Mysterious WGB posted this article from the UK Daily Mail.
Excerpt:
Praying helps people stay in control of their emotions and behaviour, according to a new study.
People turn to prayer ‘as a coping response to the high demands in life’ and are rewarded with increased strength and ability to resist temptation, researchers said.
Previous findings have shown that when people try hard to control their emotions and thoughts, the risk of aggressive outbursts and binge drinking or eating rises.
But the latest study, by German psychologists at Saarland University and the University of Mannheim, found that praying helps people maintain self-control.
‘A brief period of personal prayer buffered the self-control depletion effect’, wrote the team, whose findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology online.
‘These results are consistent with and contribute to a growing body of work attesting to the beneficial effects of praying on self-control.’
Praying has already been linked in the past to reduced levels of infidelity and alcohol consumption.
Also, I feel that I should mention this interesting study, if we are going to have a Twilight Zone post today. (H/T STR)
Excerpt:
Abstract
We examined whether atheists exhibit evidence of emotional arousal when they dare God to cause harm to themselves and their intimates. In Study 1, the participants (16 atheists, 13 religious individuals) read aloud 36 statements of three different types: God, offensive, and neutral. In Study 2 (N = 19 atheists), ten new stimulus statements were included in which atheists wished for negative events to occur. The atheists did not think the God statements were as unpleasant as the religious participants did in their verbal reports. However, the skin conductance level showed that asking God to do awful things was equally stressful to atheists as it was to religious people and that atheists were more affected by God statements than by wish or offensive statements. The results imply that atheists’ attitudes towards God are ambivalent in that their explicit beliefs conflict with their affective response.
Now, I am blogging about this because it’s interesting, but I would classify this as being in the camp of near-death experiences and the Shroud of Turin. It’s interesting, but it’s not something that I would use to prove anything in a debate. Ever since I read this article from Christianity Today a while back, I’ve been sort of cautious about using prayer studies to argue for anything. Take this prayer study with a grain of salt.
Dina sent me this article from the UK Telegraph about a recent Supreme Court decision from the UK.
Excerpt:
The devoutly Christian owners of a Cornish hotel who refused to allow two gay men to take a double room have lost their final appeal to the Supreme Court. It ruled that Peter and Hazelmary Bull had discriminated against the couple, even though they had long operated a rule that unmarried guests had to sleep apart. One of the judges, Lady Hale, said such a case would have been unthinkable less than two decades ago, and it is a measure of how both the law and societal norms have changed that the Bulls should have found themselves in such a predicament.
It is also a pity this matter was not settled amicably when the Bulls made an offer of redress; but campaigners were intent on making an example of them. The aggrieved men, Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, who were in a civil partnership, were supported by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The Bulls were perplexed as to why the EHRC should act against them, since their right to exercise their religious beliefs was being set against that of the men not to be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexual orientation.
Dina also sent me this article from the pro-gay Spiked Online.
Excerpt:
[A]s the systematic unequal treatment of gays has ended, so another problem has grown. One pernicious social force has been replaced by another: the willingness of the state to outlaw minority or eccentric views and behaviours. State-backed oppression has yielded to state-backed intolerance.
The Bulls have been hauled before the courts and told they can no longer practise what they preach. To deny a couple the right to make a living in a manner consistent with their Christian values is draconian. The Bulls’ fate is similar to that of Lillian Ladele, an Islington marriage registrar, and Gary McFarlane, a Relate counsellor, who were both sacked after declining to provide their professional services to lesbians and gays. Equality laws did for them all.
The problem here is not, as it appears, merely a slap in the face to Christians. It is a slap in the face to the right of all individuals to act free of state control absent a compelling reason for intervention. As John Stuart Mill put it in On Liberty (1859): ‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.’
As if to satisfy Mill’s harm principle, the Supreme Court went in search of Preddy and Hall’s ‘harm’. What they found was that when the Bulls’ house rules were explained to Preddy and Hall, they found it ‘upsetting’ and ‘very hurtful’. Even in the touchy-feely twenty-first century, where self-esteem is seen as so important and so fragile, this is pretty lame.
The Supreme Court judge, Lady Hale, may have been aware that this ‘affront to their dignity’, as she put it, was not the sort of harm, in the Mill sense, that should justify the state’s coercive power. She bolstered her argument by linking Preddy and Hall’s hurt feelings to a bigger historical picture. ‘We should not underestimate’, she said, ‘the continuing legacy of those centuries of discrimination, persecution even, which is still going on in many parts of the world’.
Fascism happens when the normal desire for compassion is taken out of the family context and becomes the policy of a powerful feminist welfare state. And that’s when it becomes a threat to the right of individuals to make moral judgments and to exercise religious liberty.
The EHRC, you’ll remember, was a project of the Labour Party of the UK, which is the socialist party in the UK. There is also a communist party called the Liberal Democrats. The striking thing is that many church-attending Christians not only vote for the Labour Party, but they also vote for the Liberal Democrats, which are even more liberal. A lot of this is because British Christians are so far to the left on economic issues that they sort of go along with the assault on their own religious liberty out of ignorance. They vote for bigger and bigger government, and then they are surprised when they actually get it.
The same thing happened in Canada with the Liberal Party and their introduction of Human Rights Commissions and Human Rights Tribunals, which criminalize offending people with free speech. The very Christians that voted for expanding government to reduce poverty were the ones who were then persecuted by the same big government they voted to create. This goes to show why we need to have better economics knowledge among Christians, because many of us are voting for left-wing parties because we think that private, voluntary charity can be replaced with government-controlled redistribution of wealth. Not only does that not work to reduce poverty, but in the end, we lose our liberties, too.
In the UK, you’ll find a lot of Christians who think that rent control is a good thing, that price controls are a good thing, that raising minimum wage is a good thing, that tariffs on imported goods are a good thing – positions which are generally viewed as incorrect by academic economists across the ideological spectrum. That’s why churches need to teach the Christian worldview, including economics. The UK church should be training Christians to undo this ignorant, patriotic confidence that UK Christians have in their welfare state. We all have a lot of work to do to educate ourselves on how the Bible applies to the real world (e.g. – economics), or else we will end up undermining our own liberties.
Additionally, I find it very frustrating that so many churches are so focused on providing emotional comfort and a sense of community to the people in the pews that they neglect to talk about these religious liberty issues. Pastors don’t want to alert ordinary Christians about how dangerous it’s becoming to take unpopular stands on issues like gay rights in public – it’s scary and divisive and drives people away from church. You’re not going to hear them trying to apply the Bible to moral issues or economic issues, etc. from the pulpit, because that spoils the “experience” and “the show” – the comfort and entertainment that people expect from church. We need to do better at helping Christians to be aware of threats to our liberties. They need to be trained to connect their faith to specific laws and policies in the real world.
Bart Ehrman is the US author of the bestselling book “Misquoting Jesus” (In the UK “Whose word is it?”). He calls into question the authority of the New Testament as scribal changes over time have changed the documents.
So can we trust the scripture? Bible scholar Peter Williams believes in the reliability of the New Testament and that Bart’s prognosis is far too pessimistic.
This post is a re-post from 2011. I have been listening to this lecture by Peter J. Williams on “Misquoting Jesus” this week, and it reminded me to re-post this debate.
Summary of the Williams-Ehrman debate:
Note: this summary is snarky. If you want an accurate view of the debate, then listen to it. My summary is meant to be humorous.
Ehrman:
I had a mystical experience in childhood and became an evangelical Christian
I went to Moody Bible Institute, and they told me that the Bible was inerrant
For a while, I was committed to the view that there are no mistakes in the Bible
At Princeton, I was taught and graded by professors who did not accept inerrancy
By a strange coincidence, I began to see that the Bible did have errors after all!
We don’t have the original documents written by the original authors, we only have thousands of copies
if the words of the Bible are not completely inerrant, then none of it is historical
if all of the words in the copies of the Bible are not identical, then none of it is historical
Williams:
I would say the New and Old testaments are the Word of God
We don’t need to have the original Greek writings in order to believe in the authority of the Bible
I believe in inerrancy, but doesn’t mean there are no problems
the doctrine of inerrancy has always referred to the original Greek copies, not the translations
Moderator:
what are the main points of Misquoting Jesus?
Ehrman:
we don’t have the originals of any of the books of the New Testament
we have copies that are much later, sometimes even centuries later!!1!
the copies we have all differ from one another – they were changed by scribes!!1!
we have 5000 manuscripts in the original Greek language
there are hundreds of thousands of differences!!1!
most of the differences don’t matter
some differences are significant for meaning or doctrine
errors are propagated because the next scribe inherits the mistake of their source copy
a large gap between the time of writing and the first extant copy means more errors have crept in
Williams:
the reason we have so many variants is because the number of manuscripts is large
Angry Jesus or compassionate Jesus in Mark
Ehrman:
most manuscripts say that Jesus was compassionate when healing a leper, but one says he was angry
it makes a huge huge huge really really big difference if Jesus is compassionate or angry
the whole Bible needs to be thrown out because of this one word between different in one manuscript
Williams:
this variant is important for understanding the passage, but it has no great meaning
the change is probably just an accident – the two words are very similar visually in Greek
it’s just an accident – it emerged in one manuscript, and it impacted a few more
the tiny number of manuscripts that have the error are geographically isolated
I’m pretty sure that WK prefers the angry Jesus anyway – so who cares?
Ehrman:
no! someone changed it deliberately! it’s a conspiracy! you should buy my book! it’s a *big deal*!!!!!1!!1!one!!eleventy-one!
The woman caught in adultery in John
Ehrman:
it is isn’t in any of the earliest manuscripts
this is an apocryphical story that some scribe deliberately inserted into the text
most people don’t even know about this! it’s a cover-up! you need to buy my scandalous book!
Williams:
that’s right, it’s a late addition by some overzealous scribe
and it’s clearly marked as such in every modern Bible translation
the only people who don’t know about this are people who don’t read footnotes in their Bible
and in any case, this isn’t a loss of the original words of the New Testament – it’s an addition
Grace of God or apart from God in Hebrews
Ehrman:
well this is just a one word difference, but it makes a huge huge really really big difference!
the words are very similar, so it’s could be an accident I guess
but it wasn’t! this was a deliberate change! it’s a conspiracy! it’s a cover-up! scandal!
buy my book! It’s almost as good as Dan Brown!
Moderator:
hmmmn…. I kind of like “apart from God” – why is this such a big scandal again?
Ehrman:
you don’t care? how can you not care? it has to be inerrant! or the whole thing is false!
Moody Bible Institute says!
Williams:
yeah Bart is always saying that every change is deliberate but it’s just an accident
the words are very similar, just a few letters are different, this is clearly an accident
I have no problem with apart from God, or by the Grace of God
please move on and stop screaming and running around and knocking things over
Moderator:
but what if pastors try to use this passage in a sermon?
Williams:
well, one word doesn’t make a big different, the meaning that appears is fine for preaching
it’s only a problem for people who treat the Bible as a magic book with magical incantations
they get mad because if one word is out of place then the whole thing doesn’t work for their spell
then they try to cast happiness spells but the spells don’t work and they experience suffering
the suffering surprises them since they think that fundamentalism should guarantee them happiness
then they become apostates and get on TV where they look wide-eyed and talk crazy
Ehrman:
hey! are you talking about me? a lot of people buy my books! i am a big success!
it is very important that people don’t feel bad about their sinning you know!
Is Misquoting Jesus an attack?
Williams:
it’s rhetorically imbalanced and misleading
it tries to highlight change and instability and ignore the majority of the text that is stable
he makes a big deal out of 5 or so verses that are different from the mainstream text
he says that scribes deliberately changed the scriptures, but he doesn’t prove that
it’s just as likely that the differences are just scribal errors made by accident
Ehrman:
well, maybe the variants aren’t a big deal, but what about one angel vs. two angels?
that’s a significant issue! significant enough for me to become an apostate – a rich apostate
if one word is different because of an accident, then the whole Bible cannot be trusted
it has to be completely inerrant, so a one word difference means the whole thing is unreliable
we don’t even know if Jesus was even named Jesus, because of one angel vs two angels!!!1!
buy my book! you don’t have to read it, just put it on your shelf, then you’ll feel better about not having a relationships with God – because who’s to say what God really wants from you? Not the Bible!
WINTERY KNIGHT 