Quiz Time!!! - Christmas

(via Skeptic Money)

   It's Christmas time again! That means time for The Ultimate Christmas Quiz! If you'd like to participate, please do so honestly - no Wikipedia, no bibles, no cheating off my answers, etc, and leave your answers in the comments section below. Quiz below the fold with my answers here:

Here is the quiz!  Don’t forget to share it with your christian friends and see if they can score as high as you!

1. What year was Jesus born?

 

a. We don’t know for sure, since the gospels disagree irreconcilably.

b. We don’t know for sure, but the gospels agree it was during the reign of Herod the Great (died around 4 B.C.).

c. We don’t know for sure, but the gospels agree it was when Quirinius was governor of Syria (6 A.D.).

d. We don’t know for sure, but the gospels agree it was the year the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars.

e. D’uh! The year zero, of course.

 

 

2. According to the Gospels, what day was Jesus born?

 

a. Dec 25th.

b. Dec 24th.

c. No date is given in any gospel.

d. The day of the Winter Solstice.

e. The third night of Hanukkah.

 

           

3. What pagan holiday did later Christians “borrow” to celebrate Jesus’ birthday?

 

a. The Greek Brumalia festival

b. The Roman feast of Saturnalia

c. Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (“the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun”)

d. All of the above

e. None of the above

 

 

4. So what day was Jesus really born? 

 

a. Jan 6

b. Feb 2 (Groundhog Day)

c. March 25

d. We can’t be certain.

e. Sometime during Sukkoth, the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles

 

 

5. According to Mark (the oldest gospel) where was Jesus born?

 

a. He doesn’t say.

b. By the chimney, with care.

c. In his parent’s house in Nazareth.

d. A manger in Bethlehem.

e. A cave in Bethlehem.

 

6. According to Luke, who were the Wise Men?

 

         a. A group of 2 – 12 Zoroastrian astrologers from Persia.

         b. Three kings of orient bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh from afar.

         c. There were no Wise Men.

         d. Cupid, Donder and Blitzen.

         e. Melchior of Persia, Caspar (or Gaspar) of India, and Balthazar of Arabia.

 

7. According to Matthew, who showed up on the night of Jesus’ birth?

 

a. Shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night

b. An angel and a multitude of the heavenly host

c. The prophet Simeon and the prophetess Anna

d. Ten lords a-leaping

e. No one.

 

 

8. What happened after Jesus’ birth?

 

a. Impossible to say for sure – two of the gospels tell completely contradictory stories, and the other two say nothing.

b.  Good tidings were brought for him and his kin; and then figgy pudding, for they would not go until they get some.

c. Scary stuff: An angel warns Joseph via a dream to flee their home in Bethlehem for Egypt. Herod kills all the baby boys in the region. After Herod’s death, they return to Judea but are afraid of Herod’s son, so they move to Nazareth in Galilee instead (evidently, Matthew forgot that Galilee was ruled by Herod’s other son!).

d. Happy stuff: The shepherds spread the good news to all, baby Jesus is circumcised, and after the obligatory 40 days for ritual purity, brought to the temple in Jerusalem where prophets hail him as the Christ. They return home to Nazareth and go back to Jerusalem every year for Passover until Jesus is twelve.

e. We aren’t told, the gospels immediately cut to his adulthood.

 

9. Which of these traditional Christmas elements were originally pagan?

 

      a. Christmas Trees

         b. Yule Logs

         c. The Birth of the Savior

         d. Boughs of Holly and Sprigs of Mistletoe

         e. All of the above

 

10. Where does the word “Yuletide” come from?

        

a. It’s an abbreviation of the Latin ultimus ides, “last holiday of the year.”

b. From Germanic/Old Norse “Jul-time” or “Jól-time” (the midwinter fest).

c. Named after Julius Caesar, who invented Sanctus Clausius, the Roman Santa Claus.

d. Named in honor of Hywll Tydd, ancient Welsh god of reindeer and socks.

e. Nordic priests copied the name from the Christian Christmastide.

 

 

11. Who started the War on Christmas?

        

a. True American Christian Fundamentalists and the Founding Fathers

b. Richard Dawkins

c. Godless atheists, the liberal media, gays and lesbians, activist judges, science teachers, lawyers, the ACLU, democrats and everyone else we hate.

d. The Jews

e. Al Qaida

 

 

12. Our familiar modern American “Santa Claus” is based on all these earlier figures, EXCEPT for:

 

 a. The English Father Christmas, Charles Dickens’ characters and the Victorian cartoons of Thomas Nast.

b. The Dutch Santa, Sinterklaas or Goedheiligman

c. A de-horned, sanitized, anagram of Satan.

d. Mighty Norse thunder god Thor’s father, Odin

e. St. Nikolaos, 4th-century Greek bishop and patron saint of children.

        

Bonus Question! (re-gifted from the Ultimate Easter Quiz)

 

13. Who wrote these gospels, anyway?

a. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – I mean, come on, it says so right there.

b. Actually, none of the gospels even claim to be written by eyewitnesses -all were originally anonymous and written at least a generation later.

c. Well, it’s more like the end of first century for Mark and sometime in the early to mid 2nd century for the others, if you must know.

d. Hold on – Not only that, but Matthew and Luke just reworked Mark gospel, adding their own material and tweaking Mark’s text to better fit what they thought it should say.
e. Get this – if all that weren’t enough, all the Gospels have been edited and added to by later editors, and for the first 200 – 300 years, we have no way to determine how faithfully the originals were preserved.

 

   If you want to answer these, now is the time to go to the comments section and do so.

UPDATE: 13. e. was missing from the original post, but was listed in the answers post. It has been added to this post as of Nov 26, 2011.

Radical!!! - Part 4: System Justification Theory

This is looking to become a 5-part series. Links will be added as the posts become available. Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 5

   Last Thursday, I learned from a blog about System Justification Theory (SJT for short). In part 1 of this series, before I had even heard of SJT, I suggested that many people are content with the status quo.
EDIT: By the way, I recommend checking out the entire series on this (currently 6 parts - don't know if there will be more); unfortunately, the author is not linking to the new posts from the original, so it'll take some work finding them.

Let's face it, most people will show content with the status quo. The status quo brings with it predictability. When things stay the same, you know tomorrow (that's a metaphor for the future, not the literal tomorrow) will be pretty much the same as today. You know how to prepare for tomorrow, because you've already done so numerous times already. Change, however, can be challenging. When you don't know what tomorrow will bring, how do you prepare for tomorrow?

SJT agrees with this premise. According to Wikipedia:

System justification theory (SJT) is a scientific theory within social psychology that proposes people have a motivation to defend and bolster the status quo, that is, to see it as good, legitimate, and desirable.

   Essentially the theory states that people have three interests for which they desire to hold favorable views: self, group, and system. More importantly, and more relevant to this topic, the theory addresses how people behave when their favorable views are threatened. (A threat is basically anything that suggests that the person's favorable view is incorrect.) According to the theory, people reach for stereotypes to help keep their views favorable. Additionally, people in the privileged group are likely to believe negative stereotypes of the underprivileged groups while the underprivileged groups are likely to believe positive stereotypes of the privileged group.

   In regards to OWS and more specifically to the differences between rich and poor, the rich will tend to believe stereotypes like "The poor are poor because they are lazy" while the poor will tend to believe stereotypes like "Rich people earned their money because they are smart and/or hard workers." Note that the poor won't necessarily buy into the stereotype that they are lazy. This is because they still desire to have a favorable view of themselves. So they instead buy into a positive stereotype about rich people. Or, interestingly, they will throw their group under the bus. (My guess is that out of the three views, the "group" view is actually the least important.) This can be seen on the "We are the 53%" tumblr, where people, many of whom are probably part of the 47% (in reference to those who did not pay federal income taxes in recent years) at some point of their lives, are posting messages suggesting that the Occupiers should STFU (shut the fuck up). They seem to be doing two things: 1. Playing on the stereotype of poor people being lazy by stating that they are hard workers and 2. Implying that they do not consider themselves poor (some say they make "good money"). Or, maybe they consider themselves part of the responsible poor, so they are actually dividing the group, throwing who they consider to be the rotten apples of the bunch under the bus, so they can keep their overall favorable view of the group? (As this theory is relatively new to me, I still have kinks in my understanding to work out.)

   This idea of throwing the group under the bus is important to understanding part 3 of this series. There, I backed up criticism of a woman with a "Not..." sign. This woman is in some bizarre state where she is distancing herself from the groups advocating for change, yet is out advocating for change. A possible explanation can be found in some of the discussion about this woman on various blogs. There is the suggestion that as soon as this woman and likewise the middle class get what they want, they'll abandon the movement and leave the hippies, freaks, the poor, etc. to fight for themselves. Unfortunately, with how this woman has distanced herself from those groups, that is probably a correct assumption.

   In regards to part 1 (and even part 2) of the series, the theory explains the misuse of the word "radical." Those who use the word in a demeaning way are going to be those who don't want change and this is their way to exclude those advocating for change from the group.

   In light of this, I got one thing slightly wrong in part 1. There I suggested that in addition to avoiding change, people might use the word in a demeaning way to make themselves feel superior. I treated these ways to use the word as though they could be independent of each other. In other words, one person may use the word in a demeaning way to justify the system and to avoid getting involved in advocating for change, but not necessarily to make themselves feel superior. Or, they could use the word to feel superior, without really caring if things change or not. But, based on my understanding of SJT, they are actually independent. People will most likely use the word in a demeaning way to both discourage change and make themselves feel superior (or rather to split the group).

   As discouraging as it is to be outcast from the group, if you are pushing for change, stay strong. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of the motivations behind the name-calling. Realize that you are actually the courageous and/or altruistic one, while they are either the timid ones too afraid to rock the boat (when coming from the underprivileged group) or they are selfish (when coming from the privileged group).

Radical!!! - Part 3: OWS and more on shooting yourself in the foot.

This is looking to become a 5-part series. Links will be added as the posts become available. Part 1  Part 2  Part 4  Part 5

   When I first started drafting thoughts for this series in my mind back in September, I was thinking of it primarily in terms of atheism, though the ideas can be applied generally. Now we have the Occupy Wall Street movement and this series gained a greater importance. In part 1, I alluded to this movement in my supplementary material. Of particular interest is the picture of the woman below:

   While this woman is supporting the OWS movement, her sign is problematic. Most people probably don't see the problem (commentary reacting to the original blog post linked above support this idea). Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds does a good job breaking down each point of the sign. I suggest you go read that piece, but I'll go ahead and summarize here: The woman is addressing groups that have been negatively stereotyped by those who do not want to succeed, so she is distancing herself from those groups when she should be embracing them, effectively empowering the stereotypes of those trying to destroy the movement. Just for an example, take Zvan's point of being a hippie:

It is the hippies who have kept the spirit of protest alive over these last few decades as everyone else has been calling participatory democracy “un-American.” Without the hippies, no one would have much idea how to put these protests together.

   Some of those defending the woman have pointed out that she could be making factual statements. Sure. But does she need to announce this to the world? I don't consider myself a hippie, for example. I have discussed before that I think they abuse the appeal to nature fallacy, thinking that anything natural is automatically better than anything engineered (food and medicine, particularly), but I am a fan and support that "spirit of protest," even if I might happen to disagree with what they are protesting. When it comes to OWS, I do not disagree with the hippies, so why should I distance myself from them on this issue? I shouldn't, and in fact I am with the hippies! After all, protests work better the more people you have.

If you don’t understand that part of a protest is the threat of numbers, perhaps you should be listening to the old-timers more. Without a mob, these protests would have no power.

   Long point short, don't be the woman in the picture if you support change. This includes supporting the groups that advocate for change, even if you don't agree with them on every issue. This is what I was upset about in my first post about the new girlfriend of a friend. When she was saying things like "I'm an independent." or "There are extremists on both sides" she was being that woman in the picture. Good luck advocating for change after you've isolated yourself from all the groups that are. Or, as I suggested in part 1, maybe that's the point? I'll cover this more in part 4.

Radical!!! - Part 2: Radical Atheism

This is looking to become a 5-part series. Links will be added as the posts become available. Part 1  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5

   In part 1, I discussed how radicals automatically get a bad name, whether or not they deserve it. In another recent post, I discussed how atheism cannot be a religion. I am here now to combine these two ideas.

   The first point that needs to be made is that there is a second definition of the word "radical" that I did not cover before. That definition is "Arising from or going to a root or source; basic." Since atheism is simply a lack of belief in a god or gods and there are no governing codes, this definition cannot be applied to the word "atheism". Nor can the other definition I used in Part 1 be applied. How does one favor fundamental changes in something that is merely a lack of belief?

   Therefore, the term "radical atheist" does not make sense in terms of atheism. I have thus been telling people that a radical atheist cannot exist. However, I must correct myself. I should be pointing out that a radical atheist does not exist in the way that they imply - that the person is radical in their atheism. On the other hand, atheist is a term that describes a person, and so can the word radical. You then can have a person who is both a radical and lacks a belief in gods. You could call this person a "radical atheist."

   If the problem doesn't make sense yet, I'll try to explain it another way. Essentially, the issue is that a term used to describe a type of person following the word "radical" does not have to be entirely dependent, making it near impossible to distinguish when it is fully dependent and when it is not. For example, you can have people who are radical about their Christianity since it does have a root, practices, etc. In this case, Christianity would be fully dependent on the word "radical." (Or do I have that backward? Is the word "radical" fully dependent on Christianity? Hopefully you get the point, though.) You can also have a person who is radical about something because of their Christian influences, but not necessarily radical when it comes to Christianity; this is a big deal in politics today (though many of those people also want to see the moderation of Christianity stopped and reversed, thus they are radical about multiple things). In this case, the words are not fully independent nor fully dependent. But both of these people could be called "radical Christians". The term is ambiguous.

   It is that ambiguity that is my issue. People really need to clarify what they mean, and using short descriptions often fails to do that. If a person is a political radical influenced by their Christianity, then say that. Don't just say they are a "radical Christian." If you think I am a political radical influenced by my lack of belief in gods (my atheism), then say that. I'll mostly agree to that one. (The only objection I would raise is that there are other influences as well, so to try to pin my radical influences to one specific thing is incorrect.) It's when you get lazy and just say, "You're a radical atheist" that I get upset, because I don't know what the fuck you mean. Are you using the terms fully dependent on each other? (Which is not correct, as noted above.) Are you using them to be partially dependent? Then what is the rest of the dependency? I don't know how to respond to that! Other than, "That's a piss poor term to use." And this post is my long way of saying just that.

Corrections - "You're Interpreting It Wrong!"

   This is actually more of an "Well, that's interesting" post than a correction, but in a recent post, I said:

[T]he Bible does say something about he who is without sin may cast the first stone along with everyone is a sinner, resulting in no one being able to cast stones.

Turns out that is likely a later addition to the Bible.

[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]

It's not a correction, really, since I said it's in the Bible. There is some significance, though, as this more positive verse in the Bible that I used to demonstrate that the Bible does have verses against bigotry looks to have been added later. Therefore, if you are a fundamentalist, it stands to reason that you can ignore this part since it isn't part of the foundation. (But please, by all means, follow it anyway!)

Sorry? - Addendum

   This video just came out yesterday. In it, Matt Dillahunty pretty much hits the same topic as my post titled "Sorry?" Not much to add other than read that post and watch the video.

What is an "athiest"? - Redux!

I have made an update to this post since I originally released it Saturday. I have changed the release date so that it appears nearer the top of my blog.

   While I think my original post on this topic was adequate for discussion, I have decided I should perhaps change it up a bit in a way my software friends can understand. Also, I want to add some other examples of why the atheist/agnostic distinction frustrates me below the line break.

   It's probably been a few months ago now, but one of my coworkers told me that he's not religious, but he's not an atheist either. Guess what he is? He's an agnostic!

   In hindsight, I should have pressed him on the "but I'm not an atheist" remark by asking, "Oh, so you believe in a god or gods?" To which I suspect the answer would have been, "No." To that I could have then asked, "But you're not an atheist?" If the answer is "Yes," then I'd go back to my first question. (See the second part for a further explanation for this.)

   In the original post, I briefly discussed the meaning of the "a-" prefix. There I pointed out that it generally means "without." So, if a theist is a person who has a belief in a god or gods, then an atheist is a person without such a belief. Another way to view the prefix, though, that is easier in software terms is to think of it as meaning "not". Therefore, an atheist is "not a theist". Pretty simple - it's a Boolean!!!

   Perhaps this can better explain to my software friends why the idea of someone being neither a theist nor an atheist, but rather an agnostic, gives me a headache - You're generating a CONSTRAINT ERROR! I have the feeling my coworker bought into the canard that it's an enumerated type (theist, agnostic, atheist), but it's not. You actually have two sets of Booleans (when we include agnostic in the mix). Notice what letter "agnostic" begins with? Yes, it starts with that same "a-" prefix. You can be either a gnostic (someone who believes truth claims are knowable) or you are not.

   As before, the two words deal with two different aspects of truth claims. Gnosticism deals with what we know and theism deals with what we believe. We can then combine the terms to describe ourselves. My software friends should be able to recognize quickly that if we combine two Booleans, we have four possible combinations:

1. Gnostic Theist - A person who believes in a god or gods and thinks they have enough knowledge to make such a claim.
2. Agnostic Theist - A person who believes in a god or gods but acknowledges that they really cannot know for sure.
3. Agnostic Athesit - A person who does not believe in any gods but acknowledges that they really cannot know for sure. (Or, recognizes that they would have to know everything about everything to be able to make a claim that there is no such thing as a god.) I, as well as most atheists, fall in this category.
4. Gnostic Atheist - A person who not only does not believe in any gods, but also believes we can know that there are no gods.

   So, Mr. Agnostic...which are you? Are you a theist or an atheist? You must pick one! (Or maybe your brain is initialized to garbage!?!)

---

   For the second part, I'm going to attempt to demonstrate the "constraint error" problem in non-software terms for the general audiance. For example, ask a person if they believe in Bigfoot. You will likely get one of three answers:

1. Yes.
2. No.
3. I don't know (in other words, agnostic).

Though that last answer is once again giving a yes-or-no question an answer other than yes or no, what you likely won't get with it is a follow-up where the person says, "But I'm not one of those people who doesn't believe in Bigfoot!" So...if you're not one of those people who doesn't believe...that means you do believe? Why didn't you just answer "Yes" then?

   See how that is confusing? Yet that's exactly the type of answer a person gets on the god question. When a person says "But I'm not an atheist" they are saying "But I'm not a person who does not believe in gods." It's a double negative, so that means they believe? Well...no. And that's what drives me crazy. This type of thinking leads in circles because it has no conclusion. As for my coworker, I perhaps should have taken him "dancing" around this circle in hopes that it would help me to expose his flawed reasoning.

---

UPDATE: One important thing I forgot to say originally is that I'm not really bothered so much about the "I don't know" answers. If you honestly have not examined the evidence for a claim, then I can handle an "I don't know" answer. Because a second thing I forgot to say is that there are different levels of certainty with a belief. Even if you are one who does not believe in Bigfoot, you can range from being absolutely confident in that lack of belief all the way to being quite unsure in that lack of belief to the point where you are on the verge of believing. So, when I said earlier that you either believe or you do not believe, that is actually a bit misleading, though still true, and I need to confess to that. The agnostic label generally implies that one is uncertain, and I acknowledge that as acceptable, though saying that you are an uncertain atheist would make more sense. Therefore, it is not so much a person using the agnostic label that bothers me as much as someone adding in that they are not an atheist. Another way to look at it besides the ways I already have is to say, "I'm not sure whether I believe or not, but I do not not believe." Ohhhhh...K.