generations of foreskins! (although that divine protection seems to have fizzled out in America..).

Didn't Jesus say that it was easier for a donkey to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? That always stuck out to me. I think usury was illegal for a lot of medieval European history, but there were ways around it. I vaguely remember reading about a set of three contracts when used together would produce interest. If you know anything about that, or medieval finance/investing in general, I would -love- to see a blog post about it. I believe Sharia Law still forbids interest, but Islamic Banking finds ways to emulate interest anyway.

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll pick up both of them the first chance I get. I'm going to TAFE (that's sort of like a vocational college and community college combined, it's an Australian thing) to get my year 12 certificate that I missed out on when I was in school, so I'm looking to get a head start on the subjects.

That makes sense. If you grew up as Christian and then had to deal with the fact you are gay, then a normal response would be rejection. That isn't always the case but it is certainly common. (It is human nature not to want to be around people that treat you like crap - most fairly tales are built upon escaping such situations, from Cinderella to Oliver Twist).

Over the past 20 years, several family acquaintances of ours left their wives and children after coming out of the closet. Many of the people involved are still waiting for the men - I'm not sure if they knew each other or not - to "come back" because these people - the men's families - as well meaning as they are, actually think it is a duty for them to suffer through marriage and live with someone to whom they aren't attracted and / or be celibate. It strikes me as an almost insufferable cruelty; moral superiority is always easy when you don't struggle with a particular desire. It's easy for the divorced-and-remarried to white wash their sin and criticize the gay teen or the drunkard to scream fire and brimstone at the gambler.

The verse about money involved a camel, not a donkey. (Christ rode a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in part because centuries before, the Jewish prophet Zechariah had written, "Behold, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious. He is humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass." You can find it in our modern Bible in Zechariah 9:9. To the priests at the time, it would have been an all-out declaration, "I am the messiah" and a blasphemy in their eyes worthy of death.)

I always took the verse to which you allude to be a warning that wealth has a tendency to possess people where they become ruled by their property rather than them ruling over their property. I believe it is connected to the lesson taught in Luke 12:16-21 where Christ tells the parable of the rich man who becomes so convinced of his own perfection and confidence that he plans on building barns to hold all of his wealth when, unbeknownst to him, God requires his soul that night and he can't take it with him into the afterlife.

Personally, to paraphrase a very famous quote, "I love the Church so much that I consider it my absolute prerogative to criticize her for her failings more than any other institution". Much of what I talk about comes down to one thesis: A significant portion of the church is so "heavenly minded they are no earthly good". My criticisms of the Church are borne from love and frustration at an almost willful stupidity. I think a scientist figuring out how to cure HIV so a 6-year-old child in Africa doesn't have to suffer through one of the most horrific deaths imaginable without any medication is doing more good for Christ than 1,000 church members meeting on Sunday morning talking about the evils of Obama or whether or not we are living in the end times. That is one of the reasons my foundation - which I rarely, rarely talk about - focuses on results-oriented giving.

Trust me crabhooves, on this site you're not alone. Sounds like just about everyone on here wants a penis up their pooper

*just to clarify. When I said bias, I didn't mean bias as a shorthand for opinions I don't agree with. I meant it in the proper definition of bias, a presupposed set of beliefs through which all data is interpreted through. Everyone has a bias of course, but some people are better at controlling theirs than others.

Ah, then by that definition you should have no problem with Sowell's work in this regard (again, if you ever read some of his other books, you might have the urge to throw the text across the room due to a handful of his social positions; that said, it cannot be denied without being intellectually dishonest that he is one of the most brilliant thinkers in his field). Here is a link to the most recent version of his book.

Great post! Maybe we should put together a study of the correlation (ha - there I am assuming there is one) between education level and religious tolerance.

I'll never forget a very basic lit course in undergrad in which another student pouted through the Epic of Gilgamesh; she took it very personally when we compared it to similar parts of the Bible - and learned it was written first (although who knows how long it was verbally shared).

That would be an interesting study!

I'd bet money that the average Christian has no idea that the Epic of Gilgamesh has a flood story almost identical to Noah.

I'd also bet money that most people don't realize that the Old Testament laws were largely recycled from the Code of Hammurabi and the Code of Ur-Nammu, King of Ur in 2050 B.C. That is interesting because Abram, or Abraham as we call him now, was born in the land of Ur within a century or two of those laws being established and would have grown up under them. It is clear when he left his homeland he took the laws with him.

To be honest, the part I am having dissonance with is why you are still a Christian. Like crabhooves, I agonized over a lot of things for many years. In recent years it has become clear to me that my greatest regret is that I took so long to painstakingly remove myself from Christianity. Christianity is a great deal of foolishness parading as ancient wisdom. You have pointed out a number of reasons why we know that the Bible is very clearly not "the perfect word of God." You are aware of the lack of foresight that the ancient doctrines had (a real god would have known that interest would one day be important). Without Spirit and Truth, what is there left to worship in? As far as we can see from the Gospels, Jesus Christ was wrong about a lot of things. What makes you okay with that? 

As an aside--while prosperity was a sign of saintliness in the OT, Jesus, and his brother James, pretty well tore that to pieces. 

The Book of Ecclesiastes was always my favorite. I am now 100% convinced that the last verse or two were added later--they completely conflict with the spirit of the rest of the work.

In a sufficiently advanced and widespread intergalactic civilization, the "world" would take on a different meaning perhaps.  I'm not sure the two scenarios you present are mutually exclusive.  Thought-provoking post, though.

Oops, I meant to repond to the original post....

You forgot the class of people who don't give two shits whether Kirk and space travel can co-exist at all. These people don't have hostility, modification, or denial. We just give a shrug and say who cares.

*Kirk and space travel can co-exist with Jesus

I don't know how different Protestant denominations view the Final Judgement, but the Catholic Church (as well as Orthodox churches) don't actually believe the Anti-Christ to necessarily be one person who's going to come and lead us all away from God. And in fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church officially teaches that the Book of Revelation is not meant to be taken literally as something that will happen in the future. On the contrary, the CCC teaches that is was all written in response to things that had already happened to the early Christian Church. Otherwise, a fantastic post, Joshua! Thank you for sharing.

Well when the bible was written none of its authors actually believed there were other planets besides this one, which I think dramatically undermines the assertion of a simplistic dichotomy between secular humanism and Christian eschatology.

Just reviewing some of my old comments and this one piqued my interest. I would reply to myself with "they STILL don't!" as many of us can attest to the resurgence of Flat Earthism, which also denies the existence of stars, planets, and even gravity itself. It's a rather poignant flavor of solipsist epistemological nihilism with a musky aroma (that musky aroma comes from the non sequitur of evil NASA scientists spreading lies).

Wait, so what was the name of the "surprise" mental model at the end?

Reverse psychology works (usually) every time, unless you're smart enough to know that someone is using reverse psychology on you. 🙂