My annual Easter resurrection post - 2024

It seems like every year around this time, I think a lot about the resurrection of Jesus and resurrection in general. I wonder why.

Anywho, I had several ideas for what I would write about this year, and I've decided to focus specifically on the appearance to the 500 that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:6. Here's what he said:

After that He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

As a Bible-believing Christian who trusts Paul, I believe this event happened. But showing it happened to a person who might be skeptical of Paul or the Bible in general is a different matter. To show it happened, I'd have to make historical arguments without just granting that it's true merely because the Bible says so. There are arguments both for and against this event happening. Here are some of my thoughts on it in no particular order.

1. Paul's letters are the earliest writings in the New Testament. They date closer to the time of Jesus than anything else. 1 Corinthians is widely agreed to have been written around the middle of the 50's CE. This particular passage is also widely agreed to contain oral tradition that dates to within five years of Jesus' death, specifically verses 3-5. I do not think verse 6 is part of the oral tradition for two reasons. First, because Paul doesn't begin the appearance to the five hundred with "that" like he does the rest of the oral tradition. Second, because Paul makes a parenthetical statement about some of the people still being alive and others being dead. Since the appearance to the 500 isn't part of the oral tradition, we can't necessarily date it to within five years of Jesus' death. But we can certainly say that unless Paul made it up on the spot, it predates 1 Corinthians.

2. It seems unlikely that this would be the first time Paul mentioned this appearance to the Corinthians. He begins this section of his letter by saying he wants to remind the Corinthians of the gospel he previously taught them. Then he quotes the oral tradition which ends with the appearance to Cephas and the twelve. Then he cites the rest of the appearances, ending with the appearance to himself. Then he ends the section by saying, "Whether then it was I or they [i.e. the other apostles], so we preach and so you believed" (verse 11). So I get the impression that even though some of these appearances were not part of the oral tradition he quotes at the beginning, they are all part of the reminder of what he preached and what they believed. That means he probably told them about this appearance when he established the church, which would've been in the late 40's probably.

3. Paul says that some of the 500 were still living at the time of his writing 1 Corinthians, but some had fallen asleep (i.e. died). I find this parenthetical comment to be very interesting because it suggests that Paul knew who a lot of these people were. Maybe he even talked to some of them. A lot of apologists think this was Paul's way of saying, "If you don't believe me, you can talk to these people yourselves." The answer skeptics usually give is, "If that were the case, then Paul would've named some of them, but he didn't." I kind of side with the skeptics on that one. Paul isn't inviting anybody to check the claim out by interviewing the witnesses themselves. On the other hand, he is opening himself up to anybody saying, "Really? Well, who are they?" If Paul mentioned this appearance when founding the Corinthian church, it's hard to imagine nobody being curious about who they were, especially if Paul included the comment about some of them still being alive.

4. The parenthetical comment, I think, is the best reason to think this appearance really happened. The fact that we have such an early account of it is the second best reason.

5. One reason many are skeptical that it happened is because it's not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. Mark only narrates the appearance to the women at the tomb. He doesn't narrate any appearances to the disciples. He only has an angel telling the women that Jesus will appear to the disciples in Galilee. Mark ends there. There's a longer ending to Mark that is almost universally agreed to be an addition to Mark that wasn't in the original, so that appearance doesn't count. Matthew, Luke, and John all narrate appearances of Jesus to the women, the apostles, and in Luke's case, some unnamed people beyond the 11 apostles, though he doesn't say how many. You would think that if Jesus had appeared to 500 people at once, it would be significant enough for the gospel authors to have mentioned it. Their silence on the matters is often invoked as evidence against it happening. Surely, the argument goes, if it happened, the authors would've known about it, and if they knew about it, they wouldn't have left it out. This is an argument from silence, but as I've said elsewhere, arguments from silence can be sound arguments as long as there is some expectation that if something were so, it would be evident. So this argument from silence isn't fallacious. However, it can be outweighed by the evidence for the event in combination with a reasonable explanation for why the authors of the gospels and Acts might not have mentioned it. One explanation might be that the gospel writers intentionally focused on the appearances to the original apostles because they are the primary witnesses to the resurrection, and being a witness to the resurrection was a prerequisite to being an apostle (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:1). And as I said before, Luke lets us know that Jesus appeared to others beyond the core apostles, but he doesn't say how many. That leaves it open to being a group appearance of any large size. In the case of Acts, Luke says that shortly after Jesus ascended in front of the apostles outside of Jerusalem, they went back to Jerusalem and had a gathering in which Peter spoke to about 120 people. It's possible, though not certain, that these 120 people were with them when Jesus ascended. You'll have to read Acts 1:1-15 and judge for yourself. It's also possible Jesus appeared to 500 people, and only 120 were still hanging around Jerusalem when Peter gave his speech. Luke just doesn't tell us, but the passage leaves the possibility open.

6. It isn't that crazy to think Jesus might've appeared to 500 people at once even if you don't necessarily think Jesus rose from the dead. After all, Mary appeared to many people at Fatima. I just did a quick google search, and it said 70,000 people saw some solar event, but I couldn't find out how many people claimed to have actually seen Mary. However, I'm sure there were a lot. The group appearances of Jesus are often compared to Marian apparitions or sightings of Elvis. There are some major differences, though, that make me skeptical that they were the same kind of appearance. First, Mary seems to only appear in Catholic contexts, and Catholics don't believe Mary died. She was just assumed into heaven. Nobody seemed to think Mary had risen from the dead as a result of seeing her. I'm not sure whether they even thought she was physical. Second, there have been ten appearances of Mary that the Catholic church officially recognizes as being legitimate, ranging from the 1500's to the 1900's, and no reason to think there won't be more. In Jesus' case, there were a series of appearances that happened over a short period of time, then stopped. Luke says Jesus appeared multiple times over a period of only 40 days. Paul said all the appearances he listed happened before the appearance to him. He said the appearance to him was "untimely," which is probably an indication that it happened much later than everybody else's. It was probably also untimely in the fact that it happened after the ascension. In either case, the appearance to Paul was unusual, and it was the last. While we might be able to dismiss Marian apparitions as group hysteria or something along those lines, that seems an unlikely explanation for the group appearances of Jesus. Otherwise, we should not expect the appearances of Jesus to have been limited to such a short period of time after his death.

7. It's not that hard to imagine that many random people here and there might've claimed to see Jesus even if they didn't. Having seen the risen Jesus would surely give somebody bragging rights, so it would be more of a surprise if nobody made false claims of having seen him. I don't think that is a good explanation of the appearance to the 500 hundred, though, because Paul doesn't just say Jesus appeared to 500 people. He said he appeared to them at one time. Since Paul probably knew at least some of these people, it's likely he heard the story from more than one perspective. I wish he had said more about that. But having heard from probably multiple people, he had to have known whether it was a group appearance or not. It's possible, though I think unlikely, that after hearing a lot of random people all claiming to have seen the risen Jesus that Paul either assumed it happened in one big group, or he just said that to simplify the story. That seems unlikely because he didn't have to say "at one time." He could've just said he appeared to 500 people.

8. Five hundred people is a pretty specific number, too. There are degrees of specificity, of course. 511 is more specific than 500, which is more specific than "more than 500," which is more specific than "a few hundred," which is more specific than "a large crowd." If Paul just heard from a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places that they all saw Jesus, there would be no reason to attach such a specific number to it. I do think five hundred is a round number, though. Paul said, "more than five hundred people." Actually, Paul says, "500 brothers." Some translations say, "brothers and sisters," but "sisters" isn't in the Greek. The translators put it in italics because they think it clarifies Paul's thought. He was talking about people, not just brothers. I suspect he meant brothers, though. Since it's unlikely there would've been 500 brothers all in one place with no women around, the real number of people might have been a thousand or more. There were probably children, too. I'm speculating, of course. It would be interesting to know how Paul came up with 500 brothers. Is that his own estimate after hearing from a lot of people, or did everybody he talk to tell him there were 500 brothers? What if the various people he talked to each gave him a different estimate? Maybe some said, "There looked to be 400 men," and some said, "There were probably a thousand men and women there," and Paul just figured about 500 brothers. Who knows? Paul's use of a specific number, even if a round number, adds credence to the notion that there really was a large group appearance rather than random isolated people claiming to see Jesus. After all, Paul most likely got this information from talking to multiple people, and it seems more likely that the 500 number came from some of these accounts than that he just pulled it out of thin air or made a wild guess.

9. Besides, if there were random people claiming to have seen the risen Jesus just because it gave them bragging rights, then again, there would be no reason for these alleged appearances to have stopped after such a short period of time. Just as in the case of Marion apparitions, you'd expect people to continue claiming to see the risen Jesus for centuries. You might think the ability to claim you saw Jesus would be limited by the fact that he ascended to heaven after 40 days, but if that were the case, then Paul would not have been accepted as an apostle. Anybody who accepted Paul as an apostle had to believe it was possible for Jesus to make an appearance after the ascension, and there would be nothing to stop them from claiming to have seen Jesus themselves. Yet apparently nobody did. It doesn't look like people were just randomly claiming to see the risen Jesus for the sake of status, ego, power, or bragging rights.

Since I believe Jesus appeared to the 500 because of my belief in the authority of the Bible and the apostle Paul, it is hard for me to be objective when looking at the historical evidence apart from my these presuppositions. But to the extent that I am able to be objective, I think the historical reasoning I've explained above is sound and that historically, it's more likely than not that Jesus appeared to a large group of people that one would not be unreasonable in thinking numbered in the hundreds had they been there. I also think the appearance of Jesus was qualitatively different than Marian apparitions or Elvis sightings. Otherwise, it would not have been interpreted as a resurrection appearance by seemingly everybody who was there.

With that said, happy Easter! He is risen! And he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I am very thankful for that.

Here are my posts from previous years:

Easter post from 2023
Easter post from 2022
Easter post from 2021
Easter post from 2020.
A post that's relevant to this one because it talks about the oft-repeated slogan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

That Christ died for our sins

With the exception of Romans, Paul wrote all of his general epistles to churches that he had established in various towns--Corinth, Phillipi, Galatia, Thesalonica, etc. When you read these letters, you have to read them with that in mind. Paul isn't writing these letters to introduce these churches to Christianity. They've already been taught the basics of Christianity. What he is doing is answering questions that have since come up, addressing issues that have come up, or reminding the churches of what they were previously taught. All of these letters are written against a background that his audience is already familiar with.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wants to remind them of the gospel he preached to them when he first organized their church. This is the central message of Christianity. It's the kerygma (i.e. proclaimation) of the gospel in a nutshell. He says:

Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received. . .

That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and
That he was buried, and
That he was was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and
That he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

That first line, "That Christ died for our sins," codifies a mountain of theological content. I want to unpack some, but not all of it, in this post.

First, the term, "Christ," comes from the Greek word, christos, meaning "annointed," or "one who is annointed." It's equivalent to the Hebrew for messiah, and to make a long story short, it's a way of saying that Jesus is the promised king of Israel who was prophecied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other Old Testament prophets to usher in God's kingdom on earth.

Second, "Christ died," is a reference to the crucifixion. Most of us these days do not recognize what a startling claim that is because we have 2000 years of Christian history to get used to the idea. But as Paul said earlier in the same letter, "Christ crucified" was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). It's a stumbling block to Jews because the messiah was the person who was supposed to usher in an era of peace and prosperity in Israel, and to free the Jews from foreign oppression, not to die at the hands of the oppressors in apparent failure. In the case of every other messianic movement in the first century, the death of the messianic candidate ended the movement immediately because it proved that the person wasn't really the messiah. The claim that "The Romans crucified Israel's eschatological king," would have sounded like complete nonense to a Jew who looked forward to the messianic age. "Christ died" would have sounded like a contradiction in terms. That is why it was a stumbling block to Jews. Yet the Christians, many of whom were Jews (and originally, all were Jews), proclaimed this fact right in the core of their message. A lot can be said about that, but I want to go on to the next part.

Third, the mountain of theological content I alluded to earlier is embedded in the phrase, "for our sins." Sin is an offense or wrong committed against another person. In this context, it's a violation of God's standard of moral goodness. Essentially, to sin is to violate the moral law. James put it this way: "Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it sins" (James 4:17). John put it this way: "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). If you know the good you should do, but you don't do it, or if you know the bad you should avoid, but you do it anyway, you have sinned. Sin and immorality are essentially the same thing.

Just as violating the civil law incurs a penalty, violating the moral law also incurs a penalty. Both the Old and New Testaments make reference to a time at the end of the age when God will judge mankind for their sins. It is said that he will pour out his wrath against sin at this time. It is hard to say what will literally happen since the Bible often resorts to metaphor to describe it, but it is sometimes contrasted with eternal life. For example, Daniel and Matthew put it like this:

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. ~ Daniel 12:2

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. ~ Matthew 25:46

Since everybody does sin, we are all subject to the wrath of God. To say that Jesus died for our sins means that the punishment we had coming to us was poured out on him. He is our substitute. Our sins were imputed to him on the cross. He paid the penalty for our sins.

At the same time, Jesus' righteousness is imputed to those of us who have put their trust in him as our savior. When we stand before God on judgment day, we will stand before him clothed in the righteousness of Christ because we cannot stand before God on our own merits. We would be destroyed if we did. It is in this way that Jesus saves his people. The righteousness we have because of what Jesus did on the cross is what opens the door to eternal life for those who believe in him. What it boils down to is that our faith in Christ is counted by God as righteousness. By shedding his blood on the cross, Jesus made peace between us and God. We no longer stand condemned, and we are no longer under the wrath of God because of our sins. We are saved.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me that I could pepper the whole thing with scriptural references and discuss each one, but if I did so, this would end up being a book-long discussion. In fact, volumes have been written on this subject. Christians don't even agree on all the details. There are different theories of atonement--the question of how exactly Jesus' death on the cross accomplished salvation for sinners. I did list some of the scriptural references in my post on Christian universalism if you want to check that out.

This post probably raises the question of why "Christ crucified" isn't a stumbling block to Christians. After all, the messiah has allegedly come, yet the world is still a mess. The age of peace and prosperity hasn't come. How can Jesus be the messiah if he was killed by the very people the messiah should have prevailed against--Israel's occupiers, the Romans?

While the Old Testament tells us that the coming of the messiah would be accompanied by the fulfillment of all the lofty promises God made to Israel, Jesus' death on the cross explains how it would happen. As I explained in "Judaism vs Christianity," sin is the reason the Jews were exiled instead of living peacefully in the land God promised them forever through Abraham. Sin was the reason the Temple was destroyed and Israel lost its king along with their sovereignty. Yet God promised to restore all of these things. Only by dealing permanently with sin can these promises be guaranteed forever. Without a final solution to sin--a once for all sacrifice that does not need to be repeated--there cannot be a permanent era of peace and prosperity because there would be no reason for why sin wouldn't result in history repeating itself. What Jesus accomplished on the cross was the final solution to the problem of sin which makes the fulfillment of God's promises possible (see Hebrews 10 for more on this). The crucifixion of Christ is the mechanism by which Christ is able to usher in the kingdom of God on earth along with the fulfillment of God's promises for eternal life, eternal peace, and eternal prosperity.

Today is Good Friday--the day we Christians recognize Jesus' death on the cross. I was inspired by that and a post I read this morning by Wintery Knight to write this post.

Won't eternal life get mind-numbingly boring after trillions and trillions of years?

I think most people in history have found the idea of eternal life to be appealing. The alternative is that we die at some point or at least cease to exist, which is unappealing to most people.

The idea of living a long time is appealing as long as we imagine that we're in good health, never get old, and things are going our way. We expect that in God's kingdom when we've received imperishable resurrection bodies, and there's no more sickness, pain, death, sadness, etc., that we'll be pretty happy. But it's hard to imagine that we'd be happy in the long term. I mean really long term because if we're talking about never-ending life, then it will go on for trillions and trillions and trillions and . . . of years.

While many people might find a very long life of health and prosperity to be appealing, the idea of eternal life, no matter how wonderful conditions might be, is frightening. It will become a hell merely becasue of the length of it.

I remember when I was younger I used to answer this objection by imagining that there's no end to God's creativity in keeping us entertained and happy forever. A God who is all knowing and all powerful will never fail to keep life fresh and interesting. But even if there were a theoretical limit to the kinds of things and situations God could create to keep us amused, he could simply use his omnipotence to zap us with contentment, and he could do this continuously throughout eternity. In that case, our joy wouldn't even require external stimuli.

Some people answer this objection by pointing to the timelessness of heaaven. If time doesn't even exist, then there's no way to ever get bored over a long period of time. First of all, I doubt it's true that there's no time in heaven. Second, and more importantly, I believe in a physical resurrection, and that certainly entails a temporal existence.

These days, however, I see our joy as consisting more in experiencing and apprehending God himself than in God zapping us with joy or constantly creating new good experiences for us to have. Imagine something you've seen that was magical and wonderful, like a total eclipse, a scene from _Life of Pie_, a magnificent work of art, a mountain, a lightening storm, the Milkyway Galaxy on a dark night away from the city. Or imagine things you would like to see in real life that have been drempt up in fiction, like a million fairies all simultaneously taking flight in the dark, or whatever. There are many exquisite things that have been seen or imagined that would be a wonder to behold, and that's just visual perception. We're also moved by stories, music, physical touch, love, friendships, and donuts.

Any of these things, no matter how wonderful we can imagine them to be, would probably become boring after trillions and trillions of years. But I don't think God would be. God is not only the most beautiful, wonderful, holy, sublime, and great being that exists, but he's the most glorious being that could exist. I don't think we have the capacity to fully imagine what such a being is like. He exhausts even our capacity to appreciate him.

What I suspect is that God is so layered and so multi-faceted that there is no end to the glory that we might experience and apprehend when we are in his presence. I suspect that God's glory (everything that is true and wonderful about him) is inexhaustible. I don't think we have words to describe him fully or concepts to imagine him fully. We have a tiny glimps of him through what he has revealed to us by way of Scripture, reason, and intuition. I think eternal life will be never-ending joy because of being in the presence of God. It is God himself, the worship of him, and the enjoying him forever that will wipe out any possibility of eternal life becoming tiresome or boring. We will never exhaust the glory of God.

I suspect this may be hard for some people to believe because you're trying to imagine the unimaginable. If you can't even imagine a being so wonderful and glorious that merely being in his presence would be sufficient to make etneral life a never-ending joy, then it's hard to imagine that it's even possible.

I think it's not only possible, but it's the reality we live in. The answer to questions like, "What is the meaning/purpose of life?" can be found in Yahweh - the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. Everything exists for him and because of him, and in him all things hold together. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It's all about him. It makes sense that Paul would say, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatewver you do, do all things for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). That's what it's all about. Even Christians, myself included, get distracted and fail to live up to the lofty goal of allowing our desire for the glory of God to be the motive behind everything we do, but I think ultimately that is where we will find our greatest joy in eternity.

Why you should be blogging or YouTubing

It looks like blogging isn't as popular as it used to be. YouTubing has become more popular. I still prefer blogs over YouTube videos.

If you're trying to improve your knowledge and understanding about the various topics surrounding Christianity and Christian apologetics, you really should be blogging or YouTubing. It is possible to read a whole book with your mind in neutral and remember almost nothing of what you read. But if you have to explain it to somebody else, then you have to learn it. If you are introduced to a new idea in a book you read, it's a good idea to blog on it because blogging on it forces you to understand the idea. You may find that in the process of writing the blog, you have to go back over what you read a few times as a reminder. Engaging with the ideas in this way will make it stick in a way that it wouldn't have if all you did was read about it.

Blogging has the added benefit of allowing you to engage with other people on the topics you are learning about. If you're lucky enough to have people comment on your blog posts, you'll be forced to think even harder about the subject because you'll want to respond to those comments in a thoughtful way. Even if you don't respond, you'll at least get to see a different take on the subject, and you'll get some feedback that reveals how well you understood (or misunderstood) the topic and how well you were able to communicate your thoughts on it. All of this engagement will make the information you're learning about stick even better. It will also improve your ability to communicate clearly.

If I'm reading a book that I plan to write about later, I take notes. Taking notes also makes the ideas stick. It's crazy, but I remember quotes from books I read a couple of decades ago because I took notes and because I used the quotes in things I wrote later on. When I take notes, I include both quotes and summaries. Quotes are useful if you plan to write reviews or use the book or article as a source later on, but writing summaries is really useful for both understanding and memory. You'll want your summaries to be accurate, so you'll be forced to read carefully enough to understand what you are reading. If you can accurately summarize a passage you are reading, you should understand it well enough to explain it to somebody else.

I encourage you to blog or find some medium that involves writing. I know a lot of people are reluctant to blog because they think, "Who am I to pontificate on this subject or tell other people how things are as if I know something?" I had that same thought when I started this blog. But the purpose of this blog wasn't primarily to inform the world. It was to hone my own noetic structure--to express myself in the hopes of getting feedback and pushback so that I could improve intellectually. You don't have to put yourself out as an expert on a subject to justify writing about it. It's just a blog after all. You can use your blog to bounce ideas off of other people.

But blogging is also a release when you have a lot of pent up thought and imagination running through your head after reading something, and you're just dying to get it off your chest.

With that being said, you don't have to be an expert on a topic before your opinion is valuable. People often have interesting things to say about topics that are new to them. Everybody is entitled to having a point of view, however ill-informed it might be. If you had to be an expert on a topic before you were justified in expressing a point of view, there would be no reason for most of us to ever have interesting conversations with each other about these things. I'm often curious what people think about a topic when they are not experts. I'm often curious what people's initial impressions are upon first hearing about something or having it explained to them. A lot of my blog posts are just that--intitial impressions upon first being introduced to something.

YouTubing may be useful in the same way that blogging is, but I really think writing is better. If the way you YouTube involves writing scripts, then I suppose that's just as good since you are writing.

What do Jehovah's Witnesses believe?

Somebody recently asked me what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. I used to know a lot about Jehovah's Witnesses. I read several of their books, a ton of their magazine articles, and I dialogued with them on beliefnet and in person. But it has been many years since I've read any of their material or even talked much with them. I've forgotten a lot. But I wrote an email explaining as best I can remember what the big ticket items were with Jehovah's Witnesses, focusing especially on areas where they differ from other Christians.

The best way to learn what Jehovah's Witnesses believe is to get their little book, Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life. Or it used to be anyway. They put out a newer book that contains pretty much the same information called What Does the Bible Really Teach?. Either of these books will give you the basics, and they're both pretty short. I've always thought that if you want to learn what other religions, deminations, sects, or whatever teach, it's best to get it from the horse's mouth. People do tend to misrepresent others, especially when they disagree with them. It's not always intentional, but it happens.

For those who just want the basics at a glance, here is the email I wrote. If there are any Jehovah's Witnesses reading this who think I got anything wrong, left anything important out, or just want to elaborate on what I wrote, please leave a comment. Without further ado. . .

You've asked me a few times now what Jehovah's Witnesses believe, so I thought I'd write it all out for you as best I can remember. I used to be pretty heavy on Jehovah's Witnesses, but it's been a long time. This is mostly about how Jehovah's Witnesses are distinguished from every other Christian sect.

1. JW's believe God chose their organization to be his mouthpiece in the end times. They believe their organization, which is run by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, was appointed by Jesus around 1918 to be the "faithful and discreet slave" mentioned in Matthew 24 to "give them their food at the proper time." They believe their organization is God's "sole channel of communication," and that one must be part of their organization in order to receive salvation. The governing body publishes their material through the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. They believe these publications contain the "food at the proper time." They study this literature on a weekly basis. When talking to each other, they refer to each other as being "in the truth" because they believe it is only through their organization that God is revealing his truth to mankind. They do not believe that one can simply study the Bible and arrive at the truth; one must study the Bible through the lense of their literature.

2. JW's believe that the second coming of Jesus happened in 1914. Whereas most Christians believe Jesus will physically return to earth, JW's believe the meaning of the second coming is that Jesus will be present in kingdom power. This means Jesus actually was enthroned as King in 1914. This isn't a physical return to earth. Rather, it's the beginning of Christ's kingdom. They also believe the beginning of WWI was the result of Jesus being enthroned in heaven. His enthronement caused a war between Satan and God's angels, which somehow manifested itself in WWI.

3. Since JW's believe they are part of the heavenly kingdom, they maintain a degree of separation from the political affairs of the world. They don't vote or take political office. Many of them avoid any type of government work, but that is mostly a matter of individual conscience. They also don't join the military or engage in any type of warfare. It isn't because they are necessarily pacifists, but because they believe they are to maintain a separation from worldly politics.

4. Whereas most Christians believe God is a trinity, JW's believe God is a unity. In their view, Jehovah created Jesus. Then Jesus created the rest of the cosmos. Jesus was the only thing Jehovah created directly. Everything else was created through Jesus. Since Jesus is created, he is not part of a trinity. He is subordinate to the Father, and only the Father is Jehovah. Prior to the incarnation, Jesus was Michael the Archangel. Whereas most Christians believe the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Trinity, Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe the Holy Spirit is a person at all. In their view, the Holy Spirit is more like a force. They sometimes refer to it as "God's active force."

5. It is very important to JW's to use God's proper name, which is Jehovah. Jehovah is an Anglicised version of the divine name, which is transliterated from Hebrew as YHWH. There are no vowels in the old Hebrew. The Hebrew name for God is sometimes called the tetragrammaton. While Jehovah shows up in the King James Version, most Christians these days use Yahweh as God's proper name. Nobody actually knows how God's name was originally pronounced because Jews stopped pronouncing it out loud a long time ago, and because there are no vowels in ancient Hebrew.

6. JW's do not believe we survive as disembodied souls when we die. When we die, we essentially cease to exist. Jehovah remembers us perfectly and uses his memory of us as a blueprint for reconstructing us at the resurrection. Almost all Christians believe in a resurrection at the end of the age. Whereas a lot of Christian understand a "soul" to be something like a ghost, JW's understand it as referring to a living person. When God breathed life into Adam, Adam became a living soul. According to JW's, our spirit is an animating force that causes us to be alive. It is not something capable of conscious disembodied existence.

7. Jesus did not physically rise from the dead. When Jesus died, he ceased to exist. The resurrection of Jesus involved him being recreated again as a spirit person in heaven. The body that lay in the tomb was disposed of by Jehovah, so the empty tomb really had nothing to do with Jesus rising from the dead. Jehovah got rid of the body in order to avoid confusion. The appearances of Jesus after his resurrection were similar to how angels appeared to Abraham and Lot. Jesus manifested himself temporarily in a physical way, but he was not actually physical.

8. JW's believe there are two classes of Christians--those with a heavenly hope, and those with an earthly hope. Those who have the heavenly hope are made up of 144,000 people. Most of them were chosen during the first century, but some of them were chosen during the 20th century. The resurrection of the 144,000 began when Jesus was enthroned in 1914. Since that time, whenever a member of the 144,000 dies, they are immediately resurrected in heaven as spirit beings. They do not have a physical resurrection. For everybody else, they will be physically resurrected on earth at the end of the age.

9. At some point, Jesus is going to overthrow all the governments on earth and establish God's kingdom on earth. This event is called Armageddon, the eschaton, or the end of the age. Once Jesus takes over, he will rule earth for 1000 years. The 144,000 will reign with him as kings and priests. The rest of Jehovah's Witnesses will be resurrected around the beginning of the escahton (my memory is a little fuzzy about the timing). During the 1000 year reign, Satan will be bound so that he has no influence in the world anymore. The earth will be restored to paradise conditions. I think those of us who were not Jehovah's Witnesses will be resurrected sometime during the 1000 year reign, possibly toward the end of it. Again, my memory is fuzzy. Around the end of the 1000 year reign, Satan will be released for one last hurrah. He will wage a war against Jesus, and he will lose. Once he loses, he and everybody who followed him will be snuffed out of existence. Everybody who is left will have eternal life on a paradise earth, except for the 144,000. I'm not sure what they do after the 1000 year reign. Once Jesus has destroyed Satan along with everybody else who didn't take Jesus' side, Jesus will hand the kingdom back over to Jehovah.

10. It is very important for JW's to maintain a degree of separation from the world. They don't want to engage in any activity that might have any hint of paganism, which is why they don't celebrate any birthdays or holidays. The only thing they celebrate is their annual memorial service, which is where they commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus. During this service, only those who think they are members of the 144,000 partake of communion. The rest just watch.

11. There are some other minor issues that JW's tend to make a big deal about. For example, they think Jesus died on a simple upright pole rather than a cross shaped structure. This is another area where they just want to avoid anything that might smack of paganism. They think the cross is a pagan symbol. Another minor issue that is very important to them concerns blood. They believe the command to abstain from consuming blood applies to blood transfusion. So not only will they not eat blood, but they will not take it into their body through blood transfusions either.

There are a lot of other things that distinguish Jehovah's Witnesses, but these are all the big ticket items. At least the ones that I can remember.

12. Oh yeah, and they also have their own Bible translation. It's called The New World Translation. They believe it is superior because whereas most English translations substitute "LORD" for the divine name, theirs uses "Jehovah." Most people think it's a terrible biased translation, though.

Sam

Motive mongering in the abortion debate

While motive-mongering is a big pet peeve of mine, I find it hard not to speculate about the motives of other people. I pretty much always keep those thoughts to myself, though.

I've complained about pro choice people engaging in motive mongering before ("Have pro-choicers given up?"). The go-to tactic of pro-choicers these days is to say that what's really motivating pro-lifers is not a concern for the unborn, but just the desire to control women. After all, pro-lifers allegedly only care about people before they are born. Once they are born, they no longer care.

Besides being wrong about the motives of pro-lifers, these speculations are irrelevant. They amount to ad hominem fallacies. They suffer from irrelevance because they have nothing to say about the morality of abortion. They neither refute any pro-life arguments nor defend any pro-choice arguments. By themselves, they tell you absolutely nothing about whether or not it's okay to have an abortion.

While it bothers me how much weight pro-choicers seem to think their irrelevant motive-mongering carries, it bothers me a whole lot more when I see pro-lifers engaging in the same behavior. I've seen pro-lifers attribute some of the worst motives to pro-choicers. For example, they'll say people only take the pro-choice position so they can endulge their sexual lusts without consequences. Or they'll liken the pro-choice denial of the personhood of the unborn to the dehumanization of other races, the motive being to discriminate against them and deny them their rights.

One reason it bothers me so much when pro-lifers engage in motive-mongering is because I'd like for those who are on my side to be above all that silliness. But it bothers me even more because I think it does damage to our message. We should want to persuade people, not insult them. People tend to stop listening to you when you attack them personally.

The major problem with motive-mongering, besides being irrelevant, is that when you speculate about somebody else's motives, the other person always knows better than you do whether or not you are right. Each of us has direct and immediate access to the content of our own mental states in a way that nobody else does. If you are wrong about the motives you attribute to another person, then they know it. And if you keep insisting on it, then they also know that you're a fool. Why should they have any future interest in anything you have to say once you have exposed yourself as being a fool?

Even if you happen to be right about their motives, the fact that you are trying to shame them will make them resistant to being honest with themselves about their motives. People will delude themselves by rationalizing in order to avoid ethical pain until they convince themselves that their motives are pure, at which time, they will still think you are a fool.

Can we please stop the motive-mongering? It doesn't do anything but give you the illusion of moral superiority while simultaneously causing you to lose all credibility with the person you are trying to persuade.

What is reasoning?

There are some things we have in common with computers. When we reason, we use logic. There are also logic circuits built into computers. I remember learning about these in my first engineering class in college. There's AND, NAND, OR, NOR, and so on. There are specific outputs given specific inputs. They work in a way that's not unlike deductive logic.

Recently, I was reading through some comments (I don't even remember where), and somebody described what computers do as reasoning. While I can see why I person might think of it that way, that is not how I think about reasoning. To me, reasoning is a conscious process. If you don't have consciousness, then you don't have reason.

A computer with logic gates behaves mechanistically and blindly. They don't actually think. When we reason, we do not just passively process information. We draw conclusions from premises by mentally "seeing" that the conclusion follows from the premises. There's an intuition involved in reasoning because it is by intuition that we recognize the logical relationship between various statements and propositions. In order to reason, we have to process and understand the meaning of the information we receive in a way that computers don't.

I am tempted to say the difference between what we do when we reason and what computers do when they process information using logic gates is even more apparent when we move away from math and deductive reasoning and more into inductive reasoning. I'm not sure, though. On the one hand, the conclusions of inductive arguments are not logically required in the same way the conclusions of deductive arguments are. On the other hand, there are algorithms that allow computers to form generalizations. On the third hand, those algorithms have to be able to be reduced to deductive processes. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to code them. I'm not sure that's true when people reason inductively. It might be, though.

Often when we reason inductively, a lot of that reasoning is subconscious. For example, when we have negative experiences, we automatically anticipate the same negative experience under similar circumstances. We start avoiding those circumstances because of this anticipation, but we don't have to explicitly think anything like, "Every time I have been faced with these circumstances in the past, it has resulted in unpleasantness; therefore, I should expect the next time I run up against these circumstances, it will also result in unpleasantness; therefore, I should avoid those circumstances." Any baby or animal can learn through experience that fire is hot, for example, without having to go through a set of propositions and a conclusion. If humans come to conclusions through subconscious processes, and we consider that "reasoning," then is consciousness really necessary for reasoning?

I still say yes. Everything about this subconscious way of coming to a conclusion still requires consciousness. There's the conscious experience of feeling the heat from the fire, the conscious experience of dreading future contact with the fire, etc. Any conclusion we reach results in a belief, and a belief is something that requires consciousness. A belief does not have to be expressed in words. A dog probably has no idea how to express the thought, "Fire is hot," but he still knows it's true. Language isn't necessary for belief or thought, but consciousness certainly is.

That is not to say we have to constantly be thinking about or giving mental attention to a belief in order to have a belief. If I were presently consumed with thoughts about pizza, and diamonds were the furthest thing from my mind, I would still have a belief that diamonds were hard. You don't have to be presently thinking about something in order to have a belief about it. A belief can be stored like a memory where it can be recalled, but it doesn't have to be right in front of our mental gaze.

I know I've rambled a bit. I'm just thinking out loud. The bottom line is that I don't think computers reason, at least not in the usual sense of the word. While there are similarities between what computers do and what minds do, I think the major difference is in whether the process is blind and mechanistic, like a computer, or whether it involves intuitively "seeing," as well as understanding, like a mind. The way we draw conclusions by thinking things through is not how computers arrive at outputs, even when those outputs are expressed in words.

Relationships are important

By "relationships," I mean family, friends, and romantic relationships. Close human connection in general is what I'm talking about.

I used to know a woman who thought it was a sign of weakness if somebody felt like they needed other people. I always disagreed with that. We are a social species. The fact that we are a social species is a strength, not a weakness. It's the reason we developed language, why our brains got so powerful, how we were able to develop civilizations, etc. Since we are a social species we rely on each other, not only in a cooperative way, but in an emotional way, too.

I haven't always had this opinion, but it has gotten stronger the older I've gotten. Ironically, the older I get, the less I feel the need to have a lot of social interaction. But I still believe social interaction is very important for our mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

This is true not only for extroverts, but for introverts like myself, too. In my case, I have always been happy with a small circle of close friends. I don't enjoy large gatherings of people I barely know. But since I become more content with solitude the older I get, I actually have to make a conscious effort to maintain personal relationships. If you're married and have a family, it probably requires more effort to get a little alone time than to invest in your relationships, but if you're single and live alone, like me, then it requires effort to be social.

Anyway, this video from Veritasium came up on my feed today, and I wanted to share it with you. It's about this 50 year on-going study about what makes people happy. It confirms a lot of what I've come to believe about the importance of social connection, friendship, and even marriage. I think it is a grave mistake to consider one's need to have companionship to be a weakness. It is not a weakness. It's simply the way we were designed. People who have more fulfilling relationships tend to have better health, better mental acuity, they live longer, and they are happier. It's worth it to put in the effort. I'm not just preaching to you, either. I'm preaching to myself. I haven't done that great of a job working at, pursuing, and nurturing relationships, especially since the pandemic.