The Meaning of Secularism

Secularism, like atheism, is not a positive set of ideas. The most straightforward definition of "secular" from Dictionary.com is "not pertaining to or connected with religion." The term describes only one thing something is not -- religious -- not what it is.

Secularlism is not a philosophy. The mere fact that a person is (or claims to be, or is claimed to be) secular tells us nothing about what it is the person does believe.

Yet the Christian right has a vested interested in tarring secularists as nihilists. It is easy to see the motive behind the strategy: if the only alternative to Christianity is nihilism, Christianity wins by default.

After running through polling data on out-of-wedlock births, abortion, and homosexuality, Star Parker writes:

The public schools that are educating the majority of America's children have been increasingly secularized and politicized. The work place has been purged of biblical ethics. All public space is darkened by lawless and vulgar lasciviousness and becoming increasingly intolerant of practicing Christians.

The result is that secular Americans have had a disproportionate impact on our country over recent years and biblical Americans are now fighting back with their voting rights.

Nice trick: secularists are equated with "lawless and vulgar lasciviousness."

The Christians, on the other hand, are committed to America's "founding principles of traditional values and limited government."

Anyone who believes those are actually the choices must go with Christianity.

Those are not the choices.

The third way is a philosophy that happens to be secular (not religious) and that recognizes that our nature as rational, autonomous beings gives rise to our inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. A philosophy that seeks positive values rooted in the requirements of human life.

Meanwhile, are the Christians truly committed to a government limited to individual rights? No.

On the economic front, many Christians advocate a massive welfare state on the grounds that we are our brother's keeper. Christians increasingly promote the environmentalist agenda on the grounds that God commanded us to care for the earth, even at the expense of human well-being and liberty.

On the social front, many Christians want to ban all or nearly all abortion from the moment of conception, on the grounds that God infused a fertilized egg with a soul, which would endanger the lives of some women and threaten a police state.

Many Christians call for censorship of unsavory materials, more political controls on drugs and personal behavior, and legal discrimination against homosexuals.

At best, the Christian right is a fickle friend of liberty.

Thankfully, there is an alternative to secular nihilism and Christian mysticism.

Religious Affiliation Dropping

The big religious news of the day comes from the American Religious Identification Survey 2008 from a group out of Trinity College. The AP put out a story on the results, as did USA Today and other publications.


From the highlights of the survey:

86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.

The historic Mainline churches and denominations have experienced the steepest declines while the non-denominational Christian identity has been trending upward particularly since 2001. ...

34% of American adults considered themselves "Born Again or Evangelical Christians" in 2008. ...

Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

The fact that 70 percent of people "believe in a personal God" while 34 percent call themselves evangelical means that the United States continues to be an overwhelmingly Christian nation. If we combine atheists, agnostics, and deists, that totals only 24 percent of the population -- a large figure, but one still surpassed by evangelicals.

In Colorado, the only big shift has been for "Nones" (no religion), which has grown from 13 percent to 21 percent from 1990 to 2008. Of course, for those of us interested in politics, the survey results don't reveal much of the interesting information. Some Christians endorse the separation of church and state; some are more open to political economic and social controls (and those two groups partly overlap).

And the decline of religion does not indicate what is on the rise. What do people believe instead of religion? Some secular philosophies are at least as bad as any popular religion. What is most important is what people believe, not what they don't believe.

Theory Versus Practice

One of my beefs with Christianity is that, because of its many unsound ethical tenets, it encourages members to voice one set of principles and act on another. Here is a great example:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's 18-year-old daughter, an unwed mother, says teenagers should avoid having sex.

However, Bristol Palin acknowledges that abstinence is "not realistic at all."

Now, I don't think younger teens have any business having sex (with others), and I look to parental responsibility to address the matter. But of course Christians say that all sex before marriage is wrong, an unjustifiable position. And so we get people like Bristol Palin spouting Christian doctrine while acknowledging its inapplicability to a well-led life. Perhaps if Bristol hadn't been torn between her theory and her practice, she might have been more conscientious about birth control.

Maher Tackles Religion

The most amazing thing about Bill Maher's Religulous, a documentary that criticizes religions of all stripes, is that, so far as I know, Maher hasn't had to worry much about death threats. This movie is a lot more insulting to Islam than, for instance, the Danish cartoons. But Maher is an American, and moreover he's a comedian. Strangely, then, Maher was able to make a more interesting documentary than might have been possible to more "serious" documentarians. I recommend it, despite a variety of flaws.

Religulous has a split personality. It is filled with low-brow jokes and cheap shots. Yet it also reveals a wealth of interesting facts about many religions, such as the predecessors of Christian myths, and its concluding message is surprisingly serious. "Religion must die for mankind to live," says Maher in the closing segments, in which nuclear blasts are superimposed with religious passages. Dark words for a funny man.

The film has two main shortcomings. First, Maher pokes fun at the many absurdities of religion, the low-hanging fruit, but he never gets around to talking about the most sophisticated forms of religion. Thus, Maher's conclusions don't follow from his arguments.

Second, Maher offers no real alternative to religion, he offers only doubt. He is "preaching the gospel of 'I don't know.'" "Doubt -- that's my product," he says. But if he has no answers to the "big questions," how is he possibly going to get the religious to seriously question their faith? In a contest between religion and nothing, religion will win every time. The religious do not lack doubt -- they doubt everything Maher has to day. But man cannot live by doubt alone. He needs a positive philosophy. In the absence of a serious alternative, religion will continue to dominate.

Does Free Will Prove God?

A large portion of articles from the conservative Town Hall attempt to prove the existence of God or slam atheism. (This is yet another example of how the conservative movement is captured by the religious right.) A recent example is Ben Shapiro's "Why Atheism Is Morally Bankrupt."

Here is Shapiro's argument:

[W]ithout God, there can be no moral choice. Without God, there is no capacity for free will.

Thats because a Godless world is a soulless world. Virtually all faiths hold that God endows human beings with the unique ability to choose their actions -- the ability to transcend biology and environment in order to do good. Transcending biology and our environment requires a higher power -- a spark of the supernatural. As philosopher Rene Descartes, put it, Although I possess a body with which I am very intimately conjoined [my soul] is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it. [A direct quote?]

Gilbert Pyle, the atheistic philosopher, derogatorily labeled the idea of soul/body dualism, the ghost in the machine. Nonetheless, our entire legal and moral system is based on the ghost in the machine -- the presupposition that we can choose to do otherwise. ...

According to atheists, human beings are intensely complex machines. Our actions are determined by our genetics and our environment.

Shapiro's claim about atheists is obviously false. Many atheists reject determinism.

But notice the basic form of Shapiro's argument: "I cannot explain X as part of the natural world, therefore God exists." This argument has been repeated in many forms over the centuries. "I cannot explain [lightning, weather, causal laws, gravity, the origin of species, morality, free will] as part of the natural word, therefore God exists."

But an inability to explain something does not justify the move to Making Stuff Up. Lack of knowledge about the natural world does not demonstrate the existence of a supernatural world.

I do not pretend to have the final answer to free will. (I don't pretend to have the final answer to gravity or many other things, either.) Yet it is obviously the case that an account of free will need not invoke God, because two major theories of free will avoid doing so. Objectivists such as Leonard Peikoff argue that mechanistic causation does not exhaust the nature of causation, and that certain things in the universe -- people with rational consciousness -- are capable of self-causation in important ways. Others, including Daniel Dennett, make a case for compatibilism, the view that free will operates within a deterministic world. I hope to return to this issue squarely within the next couple years.

The unassailable fundamental is that we do have free will. We obviously can "choose to do otherwise." We can observe the phenomenon of choice within ourselves. The fact that science cannot explain free will with finality does not disprove free will any more than a lack of understanding about gravity allows us to float freely above the earth with no upward force. The point of science is to explain aspects of the natural world, not rationalize away their existence.

Shapiro claims that atheists cannot explain free will in the context of natural law. His solution? Conjure a God not bound by natural law. He counts his ignorance as his proof: we don't understand something, therefore, God. Yet even within that rationalistic framework Christians have struggled to explain free will. Many influential Christians were determinists. Indeed, Christianity is driven to its own form of compatibilism: God must simultaneously have perfect knowledge -- including a perfect awareness of the future -- and grant humans free will. Neat trick. The upshot is that Christians reject compatibilism based on a competing theory of compatibilism. But the absurdities of the supernaturalist framework are secondary: the main point is that there's no reason to accept a supernaturalist framework, and the attempt inherently defies reason.

Nonbelievers Proof of God?

Christians, it seems, can use any fact whatsoever to "prove" the existence of God. In a letter to the Rocky Mountain News, Brian Stuckey argues that the existence of people who don't believe in God proves that God exists, as disbelief was "foretold in the Holy Scriptures." What a great argument! It is essentially in the form, "You disagree with me; therefore, I'm correct."

Stuckey claims:

It is true that many Americans are "shifting away" from organized religion. Many mainline churches have turned away from the traditional teachings of the church. Polls indicate that religious affiliation dropped from 90 percent in 1990 to 81 percent in 2001.

I wish he would have indicated which polls he's talking about. However, polls I've seen (see, for instance, Bowling Alone) indicate a growth in the more hard-core evangelical lines, and that is the more significant trend.

Paul was a master of the ad hominem, as Stuckey quotes:

As St. Paul wrote, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves . . . Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 3:1-7).

Again, "You disagree with me; therefore, I'm correct."

If There Is No God

Dennis Prager's "new" article, "If There Is No God," recycles a variety of bogus claims about atheism, yet at least it grants, "[I]t is not possible to prove (or disprove) God's existence." However, if it is not possible to prove something, it is not necessary to disprove it. Arbitrary claims should be dismissed out of hand. Nevertheless, because claims about God involve absurd metaphysical presumptions, it is possible to disprove God's existence.

Without God, Prager asserts, "there is no good and evil," "there is no objective meaning to life," "[l]ife is ultimately a tragic fare," and so forth. Of course this is complete nonsense. Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, which rejects supernaturalism, shows that good and evil are rooted in human life and its requirements and that one's life, properly lived, can be meaningful and joyous.

Moreover, supernaturalism deflates to the same subjectivism that Prager criticizes; good and evil become dependent on the whims of a supernatural being, and "objective" comes to mean adherence to arbitrary doctrines. A better title for Prager's article would have been simply: "Projection."

How to Think Like an Apologist

A few days ago, I pointed out that many or most fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterus and die naturally. Thus, according to the Christian view that God controls the universe, God is the ultimate abortionist.

A fellow named Darrell Birkey replied, "So you slander God, blaming him for miscarriages and failures for the fertilized egg to implant in the womb. God designed the procreation process, but He doesn't cause miscarriages,etc. You slander and demean God to claim that he does."

I confess to be being disappointed with Birkey's reply; I was sort of hoping he'd, you know, offer some sort of argument to back up his position. If I were a Christian apologist, I might argue something along these lines:

It is true that God controls the universe and whether an egg fertilizes and implants in the uterus. However, when God allows a fertilized egg not to implant, that is not the equivalent of an abortion. God knows before-hand whether he's going to allow an egg to implant, and he imbues only those fertilized eggs destined for implantation with a soul. Thus, a fertilized egg that God allows to die does not have the moral status of a fertilized egg that the woman willfully aborts.

Yes, God also knows before-hand whether the mother is going to abort. However, this remains a matter of free choice for the woman. A woman is bound to obey the will of God. It is impossible for the woman to know which fertilized egg God intends to imbue with a soul. Thus, it is wrong for a woman to take any action with the intention of blocking a fertilized egg from implanting in her uterus.

But why does God allow some fertilized eggs to die in the first place? Why didn't he create us such that all fertilized eggs implant in the uterus and successfully grow to live babies? Why do fertilized eggs fail to implant or sometimes die after they have implanted? God's plan for the universe is too grand for us lowly mortals to fully comprehend. However, the biological facts do offer us a wonderful opportunity to live our faith in God. Some women are tempted to think that the fertilized egg she kills is the same as a fertilized egg that God allows to die. But the woman properly understands that God is in charge, and she must let his will decide the matter.

And here is my brief reply to this apologist nonsense.

First, there is no God, no proof of God, and no mystical soul with which God imbues a fertilized egg. Thus, there is no reason to think that one fertilized egg is different from any other, morally speaking. The final paragraph appeals to human ignorance, as though that resolves any paradox with the religion. Finally, if God did exist, it would be a bit nasty of him to allow some fertilized eggs to die merely so that women could face temptation to prevent implantation or get an abortion.

If anybody else has a better explanation for why God would kill more fertilized eggs than all abortion doctors combined, I'd love to hear it.

Ba-a-a-a-a

I'm still holding out hope that this is a parody. iLiveValues.com published a blog entry called, "Being an Obedient Follower." The web page claims to be published by ERLC, which links to The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the vision of which is "An American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority."

The point of the blog entry is to teach readers about sheep. We need to know about sheep because, the blog reminds us, Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep. So the idea is that we are supposed to be Jesus's sheep, and God's hand-picked followers are supposed to "feed" us.

Here are some of the descriptions of sheep offered by the blog: "natural inclination to follow a leader... a strong lead-follow tendency... no such thing as a 'natural born leader' among sheep. The day’s leader among the flock is normally just the first sheep to move... when one sheep attempted to leap over a 15 meter wide ravine and instead fell to its death, nearly fifteen hundred other sheep followed... sheep are not as dumb as we have been told... just below pigs and on par with cattle in IQ... no sense of direction... Lost sheep usually will walk around in endless circles, in a state of confusion, and even panic... Sheep spend most of their lives eating and drinking, but they are not careful about what they eat and drink... Sheep are almost entirely defenseless."

So this is the model for Christian behavior, apparently. How are God's appointed shepherds supposed to treat these sheep?

"A shepherd would sacrifice for his flock. His flock implicitly trusts him. Sheep need a leader, even if they don't know they do."

I imagine that the "sheep" especially need a "leader" if they protest that they don't.

Thankfully, I know many Christians who would just as soon shop for guns or "feed" sheep to their children.

Muslim Creationists

Reuters reports (via Little Green Footballs via Jim M.):

Unknown outside Muslim circles two years ago, Adnan Oktar -- the 52-year-old Turk behind the pseudonym Harun Yahya -- caught the attention of scientists and teachers in Europe and North America by mass-mailing them his 768-page “Atlas of Creation”. His lavishly illustrated book preaches a Muslim version of creationism, the view scientists usually hear from Christian fundamentalists who say God created all life on earth just as it is today and oppose the teaching of Darwin's evolution theory.

Obviously I'm not going to spend the time to acquire this book and evaluate its particular claims. All creationist claims proceed down a similar path. Here I point out merely that creationism depends on supernaturalism.

But this does point out a difficulty with using creationism to promote a particular sect: all religious sects believe in creationism. Creationism invokes some designer, but is this designer a god of the Greeks, other pagans, the Muslims, the Christians, or the deists? As a tool of propaganda, creationism works only with those predisposed to believe the particular faith of the creationist. I somehow doubt that American Christian creationists would appreciate the use of Oktar's book in a class that taught "intelligent design."

Did Resurrection Myth Precede Jesus?

Sheera Frenkel of The Times (of London) reports a debate of a Dead Sea tablet called Gabriel’s Vision of Revelation. She writes:

Israel Knohl, a biblical studies professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argued yesterday that line 80 of the text revealed Gabriel telling an historic Jewish rebel named Simon, who was killed by the Romans four years before the birth of Christ: "In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you."

Professor Knohl contends that the tablet proves that messianic followers possessed the paradigm of their leader rising from the grave before Jesus was born. ...

Professor Knohl defended his theory at a conference at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem marking 60 years since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He said that New Testament writers could have adapted a widely held messianic story in Judaism to Jesus and his followers.

Others, of course, dispute this interpretation of a damaged text.

I regard it as an intriguing but unproved theory.

But it won't affect modern Christianity, either way. If it were shown definitively that resurrection stories preceded Jesus, Christians would respond by saying that of course the resurrection was prophesied, and this is not diminished by its application to a false prophet.

It's not as though this is the only myth suspected to precede Christianity; other resurrection myths are known to precede it. For example, Paul Tobin summarizes:

The myth of Adonis was known to the Greeks as early as the fifth century BCE. The Egyptian myth of Osiris dates back to at least 4,000 BCE and was recorded in detail by the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46-120 CE). The Persian Sun-God Mithras was mentioned in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus (c480-c245 BCE). The cult of Mithraism reached Rome in the first century BCE.

The way the early church fathers defended against the mystery religions showed that they knew these pagan myths antedated the Christian ones. Justin Martyr (c160-165) claimed that the devil plagiarized Christianity by anticipation with the pagan religions in order to lead people from the true faith. He claimed the myth of the virgin birth of Perseus, an ancient Greek legend that preceded Christianity, was pre-copied by the "deceiving serpent" (Dialogue with Trypho: 70). Similarly he asserted that the cultic rites of Mithraism had a diabolical origin (Apology 1:66). Tertulian (c160-c225) made the same claim: that it was the devil that provided this "mimicry" [notes omitted].

If you believe that there is a God who can raise people from the dead, that you will live forever in Heaven, that you talk to God, etc., then you'll hardly be troubled by conflicting resurrection stories. This is, after all, about faith. If we restrict the discussion to proof, then all resurrection stories are easily recognized as myths.

Who You Callin' a Liar?

A Pew poll recently found that most people think that other religious are a good enough ticket to heaven. (This differs from what some in my childhood church taught, that Catholics are going to hell.) In general, that particular poll result is a good thing. While it's unfounded to think that any religion offers eternal life, it's better to think that any "good person" can get into heaven than to think that only members of one particular sect are so destined.

Cal Thomas's response to the poll is so silly it's hard to believe it's not parody:

Do They Think Jesus Was a Liar?

I am shocked and appalled over a newly published survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. It finds most Americans believe there are many ways to salvation besides their own faith. Most disturbing of all is the majority of self-identified evangelical Christians who believe this.

Apparently they must think Jesus was a liar, or mistaken, when he said: “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me.” Look it up. ...

Look it up? You mean, in the standard Christian Bible? Gee, that's helpful. Thomas urges Christian churches to fight heresy -- yes, heresy! -- "in their midst." All we need is another round of heretic purging.

Even if one believes that Jesus is the exclusive path to salvation, it's still possible to believe that Jesus would cut people a break for innocently believing other religious doctrines.

Thomas writes, "If there are many paths to heaven, Jesus suffered and died for nothing." That's not necessarily the case, even from a religious perspective.

Of course, if there are no paths to heaven, then Jesus did suffer and die for nothing.

Prophetic 'News'

Since when does evangelical preaching constitute news? Since The Denver Post decided to pander to the evangelical movement, I suppose:

New Life Church embraces prophecy
Church legions learn "seeing" is believing
By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 04/30/2008 06:08:17 AM MDT

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The pastor of New Life Church -- Colorado's highest-profile megachurch -- is teaching its 10,000-member congregation how to become modern prophets in their own lives.

"I want all of us here tonight to hear God's voice," Pastor Brady Boyd told the several hundred gathered Monday night. "You've all been uniquely hard-wired to hear the voice of God." ...

The Holy Spirit can give people direct guidance from God on everything from their marriages to their jobs if they learn how to hear it, Boyd said.

The article goes on like this for 591 words. The article presupposes the existence of God and allows for not a single word of criticism or skepticism.

Draper does include one interesting line: "New Life Pastor Jeff Drott... said that God rarely speaks to people in an audible voice, often sending a thought, vision, dream, image or scriptural insight."

Isn't it conceivable that these "thoughts" and "insights" are coming from some source other than God? For instance, if you have a problem and start "thinking" about it or reading the Bible (or any other book offering moral guidance), mightn't you come up with something useful? Do such thoughts and insights really require a belief in God? Or is it possible that non-religious people also get thoughts and insights (and maybe even dreams, images, and the like) when they're contemplating a problem?

And isn't it possible that Electa Draper might, you know, interview somebody for her "news" stories who offers a perspective other than the one that we've been "hard-wired to hear the voice of God?" Alternatively, she could simply cover real news.

Speculations about Jesus' Birth

How did Mary get pregnant? Fox reports new speculation:

In his upcoming biography of Jesus, "Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will make the shocking claim that Christ probably was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during the Jewish uprising in Galilee, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue called Verhoeven's claim "laughable."

"Here we go again with idle speculation grounded in absolutely nothing," Donohue told FOXNews.com. "He has no empirical evidence to support his claim, which is why they say 'may have.'"

I basically agree with Donohue's criticism.

But what is Donohue's alternative account? The Gospel of Luke claims (1:35): "And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."

Because the claim that Mary was impregnated by a supernatural being is supported by so much more empirical evidence than the claim that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier.

To Hell with Hell

According to one of Wes Morriston's friends, long ago Morriston insisted that Ghandi was burning in Hell and would continue to do so for all eternity. Now that Morriston has thought about the matter a bit more, he has concluded that, not only is Ghandi not burning in Hell, but nobody will suffer an eternity in Hell. Morriston presented his ideas February 21 at a THINK! lecture sponsored by the Center for Values and Social Policy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Morriston's complete lecture is available online in mp3 format; his lecture notes too are available.

I was worried when, early on, Morriston conceded that, if there is no life after death, the debate about Hell is rather pointless, but then asked us to suppose that there is life after death. Was this going to be a night of angels and pins? But Morriston's talk turned into a fascinating history lesson of various views of Hell, and an explanation of why many of those views contain faulty arguments.

Morriston argued, "If you believe in God, you probably shouldn't believe in Hell." His basic argument is that people, as finite beings, are incapable of doing something that would merit infinite punishment. If God is just, then he would not sentence any mortal being to an infinite punishment. (Morriston allowed for the possibility of a very long punishment.)

Morriston briefly reviewed the views of Hell by such Christians as Dennis Prager, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, C.S. Lewis, and Stephen Davis. [Actually Prager is Jewish.] He effectively responded to each argument in turn.

Edwards, for example, claimed about Hell, "The seeing of the calamities of others tends to heighten the sense of our own enjoyments. When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state..."

Morriston's most interesting arguments opposed the "free will defense for hell" of Lewis and Davis. The idea is that people "choose to be in hell" and "live their lives apart from God" (in Davis's words). Morriston offered three possibilities for why someone might make such a choice. First, a person might be ill-informed, but then how could the person reasonably be punished for that? Second, a person might be a "reasonable non-believer," which is different from "rejecting God." Again, why would this merit eternal punishment? Finally, a person might ruin his soul to the point where redemption is impossible. But then "why doesn't God fix their wills and restore their freedom?"

But doesn't Christian theology clearly maintain the existence of Hell? Morriston offered two responses. First, if the Bible really supports a belief in Hell (as eternal punishment), then something in the Bible is wrong. Second, it's not clear that the Bible does support a belief in Hell (as eternal punishment); Morriston pointed to an essay by Keith DeRose on the matter.

However, while it's all very interesting to look at some of the details of Christian theology, the supernatural realm does not exist, and that remains the most important reason why one should not fear spending an eternity in Hell.

Coca-Cola Crucifixions

Invesco Field at Mile High. Coors Field. I can handle that. But Coca-Cola Crucifixions? That's going a bit far. Yet, according to the Telegraph, Coca-Cola and Smart Telecommunications are sponsoring a festival in the Philippines in which people reenact the crucifixion of Jesus, in some cases using real nails. The March 20 article by Thomas Bell carries the absurdly understated title: "Easter warning: crucifixion is bad for you."

The link also shows a Reuters photo of a man hanging from a cross with nails through his hands. Well, he's cheating a bit, because his arms are tied to the crossbeam with ropes, and the nails are pounded through his palms. As I learned in my childhood church, the nails actually went through the wrists, so that they didn't tear through the flesh between the bones in the palms. (You wouldn't want people falling off their crosses!) And part of the agony of crucifixion is that it's hard to breath while hanging from the wrists, so you have to keep lifting yourself up by the nails in your wrists, until you become too exhausted to do so and suffocate to death. The man shown in the photo doesn't look especially comfortable, but the ropes are denying him his opportunity to fully share in the misery of Christ. But, then, these people don't imagine that they can come back to life after decomposing in a tomb for three days, so they get to come down off their crosses before doing too much physical damage to themselves. (While I learned little in my church about, for instance, the Christian takeover of Roman government, I learned quite a lot about crucifixions.)

Anyway, the article reports:

Many people in the Philippines consider crucifixion and self flagellation good for the soul, but it is bad for your health according to new government advice for penitents.

"We are not trying to go against the Lenten tradition here because whipping has somewhat already become some form of 'atonement for sins' for some of us," Health Secretary Francisco Duque the 3rd said.

"Getting deep cut wounds during whippings or lashings is inevitable and being so exposed during the course of the penitence, with all the heat and dust blowing in the wind, welcomes all sorts of infections and bacteria like tetanus," he explained.

Re-enactments of the Passion of Christ are common in many parts of the mostly Roman Catholic Philippines but frowned upon by the church authorities.

In San Fernando City 23 people, including two women, have signed up to re-enact the crucifixion at three "improvised Golgothas" around town. Four of them will use real nails.

The city government's website trumpets the preparations.

"The City Health Office (CHO) autoclaved all the nails to be used and will administer anti-tetanus vaccine to all the 'Cristos' to ensure their protection from possible infection," it points out. City officials will conduct an inspection of the Golgothas on Thursday. ... [Credit for link: Paul Hsieh]

Doesn't this juxtaposition of tatanus shots, made possible by germ theory and medical science, alongside ritualistic self-torture, strike anyone as, you know, odd?

Thankfully, here in Denver, reenactments of the crucifixion don't involve actual nails.

Voluntary crucifixion, while morally reprehensible, is similar to prostitution in that it should be legal for consenting adults, however stupid and self-destructive it is. But for the local government to sanction the event is -- I struggle to come up with an adequate adjective. Absurd? Ridiculous? Hysterical? Detestable? Horrific?

But maybe Coca-Cola can push the gig a bit further. Do you think sugar water can be subject to transubstantiation?