Why Did the Jews Want Jesus Killed?

Recently, a Hindu friend of mine who is interested in Christianity saw the movie the Passion of the Christ. She asked a very excellent question. Why did the Jews want to kill Jesus?

Of the four Gospels, only the Gospel of John specifically says that the Jews were the ones who wanted to kill Christ. I don't know if this is a problem in translation from the original Aramaic, or if John carelessly identified the ruling judicial body of Jerusalem, as "the Jews". This identification in the Gospel of John has caused unimaginable misery among the Jewish people trying to live with their Christian neighbors for the last 2000 years.

Let's remember first and foremost that Christ himself was a Jew. Let us also remember that just a week before the crucifixion, Christ was received into Jerusalem by crowds of people lining the streets waving palm branches and shouting hosannas and calling him the Christ. The movie the Passion of The Christ alluded to this as Pilate asked if this is the same man that the crowds that turned out for the week before.

The Gospels tell us that Christ was an intensely popular figure throughout Judea and Galilee. We're told in the story of the sermon on the Mount that he preached to 5000 men that day. In common Jewish literary form, women and children are not counted in population estimates. A conservative estimate of those who heard the sermon on the Mount could easily be 7500 people, possibly as high as 12,000 people. This was not a unique event. Jesus regularly drew crowds whenever he approached a village.

The Jews under Roman occupied Palestine were not the same people that we usually think of when we read the Old Testament. The Jewish nation throughout much of the Old Testament consisted of the 12 tribes of Israel. However, shortly before the Babylonian exile, Assyrians had invaded Israel from the North and carried off 10 of the 12 tribes into bondage. These tribes were never heard from again. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin were defeated by the Babylonians and carried off to exile for approximately 50 years. When the Persians defeated the Babylonians, Cyrus the Great granted the Jews permission to return to Israel and as a part of reparations offered to rebuild the Temple. The original Temple had been intended to be the resting place of the ark of the covenant, which contained the tablets of the 10 Commandments, written by God and given to Moses. The ark disappeared from history when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the city. The new Temple, even though it was more majestic than the old temple, was largely symbolic since it didn't contain the ark.

The temple was an incredible source of wealth for Jerusalem. Observant Jews for hundreds of miles around frequently made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the holy days of Passover in spring. They would make offerings of money and sacrificial animals at the Temple. Temple merchants capitalized on this by providing animals to be sacrificed for sale during the pilgrimage weeks. The primary beneficiaries of all of this were the Temple priests, and the aristocratic classes of Pharisees and Sadducees. They directly received monetary contributions that were given to the Temple and indirectly received remuneration from the numerous Temple merchants, who operated with the permission of the priests. The priests became the ultimate authority on judicial dealings in the Jewish community. The priesthood was a hereditary position. This made the priests arbiters of all things legal, the spokesmen of God himself, with no responsibilities to the people or answerability to society. They became wealthy due to the sacrifices of those who were productive in society. Naturally, this made them an aristocratic class, set apart from day-to-day Jewish society. Senior priests formed the inner circle of the Jewish Sanhedrin, led by a high priest whose office rotated among the senior priests. The full Sanhedrin consisted of 71 members from wealthy and influential families in Jewish society. As is the case of any ruling body which does not answer to the people, the primary use of the Sanhedrin's authority was to ensure that the Sanhedrin stayed in authority.

Such authority was not sanctioned or approved of by God. The serious scholar of the early New Testament knows that God disdained the idea of a temporal government for the Jews from the start. It's instructive to read the commentary that God gave to Samuel, when the people told Samuel that they wanted a king. God explicitly warned about the abuses that a king would lay on the people.

Then Jesus arrived on the scene. His 12 close disciples were themselves commissioned with 71 followers in a hierarchy that deliberately mimicked the Jewish Sanhedrin. The popularity of Jesus’ ministry gave him an undeniable authority that had nothing to do with heredity, position or power. Jesus, in effect, set up a shadow government that was intended in one way to mock the Sanhedrin, but also to challenge it. The Sanhedrin had used its religious authority for secular gain. Jesus demonstrated by example how such a body should be used to serve the people, not to enslave the people. The people responded with wild adulation. This did not go unnoticed by the priests.

The priests had sought to discredit Jesus every chance they had. They devised riddles or logical traps from which no answer would be appropriate. Jesus adroitly avoided these traps. They sought to drive a wedge between Jesus and his followers by claiming that he did not follow their strict interpretation of Jewish law. He made them look foolish by teaching them that the spirit of the law that came from God was logical. He taught them that the law should be applied with common sense; that only a fool would apply the law without regard to consequences.

In Roman occupied Palestine, news traveled by word of mouth at the speed of a walking man. There were no experts to compile statistics and take polls and analyze trends. A person's perception was shaped by those with whom he spoke. The Temple priests knew that Jesus had a following, but they were sufficiently disconnected with the population that they didn't appreciate how large that following was. On the first day of the week before Passover, Jesus entered Jerusalem to be greeted by huge crowds in the streets exuberantly celebrating his presence. This was a wake-up call for the priests. They suddenly realized that Jesus wasn't just an annoying cult leader, but the wildly popular leader of what was shaping up to be a massive political movement.

This threatened the priests in two ways. A direct challenge was placed to their religious authority, the authority that they derived from their position in the Temple. Indirectly, but perhaps more serious, a popular figure like Jesus could be viewed by the people as the new David, the new leader to lead Israel to another golden age. One must remember that Palestine was governed as a protectorate of the Roman Empire. At this time, such a popular movement would quickly seek to throw off what most Jews believed to be their Roman oppressors. Rome had a long history of putting down such rebellion with brutal, even genocidal force. The high priests had a better appreciation of the power of Rome than most. From their point of view if they joined Jesus, Rome would crush Israel and their way of life would be ended. If they opposed Jesus, his numerous followers threatened to overthrow them and replace them with Jesus' shadow government. Again their way of life would be ended.

It's very important to remember that the priests were frightened of Jesus and the power he wielded because of his popularity with the crowds. The day Jesus was crucified, Jerusalem was a ticking time bomb. The city was filled to overflowing with pilgrims there for the Passover. The Romans had recently made the mistake of placing a Roman banner bearing a head of Caesar in public display. Images such as this are very offensive to Jewish people. A group of Galileans had torn down the banner and incited a riot. The Romans had met this with their usual brutal efficiency and crucified the Galileans. Passions were running high in the crowded city because of this. Both the priests and the Romans were terrified of an uprising.

The Temple guards apprehended Jesus after midnight in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was brought to the house of the high priest placed on trial before the Sanhedrin. Several Jewish laws were broken in the process. The full Sanhedrin was not present. Jewish law required a quorum of the Sanhedrin to be present to try a capital case. The case was tried in the dark hours of the night. Jewish law required that cases be tried in daylight. Witnesses were required to convict in a capital case. The witnesses presented were contradictory and dismissed by the Council. Jesus was convicted and sentenced to death on the same night. Under Jewish law a sentence of death could only be handed down after one day and one night had passed since the conviction. The problem that the priests faced was that they had to carry out the sentence before Jesus’ followers could be rallied to his defense.

When questioned directly as to whether he was the Messiah, Jesus responded "I am". This is a direct allusion to the name God had given Moses on Mount Sinai. The priests convicted Jesus of blasphemy on the basis of this testimony. The penalty for blasphemy is death by stoning. Instead of performing the execution themselves, the priests sent Jesus to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. They claimed that they could not put Jesus to death. This is categorically false. Jews routinely stoned people to death and the Romans took no notice. This was a political maneuver, because they knew that if they ordered Jesus to be stoned that their blood would run in the streets from Jesus’ followers.

Pontius Pilate was a political animal, who knew the lay of the political landscape in Judea. On one hand, he knew that condemning Jesus to death could easily spark a riot among Jesus’ followers and Roman blood would run in the streets. On the other hand, he knew well the power of the priests and knew that they could incite a riot themselves. If he didn't do what they wanted again Roman blood could easily run the streets. Caesar had grown weary of the volatile situation in Judea and had warned Pontius Pilate to keep the peace or suffer the consequences.

Pilate did everything he could to avoid putting Jesus to death. He first tried to avoid it by saying wasn't his problem. Jesus was from Galilee so he sent him to Herod, who was the King of Galilee under Roman jurisdiction. Herod, unlike his father Herod the Great, had no great love for the Romans. He sensed the dilemma that Pontius Pilate was in regarding Jesus, and enjoyed a certain amount of satisfaction from Pilate’s discomfort. He chose not to give Pilate an out and returned Jesus.

Under Jewish law a prisoner could not be tortured to death. Pilate knew this and ordered Jesus to be scourged, and hoped that this would preempt the high priests’ call for execution. By this time Pontius Pilate, and the high priests were playing a high-stakes game of chicken. The priests called Pilate’s bluff and raised the stakes. They brought Roman politics into it by saying that Jesus had fashioned himself as a king, and therefore was a threat to Caesar. This made Pilate's choice clear. He would either do what the high priests wanted him to do or be declared an enemy of Rome. Pilate symbolically washed his hands of the blood of Jesus, demonstrating that he did not want Jesus to die, and then ordered his execution.

It seems incredible to us today that crowds formed to mock Jesus as he carried his cross to Golgotha. Once again we have to remember to judge by the times and not by the standards that we’re used to in the 21st century. Although Jesus had a large following, by the numbers of people in Jerusalem that day relatively few had actually seen him up close in person. Add to this that after the beatings and the whippings, Jesus was probably hardly recognizable as the same person. It was quite common for crowds to mock prisoners on their way to execution. Remember that Jesus wasn't the only person being executed that day, two other people were crucified with him. Some say they were revolutionaries, others say they were thieves. The same mob mentality that caused people to turn out and celebrate Jesus entry into Jerusalem a week before brought people to mock the prisoners on their way to execution. In both cases, many people probably didn't even know who they were celebrating or mocking. Remember also that there was no mass media. Most of the events that took place that day were done in relative secrecy. Jerusalem was a very busy, very crowded city that day, as pilgrims from all over the countryside prepared for the upcoming Passover feast. Most of the people in Jerusalem who actually followed Jesus probably didn't even know about the crucifixion until after the fact.

The lesson to be learned here is something that one should be aware of when reading any part of the Bible. Bible stories are part history, part moral lesson, part article of faith. In many cases the authors of the Bible weren't historians and didn't appreciate the scholarship which would be required of future readers of the Bible who were from different times and cultures. The authors assumed that the readers would have a common frame of reference, and consequently didn't take the time to explain things that seemed matter of fact to them, but seem unusual or mysterious to us now. This leads to a story of characters and actions that sometimes is missing a necessary backdrop from the scenery, and therefore they seem to behave strangely, because we’re missing a crucial assumption in the story. In order to properly appreciate biblical stories, the reader must immerse oneself in the place and time that the story takes place in order to appreciate the historical perspective.

"Martyr" in Islam Means "Crappy Fighter".

One of the things that just frosts me to no end is the common Islamic abuse of the word “martyr”. They throw this word around and imply that Islamic “martyrs” are equivalent, or perhaps even superior to Christian Martyrs. Part of the purpose of this is to purposefully blur the distinction between Christianity and Islam, in an effort to further legitimatize Islam. 

In effect, they are trying to say that as the Christian community reveres its early martyrs for the faith, so too Islamic martyrs should similarly be revered. 

The problem with this is that an Islamic “martyr” has nothing in common with a Christian martyr.
The Quran has very little to say about martyrs, except that they’re among the righteous and rub shoulders with prophets in paradise (4:69), and that they’re generally fine people to be around. But what does it mean to be a martyr? We find the answer in the very first mention of a martyr in Hadith Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2 Number 35:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

The Prophet said, "The person who participates in (holy battles) in Allah's cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His Apostles, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward, or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to Paradise (if he is killed in the battle as a martyr). Had I not found it difficult for my followers, then I would not remain behind any sariya going for Jihad and I would have loved to be martyred in Allah's cause and then made alive, and then martyred and then made alive, and then again martyred in His cause."
 
Well, there its pretty clearly spelled out: A martyr is someone who dies during jihad. This also puts a pretty fine point on the misdirection that jihad is an internal moral struggle. I’m not aware of many people who die in a struggle of conscience. Jihad is specifically called for in the Quran (9:5) 

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
 
Martyrdom and jihad are inextricably linked. You cannot be a martyr in Islam unless you are conducting jihad. Jihad is described as “Holy Battle”. Its specific purpose is to spread Islam, or to subjugate non-believers and relieve them of their possessions. One of the clearest statements to this effect is in Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 254:
Narrated Abu Burda Bin Abi Musa Al-Ashari:

. . . .by Allah, we took part in Jihad after Allah's Apostle , prayed and did plenty of good deeds, and many people have embraced Islam at our hands, and no doubt, we expect rewards from Allah for these good deeds.'
 
The value of jihad in Islam cannot be understated.  Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 41:
Narrated Abdullah bin Masud:

I asked Allah's Apostle, "O Allah's Apostle! What is the best deed?" He replied, "To offer the prayers at their early stated fixed times." I asked, "What is next in goodness?" He replied, "To be good and dutiful to your parents." I further asked, what is next in goodness?" He replied, "To participate in Jihad in Allah's Cause." I did not ask Allah's Apostle anymore and if I had asked him more, he would have told me more.
 
Indeed, it is considered the highest deed a Muslim can do. Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44:
Narrated Abu Huraira: 
A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed."
 
So Muslims are charged with the highest calling in Islam: to use holy battle to force non-believers to embrace Islam. If you die doing this, you are a martyr. 

Does anyone but me see a problem with this philosophy and the whole concept of no compulsion in religion? 

All of the Surahs and sunnas regarding martyrs come from after the Hijra, the flight to Medina. There was no question of martyrdom before the hijra, because the two dozen or so social misfits who followed Muhammad on the Hijra were hardly in any shape to fight anyone, let alone stand up and die for Islam. The no compulsion clause in the Quran (2:26) clearly comes from the pre-Hijra period in Mecca, when Muhammad was trying to make nice and recruit members nicely. This is a classic case of abrogation. Did Allah really write all this down before he created the universe, or was he making it up as he went along, responding to events as they happened? One answer makes Allah out to be an imbecile, and the other answer is pretty conclusive evidence that he was a product of Muhammad’s fevered imagination.
So is an Islamic martyr really a good person? Let’s see, his initial goal was to force me, a non-believer, to embrace Islam by threatening me with death or a ruinous head-tax if I didn’t. And for those of you who smugly say the Jizhya is a pittance, in the Syrian campaigns, the Jizhya was a gold Denarious per person – approximately four ounces of gold, more than $3500 in today’s currency. This person is so fanatical about his cult belief that he’s willing to kill me or die in an attempt to make be believe the same way he does. I don’t know, maybe it's just me, but I just find that a tad obnoxious.
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Now, let’s examine what it means to be a Christian martyr. In Christianity, a martyr is someone who dies for believing in the word of Jesus Christ. Often such a person is compelled to renounce the teachings of Christ and is killed when he refuses. A hallmark of martyrs is that they do not actively resist their persecutors, but speak the praise of Jesus to the end. Typical of the example of scores of martyrs in the early church was the first Christian martyr, Stephen (Acts 7:54-60): 

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse.  When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.  They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" Having said this, he fell asleep.
 
For you literalists, “falling asleep” is a common new testament euphemism for dying (Matthew 27:52, John 11:11, Acts 13:36, 1 Corinthians 15:6, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 2 Peter 3:4).
Christ died on the cross, and he did so in submission. He did not protest, he did not fight, he did not try to avoid it – he easily could have left Jerusalem and avoided capture. When he was in fact captured, one of his apostles, Peter, sought to use violence to defend him, and was rebuked: 

Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave's name was Malchus. So Jesus said to Peter, "Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?" – John18:10-11
When those who were around Him saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, shall we strike with the sword?" And one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus answered and said, "Stop! No more of this." And He touched his ear and healed him. – Luke 22:49-51 

Early Christian martyrs followed Christ’s example. Muslim views of Christianity are narrowly focused on the crusades as seen from a jaundiced Muslim perspective. They see the crusades as a series of wars of conquest and a deliberate attempt by Christians to spread Christianity by force. They are blind to the fact that the crusades were wars of liberation, an attempt to retake formerly Christian lands and peoples which had been forcibly converted to Islam (see The "Peaceful" Muslim Expansion). Most Muslims believe that Christianity began the same way Islam did – at the point of a sword. 

In a way it did, but the sword was poised at the throats of Christians. It was illegal for three centuries to be a Christian in Rome. To be discovered to be a practicing Christian was a death sentence. The Romans made good sport of the public spectacle of feeding Christians to the lions in the coliseum as a form of entertainment.   The remarkable thing was that Christianity not only survived this period, but grew exponentially as it did so. Indeed, Christians felt it was an honor to die because of their beliefs, but to die as an example of piety and faith, not because they were trying to force anyone to join their religion. A group of people presented themselves to the Roman governor of Asia, C. Arrius Antoninus, declared themselves to be Christians, and encouraged the governor to do his duty and put them to death. He executed a few, but as the rest demanded it as well, he responded, exasperated, "You wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and ropes to hang by."* 

Such examples of faith led people to be amazed at how these people went willingly to death without a fight. This led to curiosity about what kind of faith could inspire people to such bravery, and caused many people to be drawn to Christianity. They were not forced, were not bribed, and had no expectation of an earthly reward when they chose to follow Christ, but instead were risking a cruel death.  

For me, I find the Christian martyrs to be an inspiration of faith. Utter faith that death awaits them to be cradled in the bosom of the Lord, if they keep to his commandment to do no harm to others. Such faith led millions more to follow Christ without one person being forced or coerced. I find the Muslim martyrs to be men of little real faith who died trying – unsuccessfully – to justify their own empty beliefs by compelling everyone else to espouse those same beliefs. The lack of substance in the Islamic faith is best exemplified by the Sharia law that mandates that apostates be put to death. What kind of faith is it that resorts to having to kill people to keep them from leaving? 

* Quoted in Bowersock, G. W. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Genesis or Darwin?

This week is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary science. A long time ago I gave up trying to speak sense to opponents of evolution, because even if I did manage to educate one or two, there seems to be an infinite number behind them ready to take up the torches and pitchforks.   It never ceases to boggle my mind that in America today there are still people who hold the Genesis story as the irrefutable narrative of the detailed story of creation, and refuse to embrace the concept of evolution. Indeed, these people not only reject evolutionary science, they have sought to replace it with a bogus “creation science” which purports to explain the discoveries of evolutionary science within the framework of the Genesis creation story.

This debate started when Charles Darwin published his seminal work the Origin of Species. This work proposed an origin of man quite different from the divine source detailed in Genesis. Christians felt that this was a direct challenge to the very foundation of Christian belief (it was not, but that’s moot). Since Genesis is the first book in the Bible, and the chapters on Adam and Eve are the first part of this book, it’s the one story most universally known by Christians. Most people get bogged down and lose interest in reading the Bible shortly after this point. Most people never finish Genesis, but skip ahead to the “good bits”, thereby losing most of their understanding of the roots of the narrative.

The Creationist View
Facts are facts. No one today can escape the evidence that geology presents us, and the inescapable conclusions which must be derived from it. Creationists seek to explain the evidence at hand within the framework of the Genesis story. In the creationist view, the universe was created in the space of six days approximately 6,000 years ago. This number is derived by extrapolating the dates/ages and genealogies described in the Old Testament. There are some ambiguities regarding the dates derived, but 4000 BCE is a reasonable estimate of the biblical age of the world. In the creationist view, the Earth was created complete. After the creation story, the next significant event was the great flood. According to creationists, the flood engulfed the whole earth, even the highest mountains. Creationists attribute the geological strata as evidence of deposition during the flood. In creation science, evidence that fits their model is trumpeted. Evidence that directly contradicts their model (the majority) is either dismissed as irrelevant, accused of being misinterpreted, or explained as being a red herring placed by the devil to lure people to disbelief. In all cases, the Genesis story trumps everything.

Creation science does not allow for an Earth older than 6,000 years. Some liberal creationists may allow for a few thousand years leeway.

Evolution Science
Creationists take particular pleasure at trying to poke holes in the “Theory of Evolution”. They do so by applying logical fallacies to something they obviously don’t understand. A good deal of the Creationist’s platform is to set evolution up as a straw man. By defining what the theory of evolution is, creationists can knock holes in the theory, and thereby demonstrate that it has no more scholarly authority than creation “science”. Unfortunately, the theory of evolution critiqued by creationists often has little or nothing to do with the science of evolution.

Evolution Science has been known as the “Theory of Evolution” since it was first proposed by Charles Darwin. Creationists gleefully refer to this and point out that “It’s just a theory! Nothing’s been proven!”

Well, there’s also the “theory” of gravity, but if I step off a 100 foot cliff I’ll get just as dead as if it were a proven fact. The evidence subsequent to Charles Darwin is so overwhelming that evolution is considered an established fact. The only theoretical things are certain mechanisms and events that are not fully understood. We have a reasonably good understanding of what happened, when it happened, and a pretty good toolbox of possibilities of how and why it happened. There’s debate among academics of how and why certain events happened, there’s no controversy over the established fact that they did happen.

So let’s take a little refresher into evolution science, so that the young earth crowd can maybe come up to speed on the current model. Hopefully then we can quit recycling the old arguments against evolutionary theory which have been rendered moot by advances in our understanding of evolution.

The original Darwinian model proposed that organisms changed in response to their environment, and that survival of the fittest selected certain traits to dominate over others. This natural selection model was supposed to have produced a steady, gradual drift over time. This seemed to be confirmed by the fossil record, where we found a steady progression of development along family trees, most notably in horses and primitive anthropoids leading up to the human species.

This model had a couple of problems. A favorite question of creationists is that if man evolved from apes, why are there still apes? This is an infantile question, because not even Darwin postulated that the pressures of natural selection would be constant or homogeneous throughout the range of a species’ habitat.

The Darwinian model of continuous gradual evolution was used to justify the fossil evidence of the evolution of homo erectus to Cro-Magnon man. However, the problem with this was the assumption that this evolution would have happened simultaneously across a large geographical area, as homo erectus fossils have been found as far afield from Africa as China and Indonesia. Under this model, Chinese H. Erectus would have evolved into modern Chinese in China, and modern Africans in Africa. No explanation was put forth to explain why such parallel evolution would take place.

Enter genetics. In the 1980’s a study was performed using mitochondrial DNA to try to track genetic divergence within populations. Mitochondrial DNA is the operating machinery within the walls of a cell, and is not recombined during reproduction. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from the mother to the child. Outside of mutations, you have the same mitochondrial DNA as your mother, and her mother, and her mother, etc.   Differences in this DNA are a result of mutation. If you assume a constant, known mutation rate in a general population, you can determine how long it’s been since every member of that population shared a common female ancestor.
The scientists engaged in this study hoped to confirm the Darwinian model, using their current understanding of evolution to predict that the human race would share a common female ancestor about 600,000 years old.

To their surprise, the results yielded a number much more recent that this. The “mitochondrial Eve”, the common female ancestor to the entire human race, lived approximately 140,000 years ago. Advances in DNA sequencing and analysis allowed a similar study to be performed using Y-chromosomes, which are passed from father to son with no contribution from the mother. The age suggested from the drift of Y chromosomes showed that the Y-Chromosome Adam, the common male ancestor to the human race, lived approximately 60,000 years ago. Subsequent studies have allowed forensic geneticists to map out the path of human migration using the frequency of appearance of genetic markers as their guide. See the excellent guide for this on the National Geographic website.

This led to a rethinking of the mechanisms of evolution. Continuous change was replaced with the concept of punctuated equilibrium, and opened up the door to an understanding of the conditions that lead to speciation. Under the new model, evolution takes place in small, isolated populations which are under reproductive stress. If we think of a genetic modification as a drop of food dye and drop it in a test tube, we can quickly disseminate that dye through the contents of the tube for a significant change. If we drop the same dye into a swimming pool, it’s quickly dispersed and has no net effect. The same effect is observable in how a genetic modification is propagated in varying sizes of populations. Also, a genetic modification will only breed true if it offers some reproductive advantage to the holder. In other words, it must allow the holder to have more offspring, or allow its offspring to reach reproductive maturity in greater numbers than those without the modification. This advantage does not have to be terribly significant to allow the new genes to become commonplace in the population. If the population is not under any sort of reproductive stress, there would be no reason for natural selection to favor one gene over another, and no drift would be observable in favor of any particular gene.

The implication of this is that successive waves of hominid species evolved in isolated pockets in Africa, and then migrated out of Africa across southern Asia. They were then replaced by subsequent waves of more advanced hominids. This fits well with the fossil record.

Fossilization
Creationist skeptics aren’t convinced. They want to see the fossil record show the progression in detail. They want to see “the missing link”. Well, the fact is that there are a number of missing links. The fossil evidence we have are snapshots in time, but they clearly demonstrate the progression from primate to modern man. The creationist camp regards the “missing” evidence as an indictment against the evolution model, as if the evidence does not support the conclusion.
In the creationist view, if the evolutionary model were correct, then we should see an unbroken chain of fossils from modern times to the earliest primates. Because we don’t, the creationists insist that the model is flawed. What’s flawed is the creationist understanding of just what a fossil is, and how it comes to be. Fossilization is a very rare event. The probability of any given animal being fossilized after death is vanishingly small. Soil composition, climate, circumstances surrounding the death all play a part in determining if an animal’s remains will become fossilized. The remains must be preserved almost immediately after death, usually by some sort of burial, to prevent scavengers from scattering and consuming them. The soil composition must be relatively pH neutral to prevent the bones from being dissolved. Usually fossilization is associated with flood deposits or sedimentation. Hot, arid conditions may also lead to preservation of the body through mummification before the body is covered and fossilized. Rapid burial due to volcanic action or tarpits is another common precursor to fossilization. Fossilization rarely occurs in forest or steppe settings, where much of the planet’s biodiversity exists. The wonder is not that we have missing links, but that we have any fossil evidence at all. The rarity of fossilization implies a relative abundance of the creatures we find in the fossil record.

Transitional Species
Creationists point out that if the evolutionary model were correct, then why don’t we see any animals in transition from one species to another? Well, the answer’s right in front of our eyes. We just have to define what a transitional species is. A species of animal is defined by being reproductively distinct from other, similar animals. You can’t mate a dog and a cat together and produce offspring. You can’t mate a gorilla and a chimpanzee and produce offspring. These are separate species.

Under the evolution model, when two populations have been separate for a sufficient amount of time, they will have genetically drifted apart to the point where no reproduction is possible. But at what point do you draw the line?

The genus Canis is a relative newcomer on the evolutionary stage. This includes dogs, wolves and coyotes.   While physically and behaviorally distinct, all of these animals can successfully breed with one another and produce viable offspring.

Cats, on the other hand, have been around quite a bit longer. Numerous cats species cannot breed and produce offspring. In a very few cases, the big cats are genetically similar enough that they can produce offspring, but those offspring are sterile. Lions and tigers in captivity have produced sterile offspring. Donkeys and horses may be bred together to produce mules, which are sterile. These are but two examples of species which have drifted enough to speciate but not enough to prevent cross breeding. There’s some speculation that such interbreeding was possible between our ancestors and Neanderthal Man.

Geology
Creation science goes to great lengths to explain the strata of the geologic column in terms of the great flood described in Genesis. To a creationist, the successive layers of sedimentary rock are clear evidence of a worldwide deluge. The occasional volcanic deposit that has sedimentary deposits both above and below it are just examples of the upheaval during the flood, according to the creationist. The presence of fossil sea life found in sedimentary formations that are mountains today lead the creationist to conclude that water once covered those mountains. Mountains never change, right?

This explanation is enough to satisfy anyone who casually looks at the strata, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Paleobiologist Robert Bakker set out to try to identify the climate of the North American plain in Montana during the cretaceous period. One of the things he found embedded in the fossil record were numerous lime balls. These nodules seemed to have been formed underground, just below the surface of the earth. They formed repeatedly, in many different layers of the strata, one on top of the other. Such formations can be found today. On the alluvial plains of India lime is leached out of the soil during the rainy monsoons, and then precipitates into nodules called kunkyars during the long, hot dry season. Since we see similar formations in the cretaceous sediments of Montana, it’s reasonable to assume that 70 million years ago, Montana was subject to a monsoon-like season and a dry season. Such cycles of wet and dry are necessary to form the lime balls which are in the fossil record. There’s no way that such formations could form in a submerged environment. (The Dinosaur Heresies, Robert Bakker, PhD, pp107-110).

Sedimentary rock that’s upthrust into a mountain range will carry with it the fossil evidence of its beginnings at the bottom of an ancient sea. Creationists scoff that a mountain range could rise out of a sea bed. The problem is that the creationist mind can’t wrap itself around the concept of a million years.

We can look at existing earthquake fault regions and draw some conclusions. Let’s take for example, a subduction fault region, which generates a magnitude 6.0 earthquake every hundred years or so. This is not uncommon. A simple search will yield several places on earth today where this would be normal. Now let’s say that each 6.0 earthquake causes a crust displacement of about 6 inches or so. This is also well within the bounds of geologic changes observed in recent history. Now let’s assume this force works over a period of 5 million years. Six inches of displacement every century for 5 million years means the crust will raise 25,000 feet – nearly as high as Mt. Everest! There’s plenty of evidence that the Rocky Mountains were forming 65 million years ago. This is not very much of a stretch at all.

The Flood
The Genesis story of the flood is by no means unique. Every culture around the world has a story of a tremendous flood, which seemed to threaten life itself. Is the Genesis tale a fable, is it the literal truth, or is it an echo of a half-forgotten event in human history?

The Genesis flood simply cannot be the literal truth. It suffices as a fable, but breaks down under scrutiny. One of the many problems with the story is how the animals were distributed after the flood – why there’s the sudden change in zoology along the Wallace Line in the southwest Pacific. Why the primitive marsupial mammals went to colonize Australia. Why did none of the placental animals make it to Australia? Why did birds and lizards make it to New Zealand, but no mammals? The flood story does not explain how freshwater fish -- which would die in salt water -- survived a worldwide deluge, and went on to exclusively populate freshwater ecosystems afterwards. The flood story does not explain the myriad of species of animals, including millions of species of ants and other insects, that exist throughout the world, isolated from Noah’s landing place by prohibitive water barriers even today.

But that doesn’t mean that we dismiss the story completely. We have evidence that the oceans were much lower thousands of years ago than they are today. A stunning testimonial of this is the Cosquer cave in France, where prehistoric cave paintings are protected by a cave entrance that’s under nearly 100 feet of water. In the times when the paintings were made, the sea was 11 miles distant, and 300 feet lower, due to the immense amount of water locked up in continental glaciers more than a mile deep.

Now take a look at a population map of the world today. Even today, the bulk of the human population lives within 300 feet of sea level. For early man, building the first cities near the ocean was a no-brainer. The ocean simply offered too many advantages: cheap, fast and easy trade; a moderated climate; and an abundant supply of food.   It’s a common mistake to think that Cro-Magnon of 10-15,000 years ago was somehow less intelligent that we are today.   A lack of technology does not mean he was any less sophisticated in his thinking and social structures.

How many of us could reproduce even a fraction of our technological foundation, if we were thrust naked into the wilderness? If we suppose that early man formed settlements, even cities, near the sea, and these cities were the repository of knowledge, technology and trade, what would become of them if the sea levels precipitously rose 300 feet? Keep in mind that we can only scuba to about 100 feet deep. Below that the sea floor is mostly an unreachable mystery, and any evidence of ancient civilization has been buried in thousands of years of sediments and coral growth. Civilization was wiped out, whole cities disappeared, and the only people to tell the tale were the refugees and hillbillies, stripped of the veneer of civilization which had been drowned with the cities. Over the generations, the story of the flood that destroyed civilization was told, and embellished to generations that weren’t equipped to understand the story.

And What of Genesis?
The creationist position is that the world was created in six days, as described in Genesis. To accept a different view is heresy. The proponents of this position miss the point. The importance of the creation story of Genesis is not the details of how it happened, but the fundamental morality of the story: God created the universe, God created Man. Man disobeyed God, and separated himself from God in the act. This sets the stage for the rest of the Bible, which is above all the story of the reconciliation between man and God, which culminated in the crucifixion of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The details of the story of Genesis are not fundamentally incorrect. They are simply abbreviated, and told within the framework of reference of the target audience: semi-nomadic herders and farmers of the lower Mesopotamian region of 4,000 years ago. These people were not aware of, nor schooled in physics, cosmology, geology, archeology, paleontology, genetics, biology (beyond basic animal husbandry), chemistry, higher mathematics or a myriad of other disciplines which define our view of the world today. To have told a creation story within the framework of modern science to such a people would have done nothing but confuse them and engendered disbelief. It would have masked the real purpose of the story: the morality play of the relationships between God, Man and Creation.

We need not discard the fundamental truths of this morality when we examine creation from the frame of reference of modern science. For someone today to discard the completely overwhelming evidence of the scientific view of the formation of the earth and the evolution of species in favor of a tale told to Mesopotamian herders of 5,000 years ago shows that such a person has more in common with that herder than with a 21st century person with a reasonable education. If it comforts you to discard the evidence before you and cling to the ancient tales, then please do so, but don’t pretend that your tale has exclusive authority of precedence and should be taken seriously by those of us who choose to accept what our eyes and common sense tell us.

I leave it up to you to choose whether to accept the atheist view of evolution or accept some sort of intelligent design rationale. The motive force is irrelevant in the study of evolution and life sciences.   I think pure Creationists miss out by insisting that the literal description in Genesis is the definitive explanation of the origin of the universe. Anyone who studies art or engineering appreciates that the details of a creation reveal insights into how the artist’s mind worked, how the artist interpreted his vision or imagination into a physical reality. Who can look at a DaVinci painting, or a Frank Lloyd Wright design and not marvel at the ingenuity of the creation, how subtle sleights of a curve or corner or texture make a delightfully unexpected contribution to the whole. By examining the brushstrokes of the art, we begin to see into the mind and soul of the artist. How impoverished are the Creationists, who refuse to acknowledge the brushstrokes of God, and appreciate the subtle, mathematical perfection and beauty of his creation by embracing the methods He used. They miss out on a visceral understanding of the genius of the Author of the Universe.

Abortion Stimulates Economy? The Lunacy of the Left.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was recently asked pointed questions by George Stephanopoulos about the congressional move which allocates substantial funds to birth control clinics (read: abortuaries) as part of the economic stimulus package (See article).  She defended this by stating that “ . . . family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

This is insane.  It should terrify you that this woman is third in line to lead this country, should the President and vice-president meet an untimely demise.  This single statement reveals an underlying set of assumptions and a mindset that is totally incompatible with reality, and the American way of life.

The justifying assumption for this statement is that babies are an economic drain on the government.  They are wards of the state, and a liability to the state.  State resources which could be better spent stimulating the economy would be spent on taking care of babies and children, from which no return would be realized.  By spending money to actively discourage and prevent these births, in Speaker Pelosi’s twisted logic, we would save the state money in the long run.

There are so many logical errors here, it’s difficult to know where to begin.  Most of us just stand in slack-jawed amazement that anyone could be so phenomenally idiotic with such a straight face.

In the first place, Pelosi’s assumption that the government is responsible for the care of children is in error.  This sort of intrusive governmental assumption of responsibility promotes an abdication of personal responsibility on the part of the individual citizen.  Once upon a time in this great country, unwed pregnancies were a scandal.  Women went to great pains to avoid this condition, because of the harsh personal economic consequences of trying to raise a baby alone.  Yes there were back-alley abortions, but they were exceptional.  There was a social stigma associated with unwed pregnancies.  Unwed pregnancies today should still be a scandal, but for different reasons.  The availability of preventative birth control, coupled with the level of education and empowerment on the part of single women should easily be enough for any woman to exercise her libido without worrying about the consequences of becoming pregnant.  It’s simply irresponsible for any woman to need to resort to an abortion to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

The government has absolved the unwed mother of responsibility for providing for her unwanted children, by ensuring that she receive welfare funds from the public treasury to care for the child.  Again, personal responsibility has been usurped by the government.  Yet the government as a nanny state simply cannot provide the level of personal care and attention required to turn a child into an exceptional, self-sufficient, independent, productive member of society.  This is a logical fallacy of the left, that governmental support of single-parent households will have a net positive effect.  In the government’s well-meaning haste to help out someone, they end up doing more harm in the long-term than good.

This assumption that citizens are wards of the state, and a financial responsibility of the state leads the State to the logical conclusion that it has the power to regulate the number of citizens to be added to society.  The result of this conclusion should be enough to cause most people to question the validity of the initial assumption.  Unfortunately, the left is so convinced that their assumptions are correct, that they will slavishly dedicate themselves to those assumptions, regardless of the consequences to which they lead.

The second fallacy is the assumption that the State has any power to stimulate the economy through direct action.  Economic history shows time and time again that the only power the State has to positively affect the economy is through inaction.  State attempts to regulate or influence markets invariably lead to less than optimum results.  This was demonstrated in the New Deal actions which only served to extend the Great Depression, Nixon’s wage and price control policies, which served to turn an economic downturn into a full blown recession and led the way to stagflation, and the most recent government meddling in our banking system which led to our current economic crisis.

Children are the promise of the future.  They are the economic engine which will drive this country, this society, this culture, this economy forward twenty to forty years from now.  Babies are an investment, which if properly cultivated, will yield rich rewards in the future.  They are the primary investment in the future, and the investment upon which all other investments are justified.  Only a totalitarian megalomaniac would come to the conclusion that babies are a disposable liability, and advocate allocating funds to restrict the number of children available to the future.

To make a public proclamation that such funding will stimulate the economy is an assault on your intelligence and mine.  The sort of thinking that leads to such a conclusion is that the government is the ultimate power in society, and that all providence flows to and from the government.    This is a dangerous idea, which many Americans have fought against over the last century, and it saddens me that it has not only come to our shores, but has found its way into the highest halls of power.  Our founding fathers took great pains to see to it that the people were the ultimate power in our country.  This is a lesson that Speaker Pelosi would do well to re-learn, and it’s incumbent upon us all to remind her and all her colleagues of this the next time we go to the voting booths.

Islamic Claims that the Bible is Corrupted

It’s a fundamental tenet of Islam that the Christian Gospel and the Jewish Torah are corrupted scripture. This is so fundamental that one would think that it comes straight out of Islamic scripture. The interesting thing is, that it doesn’t. In fact, the Koran is very clear that it confirms what has already been revealed in scripture in many places:

When before it there was the Scripture of Moses, an example and a mercy; and this is a confirming Scripture in the Arabic language, that it may warn those who do wrong and bring good tidings for the righteous. -- The Koran (Pickthall tr), Sura 46:12 - The Sandhills

This theme is repeated in many places: 2:89, 2:91, 2:97, 2:101, 3:3, 4:47, 5:48, 6:92, 35:31, 37:37, 46:12, 46:30, 61:6.

So it’s clear the Muhammad held the Gospel and the Torah in high regard. He seemed oblivious to the Tanakh, either he wasn’t aware of it, or lumped it with the Torah (a common mistake for a Gentile), or he didn’t consider it relevant.

It’s obvious from much of the style of the Koran, the many appropriated stories from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and outright statements to the effect, that Muhammad fancied himself an heir to a long line of Jewish prophets. His endorsement of Judeo-Christian scripture seemed to bolster that argument. His teaching even raised speculation among the Jews that he may have been the messiah, and among the Christians that perhaps he was the second coming. In the seventh century, both faiths were eagerly awaiting these events.

The student of Islam has to keep in mind some essential facts at this point: During Muhammad’s day, the Koran was not written down! It was memorized by heart by the followers of Muhammad, in what is today considered an archaic form of the Arabic language -- a language not known beyond the bounds of Arabia, Jordan and southeastern Syria. Now some might scoff at this, thinking that such a feat stretches the bounds of reason, that people could memorize such a vast tract. It’s not that out of the ordinary. First the Koran is presented as a poem, in a rhythmic, rhyming cadence that lends itself well to memorization. It is highly repetitive, themes are repeated many times in various surahs, so the feat isn’t quite as vast as one would imagine at first glance. Memorization of huge stories is quite common among peoples with no written language. Illiteracy does not mean people are stupid or cannot manipulate the language. Socrates himself bemoaned the advent of writing, for fear that it would erode the memory.

This lack of a written Koran in Muhammad’s time made it very difficult for the scholar to compare the revelations of Muhammad with Judeo-Christian scripture. Nevertheless, it was done. The Jews of Medina listened to Muhammad. As residents of the area, they well understood the Arabic that Muhammad spoke. They compared it to their (Hebrew) scriptures available in their synagogue, and found that the two did not correlate. They rejected Muhammad, which subsequently led to their downfall as he turned his wrath on them. The details of their objection was not recorded. Muhammad spoke of their dissention as if they were lying to him:

And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly. - The Koran (Pickthall tr), Sura 3: 78 - The Family Of Imran

Even at this point, Muhammad was holding onto the idea that the Judeo Christian scriptures were reliable.

To understand this, you have to recognize the roots of Muhammad’s association with Monotheism. He was raised a polytheist in Mecca, but had traveled in the employ of his first wife to southern Syria on trade missions. It’s said that he was a student of a Nestorian monk in the trade city of Bosra named Bahira. None of the Christian scriptures had yet been translated into Arabic, and of course neither had any of the Jewish scriptures. If we assume that Muhammad was interested in Christianity, we can speculate that he heard many tales by oral transmission. Lacking a dedicated scholarly approach to translation, there is no way of knowing the quality of the translations from the extent Greek texts then available and the Arabic that Muhammad received. There is no way of knowing if Muhammad was exposed to the entire old and new testaments, but it’s highly unlikely. More likely, the high points were passed to him, as evaluated by the person who was instructing him. It’s also plain from the Koran that many apocryphal stories were also related to him. Lacking the ability to discern for himself, he had no way of knowing that many of these stories were fanciful, and not accepted even then as canonical. It’s clear from his own “revelations” that he was captivated by the stories, but missed much of the underlying meaning and theological implications.

The motivations for his acceptance of the Judeo-Christian writings as legitimate was plain. No one was going to believe someone who invented his own monotheistic religion from whole cloth (Actually, he was probably wrong on this point, and it may have been better for Islam in the long run if he had done so). By taking up the mantle of Judeo-Christianity, he could appeal to a huge population of already practicing monotheists, and thereby gain legitimacy among his own people as well.

The problem came after Muhammad was long dead, when Islamic scholars who could read in several languages, and had a printed codex of the Koran to use as a gold standard, began to definitively tie the Judeo-Christian scriptures to the Koran.

The problem was, they didn’t match. In fact they contradicted each other at almost every turn. Muslims scholars could not accept that their Koran was in error. After all, it was the direct Word of God, dictated word for word to Muhammad was it not? Therefore the Judeo-Christian scriptures must have been tampered with, and were declared corrupt.

Today, it is not allowed in most Islamic countries for Muslims to read the Bible. Consequently, all they know of it is what they are taught in Islamic schools. Much of what they are taught is incorrect.

The contradictions between the Bible and the Koran are myriad, and I won’t go into them here. If you’re interested in the details, you can find some places to start here and here. It was these contradictions, among others that led Muslim scholars to conclude that the Bible was corrupted.

The interesting thing about this claim is that Muslims never say when this corruption took place!

Well, it either happened before Muhammad, or after him. We’ve already established that Muhammad accepted the Bible as legitimate in his time. This is a theme that is prevalent throughout the Koran. So, one could argue that it’s safe to assume that the Bible was uncorrupted in the time of Muhammad. I mean, if it was corrupted, you think he would say something to that effect, right? But no, he said it confirms the Bible!

So by this logic, the Bible was corrupted after Muhammad. Those dirty Christians must have corrupted it just to spite Islam! One Islamic way of looking at it is that the Bible has been translated so many times that it could not have helped but be corrupted.

Well, there are problems with this. Most Bibles today are translated from and checked against the Latin Vulgate codex. This is the authoritative Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, compiled by Jerome in the early fifth century from the Septuagint and Hebrew texts. It was completed in the year 405, a full two hundred years before Muhammad’s revelations. Some Bibles, such as the New American Standard, choose to go back to earlier known codices in the original Greek and Aramaic, when available. All of these sources predate Muhammad by centuries, and are still available today. There is little difference between them and the Bibles we use today.

Moreover, we have the writings of the early church fathers from the second and third centuries. These letters and epistles, sent between far flung congregations of early Christians, were used to teach and answer questions. The early church fathers were fond of quoting scripture. If you compile all the scraps of scripture quoted in their many letters and documents and pasted it together in the proper order, you could completely reproduce the New Testament except for 27 verses! And guess what? It was the same then as it is today!

By Muhammad’s time, there were more than fifty thousand lectionaries in use in the Christian world. To have corrupted the Bible at this point would have been a monumental effort, involving the gathering and replacement of every lectionary and every codex in existence. This in a time when all copying had to be performed by hand, making a single lectionary a thing of such high value that it was often the most prized thing in the community. The wildest conspiracy theory in history would be dwarfed by this event. Only a Muslim would see this as anything but impossible.

This means that if the Bible was corrupted, it had to happen before Muhammad. Let’s examine this. In the first place, Muhammad never hinted at such a thing. But let’s say he managed to miss it, or was just being polite. If we consider the New testament, the corruption must have happened very early. The Latin Vulgate was codified in 405. The content of the Latin Vulgate agrees with that found in the Chester Beatty Papyri, dated to the third century. This leaves a mere two hundred years between Christ and the earliest known texts of the New Testament.   Most scholars place the earliest dates for the Gospels to have been written at around 60-100 AD . . . within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses to Christ. This further narrows the window in which corruption might have crept in. The earliest known texts confirm our Bible today. It’s unlikely for the Bible to have been corrupted in the time of the living memory of the men who actually wrote it. The time frame that this corruption could have taken place means that men who had living memories of the authors were still alive (Think about this for a second. My grandmother, aged 92, knew people in her childhood who had fought in the Civil War, 140 years ago!). 

The problem is even worse for the Old Testament. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls confirms the Old Testament of today, and dates back to 250 BC.

Jewish scribes were meticulous about their transcriptions. There was a set of rules that had to be adhered to. Letters were to be printed literally on a grid, like a courier font today, and the resulting text was examined vertically as well as horizontally to ensure through this sort of primitive “checksum” that no errors had crept in.

There is no basis for the Muslim claim that the written Bible is corrupt. Any claims of corruption before the scripture was written are irrelevant, and can be just as easily leveled at the Koran as at the Bible. In fact there is plenty of scriptural reference in Islam that suggests that the Koran is neither complete or pristine. But that is the subject of another article.

Teaching Our School Children About Islam

My son came home the other day upset that the Islam lite that was being taught by his fifth grade teacher was not the same as the classic Islam that I teach him about here at home. I wrote the following letter to her, expressing my concerns.  The response I got was brusque, and clearly indicated that she had not read my letter in its entirety and was closed to further discussion or investigation.  She definitely stated that they do not discuss Islam in school.  I find this hard to believe, because ten year old kids are insatiably curious, and questions always arise about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the current conflict in Gaza.  How can you not discuss these things without discussing Islam?  I would cheerfully remove my child from this school if I thought I could get a better education anywhere else.

If you have concerns about the politically correct brand of Islam that is being presented to your children at school, please take the time to contact your school officials and educate them.  If Islam is to be discussed at all to our children, it should be done so with full disclosure.  It's a grave disservice to the next generation to misrepresent the greatest threat to our freedoms and western values in our time.

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 Dear Mrs. Xxxxxxxx,
   My son has been discussing with me about your 5th grade studies on Islam recently, and I am a bit dismayed by what I am hearing.

   I have a friend who is a Baha'i, and several years ago we frequently discussed religion over lunch.  The course of these discussions has prompted me to conduct an extensive study of Islamic history over the last year or so.  I have conducted this study from a variety of sources, including the Koran and the hadiths themselves.  I have corresponded with practicing Muslims from Egypt, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia, and have learned that they live in a completely different world that we do, where black is white and evil is good.

  Mrs. Xxxxxxxxx, today we are facing a world war against Islam.  It is absolutely essential that we understand Islam for what it really is if this conflict is to be resolved.  What I have been hearing coming back through my son is a series of propaganda ploys and common mistakes that westerners make about Islam.   It is critical that if you are going to teach about Islam, that you thoroughly understand it, and avoid the erroneous, politically correct misinformation that is being promulgated through the media and by our national leaders.  If you take a quick inventory of all the armed conflicts around the world today, a hugely disproportionate number of them involve Muslims who cannot get along with their non-Muslim neighbors.

I'm not a racist or a radicalized islamophobe.  I don’t need propaganda literature to support my positions on Islam.  My position is strongly anti-Muslim, and my only necessary source of material is the Koran and the hadiths and commonly accepted Islamic histories.

Do not misunderstand me, I do not hate Muslims as such.  I think that the people most victimized by Islam are the rank and file Muslims themselves.  Most Muslims are good people who are forced to profess a belief in a cult religion that they little understand.  They are slaves.

John 10:14 says that "I am the Good Shepherd, and my sheep know me".  I have read the Koran enough to know that the deity that Muslims worship has nothing to do with my God.  I recognize the being that the Muslims worship.  He is well known to Christians in word and deed, and his name is Satan.

Let me briefly discuss some common misconceptions.  
1. Muslims and Jews and Christians all follow the same God.  FALSE! Muslims claim this legitimacy based on a tradition of descent from Abraham. See my article concerning this fallacy. This tradition states that the Ka'aba was the house that Adam built when he was expelled from Eden, and that Abraham rebuilt it.  There is no biblical or archaeological evidence that Abraham ever entered Arabia.   Any similarity between Islam and Judeo-Christianity is a fabrication of Muhammad, intended to make his cult more palatable to the Jews and Christians he was trying to court into joining him. 

• My God does not endorse the assassination of people who speak out against him.  (Ibn Ishaq 676)
• My God does not permit you to rape your captive females.  (Tabari IX:25)
• My God did not endorse his prophets to  take slaves and "marry" (read: Rape with legitimacy) them hours after publicly executing their fathers.  (Quran 50-51, Ibn Ishaq 466)
• My God does not share his glory with his two sister goddesses (oops, sorry, Satan dictated that part of the Quran, according to Muhammad.  My bad . . . or his. . .. whatever).  (Ibn Ishaq 165)
• My God does not endorse 57 year old prophets to have intercourse with 9 year old brides.  (Bukhari:V7B62N64)
• My God did not advocate his prophet to wage a campaign of banditry from which the prophet got 20% of all the booty.  (Quran 8:41, Bukhari:V1B2N50)
• My God did not reverse his teachings. (Quran 2:106)
• My God does not deny the immaculate conception, the divinity of Jesus or that Jesus died on the cross, let alone rose from the dead. (Quran 4:157)
• My God does not teach that a woman is worth half of a man.  (Quran 2:282)
• My God does not require that you be killed if you leave the faith.  (Quran 4:89)
• My God does not consider the mindless recital of scripture in an archaic language that the penitent doesn't even understand as prayer.  (Bukhari:V2B16N108)
• My God does not instruct the sons of prophets to divorce their wives so that the prophet can marry them. (Tabari VIII:1-3)
• My God does not instruct his prophets to renounce the trinity. (Quran 5:73)

All of these things are documented in the Koran and hadith.

In actual fact, Islam is primarily based on the polytheistic traditions of the ancient Arabs of Mecca, with a large dose of tortured Torah and fractured New Testament, and a huge serving of self-serving pablum to cement the power of the messenger.  Many passages are contradictory, most of the parallels to the Torah are just plain wrong.  It's plain that the Koran was developed by someone who had heard bible stories, but is not intimately familiar with them.  

2. The conflict between the Muslims and the Jews is a recent one over land rights in Israel.  FALSE. This is only correct in that the conflict is over land rights.  Remember that Mohammed drove out three of the Jewish tribes that had originally welcomed him in Medina, and put the fourth one to the sword,  butchering all the men who had been taken captive, and raping their women that same night.  One of Mohammed's 22 wives was "wedded" the night of the massacre.
 
3. Muslims are tolerant.  FALSE.  Try to enter Saudi Arabia with a Bible.  They will confiscate it from you and feed it into a shredder right as you process customs.  You cannot enter Saudi Arabia if you are Jewish. Please look at some of these pictures to see the tolerance of these people. 

 4. Muslims are peaceful. FALSE!  Well, "good" Muslims aren't.  A common argument for Muslim atrocities is to turn it back on the accuser.  "Think of all the murder and atrocities committed in the name of Christianity during the Crusades."  Yes, but there is a big difference between committing an atrocity in violation of your holy teachings, and committing an atrocity because your holy book specifically advocates and in many instances requires it of you!  Ironically the "best" Muslims are the radical terrorists.  They are the ones who are following the core teachings laid out in the Koran. The Muslims community routinely turns the discussion of Islamic Jihad back to a critique of the Crusades.  This argument doesn't wash.  The Crusades were a direct result of the brutal attack on Christianity carried out between the seventh and tenth centuries.  Muslims today are taught that Islam spread peacefully.  I have documented a timeline of this spread of Islam and invite you to review it to see how "peacefully" this cult spread.  I would like to draw your attention particularly to the battle of Ullais, where the Muslim General Khalid spent two and a half days executing more than seven thousand Persian prisoners in an attempt to make the Euphrates run red with blood. Also pay close attention to the fate of the refugees who were allowed to leave Damascus under a truce in the Battle of Battle of Marj-ud-Deebaj 
 
5. Muslim science contributed to today's civilization.  FALSE.  Nothing new developed under Islamic rule.  They stole art and technology from other civilizations.  The "Muslim" shrine of the Taj Mahal?  Predates Islamic India by a couple hundred years.  They only contribution that can be accredited here is the cross-pollination of ideas, as the stolen technologies were consolidated.  Anything to the contrary is misinformation promulgated by Muslims.  Yes, even zero was invented by the Indians.

Below I am providing you with some links.  One of the most interesting of these is the Free Baha'i Library project "Ocean".  In this is a searchable database containing numerous religious texts from Islam (4 translations of the Koran and the Bukhari Hadith), Zoroastrian, Christianity, Bahuallah, Mormon, Sikh, Tao and Hindu.  An invaluable tool for anyone interested in comparative religion.

I also invite you to study the various critiques of Islam.  Use the Ocean database for reference.  You will quickly come to the realization that I did, that Mohammed was a schizophrenic, homicidal pedophile and rapist, who used a cult belief to control his followers that was no different than Jim Jones or Bagwan Shree Rajneesh.  The only difference was that Mohammed's followers had the historical good fortune to wage a war of conquest that was little different from those of the Huns or the Mongols.  A fringe barbarian race had a population explosion backed by cavalry.  The Christian world was in disarray and war-weary from the recent Sassanid wars against the Persians, and was in no condition militarily to turn back the Arab hordes.  A relatively minor cult that should have burned out after the death of it's founder was spread by force of arms and promulgated by mutual fear of the consequences of apostasy.

There are numerous accounts of miraculous visions and tales of the Holy Spirit at work in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world today.  The interesting thing about Islam is that those most vulnerable to conversion to Christianity seem to be the most devout Muslims.  Most Muslims don't try to read the Koran, because it's pretty much incomprehensible.  It isn't arranged in any sort of order, except that the longest surahs are first.  A devout Muslim who wants to be the best Muslim he can be will try to read and understand the Koran, and feel that he is not worthy, because no matter how deeply he studies it, it's contradictory and makes little sense.  Give that man the book of John, and it is like a veil lifted from his eyes.  He can read a compelling narrative that confirms everything that he hoped the Koran would say, but it never quite did.  Bam.  Instant Christian.  This is why the Bible is banned in Saudi.

Here are some additional links for you to check out:  
World religions free research library. - a downloadable tool that provides all the major writings of the world religions.   
Prophet of Doom - I am providing a link here to the annotated P.O.D. Koran, but this site has so much more to explore. . . . 
History of Muhammad & Islam
Answering Islam  - excellent, well organized site.  I especially endorse the section of testimonials of converted Muslims from around the world -- The Holy Spirit IS working! 
A Hindu take on Islam

I would be more than happy to discuss this further if you wish. I would appreciate it if you would modulate your discussions of Islam to the children and teach the truth, that it's claim of being an Abrahamic religion is questionable.  Teach that Islam's ultimate goal is to enforce Sharia law under a worldwide Islamic theocracy.  This is what Muslim children are taught, it's a disservice not to teach it to our children. Teach that the primary victims of Islam are the peaceful Muslims, who would leave Islam happily if it was not a death sentence.

All of these things are obvious to anyone who takes the time to actually seek the knowledge, instead of relying on the modern day Goebbels' to paint the world the way they want you to think.  Some of your children will find this knowledge on their own.  I hope when they do that they don't look back and think that their teacher misled them.

Yours,