Sacred Name heresy -- Which are the true names? "God" "Jesus" "Yeshua" "Yahweh" etc. etc.

Scott Johnson's latest study is on a heresy that I only discovered last summer when I received the email I post below, through a mailing list I was on. This is the "Sacred Name" heresy, which is related to the Hebrew Roots movement. As you will see in the material below, the name "Jesus" is rejected as pagan! I didn't do a study on it myself, I was merely shocked and offended at the information I received and asked to be taken off the mailing list. Not only in English but in most other languages, "Jesus" is the name of our Lord. It comes from the Greek. I never had an objection to the Hebrew version "Yeshua" until now, simply accepting it as a valid preference in the Messianic churches. Having read only a bit of Johnson's PDF file and heard only his Part 4 so far, I already have concluded that there is no justification for using the Hebrew name at all.

I'm glad to have the opportunity now to devote a post to this and refer people to Johnson's study.

At first I had the impression from the first part of his PDF file that at least some of his study relies on a King-James-only source that I consider heretical in itself, because it treats Elizabethan English as a sacred language. Looking over the PDF again and now having heard his parts 1 and 2 as well as 4 I see that this isn't really a problem in the overall study. The emphasis is on the fact that English is now the universal language, and there's no idea of its being a sacred language in the same sense some Hebrew Roots people treat Hebrew as I first had thought.

Neither is a sacred language. Neither is Greek a sacred language. God did give the New Testament in Greek, and that is important, as that is the source of the name "Jesus" but Greek is also not a sacred language. It was the universal language in its day -- as English is in our day -- but that doesn't make it sacred, merely God's providentially prepared vehicle for His word.

Here is the email I received last summer:

"God” isn’t a Name

“I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the name of the son and of the Holy Ghost!”

How often did I hear those words in baptismal services during the first 35 years of my life? Did I ever consider what the name of the Father was? Actually, I don’t think I gave it much thought as it was customary to hear those words. My parents took me to church faithfully from my birth until I went away to school. Then I married someone who had the same habit of church obeisance and so the rituals and dogma continued, without question until I would one day have my eyes opened. Yet sometimes, I did contemplate what was really meant by this and other traditions of our church. Is this really tradition?

Of course! Because the actual name of the Father was never used. In fact in the church I attended, there was no specified name for the Father except a very rare uttering of the name Jehovah. “God” is all that was normally used. It was not until my son was baptized in a river in Mexico , when I worked as a self-supporting independent missionary that I began to contemplate these things. My brother-in-law who was a self taught preacher came down to visit and perform the baptism and accepted the challenge of baptizing “in the name.” He used the Hebrew names; Yahweh, Y’shua, and Ruach Ha Chodesh. Little did I know at the time that I would one day make a full turnabout to truly embrace the names for Elohim without pagan contamination!

But, some may ask, is it really all that important to call the Father and Son by their original biblical names? I hear enlightened religious people in many places occasionally tossing in the sacred names when they speak, like adding a little salt and pepper to the meal, but in their practice they continue to use the terms “God,” “Lord,” and “Jesus Christ” as names the majority of the time. It makes me wonder whether people, serve a half pagan, half divine Elohim. Why do we continue to use the old terms? I address this to myself as much as to anyone for I often settle for compromise when speaking to friends and family.

Some have reminded me that “we must do this” so the folks who have not yet opened their eyes to the truth will not be offended. So, what about offending Yahweh? Is that not MORE significant than the likely offense of someone who refuses to open their eyes to the truth?

Pretty clear where this is going, right? ALL churches and all Christians but those that accept this notion of the right names for God are "pagan," and not "enlightened" and haven't "opened their eyes to the truth" --although this of course includes ALL Christians back to the cross. That doesn't seem to bother them. THEY have it right and all those others were just wrong. Just like any cult. The Mormons believe the same, so do the Jehovah's Witnesses. THEY got it right after centuries of wrongness. At the very least we have a new cult here. I hope more become aware of it and can steer unwary Christians away from it.

I ask you, what could be the motive for merely using the set-apart (sacred) names once in a while? Could it be literary embellishment? Or to “show off” how much we know? Are we not serious in our approach to the injunction to not use pagan names for YHVH?

Let me guess what is concerning this writer. Some have halfway accepted this heresy of the supposed "sacred" name but only to the extent of considering it an alternative, as I've regarded the use of "Yeshua" in messianic congregations. Some are probably just being polite to the people who believe in the sacredness of the names. At the very least they haven't accepted the lie that the names used for two millennia are false.

I realize that some of my readers may take exception to this for various and sundry reasons. Let us look at what the Torah says:

Deu 12:3 And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.

That is pretty strict, isn’t it? Pretty radical! We are to destroy even the names of the pagan gods. (By doing this we would cease to use them, right?)

Exo 3:15 And Elohim said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, YHVH Elohim of your fathers, the El of Abraham, the El of Isaac, and the El of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: THIS IS MY NAME for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

Unfortunately the translations that have come down to us through the centuries do not even use the name in these verses. Look at what the KJV says of this same verse:
Exo 3:15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: THIS IS MY NAME for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

I ask you to tell me where the name was actually used in this verse? “LORD God” is not a name! No wonder we thought that the word LORD God was his name! What a mess the translators have made with this! I have learned why they did this--because of the Jewish reticence to the usage of the Holy Name of YHVH. Their claimed reason was that it not be taken in vain or used lightly, but in the Holy Word of Elohim, there is no reason to dilute it or hide it! Maybe in daily conversation, but surely not in the Word of Elohim!

Um, the Jews use "Adonai" which means "Lord" in order not to say the name YHVH. Whether continuing with that practice is right for Christians or not, I don't know, but that WAS the basis for it.

We are instructed not even to mention the name of other gods:

Exo 23:13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.

Deu 18:20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

When Elijah contended with the prophets of Baal, he made a distinction between the names of the gods of the heathen and his God.

1Ki 18:24 And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name YHVH: and the Elohim (god) that answereth by fire, let him be Elohim (god). And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.

Now before I get in too deep of water, let me assert that the word “god” is not a name. It is a generic term. It refers merely to a position or title. If you use the name “god” you must preface it with a descriptive phrase in order to distinguish it from the other gods. Elohim is the same thing. Elohim is the generic term for god. It is used for both pagan and divine and must be defined. I ask you, which god? Which Elohim?

My dear brothers and sisters--the name was stolen from us! We have been deprived of it for centuries, but it has been promised that in the end, YHVH’s people will know his name:

Stolen from us? We follow the NEW Testament. The names we are to use are given there.

Isa 52:6 Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.

Eze 39:7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel ; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the YHVH, the Holy One in Israel .

Rev 3:12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my Elohim, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my Elohim, and the name of the city of my Elohim, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my Elohim: and I will write upon him my new name.

Throughout this list of Bible verses she's using some oddball translation which she doesn't identify, one that uses the names this cult believes are to be used, instead of the ones traditionally used in English Bibles.

Gone are the days of prefacing a prayer with “Dear God!” Wouldn’t it be awful if the wrong god should answer us? Of course--in the days of our ignorance the Almighty winks, right? At least until we have “seen the light.” Now perhaps we may specify which god, by saying “the God of Heaven” or “Creator God.”

True to the character of the devil, this is one devilishly subtle heresy. The "wrong god" can't answer us unless the true God allows it, and the true God hears our hearts and knows when we are addressing Him.

If we look again at Exodus 23:13:

“And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods (elohim), neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.”

What about the practice of using a name that for over 1700 years has referred to the Catholic Sun God, “Jesus Christ?”

And there you have it, in all its devilish lying blasphemy. My my, "what about" our use of the name given to us in the New Testament, which she labels as a pagan reference to the "Sun God" invented by Catholicism. Oh this devil is clever.

How can we allow this confusion to continue? The Torah is very clear that we are not to confuse the set apart things of YHVH with the paganized practices of the heathen all around us. Simply, why add to the confusion over who our God (Elohim) is, or who his Son is? If he has a Holy (Kadosh or set apart) name, then let us keep it set apart, distinct and separate from the confusion of paganism.

There are several arguments favoring the use of the name Y’shua ha Mashiach instead of Jesus Christ. One is the reason we just mentioned--that of keeping it distinct from the names used in Roman Catholicism who was behind the adulteration of nearly everything that was originally holy.

Well, I have to agree that the Roman Church is full of paganism, and this fact can give a veneer of plausibility to any claim that anything they ever did is probably pagan. But the name Jesus Christ comes from the Bible, not the Roman Church. (Let me guess, at some point this cult also attacks the Bible -- oh but she already has, simply by questioning the names as given there.)

Also to be considered is the fact that the name Jesus comes from the Greek “Iesous” (though he was not a Greek), and sounds similar to the name of the pagan deity Zeus, or the Latin Isis of the pagan sun worship trinity. Though many deny that it has either of these origins and that it was merely a bad transliteration through the Greek of the Hebrew name Y’shua, still it sounds similar, and this brings confusion!

Only to those looking to be confused I dare say.

Perhaps the best reason is that his name was never Jesus Christ. The name given to the son of the Highest by his mother Miriam (Mary) was Y’shua and Christ is not his surname, as it seems to indicate in the common usage. Messiah is what he is to us.

And here I think we begin to see the Bible coming under criticism as expected.

Y’shua is the only name that means “Saviour.” “Iesous” or “Jesus” has no such meaning, though the translations we have today say it does. Jesus has no meaning in Hebrew. It only has an applied meaning as it has come down to us today. If we are to be accurate in our details, we need to use the name that was given to our Redeemer by the angel that announced his birth. Remember, the name Jesus is a translation or transliteration, not a name.

Ah, such subtle plausibilities. The New Testament has the angel announcing His name as Jesus. The New Testament is our guide, God's word.

I lived in Mexico for several years and though many of the people will call a foreigner by a transliterated name such as “Hoostino,” for lack of the name Justin, it is clearly not the same name, and most gringos I have known do not take very kindly to having their name mispronounced. I have seen them spend a lot of time teaching the people just how to pronounce their name. Surely we can wrap our tongues around the simple name Yeshua or Yahshua! And even if it is difficult, is it not worth our efforts to do so?

Ah such hairsplitting niceties the devil is so good at. I don't know about "gringoes" but I suppose most people would rather keep their names as they sound in their original language, but as a matter of fact when people of one culture take up residence in another they do accommodate to the way the natives use their name. That IS a fact.

So, as we make straight paths for our feet, and choose to set apart our walk from the walk of paganism, let us not be discouraged. We may be criticized, we may be ridiculed, but that will help us to move out of the camp of Babylon and into the narrow path that is marked out ahead of us! There is no compromise in the camp of the righteous. Let us press on in sincerity in our work of gathering out the stones from the path as we build the highway of YHVH our Elohim!

Blessings in Messiah Yeshua,

T---

For more information on the name, Jesus, please check out this website:

http://yahushua.net/pagan_name.htm

IS JESUS a PAGAN NAME?
by Yahkov Hartley

In a recent Messianic magazine there appeared an article that purported to address the question,"Is the name "Jesus" pagan?" The article was clearly a defense of the use of the name "Jesus", in spite of that author's admission that this is not the "original" name (birth name) given to the Messiah (by his Jewish mother, Miryam). The article leaves the reader with the notion that Jesus is just as valid, if not more valid, than Y'shua1 when referring to the Messiah. And it arrives at this deduction by the most careless etymology and stunted logic, ignoring the weightier matters of the issue. The "issue" raised in this article is a prize-winning deception, designed to decoy the unwary from the real issue of the word "Jesus".

Early in the article, the author demonstrated the difficulty of transliterating from Hebrew to Greek and the ease of transliterating from Hebrew to English. A detailed letter-by-letter (from the Hebrew aleph-bet to the Greek alphabet) "transliteration" of the name, Y'shua to the Greek name, Iesous was brought forth as evidence. Because there are no equivalent sounds of many of the letters, this so called "transliteration" becomes in reality a translation. There is so little assonance between "Y'shua" and "Eeaysooce" that calling this a transliteration is an offense to even the most debased scholarship. There is no way to transliterate this name between these two languages! The best that can be done is to translate, which is what was done in the Septuagint by its Hebrew translators.

The name, Septuagint, is late-Latin (the ecclesiastical tongue of the Roman Corporate Church) from septem + ginta which hints at the 70 (approximately) translators who produced the Greek version of the Tanakh (the "Old" Testament). A study of the etymology of the word "Jesus", in even as mundane a source as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, reveals that this name does not come directly from the Greek "Iesous", but derives from the early-Latin "Iesu", the "I" pronounced initially as a "Y" producing Yay-soo. The "I" in the middle-ages was differentiated into the "I' and the "J" in our Latin alphabet used for the English language. Thus, in late-Latin, the Iesou (Yaysoo) became Jesu (Jaysoo) which became Jesus in the English tongue. This relationship in the etymology is omitted by the author in his "apologetics".

Regardless, the word Jesus has no direct ancestry from the Greek Iesous, as is implied by the author, but at best, it derives from the late-Latin Jesu , a fact completely missing in the cited article. However, all of this etymology, even with the missing link provided above, is a decoy to distract our attention from the real problem with this word "Jesus."

We have never used the argument that Jesus is somehow a compound of Gee-Zeus (Zeus being the chief "god" of the Greek Pantheon) although there is certainly an extreme degree of assonance (which is the core of the art of transliteration) with the "Jesus" word. We have never pursued that possibility to any extent, since it is totally irrelevant. The only relevant issue is: What was/is the Messiah's name given him by his mother, Miryam, in accordance with the angelic messenger's revelation to her?

Since the author of the subject article didn't have any problems with the name Y'shua being the Messiah's "original" name, why not look firstly at what is NOT the issue here? The issue is NOT, " whether the word Jesus is pagan!" The issue is NOT how to "transliterate" Y'shua into Greek! The issue is NOT how to "transliterate" Greek Iesous into Latin! The issue is NOT even how to "transliterate" the Latin Jesu into English! The issue IS how to transliterate the real name, Y'shua, from the Hebrew, into English. We certainly don't need to go through Greek into Latin and then from Latin into English. Why would anyone want to take such a circuitous route, unless he's trying to "prove" the validity of the erroneousness, "Jesus?"

This tedious excuse for scholarship makes me appreciate even more the reminder in Scott Johnson's PDF file that God chose the name Jesus by providentially arranging for Greek to be the universal language of the day.

To transliterate the Hebrew Y'shua to English, we merely go to Y'shua1. Thus his name is pronounced Y'shua both in Hebrew and in English - perfect transliteration. What could be simpler? Whether Jesus is a pagan name isn't what matters! What matters is the fact that Jesus was never the name of the Messiah of YHWH, whose story is recorded in the new testament!

Odd, then, that that IS the name given in that very same New Testament. (Oh and now I note that he doesn't capitalize New Testament. Yup, we're neck deep in a cult here).

Proper names are not translated from one language to another, if it is possible to transliterate. If that is impossible to accurately transliterate a proper name (as is the case in transliterating from Hebrew to Greek) then it is still possible to teach them how to correctly pronounce the name of the Messiah; similar to the way that English speaking people would learn how to correctly pronounce the Spanish word "Chihuahua" or the French word "resume"). They need someone who knows the correct pronunciation to teach them.

The change of the Messiah's name from Y'shua (Yahushua) to Jesus (a mistranslation) certainly serves the purpose of obscuring his Jewish identity and his Jewish ministry. The true ministry of Yahushua the Messiah is and was dedicated to finding the "lost sheep of the House of Israel." History, both religious and secular, is clear that the "Church" has expended a vast effort to distance itself from the true nature, origins, and purpose of this Jewish messiah!

The "scholarship" of the subject article is a paradigm (an example) of eisegesis pawned off as exegesis. If this represents the "best" understanding that these people have about such issues, then they are woefully inadequate to be the tool to accomplish the reunion of the Two Houses and restoration of the united kingdom of Yisrael. The "churches" and their teachings have not, do not, and will not ever cause the Tribes of Judah to become jealous!! Nor will they be able to bring the genuine Messiah to his people (see Romans chapter 11).

It is no surprise that the number of "religious" people who want to bring "Jesus" to the Jews, clearly do not have a grasp of many of the Ephraim/Judah issues that plague the unity of those two Houses. Churchianity has been in the sun way too long, and it is going to be a tough process for them to discard the pagan and/or error filled baggage they bring with them. Judah (the Jew) has considerable Talmudic baggage to discard as well. I am reminded of the declaration of the prophet Hosea 4:6, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..."

We are not interested in bringing "Jesus" errors to Judah; there are already enough groups doing that. We do support bringing Y'shuah Ha Mashiach (Yahushua the Messiah) to both Ephraim and Judah: and there is an immense historical difference between Jesus and Y'shua. People's eternal life depends on acceptance of the genuine and rejection of the false.

Our king is totally opposed to perpetuating the centuries of misinformation and disinformation promulgated by the church leaders who have used their pulpits to disseminate their apostasy. The prophet to Israel, Jeremiah 16:19, prophecies: "O YHWH, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, 'Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.'"

We need to examine the Scriptures from a Hebraic perspective (not always a Jewish perspective) in order to glean all the truth and nuances of the Hebrew writers of those books and arrive at the intended (by YHWH) understanding of the Hebrew words of YHWH to the people to whom He entrusted the oracles. Those people were NOT the "churches."

We take seriously the imperative in Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 58:1, "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." We know that we are citizens of the Kingdom of YHWH and have no allegiance to any denomination on earth nor any man. Our Kohen HaGadol (High Priest) is Y'shua Ha Mashiach (Yahushua the Messiah) and he ministers in the Great Temple of YHWH our Father on our behalf.

1 (Yeshua) is a contraction of (Yahushua)

A truly pernicious heresy, casting doubt on the Name of our Savior used by all English-speaking Christians and in fact most European Christians as well, and probably all Christians for that matter if we could appreciate how the Greek is translated into the various languages. As I say above, I never had an objection to the Hebrew version --"Yeshua" or one of its variations -- preferred in some messianic churches, but now I'm thinking there's no defense for it at all. I now also object to the use of "Yahweh" as really just another Hebraicism, for which there is no real justification. An important point made in Scott Johnson's PDF to his study is that God gave us the Name of Jesus in Greek, the universal language of the day, because there is now NEITHER JEW NOR GREEK BUT ALL ARE ONE IN CHRIST JESUS. To insist on the Hebrew name is to contradict God's plan. But mainly it's a form of Judaizing, which a great deal of the New Testament is devoted to condemning.

There are so many heresies these days it could wear a person out keeping track of them and Christians are falling into them right and left and need to be warned away from them. You'll find some seemingly solid churches nevertheless falling for "Yahweh" and in that case it's not because of cult influence but because it has some kind of scholarly history that goes back to the time of Westcott and Hort. There's an open door to heresy right there. But of course I think all the Bibles that make use of the Alexandrian Greek texts so favored by Westcott and Hort already are leading the churches into questionable doctrine and spiritual compromise.

MAJOR HASAN AN HONEST FOLLOWER OF THE KORAN murdered out of obedience even against conflicting feelings. Read it and weep.

I want to get this information published even though I'm not going to take the time to format it carefully or comment much at this point. Here's the raw stuff.

Gist: Major Hasan who killed so many at Fort Hood did so in obedience to the Koran EVEN AFTER SEEKING WAYS HE MIGHT BE ABLE TO AVOID THIS DUTY. He even gave a speech outlining his thinking in this direction, yet nobody took it as the warning signal it was. The Koran is unfortunately not open to alternative views and he had to conclude that to be obedient to his God he HAD to kill nonMuslims. This conflict came to a decision point when he was being asked to go and kill Muslims, which he couldn't do and be faithful to his religion. The Koran teaches that killing a Muslim will take you to Hell, and killing nonMuslims will earn you blessings. There is no room for other interpretations. The man was excruciatingly honest about the position he was in on account of his religion. He wasn't unfaithful to the American Army so much as REQUIRED BY HIS RELIGION to make a choice he didn't want to have to make.

What sort of idiots are we in the West that we have been ignoring this obvious situation for years now?

I wasn't able to find the speech itself but maybe it's trackable from these links, and Rubin's article is pretty clear about what it says anyway:

http://www.gloria-center.org/Gloria/2009/11/why-i-murdered.html

Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people—including the president of the United States--to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack.

It was reported that the audience was shocked and frightened by his lecture. He was supposed to speak on some medical topic yet instead talked on the topic: “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.

It is quite a good talk. He’s logical and presents his evidence. This is clearly not the work of a mad man or a fool, though there’s still a note of ambiguity in it. He's still working out what to do in his own mind and is trying to figure out if he has a way out other than in effect deserting the U.S. army and becoming a Jihad warrior. Ultimately, he concluded that he could not be a proper Muslim without killing American soldiers. Obviously, other Muslims could reach different conclusions but Hassan strongly grounds himself in Islamic texts.

In a sense, Hassan's lecture was a cry for help: Can anyone show me another way out? Can anyone refute my interpretation of Islam? One Muslim in the audience reportedly tried to do so. But unless these issues are openly discussed and debated--rather than swept under the rug--more people will die.

In fact, I’d recommend that teachers use this lecture in teaching classes on both Islam and Islamist politics.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/11/10/GA2009111000920.html

http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/

STOP COPENHAGEN CLIMATE TREATY in DECEMBER -- WILL SELL OUT U.S. SOVEREIGNTY -- OBAMA HATES THE U.S. AND WANTS TO SELL US OUT

If you aren't hearing about this or keeping up with it, pay attention. Obama is poised to sign this treaty that is supposedly to protect the planet, but what it is really designed to do is strip wealthy nations of their sovereignty -- and that means us of course. This treaty has a provision to punish nations that are supposedly causing the climate problem -- that's us they say -- that will take American money and put it in the hands of Third World countries. Our Constitution PUTS INTERNATIONAL TREATIES OVER U.S. SOVEREIGNTY -- it's written into our own law, so if he signs this treaty he will be signing away our sovereignty to a world government.

Scott Johnson discusses this upcoming attack on our nation in last Sunday's talks. Here's the PDF file that covers all the same material that's in the talks.

Near the beginning of PART THREE of Johnson's talk from last Sunday he airs statements by Obama that show his true IDENTIFICATION WITH ISLAM and his hatred of America, shown among other things by his disgusting attribution of Western achievements to ISLAM that are ALL IN FACT DUE TO CHRISTIANITY. He's taking his clips from this You Tube video (Listening to this gives me such a stomach ache I can hardly stand it).

Show us the bones, Mr. Dawkins, show us the evidence, show us the science. We can do without the fairy tales.

Poor Richard Dawkins, poor Wendy Wright. She keeps saying there is no evidence for evolution or specifically for the supposed transitional forms between different species, and he keeps saying there is. I've barely begun watching this discussion between the lady from Concerned Women for America and Dawkins the biologist, but I want to comment before I watch further.

He keeps saying there IS evidence, go to the museum and see Australopithecus, homo habilis, homo erectus, that these represent a graded series of transitions to modern homo sapiens from something more ape-like (it's supposed to be the ancestor of both apes and man but it always looks particularly ape-like you know), and she's not saying clearly enough for Dawkins to get it why these are not evidence. At least so far - to the middle of Part 2 at this point.

She DOES say "show me the bones" and that is the beginning of our objections, but she doesn't get to explain what she means. What you see in museums and book illustrations are artists' conceptions of these supposed transitional creatures, not the actual facts, not the actual evidence. We are given only a fantasy idea of some creature that may or may not have existed for all we know, imaginatively constructed from only a few bones, sometimes ridiculously few bones. We are not given the actual evidence, the actual bones, which are hardly ever -- in fact more likely never -- entire skeletons, we are not given the reasoning that links a particular body part to another body part, or if by searching for it we can find such a description it often seems glibly and even sometimes romantically (in the literary sense) described rather than rigorously thought through.

Sometimes a skull is found sort of near to but not close enough to be unequivocally related to a particular bone or collection of bones and the insistence that they belong together is not all that convincing from the actual facts. We want the real evidence. We want to be able to think it through ourselves, but they give us only THEIR conclusions and withhold the evidence. We want to see some examples of ape bones versus human bones, and a good range of them since we know there are big differences between individuals, so we can make comparisons ourselves. We want to know exactly how many actual specimens of any supposed "hominoid" type are in existence and how complete they are and how it is known all the parts belong to each other in a particular case. We want to be told exactly where each piece of a specimen was found. We want to know exactly how they were all dated -- was it by the particular stratum they were found in? And how was that stratum identified and dated? Were actual tests done or was the date inferred from other clues and may we please know what facts validate those clues if so? And we'd like to see this all laid out in good English and not in shorthand or scientistic jargon in minuscule old fashioned typeface.

We know archaeologists are scrupulously careful to mark each artifact and fragment as to where it was found at the site as mapped on a grid, and it is all carefully photographed as well. Perhaps this is unfair, but it's easy to get the impression that evolutionists, on the other hand, are rather sloppy with their evidence, preferring to construct their finds from imaginative rhapsodizing rather than actual science, and that they couldn't produce a rigorously kept log of any of the evidence at any site where a specimen was found. If such logs do exist, publish them so we can all mull them over.

Then there are the artists' renditions of the supposed pre-homo sapiens creature. I often wonder: Have the scientists ever seriously considered the huge range of skull shapes and sizes and body types and sizes among LIVING HUMAN BEINGS? They insist that such and such a skull shape is a precursor or a transitional type as if there were a fixed modern type it is precursor TO, though it seems to me I've seen all those supposed precursor types walking around some city in the 21st century, working on a construction crew or reading the Wall Street Journal (or Darwin's Origin of Species) over a latte in a cafe. OR I've seen it in a cage at the zoo: That is, either it's an ape or it's a human being, there's nothing in between.

Also, do the scientists or the artists have the expertise, or work with those who do, in reconstructing the fleshy contours of a face over a skull? It's an exacting science, but I get the impression from the usual evolutionist illustrations that some pretty rough and exaggerated guesswork often suffices for them. TRULY SCIENTIFIC illustrations scrupulously indicate the actual evidence as distinguished from the artistic rendering. It's a mark of the LACK of scientific rigor that what we get from the evolutionists are completed artistic fantasies without a clue to how much of it has any real factual basis.

I'm sure Dawkins is genuinely convinced that those artists' renditions in the museums ARE evidence, ARE science. That's why he just can't get what Ms. Wright is trying to say about them and is so offended that a nonscientist would doubt the work of scientists. He needs to seriously rethink that belief.

I hope Wendy Wright gets into all this with more specificity but I'm going to post this at this point and come back to it later.

Assuming this discussion remains on the topic of evolution I'm moving any further posts on it to my Fantasy of Evolution blog. [Later: Dawkins' latest book on evolution promises to supply the evidence I'm asking for here, but in fact it fails to deliver on that promise, and at Fantasy of Evolution I posted a review of the book from Amazon that discusses this problem.]

Summary of Flat-Out Wrong (as opposed to Straw Man) Arguments made by Christopher Hitchens

1. This idea that religion was invented to explain the physical facts of life on this planet that we now understand by science is just a lot of hot air. I just heard him say this for the umpteenth time in that flat dogmatic way he has of pronouncing such things he can't possibly know but can only conjure out of thin air, how they didn't know earthquakes were caused by the cooling crust of the earth, that diseases were caused by germs and so on, so they made up the actions of gods to explain them.

But, Mr. Hitchens, we all know those things now and even knowing those things now some of us STILL come to believe in God AFTER knowing those things and I for one have no trouble at all reconciling the scientific explanations with God's control over all of it (I mean the TRUE scientific explanations of course, NOT evolutionism which is bogus). This connection is in fact a very exciting discovery to make after living 45 years as I did under the Scientific Explanation for Absolutely Everything. There is a magnificent and mysterious interaction between the goings-on in the material world and the goings-on in the spiritual world.

Prescientific man had enough sense to intuit this connection but unfortunately he too often put his trust in the demon gods instead of the one true God. Still, the demons may have some power over some physical events too, allowed by the one true God of course. This reminds me of the Lewis and Clark expedition which witnessed an Indian buffalo dance during their first hard winter, and sure enough the buffalo showed up a few days later although there was no rational reason to expect them to. God's mercy I assume. The Indians and the white men took down quite a few of them, the Indians taking by far the most as I recall, and the buffalo fed them all that winter, both tribes.

All the noise and hocus pocus in the buffalo dance is probably irrelevant to the result, though there are no doubt some demonic influences in all that, but the overall effect may be like an intense prayer to the Great Spirit that God hears in His mercy. The Indians had learned to trust in such appeals to the spiritual world -- from the empirical evidence that they got results! As for science, what explanation can science give for the buffalo showing up in a territory they'd left earlier in the season to roam elsewhere, arriving within a few days after the buffalo dance? Many natural explanations might be reasonably enough guessed at, even correctly, but none would be sufficient.

Normally no natural laws are violated in the spiritual-material interaction at all, things just sort of work out one way or another according to the spiritual forces at work -- there are so many possible scenarios that could occur in the natural scheme of things the actual one that does occur startles nobody out of their scientific assumptions. Those who have prayed for it will recognize in the event answer to that prayer though the natural mentality will remain unconvinced. But miracles are also possible, though they occur only very rarely, meaning events that defy all natural explanations.

HOWEVER, this is not likely THE REASON people believed in God or gods in the early days, or at any time.

2.

Post under construction.

Musings on the Catholic confusion in this atheist debate

Still working on the previous post, but wanted to get this in here somewhere. Dinesh D'Souza is a Catholic, and although he's a very bright and knowledgeable guy who has come up with some of the best arguments in this debate with atheism, in the course of it he's constrained to defend Catholicism, including diminishing the crime of the Inquisition.

In Part Five of a debate with Hitchens {earlier than the one previously discussed here) [1:22 - 3:28] Hitchens specifically accuses Catholicism of fascist politics, naming Mussolini, Salazar, Franco, Father Tiso and another name I couldn't get. Hitler hated Christianity but his nominal Catholicism shouldn't be ignored in this tally. I think in Hitchens' very tallying of the Catholic leaders who pursued the fascist cause there is possibly a revelation of the antichrist spirit of the Roman church that I hadn't been aware of before. I was aware that priests had conspired to help Nazis escape from Germany after the war, among other things (Dave Hunt's books describe much in this direction that I've forgotten), but I'd never put it together before with the essential antichrist nature of the Roman church. Definitely something I want to think about more.

Dinesh simply accuses Hitchens of taking the focus off the secular totalitarians, but there really is something startling about the degree of Catholic involvement that Hitchens has just laid out that needs to be acknowledged -- and not merely acknowledged -- it's a sign of the apostate anti-Christian nature of the Roman Church and we should probably be looking more in that direction as the end times continue to unfold. Remember, the Catholic Church has embraced evolutionism and regards Creationists as moronic fundamentalists, and that's just a small part of the worldly system it's embraced in its ambition to global power.

And of course because he IS a Catholic, poor Dinesh can't keep his focus clear on the elements of this debate and that's sad, but what's sadder is that he really does not know Christ, really is not saved, has only an intellectual grasp of the Christian revelation. By part 9 of this series D'Souza is saying he has faith because he does not know, pretty much demonstrating that he doesn't really have true faith as a born-again believer understands it, and this unfortunately contributes to the confusion that gives credibility to Hitchens' position. Faith IS the evidence of things unseen, and if we have true faith we DO know the things we have faith in. We KNOW the things faith shows us. Dinesh is affirming a leap-in-the-dark definition of faith because all he really has is mental assent, and that's unfortunately the case for the vast majority of Catholics, and really probably for all, as Catholicism cannot save. If there are true Christians in that church, the Lord says "Come out of her, My people."

Dinesh also wrongly equated Judaism with the Old Testament and described it as a religion only for the tribe, as if it had just about nothing to do with Christianity. He did this in agreement with something Hitchens said, about how Christianity is a rip-off of Judaism, a plagiarism. Thanks, Dinesh, for not correcting that misapprehension. But I guess he's stuck in a Catholic misapprehension. And it's interesting that it sounds a lot like what Hitler thought of the Old Testament -- evil religion, religion of the Jews. Does Dinesh have no sense at all of the seamless whole of the Bible, the fulfillment of the Old in the New, the continuity from Eden to Revelation? Sounds like he hasn't a clue. Judaism is not Old Testament religion, Judaism is Talmudic religion. the man-made tradition of the Pharisees that Jesus kept condemning that had supplanted the revelation of God. The Old Testament on the other hand is testimony to the one true God and the Jews were supposed to carry this testimony to all mankind. That's what Jesus ended up doing in their stead.

Hitchens and other atheists are rightly confused about what Christianity really teaches when they hear stuff like this, when they have to regard Catholicism as just as much Christianity as any other sect, having no ground for making a distinction, and not caring to make one anyway of course, happy to tar us all with the sins of our worst enemies, the Roman Church, Islam -- even their sins against us.

In part 6 of that debate a questioner says he thinks both Christians and atheists alike agree that morality evolved anthropologically. [around 8:50] Oh wow, has it gone that far that he thinks he can speak for all Christians about that? It's not just Catholics but great numbers of those who regard themselves as evangelicals who have been infected by evolutionism.

Summary of Hitchens' Straw Man arguments

Just a catchall for some of Hitchens' straw man arguments.

1. Straw man argument that we claim all morality is derived from religion or the supernatural.

No, we don't. We affirm that all humanity possesses a conscience. Some DO argue that this fact that we possess a conscience is evidence for the existence of God.

2. He claims we HAVE to believe that for 98,000 years out of the 100,000 evolutionists say humanity has been around, that God did not intervene in painful, miserable, helpless and fearful human lives, deciding to intervene only 2000 years ago.

First, God started intervening, according to the Bible, right after the Fall, right after Adam and Eve sinned, with the promise to send a Savior and with a plan to prepare humanity for that Savior, and providing animal sacrifice to atone for sin until the True Sacrifice would come. And there was never a time that He did not hear prayer and intervene on behalf of people who sought Him. So we do NOT believe that God only started intervening with the sacrifice of Christ.

Second, there are way too many theist evolutionists who accept those absurd numbers for the duration of the existence of humanity although there's no way to reconcile them with anything in Genesis, but if we accept them for the sake of argument along with the teaching of Genesis, and put Adam and Eve at the near end of that 100,000 years, say about 94,000 years after the supposed first human being (which allows for the 6000 years that we can count in the Bible since their creation), you have to reckon with the Biblical teaching that sin, suffering and death did not enter the world until their Fall. That means that ALL living things that preceded them did not die but were still living at the time they came into the world, including all the human race evolutionists believe had been here all that time. There would have been NO DEATH, NO SUFFERING in all that time for God to have been indifferent TO. There would also have been no evolution, as that assumes death. There would have been no fear as the physical universe would be perfectly accommodating to life, with an abundant food supply for animal and human both, no hostile animals, no pain in childbirth, no scary earthquakes etc (all destructive processes started at the Fall and increased drastically with the Flood) and all would have been constantly in loving communication with God, and so on.

There is no point in considering the possibility that Adam and Eve came at the beginning of those 100,000 years, because the whole Biblical testimony since their creation would be utterly destroyed. Hitchens says we HAVE TO believe his scenario. No, we do not.

Dinesh D'Souza's answer to this is a good one: those long ages of human suffering and helplessness that evolutionists believe preceded historical time are more of a problem for those of Hitchens' persuasion than for us. They are hard to account for if we assume that humanity was the same then as now, endowed with the same brain power and inventive abilities, yet didn't begin to do anything to improve their condition for some 94,000 years. I consider this to be a great argument against the whole idea of that supposedly long blank preamble to history.

3. Hitchens argues from that and other examples that the universe is a pretty unfriendly place for human beings. "Some plan" he says.

This needs to be answered in a way that I haven't seen it answered. It was MENTIONED on the Book Expo panel but not pursued. Death and disease and suffering in the universe are NOT part of God's original plan, but the result of the Fall. ALL suffering and death entered with the Fall, are the result of Adam and Eve's original sin, which effected a catastrophic break between humanity and God. We ourselves are now subject to suffering and death, AND we live in a ruined and battered universe as a result of the Fall, that nevertheless, by God's mercy, retains enough of the qualities of the original Creation to sustain us. (In listening to these debates it began to occur to me to wonder if possibly the whole universe outside our planet was also originally more friendly to human life, just as Earth was. Perhaps all the other planets in our solar system were once habitable. Wild idea of course.)

4. Straw man idea of what faith is, that it is supported by no evidence whatsoever.

Witness evidence. Many witnesses to amazing supernatural events. Which he dismisses as deluded, and those who believe the witnesses as even more deluded, and the written accounts of which he claims are hopelessly corrupted. Sometimes I don't even want to bother defending myself against such self-serving ignorance, just hand him the scimitar, bow my head and say Have at it. An honest sensibility ought to be able to see that the witnesses are honest and rational people, and there's a ton of evidence that the scriptures are reliable.

5. Straw man argument that religion says God created people sick and then orders them to be well.

This is a more direct version of the straw man argument about the 100,000 years of God's refusal to intervene for unhappy humanity. God did not create people sick -- that happened when sin entered. And I have no idea where this ordering them to be well comes from. He wouldn't be saying that sin is sickness, would he, and the ordering to be well then the commandments against sin? Another version of this is his statement that we have some innate inbuilt design flaws. Nope, we were made perfect and sin brought in all the deformities.

But this does get me pursuing some thoughts about this ordering us to be well. God knew very well we couldn't obey the commandments as perfectly as the Law demands, especially not their inner meaning which is only revealed in the New Testament. When humanity fell we lost the spiritual sense necessary to perfect obedience. The New Testament says then that God gave the Law as a tutor to bring us to Christ, teaching us just HOW unable to obey the Law we are, so that we will see our need of being saved. Of course Christopher Hitchens thinks he's doing just fine, thank you very much. Well, the rest of us who know better are grateful for God's mercy.

6. Related to the accusation that we think morality is the result of religion is Hitchens' claim that we think the Israelites had no sense of the wrongness of rape, murder and theft and so on until God gave the Law at Mount Sinai.

This is sheer silliness. We know all humanity was given a conscience. But conscience isn't a fixed thing and different people have more or less sensitivity to it in our fallen condition. Writing down the law was part of the covenant God was making with His people. According to something I read, the giving of the Law was a declaration that God was King of the Israelites, as apparently in that part of the world at that time kings did declare a law for their people as part of their rule over them, as I recall was the case with Hammurabi's law for instance. Such a written law was binding in a way the conscience-directed morality was not, and more strict. Then when we get to the New Testament we are told that the Law was given that the people might learn their inability to obey it in its perfection, as the Law is of an order of perfection and holiness fallen man can't ever hope to attain. This would lead those with a sense of the consequences for failure to obey the inexorable demanding perfect Law to a desire for the mercy offered in a Savior who would take the consequences upon Himself in our stead. Hitchens is contemptuous of this merciful offer, obviously having NO idea just what consequences are entailed by failure to obey the Law, consequences we all rightly deserve -- and if he did have some idea he'd just shake his fist at them anyway.

7. He says the substitutionary atonement of Christ is immoral.

Does he think he can take the punishment for his own sins which deserve an eternity of Hell? He forgets that while he reckons everything in the prosaic terms of the visible natural world, the Bible presents an unseen supernatural world in which our sins have far greater consequences than he can imagine. He can of course deny that this other world exists, but he should at least humbly recognize that in the context of this other world we believe in, the substitutionary atonement by God the Son Himself incarnate is an act of inestimable mercy, and cease from upbraiding us with his own narrow views.

8. Both Dinesh D'Souza and Marvin Olasky argued that Christianity brought a higher order of morality into this world with objective historical consequences that have been documented. Hitchens has never confronted this argument, reducing it to the false claim that Christians think morality is the product of religion or insisting that natural man has exactly the same moral sense. This is simply false but he hasn't yet grasped what is being said.

Christianity DID bring a higher order of morality into the world. Jesus Christ DID inspire respect for women that never existed in ANY culture prior to His coming. Jesus Christ DID inspire a level of compassion for all humankind that never existed in ANY culture prior to His coming. This included the very first inklings that slavery is wrong, that took time to work through, but it never existed in ANY culture prior to His coming and no other culture took even the first steps to abolish it. Dinesh pointed out that only the Christian West rushes to help the victims of a tsunami across the world. Actually now other societies are imitating our lead, but it's a Christianity-based attitude that prompts such actions and it never existed in ANY culture prior to the coming of Christ. Christians were moved to take in and care for the babies put out to die in pagan cultures, and also the sick and helpless elderly who were also abandoned to die. Now we are returning to the pagan practices of killing the unborn and suggesting that we should also kill the useless elderly and others who are helplessly dependent on our mercy. Eventually it was the Christians who established orphanages and hospitals on the compassionate principles of Christ, which have become huge finance-driven institutions in our day that are probably going to end up throwing out the weak and sick and elderly again in a return to pagan values -- and to the evolutionistic values of supporting the strong and abandoning the weak I might also add. A man from Tonga got up in one of the debates to say he was grateful that Christianity had turned his people from cannibalism. And much much more along these lines should be specifically attributed to Christian influence in this world.

These are all specifically Christian contributions to the world that Hitchens falsely attributes to normal human conscience. No, taking care of strangers was NEVER practiced in any culture before Christianity, and women were NEVER respected in any culture before Christianity, and slavery was practiced EVERYWHERE until Christianity. Christianity has so spread itself through the cultures of the West that outright atheists get righteously indignant when such Christian standards are violated, falsely thinking it's just normal built-in EVOLVED morality that feels that way.

D'Souza and Olasky are right about the source of this degree of concern for our fellow man, Hitchens is wrong.

9.