Digital Bits Skeptic

By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 156

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give an update on the status of Digital Bits Skeptic.

The short story: I’ve pushed the pause button. Subscribe to updates at AndyKaiser.com for my continuing adventures.

The longer story: You may remember my writing effort, the League of Scientists? I wrote it. Then I wrote another. Then I realized I shouldn’t be committing so much time and effort to a series that wasn’t yet published. But I still wanted to write. So I wrote another fiction book, a geek-friendly detective called “Dev Manny“. After I published Dev, I started writing another book. That’s where I am now. I’m putting a lot of effort into this whole creative writing thing, and simply don’t have the time to dedicate to Digital Bits Skeptic. So until I have a shift in my priorities or get more time to dedicate to it, I’m pausing Digital Bits Skeptic. It’s not going away – there’s a lot of great stuff here – but I’m not going to publish articles for the time being, and may restart things in the future. To keep in touch with any new updates about Digital Bits Skeptic or my other efforts, please subscribe to my news feed at AndyKaiser.com.

For as many of you as possible, I don’t intend this as a goodbye. I hope to see you around!

Andy

[Like other articles by the prolific R.C. Symes, this article's length makes it unsuitable for a podcast, but I still want to publish it. Good stuff. -Andy]

By R.C. Symes
Article ID: 155

If the Bible has many errors, contradictions and falsehoods, can it truly be the word of an all-wise God? Or is the Bible more a creation of fallible men who are expounding their own messages while claiming God’s inspiration and approval? The answer has profound implications for Bible believers and their claims about biblical inerrancy.

Whose Bible?

Before we attempt to answer the question whether the Bible was the divine word of God or a man-made myth (only men wrote the Bible – women were viewed as inferior and unworthy), we should first be clear about which Bible we are talking about. Surprisingly, Christian denominations cannot agree on what constitutes inspired Holy Scripture. Is it the Bible of Roman Catholics, Protestants or Orthodox Christians? Roman Catholics claim that the Bible contains 73 canonical (authentic) books, while most Protestants accept only 66 because they reject the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books, and Orthodox Christians accept 76 books. Each denomination claims its Bible is the true word of God. Which one is to be believed?

Christian denominations in the world today agree that the New Testament contains 27 books, however there is little consensus among them as to what God’s word really means. Is it any wonder that with over 20,000 denominations, there are competing Christian interpretations about the means to salvation, atonement, the nature of the sacraments, prophecies, Christ’s Second Coming and other doctrines based on the Bible? If God is not the author of confusion or disorder as the Bible says (1 Corinthians 14:33), how is all this disagreement to be explained? Is it not more likely that the Bible is really the work of men, not an all-wise and all-powerful God? Surely God could have provided better guidance and clarity as to which scriptures should have been included in His book and what they mean.

How was the Bible compiled?

The Hebrew (or Old) Testament of 24 books was written from about 1,000 BCE (Before Common Era) to the beginning of the 1^st century CE and was not formally agreed to by Jewish rabbis until about the 10^th century CE. These books were accepted as canonical mainly because of traditional use. The early Christians used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint (which included the Apocrypha) that was completed around 200 BCE. The Septuagint translation sometimes varies from the original Hebrew wording (e.g. the Greek version of Psalm 22 claimed by Christians to prophesize Jesus’ crucifixion, says in verse 16, “they pierced my hands and my feet”, but the Hebrew version says “they have hacked off my hands and my feet” (New English Bible translation)). This loss of limbs did not happen to Jesus at his crucifixion.

For the early Christians, deciding on what books to include in the New Testament was complicated. Jesus left no written material before his death about 30 CE. The 27 canonical books of the New Testament were written between about 50 to150 CE. Scholars can determine approximate dates of biblical manuscripts by the material used to write on, the style of writing, historical references in the text, etc. However, there were over 40 other Christian gospels, books and letters in circulation from the second to third centuries (e.g. Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of the Ebionites, Acts of John, 3 Corinthians, etc.), before the canon of the New Testament was finalized late in the fourth century.

Who decided what was in and what was out?

In the first three centuries there were many versions of Christianity. Even Paul complained of different preaching to his (Galatians 1:6). Theological disagreements grew over the decades with different gospels and epistles supporting one view about Christ over the other. The Catholic faction, which was organized better through its hierarchical leadership and deft use of the Old Testament to strengthen the legitimacy of its teachings, eventually won out and suppressed the other “heresies”. This faction eventually declared which books would be acceptable as God’s word, but for its first 300 years, Christianity did not have the New Testament as we now know it.

The finalization of the New Testament canon was based less on objective criteria and reasoning than on the tradition of which books were widely used in churches and recommended by authorities as being genuinely authored by an apostle. Sometimes curious reasoning prevailed as can be seen by Bishop Irenaeus’ explanation of why there are only four gospels: “It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are, since there are four directions of the world in which we are, and four principal winds ….” (Against All Heresies, 3XI8, c.180 CE).There was much competition and confusion in the first few centuries as to what really was the Word of God. Biblical literalists have to admit that this was a strange state of affairs to be tolerated by an omnipotent God concerned about the dissemination of his truth.

Our New Testament versions are not the originals

The original Greek manuscripts of the books of the New Testament have not survived. What are extant are hand written copies of copies of copies – over 5,600 fragments or complete copies in the original Greek, with 94 per cent dating from the 9^th century. The earliest is a tiny fragment from the Gospel of John dated to the first half of the 2^nd century. The earliest complete copy of the Gospel of Mark which was written about the year 70, dates from the 4^th century. Our earliest copies of Paul’s writings come about 150 years after he wrote them. Mistakes in the copying process resulted in thousands of variations in these texts until the invention of the printing press in the 15^th century. The differences were mostly spelling and grammatical errors, but also there were some omissions, insertions and mistranslations in the New Testament. There are some significant differences and contradictions in the biblical texts that have a bearing on historical accuracy and Christian theology.

The earliest surviving version of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus (circa 300 CE), contains the book the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas that had been read in churches for years. They were eventually expunged from the canonical New Testament for not reflecting orthodox thinking. There are other books that are actually referenced by New Testament writers that are missing from the canon. For example, Paul urges believers to read his letter to the Laodiceans (see Colossians 4:16). It is disputed as to whether the surviving Latin copy, originally in some Bibles, is genuine. Also, the writer of Jude references the Jewish apocryphal book of Enoch as though it was authoritative (Jude 14-15). It is ironic that Jude is accepted into the Biblical Canon, but the book he quotes from is not. The early New Testament was a fluid entity for many decades and determining what was really the Word of God was controversial. Ultimately, men who did not personally know the authors of the scriptures made the decisions.

Biblical text variations and forgeries

In the Old Testament there is a curious case of Biblical plagiarism (compare Chapter 37 in Isaiah with Chapter 19 in 2 Kings). Was the text about King Hezekiah asking for Isaiah’s prayers so important that God chose to inspire another writer to repeat the story almost word for word over a hundred years later? Or is it more probable that one author copied the words of another without admitting his source? (Also compare the copying of 2 Kings 20:1-19 with Isaiah 38:1-8 and chap. 39). So much for divine inspiration and textual integrity!

In the New Testa ment there are a number of verses that we now know were not part of the earliest manuscripts. For example, the authors of the most famous English Bible (the King James Version of 1611, or KJV) did not have access to the earliest Greek manuscripts. The difficult doctrine of the Trinity is supposedly confirmed by the KJV wording of 1 John 5:7: “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” This wording is not in the earliest manuscripts, but was added to some texts in the early 16^th century, to support the doctrine of the Trinity (i.e., although the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each God, there are not three Gods, but only one God consisting of three persons).

Likewise in the earliest Gospel, Mark, the final verses (chap. 16: 9-20) that describe the resurrection appearances of Jesus are an interpolation (i.e. forgery). These verses do not appear in the earliest manuscripts and the writing style is different, as is the choice of words and phrases compared to the original Mark. Mark abruptly ends his gospel with the women seeing an empty tomb, but there are no resurrection appearances. They are told by a young man to tell the disciples that Jesus is risen and will meet them in Galilee, but they flee in terror and tell no one. This ending was unsatisfactory for the forger, so he added verses reflecting Jesus’ appearances now listed in the other gospels. As well, he added references to believers conducting exorcisms, charming snakes, and having immunity to poison. Is this addition not by Mark still God’s word?

Not only are there additions to the New Testament, but also there are textual gospel variations due to omissions. For example, to avoid contradictory accounts about Jesus’ ascension to heaven, some manuscripts delete the reference to Jesus’ ascension on Easter Sunday evening found in Luke’s gospel. The phrase “and was carried up into heaven” found in Luke 24:51 was removed because it conflicts with the assertion that Jesus did not ascend until forty days after his resurrection (Acts 1:3, 9-11; 13:31). Which is true – Luke or Acts?

Modern translation bias

Variations in the Bible’s text are not just a result of limited access to the earliest manuscripts or poor translations of the original Hebrew or Greek. One modern translation, namely The New International Version (NIV), is a product of translators who are committed “to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s word in written form.” (NIV Preface, p. xxxiv). These translators have access to the best manuscripts, yet it is disturbing to note what they sometimes choose to leave out or deliberately change in the accepted manuscript translations used in most modern Bible versions.

For example, the NIV changes a contradiction in the received manuscripts by omitting words from the original text. In Genesis 2:17.  Adam is warned by God in the original Hebrew text that if he eats fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “…you will die the same day.” (Good News Bible). The NIV translation removes the time reference to imminent death and says “…for when you eat of it you will surely die.” This is done to remove the contradiction in the Bible that says Adam, after he ate the forbidden fruit did not die but instead lived to the age of 930 years (Genesis 5:5) and therefore God who cannot lie (1 Samuel 15:29 and Titus 1:2) indeed must have been a liar.

Is it too much to ask that the God of Truth would ensure, through inspiration or otherwise, that His word would be accurate in its original revelation and free of errors, additions and omissions in all subsequent translations? How does the fundamentalist believer explain that all these variations in Bible versions are still the literal and true word of God?

What do Churches say about inerrancy?

According to the Pew Center for Research (April 4, 2006), 76 per cent of American Christians believe the Bible is the word of God (with 36% of those believing it contains His actual words to be taken literally). Most biblical scholars have abandoned the claim that God dictated the words of the Bible (in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek) to its many authors. There are just too many stylistic and historical differences in the texts to claim one Author for them all.

The claim of most Christians is that the authors were “inspired” by God to write what they did (2 Timothy 3:16). Many believe that because the Bible comes from God, it has to be inerrant, that is without any errors or contradictions with respect to history, science, morality and matters necessary for salvation. Other Christians qualify this inerrancy to pertain only to the original manuscripts. However, the originals are no longer extant and therefore there is no way of proving this claim. We are asked to believe that an all-powerful God preserved the original manuscript writers from error, but kept these texts hidden from us so that we have to rely on unreliable copies filled with mistakes. Why would God allow confusion of his word in this way?

The Roman Catholic Church has modified its position on the inerrancy of the Bible. Proclaimed by church Councils, and reaffirmed  by Pope Leo XIII in 1893, it was held that all the canonical books “are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Spirit; … it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.” (Providentissimus Deus, Encyclical Letter). In more recent times the Church’s position has moved to the more ambiguous “we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.” (Dei Verbum, Article 11, Second Vatican Council, 1965). This statement can be interpreted as meaning scripture is totally inerrant or only inerrant with respect to matters of salvation.

A group of 300 international evangelical Protestant leaders met in Chicago, USA in 1978 and upheld the inerrancy of the Bible. They affirmed in part: “Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives” (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Short Statement, #4). More progressive Christians do not consider the Bible as inerrant, but rather a product of fallible authors writing in the context of the beliefs, knowledge and mores of their times.

Biblical errors and contradictions

Those who believe that every word of the Bible is true because the Bible is God-made, not man-made, have their work cut out for them to explain its many errors and contradictions. Some key problems, to name but a few, are found in the following areas:

History and Archaeology

The Old Testament has many historical errors confirmed by archaeology. For example,

Joshua’s destruction of Jericho (Joshua, chapter 6) by blowing horns to make its mighty walls come tumbling down and then massacring the city’s inhabitants, is an historical impossibility. According to the Bible’s chronology this took place around 1450 BCE, but multiple archaeological digs in recent decades have confirmed that Jericho was no more than a ghost town between 1550 to 1200 BCE.

Archaeologists have also failed to find any tangible records of the Israelites’ Exodus out of Egypt after God sent seven plagues and natural disasters on Egypt (for which, by the way, there are no records in Egyptian history). Moses led about 600,000 men (double that counting women and children – an unbelievable total; Exodus 12:37) in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years according to the Bible. Most of that time was spent at Kadesh-Barnea (Numbers 13:26, 20:1), but detailed examinations of the area have revealed that there was no occupation there before the 10^th century BCE. This is about 300 years after the supposed Exodus!

Primitive Science and Cosmology

There are two contradictory stories of the Creation of the earth and the heavens in the book of Genesis, written either by different authors or an author drawing on different sources. In chapter 2:4-24, which is probably the oldest version of the story, creation takes place in the space of one day, and man was made before any plants and animals, and woman was made later after animals failed as suitable helpers for man. However, in chapter 1, creation occurs over six days, with plants, fish, birds, and animals created before man and woman, who were created at the same time. Which Bible version is the true word of God? Or does it not make more sense to regard these Bible stories as creation myths collated in the first millennium BCE, especially in light of modern scientific evidence about the age of the earth and the evolution of species?

Biblical cosmology portrays a three tier universe (the heavens, earth, and the underworld). The basic observations of primitive man are related in the Bible as God’s word – the earth is described as flat (Isaiah 11:12; Matthew 4:8), stationary (Psalms 93:1; 104:5) with the sun moving back and forth across the heavens (Ecclesiastes 1:5). Earth is also covered by a vault (inverted dome) held up by pillars (Job 26:11; Psalm 104:3) in which are fixed the stars and windows to let down rain (Genesis 7:11). Biblical literalists who accept all this as God’s true word (as did Jesus) are ignoring proven knowledge.  And those who try to make the words mean something different in order to conform to scientific reality are distorting the original language and meaning.

The Flood Myth

Many fundamentalists still try to prove that the great worldwide flood at the time of Noah as related in Genesis chapters 6-9 is literally true. However, the geological record shows no signs of the earth covered in water 8.8 km (5.5 miles) deep which is the height of the earth’s highest mountain. Also, the wooden ark which was about 168 meters long (the length of about one and a half football fields) would have been too structurally unstable and leaky not to capsize. At the same time it would not have been large enough to hold over 45,000 species of the phylum Cordata (mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians), or 90,000 paired individuals, as well as food and water for them. Also, how some unique species could have made their way from the Americas and Australia to Noah’s ark in the Middle East remains unsolvable. There were also over a million species of insects that needed to be accommodated as well as salt water fish species needing sea water (greater than the volume of the ark) for survival after the oceans were diluted by the rain. Feeding and waste removal for all these creatures for over a year had to be handled solely by Noah and his family! This is not history, but myth.

Yet what is most disturbing about this myth is the morality related to it. The Bible tells us that God was angry with human wickedness and therefore decided to kill almost all living creatures on the planet (not just humans). If this is true as fundamentalists claim, then this is the worst human genocide in history (only 8 people survived), and was a near mass extinction of all life, ostensibly carried out by a just and loving God.

But was it worth it? God appears to have been a poor judge of character when He decided to spare Noah, whom he thought was “a righteous man, the one blameless man of his time; he walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). After the flood was over and life began anew, the 600 year old Noah, the righteous favourite of God, was found drunk and naked in his tent by his youngest son Ham. For this discovery, Noah cursed not Ham, but Ham’s innocent son Canaan and condemned him to be a slave for Ham’s brothers (Genesis 9:20-29). Canaan’s offspring established the Canaanite nation that was mercilessly exterminated by the Israelites. Humans carried on after the flood in their usual wicked ways. How then does a moral and omniscient God justify wiping out most of life in the worldwide flood if mankind was only to continue on as before?

Mathematical Blunder

In the realm of mathematics the Bible gets it wrong when determining the value of  (pi), the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. In 1 Kings 7:23-26 and 2 Chronicles 4:2-5, a large container (the molten sea) is described as ten cubits in diameter and 30 cubits in circumference, therefore the value of pi would be 30/10 or 3.0. We know that pi is not 3.0, but an irrational number 3.14159, and it has to be exact as possible for uses in engineering, global positioning, etc. Over 1,000 years before 1 Kings was written, the ancient Egyptians calculated pi as having a value of 3.16049 as revealed in the Ahmes (or Rhind) Papyrus. This value is 0.6% off the modern value of pi compared to the 4.5% error in 1Kings. Biblical apologists try to rationalize the error by saying the measurements were only approximate, or were taken at different places on the vessel, or that the numbers have a mystical interpretation. These excuses rule out one another and can’t get around the obvious mistake in the plain reading of the Bible.

Prophecy Imagined

Those who take the Bible literally often point to its many prophecies that supposedly have been fulfilled in history, especially with respect to Jesus, as proof of its truth. This is a false assertion when it is realized that the authors of the Gospels, who were not eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, selected passages of the Old Testament to flesh out their concept of the Messiah. There were too few biographical details of Jesus in the oral tradition or in the earliest written texts, namely the letters of Paul. Gospel authors, especially Mark who wrote the first biography of Jesus and whom Matthew and Luke copied to a large extent, turned to the Old Testament to flesh out the life of Jesus based on their assumptions of what must have happened.

For example, in describing Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, all the gospel authors except Matthew have Jesus riding on a donkey (e.g. Mark 11:1-11). However, Matthew has Jesus riding on two donkeys simultaneously (Matthew 21:1-7)! This is because Matthew misinterpreted the parallelism in the original source of the story, Zechariah 9:9. In Matthew’s case the importance of the Old Testament as a source of information about Jesus overrode common sense and the other Gospel authors’ descriptions of the event. Events in the life of Jesus, based on plagiarized details from the Old Testament, often taken out of context, were easily turned into prophetic “proofs” about the Messiah.

For a more detailed discussion of these issues please see my articles:

Bible prophecies and myth

Jesus’ miracles, religious myth and biblical contradictions

Conclusion

Humans throughout history have invented gods in their image – from Yahweh to Baal, from Zeus to Thor, from the Trinity to Allah. The Bible’s authors are no different. They borrow themes and myths from other cultures and over time develop their own fallible views about God, and ponder man’s relationship to the divine.

Unfortunately, the Bible soon begins with the terrible genocide of the world-wide flood and ends with the promise of another end of the world scenario at the Second Coming of Christ to judge mankind. Believers in Christ (only about 30% of the world’s population) will obtain eternal reward in heaven, but non-believers and sinners will suffer not just death (the ultimate punishment of the Old Testament), but this time they will face eternal punishment and torture in hell (Matthew 25:41-46; Revelation 14:9-11). Is this not more reflective of the word of vengeful men at a certain moment in history, than the eternal word of a loving and compassionate God?

To read the Bible as the literal, unerring, prophetic word of God rather than as a man-made religious myth, insults our knowledge of history, science and rational thought. The Book is more a history of the struggle of humans to make sense of their place in the world and the moral issues of their times. As such, the Bible is not the ultimate word, but only a tentative beginning. In essence, it is not God speaking, but man.

Podcast: Download

By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 154

Bill O’Reilly is a conservative political commentator who is best known for his TV show “The O’Reilly Factor” and its many associated books. Recently, he got into some hot water over comments he made about life, the universe and everything. This is the quote you’ll hear often regarding this issue:

“Okay, how did the moon get there? How’d the moon get there? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the moon get there? How’d the sun get there? …Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it? Venus doesn’t have it. How come? Why not? How’d it get here?”

Here’s the video of the above:

This comment was made in response to viewer feedback, after an earlier broadcast had him claiming that the Earth’s tides were proof God created the Universe – since we didn’t know how the tides worked, O’Reilly claimed, that was proof of the existence of God.

Every commentary I’ve read on this issue so far addressed the point that O’Reilly is factually wrong: Yes, we do know how the tides work. We know how the moon and sun “got there”. These issues have been addressed in plenty of detail by people much smarter than I. So I’m not going to tackle them here.

Most criticism of this issue misses a more important point than O’Reilly being factually wrong. Yes, he didn’t know some basic science. He then proceeded to plant himself deeper in his hole by backing up his claim with more examples of Stuff We Don’t Know, although it turns out We Do.

O’Reilly’s problem is not in knowing specific answers. His problem is in assuming that because we don’t know something, then “God did it”.

In his response to scientific criticism, O’Reilly moved from talking about the tides to talking about the moon and the sun. I see where he’s going with this. If we then tell him how the moon and sun are formed, he’ll pull back the camera to encompass an even bigger picture. He might say something like:

“Okay, pinhead, then how’d the solar system get here? How’d the Universe get here? Why is there anything at all?“

O’Reilly claims that because we don’t know something, God (presumably the Christian god) is the answer, because if something exists, it must have had a creator. That sounds nice on the surface, until we use his technique and pull back the viewpoint. We might respond with something like this:

“Okay, Bill, then how’d the Universe get here? You say your god made it? How did your god get here? Why is there anything at all?“

The answer to this question: God always existed. He exists outside of time and space. However:

1) How is it that a god can always have existed, but the Universe can not? It’s frustrating to me that, when religious people claim that their god created the Universe, they don’t worry about the creation of their god, who supposedly has always existed. If you can accept a god that always existed, why can’t you accept a Universe that always existed?

2) Saying ’I don’t know’ does not mean ‘I give up’. O’Reilly’s attitude indicates that a sensible person must respond to him with, “because I can’t answer your question, God must be the answer”. Listen to the rest of his commentary – he seems to believe this himself, and expects his audience to follow this same logic. However, I don’t have a problem saying ‘I don’t know’. But I do have a problem with people who explain their ignorance by defaulting to an even more unknowable and complex explanation. They shrug their mental shoulders and default to a “god did it” explanation. To me, this is the same as saying, “Because I do not have an answer myself, there must be a supernatural answer and I will not search further. I see no need to learn about this or research it. I won’t evolve and life will not improve.”

This is the refusal to explore our world’s many mysteries. Even worse, it’s to state that you have no interest in doing so. This is willful ignorance. This is mental stagnation.

Bill O’Reilly isn’t the only one. He’s got plenty of partners in intellectual crime. Like the Insane Clown Posse, the hip-hop group who released a song called “Miracles”. Here are some applicable lyrics:

******* rainbows, after it rains
There’s enough miracles here to blow your brains

…Fire, water, air and dirt
******* magnets, how do they work?

…And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
y’all ************* lying, and gettin’ me pissed

The Insane Clown Posse is another version of Bill O’Reilly’s original point: If we don’t know the answer to a scientific question, it’s better to remain ignorant and call it a god-given miracle, rather than to try and solve the mystery.

Calling a rainbow a miracle is laughable. Calling a magnet a miracle is cringe-inducing. This mindset leads to poor education and scientific regression.

I’d rather research chemistry and biology to find ways to heal the sick and cure disease.

I’d rather learn physics and astronomy and explore our Universe so we can eventually move off this limited-lifespan planet.

I’d rather use science to understand our world and make our lives better.

Anything less is uncivilized.

Podcast: Download

By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 153

League of Scientists book reviews – the reviewers and you

Many of you remember my associated project – “The League of Scientists” – a book series that stars a bunch of science geeks who use skepticism and critical thinking to solve seemingly-supernatural mysteries. Multiple people now have compared it (in a good way) to the mystery-solving process in ‘Scooby-Doo’. More and more, I’m grudgingly agreeing with this analysis, because at the heart of it all, it’s true. The League investigates weird mysteries, and similar to the Scooby gang, finds that the ghosts and goblins have completely natural and understandable explanations.

The book isn’t available yet – the latest estimate from the publisher is that the League of Scientists book #1: Ghost in the Water will be out in late 2011. So while I have to be patient, I’ve got plenty to do in the meantime. And I’ll of course let you know as soon as possible when I have a printed copy in my hands.

I have some great reviews from leaders in the skeptical and critical thinking community. My thanks to everyone. Here are some of those reviews.

	“I read Ghost in the Water by Andy Kaiser. This is pitched for sixth grade level, but don’t let that fool you; it’s a very nice story. Five bright six graders form the secret-membership League of Scientists to solve supernatural mysteries by explaining them in natural terms. It reminds me of the old radio program, circa 1950, House of Mystery, that did something similar, only for adults. I remember when the head of a cursed castle had to go down in the dungeon overnight to face the malignant spirit of a criminal ancestor whose body was shackled in chains; prior men had done this and been found dead in the morning, unmarked. Indeed, the spook was expecting him: the coffin stood upright facing the door. What a manifestation! It turned out that the tide came in and flooded the dungeon, drowning the poor men locked there. The coffin was standing because the chains around the ancestor’s feet weighed down that part, and the water lifted the rest up. Okay, Ghost in the Water is not as ugly, but you get the idea. The school’s leading swimmer is attacked by a green ghost in the water and doesn’t want to swim any more, meaning the rival teams will win by default. Time for the League to step in; there has to be a natural explanation. Doesn’t there? The protagonists are realistically described; one is being pursued by an implacable bully, complicating his existence, because of course the school authorities are oblivious. I loved this novel, and believe most readers of any age will too. It’s one great adventure with an educational theme, with luck the first of a series.” Piers Anthony Science fiction and fantasy author
	“I found the first chapter so intriguing that I couldn’t stop reading until I finished the entire book.” Stephen Barrett, M.D. Founder, QuackWatch.org
	“As I read this book, I kept remembering Carl Sagan’s answer to a reporter asking what his favorite scientific TV show was: ‘Scooby Doo!’ For the same reasons I can heartily recommend this adventure in scientific thinking.” Ann Druyan Co-writer of the Cosmos TV series and wife of the late Carl Sagan
	“This is the kind of story I wish I could have read as a kid. It would have put me ten years ahead in my understanding of why science is both fun and important. Science is all about solving mysteries. The League of Scientists reminded me that it’s an adventure too. Even when it’s in the middle of the night and you’ve been working for thirty hours straight, in a way you’re a superhero blazing new trails and learning things nobody’s seen before.” Brian Dunning Science journalist, Skeptoid.com
	“This adventure of The League of Scientists is… a wonderful introduction to scientific detective work and critical thinking skills – all wrapped up in a delicious mystery! Although the exploits are shared with young readers, this seasoned detective looks forward to the League’s next adventure.” Joe Nickell Forensic, Historical, and Paranormal Investigator
	“With ‘Ghost in the Water,’ author Kaiser has given a younger generation a highly readable adventure/detective story that carries an important lesson. Those students who care to peek behind that curtain where the Wizard of Oz was hidden, will find this very sodden spook no more than the expected illusion, an error of judgment. I trust that some of these readers will become politicians, and use such wisdom to help us all arrive at more sober conclusions. I see a great, bright future for the League of Scientists. If this is only their beginning adventure, I can see that they still have so many possibilities of making real sense of matters that are so often seen by the public as deep mysteries and strange ‘truths’ that — if really true — would fly in the face of what we’ve discovered in the last few centuries about reality. Can’t wait for #2…” James Randi Founder, James Randi Educational Foundation

Next up for the League of Scientists is to get the word out to educators – teachers, librarians, ideally people with an influential position in science education. If you know any or are one yourself, please contact me and let me know. I’d like to get the book into their hands to get reviews from the educational community. Again, if you think you can help, please do. I look forward to hearing from you!

Podcast: Download

By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 152

[Pretend you're hearing a bunch of click-clacky gun-loading noises right now. Shotguns being loaded, pistol slides being racked, ammo cartridges being slammed into place.]

Anyone who’s seen a shoot-em-up Hollywood movie in the last 60 years knows: That is the sound of Awesome.

You’ve got the sound of heavy artillery being prepared for bloody, violent action. Some may be precision instruments, military tools. High-tech, superbly-designed weapons, all proven to outlast their civillian counterparts. These tools of destructive peacekeeping are all tested and passed by the most rigorous military testing standards.

It certainly sounds cool when I say that something was “designed per military specifications“. But what does that really mean?

Without more information, there’s a problem. The claim can mean whatever the tester wants it to mean.

To use an example from my own life, let’s look at a cellphone.

I review consumer technology, stuff like ereaders, computer stuff and yes, cellphones. A few months back, I got my hands on a demo unit of the Casio G’zOne Brigade cellphone, a high-tech yet super-durable phone. It was so tough, the marketing material said that the Brigade “Meets Military Specifications 810F standards for Water, Shock & Dust Resistance, Immersion, Vibration, Salt Fog, Humidity, Solar Radiation, Altitude, Low and High Temperature Storage.”

This was a pretty cool opportunity. The Verizon sales rep gave me special permission to not only review the phone, but to put it through the military standards that the phone was tested for! I could put the phone in the oven, in the freezer, and even under water!

So I did.

Now, to paint the whole picture, I’d done this before with a similar phone. And when I reviewed that one, I was given some very specific military testing standards, a big list of tests like this:

“The Drop test was performed in accordance with Method 516.5, Procedure IV. The G’zOne Type-V was sequentially dropped in non-operating mode, onto each face, edge and corner for a total of 26 drops from a height of 1.50 meters (4.9 feet). The drop surface was defined as two-inch-thick plywood over a steel plate over concrete.”

That was an older phone. I had a little problem with this newer, phone, though, because for some reason I couldn’t find any specifics on what military spec tests had actually been performed. I tried to pull information from Casio, from Verizon and the Internet at large. Nothing.

Military standards are important, and needed, because they can tell you what kind of equipment you want to take with you in certain extreme conditions, conditions that could be a life-or-death situation. But without detail, the claim of testing is meaningless, because we don’t know what standards were tested against, or what kind of failure rate the subject experienced.

In this most recent case, simply saying “military standards” won’t tell me if my phone is suited more to Death Valley, or a warm Caribbean beach.

If you see claims for military testing standards, realize the following:

• The “Military Specifications 810F” standard is not a test. It’s a collection of tests. Each test has variables that can be set by the tester. If you say that something “conforms to MIL-STD-810F“, it’s meaningless unless you also say what specific test was performed, and under what conditions.
• You can easily claim a device was designed for or tested by military specifications. That doesn’t mean it passed!

With this latest ultra-rugged cellphone, I took it upon myself to perform specific tests. Yes, the phone passed all of them, and gave me some awesome pictures of me doing things to a cellphone you really shouldn’t do. There were multiple cool tests. My favorite was testing for a high-velocity rainfall: I got to spray an expensive cellphone with a hose.

At a low level, I learned a lot about the 810F military test standards and how they can be abused or misunderstood. I learned that when they’re used properly, such standards are very important, and can help guarantee that a tool or a weapon will behave in the way that you think it will.

At a high level, the lesson here is even simpler: An impressive-sounding claim means nothing if there’s no way to verify it. Because for some tools and weapons, from the simplest Leatherman to the best lightsaber, knowing the limits can be the difference between life and death.

[Like the last article by the prolific R.C. Symes, this article's length makes it unsuitable for a podcast, but this analysis of examples of Biblical prophecies is important enough I still want to include it here. -Andy]

By R.C. Symes
Article ID: 151

The Bible contains hundreds of prophecies claimed to be the word of God. Yet the failure of so many prophecies leads to the conclusion that they are more on the order of religious myths, than historical facts. This has profound implications for Christian theology and beliefs.

In simplest terms, a prophecy is the accurate prediction of a future event. In religious terms, a prophecy is the inspired declaration of divine will and purpose by someone chosen and guided by God’s foreknowledge. The Christian New Testament says that true prophets were “… impelled by the Holy Spirit, they spoke the words of God.” (2 Peter 1:21, New English Bible).

The Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) state that the test of whether a prophecy is true or false is as follows: “When the word spoken by the prophet in the name of the Lord is not fulfilled and does not come true, it is not a word spoken by the Lord. The prophet has spoken presumptuously; do not hold him in awe.” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Conditions for a valid prophecy

As noted above, if a prophecy is not fulfilled it is invalid. But there are other conditions that need to be met to avoid fraud. To be valid, the prophecy must have been made before the actual event prophesized; the prophesized event when it occurs should correspond to the details of the prophecy and these details should be specific rather than generalizations; the prophecy should be clear and unambiguous so that its meaning cannot be misinterpreted or changed; and it should not be just a logical guess about an impending event.

Why is biblical prophecy important?

Many Christian apologists argue that the Bible (Old and New Testaments) prophetically foretold future events that were fulfilled in history. It is claimed by fundamentalists that biblical prophecies were fulfilled with such accuracy, that the odds are too great that the outcomes were just due to chance. The prophecies, therefore, could only be due to God’s inspiration and guidance to the prophets; hence what the Bible says is true and worthy to be believed and followed as the inerrant word of God. Biblical literalists believe that there are no false prophecies in the Bible because if there are, then the credibility of God and his word are totally undermined. For Christians, the culmination of biblical prophecy was the advent of Jesus Christ and the religion founded in his name. This was all part of God’s plan as spoken by the prophets.

I have dealt elsewhere about prophetic issues related to Jesus’ birth, miracles and resurrection. Please see:

Myths Surrounding Jesus’ Birth

Jesus’ Miracles, Religious Myth and Biblical Contradictions

The Resurrection Myths About Jesus

In this essay I shall focus only on one Old Testament and one New Testament prophecy.

How reliable are Old Testament prophecies?

One of the most controversial prophecies of the Old Testament is the prophet Ezekiel’s prediction made sometime between 592-570 B.C.E. that the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre would be utterly destroyed and never be rebuilt. The Tyrians had angered God by their failure to help Judah against the Chaldeans (Babylonians) who had conquered Jerusalem; therefore they were to be punished. Tyre was a prosperous trading city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in what is now modern day Lebanon. It consisted of an island fortress city with two harbours and nearby suburbs on the mainland.

Ezekiel begins his prophecy in Chapter 26 with a general curse against Tyre outlining her destruction (26:1-6). According to Ezekiel, many nations will rise up against Tyre, her walls will be torn down and God will scrape the soil off her island and make her like a gleaming rock where fishermen spread their nets. Ezekiel then becomes more specific when he claims that God told him that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon and his army will bring all this to pass by laying siege to the city, killing its inhabitants, plundering it and laying it waste (26:7-13). He then repeats that God will make the ruined Tyre only a gleaming rock where fishermen spread their nets. In addition, he prophesizes that Tyre will “never be rebuilt” (26:14) and “never again be inhabited or take your place in the land of the living” (26:20). In this part of the prophecy, Ezekiel drops the earlier reference to many nations attacking Tyre because this will not be necessary after Nebuchadrezzar’s triumph. He writes “I will bring you to a fearful end, and you shall be no more; men may look for you but will never find you again. This is the very word of the Lord God.” (26:21).

Tyre was not permanently destroyed

History records that Nebuchadrezzar did attack and destroy Tyre’s mainland suburbs, but could not destroy the island part of city, even after a thirteen year siege (586-573 B.C.E.). The outcome was that Tyre reached a compromise agreement with Nebuchadrezzar to pay tribute and accept Babylonian authority while Tyre resumed its trade and rebuilt its mainland parts. Despite the prophecy, historical records show that Tyre was rebuilt several times and that the city existed during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods and the centuries that followed, but in the end it did not achieve its former wealth and power. The New Testament even has numerous references to Tyre’s existence during the time of Jesus and Paul (e.g. Matthew 15:21, Acts 21:3). Modern day Tyre is built on and about the ruins of the ancient Phoenician city and its successors, and is currently the fourth largest city in Lebanon. So much for the prophecy that Nebuchadrezzar would utterly destroy Tyre and that it would never be rebuilt or inhabited again!

Did Alexander the Great fulfil Ezekiel’s prophecy?

Some biblical apologists who believe that the Bible can never err, claim that although Nebuchadrezzar did not destroy all of Tyre, the prophecy was fulfilled almost two and a half centuries later when the Greek general, Alexander the Great, destroyed both the mainland and island parts of the city. However, the prophecy (which after all, looks into the future) does not say it would be Alexander who would finish the job, but that Tyre would be utterly destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar. Why would God deceive Ezekiel who thought he was talking about his times rather than two centuries later and an Alexander whom he knew nothing about? And what sense was there to use Alexander to kill the people of Tyre centuries later when those whom Ezekiel wanted punished for thwarting God were already long dead? Ezekiel was really talking about the Babylonians and Tyre, not the Greeks and Tyre.

Those who believe Alexander fulfilled Ezekiel’s prophecy also have to contend with a different prophecy about Tyre written by Isaiah over a hundred years earlier than Ezekiel. Isaiah prophesied that the Chaldeans would destroy Tyre which would remain desolate for 70 years then return to the Lord’s favour and prosper, giving her trading profits to the Jews (Isaiah 23:8-18). However, the Chaldeans did not destroy Tyre, nor did Alexander fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy either. According to the rule of Deuteronomy, both Ezekiel and Isaiah spoke presumptuously and should not be believed.

Other Old Testament prophecies are also suspect, but it only takes the failure of one to show that the “word of God” as related in the Bible is untrustworthy. God’s prophets were not infallible. Those who read the Bible literally, believe that the Bible is without error; but then have trouble trying to explain away its obvious inconsistencies and falsehoods. They end up turning biblical prophecies into a confusing puzzle of rationalizations open to a multitude of conflicting interpretations. Is this the clarity that an omniscient God would want? Or is the simpler answer really that the prophets got it wrong and it’s time to admit it? We are dealing with myths here.

What are the implications of New Testament prophecies?

Prophecies in the New Testament are primarily concerned with the glorious Second Coming of Jesus Christ to earth to judge the living and the dead. This cataclysmic event will be the end of the world as we know it. The book of Revelation is the primary source that prophesizes the doomsday circumstances under which this will happen, and other references are also made in the New Testament epistles and gospels as well as the Old Testament book of Daniel. These biblical texts about the end times have given rise to hundreds of prophecies by believers from the first century to this day, usually predicting that the Apocalypse will occur at a certain time. All these prophecies have failed.

Yet beliefs about Jesus’ return and the end of the world still persist. A survey of Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press (June 22, 2010) found that 41 per cent of all Americans 18 years of age and over (i.e. around 95 million) believe that the Second Coming of Christ will occur by 2050, while 46 per cent do not. Among Christians, 58 per cent of Evangelicals believe this will happen, as do 27 per cent of mainline Protestants, and 32 per cent of Roman Catholics. Even 20 per cent of the denominationally unaffiliated believe this too.

The millions who believe that the existing order will soon be destroyed cannot help but be affected in their attitudes about political, economic, environmental, social and moral issues. Some want to hasten the end times by supporting certain policies and actions that will spur on the final apocalyptic battle between good and evil and thereby fulfil God’s redemptive plan. Christian Zionists, for example, uncritically support Israel and its territorial policies even if it precipitates war, in the belief that without the Jewish nation God’s plans cannot be fulfilled. They believe that conflict will hasten the fulfillment of the prophecy that the battle of Armageddon will take place in Israel. Here is where the end of history will arrive and all those on earth who have not converted to Christianity will face God’s judgement and wrath, culminating in their death.

How reliable are New Testament prophecies?

The earliest written comments on Christ’s Second Coming are found in the Apostle Paul’s letters in response to queries by Christians of his day. Early Christians believed Christ’s return was imminent. For example, in his letter to the church in Corinth written about the year 54 C.E., Paul writes, “What I mean, my friends, is this. The time we live in will not last long…. For the whole frame of this world is passing away.” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31; emphasis added). Again in his letter to the Thessalonians specifically to address their concerns about believers who have died before Christ’s Second Coming, he writes, “For this we tell you as the Lord’s word: we who are left alive until the Lord comes shall not forestall those who have died; … the Lord himself will descend from heaven; first the Christian dead will rise, then we who are left will join them, caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18; emphasis added). Of course this did not happen in Paul’s lifetime, despite his firm belief that it would.

Jesus was wrong

Even more astonishingly, a prophecy from the very lips of Jesus himself about the Second Coming of the Son of Man (God’s messianic heavenly agent, i.e. Jesus) failed to materialize. Jesus told his disciples that their generation would see his apocalyptic return before they died.

The Synoptic gospels all relate a common prophecy of Jesus to his disciples: “I tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28). Also, referring to the end times, “I tell you this: the present generation will live to see it all” (Matthew 24:34, Mark 13:30 and Luke 21:32). In response to his disciples’ question of what will be the signs of the end of the age and his coming kingdom, Jesus tells them that there will be wars, famine, earthquakes, persecution, lawlessness, false prophets, the gospel will be proclaimed throughout the world, and the temple destroyed. The Son of Man will then come like lightning, the sun and moon will be darkened, stars will fall from the sky, the celestial powers will be shaken, peoples of the world will lament, and then he will come on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory. With a trumpet blast his angels will gather his chosen ones and he will sit on his throne in judgement, consigning sinners to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life (Matthew chapters 24 & 25). Jesus warns his disciples that “when you see all these things, you may know that the end is near, at the very door.” (Matthew 24:33).

Yet Jesus’ Second Coming as he prophesized did not happen. There were no apocalyptic heavenly events in first century Palestine or elsewhere. The first century generation, whom he said would see it all happen, died. The end of the world did not occur. Life went on. If the second person of the Holy Trinity could not get it right, what does this say about all the subsequent prophecies about the end times? And what does this say about the reliability of God’s infallible word in the Bible?

Rationalizations that Jesus did not mean what he said

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians cannot admit that the Bible could be wrong, let alone that the Son of God would misspeak himself. It is intriguing that while they take the Bible’s contents literally everywhere else (e.g. Noah and the worldwide flood, Jesus’ miracles, etc.), they fail to do so with Jesus’ own words about the timing of the end of the world! All kinds of rationalizations are put forth that Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled or that he was prophesizing about the distant future. The following are some of the most common excuses.

Some argue that the Second Coming was really Jesus’ Transfiguration that occurred shortly before his journey to Jerusalem and crucifixion in about 30 C.E. At that time the Bible relates that Jesus appeared in a glorious state to Peter, James and John on a mountain where his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light, and a voice spoke from a cloud and said “This is my Son, My beloved, on whom my favour rests, listen to him.”(Matthew 17:1-6). This is interpreted as a manifestation of the power and glory of Christ, a foretaste of his second coming, before his disciples died. However, Jesus did not prophesize that his Second Coming would only be seen by only three disciples, but that it would be a more dramatic event with the cosmos in turmoil and Christ descending from the heavens to judge the living and the dead. This was to be witnessed by the whole world at the same time (see above, Matthew chapter 24).The Transfiguration, therefore, fails to meet the details of the prophecy.

Others try to argue that Jesus’ Second Coming occurred at Pentecost, fifty days after his resurrection, with the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is claimed that this was the Second Coming and it enabled Jesus to head a spiritual kingdom with the foundation of the Christian Church. However, this was not the answer Jesus gave when asked by his disciples what his Second Coming would be like. There were no cataclysmic events at Pentecost as described above. Moreover, Jesus had prophesized that the people of the world would see him coming in the clouds in glory and judgement. His followers did not see Jesus at Pentecost, but instead they were filled with the Holy Spirit, a distinct entity who is the third person of the Trinity (Acts 2:1-4). Pentecost does not fit the bill.

Still others conclude that the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 by the Romans signalled Christ’s return, but in an invisible manner. This is based on the prediction in Matthew chapter 24, and Mark and Luke, that there would be wars, false prophets and the temple would be destroyed during the end times. As well, it links to the prophecy that this would occur before the generation of Jesus’ time had died out (there could have been a few of his generation left, although the average life span was only about 40 years in those times). However, this interpretation is also false. The gospels do not say that Jesus will return invisibly, but that “all the peoples of the world … will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory” (Matthew 24:30). This did not happen in the year 70. Moreover, his chosen (the Jews) were not gathered together from the ends of the earth (Matthew 24:30), but just the opposite — they were slain by the thousands and many were exiled by their Roman conquerors. Moreover, Christ failed to restore the sovereignty of Israel (Acts 1:6; Luke 1:32) at the time of the Jews’ defeat. Nor could he have returned spiritually because it was promised during Christ’s bodily Ascension into heaven, that at his Second Coming “he will come the same way as you have seen him go”, that is, bodily on the clouds (Acts 1:11).

Given that the above rationalizations fail, some believers resort to redefining the original Greek words of the New Testament to change the meaning of the “generation” of Jesus’ time to the “Jewish race”. The Greek word for generation is “genea” and it means “all those living at the same time; contemporaries”. This is the meaning of the word when it is used many times elsewhere in the gospel (e.g. Matthew 1:17; 11:16; 17:17). The Greek word for race or nation is “genos”. The rationalization is that genea is being used as a synonym for genos, which could then mean Jews living in the distant future could experience the prophecy. This ignores Jesus’ disciples’ question about specifically when the end times would occur. Let us see, for example, what happens when “race” is substituted for “generation” in the following passage in Matthew. Here Jesus says that the disciples can recognize that the kingdom of God is near when the heavenly portents appear: “I tell you [i.e. my first century disciples] this: the present ‘race’ [i.e. Jews] will live to see it all” (Matthew 24:34). Using “race” instead of “generation” does not make sense from a time perspective. It is akin to making a general statement that someday the Jewish race will live to see the end, which is hardly a prophecy. And the adjective “present” before “race” also does not make sense. The only sensible conclusion is that Jesus was speaking to and about his contemporaries, not a future generation or a race of people. This is why virtually all biblical translations use the word “generation” with its plain meaning.

As a last resort, some Bible apologists state that after his resurrection, Jesus simply changed his mind about the timing of his Second Coming. However, Christians claim Jesus is the Son of God and has God’s quality of being omniscient, knowing all, including the future before it happens. If so, then why would Jesus make a prophecy that he knew was untrue and that he would revoke later? Why make himself a false prophet while on earth and thereby confuse his followers? After all, God’s holy word says, “God is not a mortal that he should lie, not a man that he should change his mind. Has he not spoken, and will he not make it good? What he has proclaimed, he will surely fulfil.” (Numbers 23:19).

Conclusion – Prophecies or Myths?

What are we to make of Bible prophecies? The Old Testament writer Ezekiel failed the test of a true prophet. What he claimed as God’s prophetic word was not fulfilled. Other prophets are equally guilty and therefore according to Deuteronomy, should not be held in awe. If just one prophecy is false, what other ones in the Bible can be trusted to be God’s word?

The issue of Jesus’ false prophecy about the timing of the coming of the Son of Man has profound implications for Christian belief. He did not return in glory in the first century to judge mankind as the authors of the synoptic gospels believed he would.

How did the erroneous stories of Jesus’ Second Coming develop? Speculation about the end time grew with the preaching of Paul, but he lacked the details that were later ascribed to Jesus in the gospels. These were first elaborated in the Gospel of Mark (chapter 13), written a couple of decades after Paul wrote the excerpts quoted above. The later gospels of Matthew and Luke copy and expand Mark’s narrative about the apocalypse. The gospel of John, which was written at the beginning of the second century when it became apparent that Jesus was not returning as prophesized, has no reference to the Apocalypse.

The author of the first gospel, believing that Jesus was the Son of Man and Son of God by virtue of his resurrection, believed that Jesus’ return and the end of the age was near. However, the author of Mark who found few details about the Second Coming from earlier oral traditions or Paul’s letters, mined the Old Testament books of Daniel, Isaiah and Deuteronomy for details to put in the mouth of Jesus. For example, Mark has Jesus say, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory….” (Mark 13:26) which is based on a dream found in Daniel 7:13-14: “and I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven …. Sovereignty and glory and kingly power were given to him….” Also Mark has Jesus prophesize, “But in those days, after that distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give her light; the stars will come falling from the sky, the celestial powers will be shaken.” (Mark 13:24). This is based on Isaiah 13:10-11 (which was an oracle against ancient Babylon, not a description of the Apocalypse): “The stars of heaven in their constellations shall give no light, the sun shall be darkened at its rising, and the moon refuse to shine. I will bring disaster upon the world and due punishment upon the wicked.” But why, if these really were Jesus’ words, would the Son of God need to plagiarize Scripture? Surely he would have had the authority and knowledge to describe his Second Coming in his own words, with more clarity and precision with respect to circumstances and timing.

Such precision would have avoided the need for the author of the Book of Revelation (who wrote 65 years after Jesus’ death) to envisage an incredible mishmash of apocalyptic scenarios that involve bizarre beasts, great tribulations (e.g. Revelation 9:13-19, where a cavalry force of 200,000,000 men with horses spewing fire, smoke and sulphur, kill one third of the human race!), the Antichrist, the battle of Armageddon, Christ’s millennial reign, etc. These fantastic visions and prophecies have been seized upon and interpreted by many doomsday preachers throughout history down to the present day, causing millions to believe falsely that the end is nigh. This lack of clarity in the Bible has also given rise to competing theologies of pre-, a-, and post-millennialism; dispensationalism; pre-, mid-, and post-tribulation rapture; preterism; and pantelism. In line with the belief that God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), is it not more reasonable to conclude that Jesus’ prophecy in the Gospels about his return was not a verbatim account, but rather the words of the gospel writers who believed (albeit erroneously) that the predictions of the Hebrew prophets were true, and who were convinced that the end time was imminent?

It is important to recognize that biblical prophecies fail to meet the criteria for what makes prophecies valid. They are not predictions to be taken literally because there are too many failures to justify this. In essence, the prophecies are nothing more than myths used to support the theological beliefs of the Bible’s authors.

Podcast: Download

By Celestia Ward
Article ID: 1414

Is skeptical fun possible with children? I have heard this question voiced by people who think childhood must be a sacred place, populated with Easter bunnies, unicorns, lollipops, Santa, fairies, dragons, and a complete lack of critical thinking. Basic rationality is the apple in that childhood garden of Eden, and do we really want to be the serpent who lures them out of their fairyland? Can we handle the guilt of making the children less… well, less childlike? Won’t they be less happy with each drop of rational apple juice we feed them? In exploring this notion, I’d like to offer up some experiences that have helped shape our family.

I had just woken up, my hair was a scraggly scene out of a horror movie, and I was barefoot and bleary-eyed as I walked down our hallway and neared the kids’ bathroom. That’s when I heard Patrick and Mikayla, 9 and 7 respectively, urging each other on. They were in the bathroom discussing something over the sink.

Then I heard their first incantation:

“Bloody Mary I have your baby . . .”

Unseen and unheard, I stopped short of the bathroom and smiled. When a delicious, perfect opportunity such as this presents itself, I can really see the temptation people have to believe that the Almighty himself has delivered it to them. The previous evening, the kids had asked me about “Bloody Mary”, a ghost they had heard about in school that would jump out of the bathroom mirror and attack you if you said three times that you had her baby.

I had not scoffed or told them it was all hogwash when they had asked me about it. I’d said, “Well, you already have a way you can test it out”–and urged them to go to the bathroom and try out their experiment. They declined that night, but apparently had built up their nerve by morning. And now, thanks to extremely lucky timing and the angle of our bathroom mirror to the hallway, I was being given an opportunity to do a little hoaxing.

“Bloody Mary I have your baby,” they repeated.

I readied myself. This might make them think more skeptically in the future, and introduce to them the notion of a false positive, I thought. Ah, who am I kidding? I just wanted to make them pee their pants.

“Bloody Mary I have your . . . baby,” they finished, with trepidation, and as they hit that last syllable I swooped in from around the corner and let out a banshee screech as I grabbed them each around the belly.

Pee achieved! From their perspective, it looked like some big scary female ghost had indeed come out of the mirror right at them–and they screamed so loud they woke their father in the back bedroom. Terror turned quickly to laughter once their brains processed that it was just me, and I’m pretty sure they will keep that little soundbyte of memory with them the rest of their lives. I know I will.

When I married a man with three young children, and realized I’d have kids in my house five days a week, I suppose my adjustment was similar to Patrick and Mikayla’s emotions in front of the bathroom mirror: terror at first, but terror that, happily, gave way to lots of laughter. They have, over the past seven or eight years, grown into very cool little people who have bright, active minds and are fascinating conversation partners. Kids love ghost stories. And they love superstitions, tales of magic, hints of psychic abilities, and all manner of woo. But anyone who has put together a treasure-hunt for youngsters also knows that kids love puzzles, clues, and actively using their brains to solve problems. My husband and I are not the only family members these children have; so in addition to our (usually) rational approach, they also are bombarded with other ways of looking at the world, from people they respect and love.

Arming kids with some critical thinking skills is something that can–and should–start very early. In elementary school, Alex, the oldest, proclaimed that he would not have to study for his math test because he’d been given a trinket necklace of some goddess who, he was told by a trusted and well-meaning loved one, would “help him get a good grade.” Regardless of whether this person really believed ancient pagan spirits exist–and take the time to help kids with their multiplication tables–or if, perhaps, they were just trying to encourage him the way Timothy Q. Mouse helped Dumbo fly with a “magic” feather, we now had a problem. This little totem was leading to lazy thinking, as if kids needed ANOTHER reason to avoid doing homework and studying for tests! Looking back, perhaps we should have just let him fail the test and learn a lesson, but at the time we slapped our foreheads and made him review his math, despite his protests. In addition to help from a piece of plastic, we cautioned him, he would also need to use his brain.

Over the years we have tried to navigate the tightrope of making the kids recognize woo for woo, while also not villifying the people in their lives who subscribe to it themselves and therefore have no moral problems foisting it onto the next generation. It helps to separate the person from the philosophy. This applies not just to belief systems but also to habits and traits that other adults have. We try to let the children know that loving someone does not mean you have to do exactly what they do or believe exactly what they believe. It also doesn’t make them right all the time.

I used my own mother as an example once; I asked Mikayla if she thought I loved my mother. She said yes, of course.

Then I asked, do you think I want to live my life exactly like my mother? She immediately said no. I asked for an example of one way I am different from my mother. Without too much thinking, she asserted that my mother was a packrat, but I wasn’t. (In fact, I’m notorious for going round the house filling up a box for Goodwill; there’s not much packratting allowed in our household).

Even at a young age, this example seemed to make sense to her and open up her mind to the possibility of picking and choosing what she wanted to emulate from each loved one in her life. It is our hope that by introducing this separation, by making a belief or trait or habit something that should be judged on its own, regardless of who possesses it, might also arm the kids when they face peer pressure situations as teenagers or college students. If they learn that their aunt Judy is cool, and they like spending time with her, and that should IN NO WAY mean that they have to subscribe to Judy’s belief in UFO visitations, then maybe, just maybe, that will translate later into teenagers who are fine hanging out with a peer group of “cool kids” but not easily swayed into bad decisions by teenage groupthink.

Two of the kids are in high-school already, and they maintain honor roll and have an active social life, but haven’t gotten into any serious trouble. We have seen them, so far, avoid the bad decisions that some of their friends have made.

Now, this might be linked to our critical thinking lessons, and it might not. After all, I’ve only got a sample group of three!

Another pitfall that rationalist parents often face is that sinking feeling that, by injecting critical thinking into a given situation, one might be robbing the child of that sense of wonder and magic that makes childhood, well, magical. We can feel like the big wet blanket-throwers, ready to poo-poo all over whatever fun stuff is going on. Mikayla, the youngest, has a firm love of ghost stories right now, as do half the girls in her class. She has notions of being a paranormal researcher when she’s older, and she thoroughly enjoys the rather badly acted ghost shows on the sci-fi channel that tout themselves as telling stories of “real” hauntings.

I personally can remember being an eleven-year-old girl, fascinated by Leonard Nimoy talking of Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle on “In Search Of,” or Jack Palance rasping on about bleeding statues or other oddities in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” So I am very careful about stomping on any child’s favorite shows just because I think they’re spreading a bunch of BS to gullible masses.

Instead, I’ve sat down with her and watched episodes. I’ve refrained from just overtly saying it’s a bunch of crap (and that takes restraint, let me tell you)–but I do actively watch and ask her questions about what we see. “Are these real people, or actors?” “Wow, see how they did that with the camera? I’ve had lens glare like that on my video camera, it’s annoying.” “Why is the ghost hunter using that device, what is it? I wonder if it picks up electrical signals from things like television sets and radios, or even static electricity in the air?”

Mikayla did not find my questions bothersome; she thought about them and actually decided it would be a good idea to test out the EM device in some homes that weren’t supposed to be haunted, to see if it picked up signals there too. Or maybe send ghost-hunters to two houses, one that was haunted and one that wasn’t, and see if they could figure out which was which, using EM devices. She even started saying that she was really surprised no one had ever done that on the ghost-hunting shows. Watching the early signs of critical thinking sprout up is a wonderful thing, and cultivating it doesn’t require much effort, just throw out a few carefully chosen questions as seed.

I realized that, without having any planned-out agenda to do so, my husband and I had been giving little lessons on critical thinking at our dinner table on a somewhat regular basis. The kids know who James Randi is–I’ve explained that he has a million dollar reward for anyone who can demonstrate they have psychic abilities. While we ate one evening, they told me they had heard about someone who knew someone who was a psychic; I of course said, well, I hope they enjoy that million dollars once they win it! But, I asked, if it was YOUR million dollars, what kind of proof would you require before giving out that prize? I asked the kids to name any kind of supernatural power they could think of.

Patrick quickly said “shooting flames out of your fingertips!” I then asked if they would give out the million dollars to someone who had a video of themselves shooting fire out of their fingertips. All three were quick to say “NOOO way, it could be special effects!” Okay, how about if they got ten people to swear that they’d seen the person shoot fire out of their fingers, and they signed letters saying so? Would you give them the million dollars? “NOOOO way, those people could be his friends, or he could have told them to lie and promised to share the million dollars with them!”

The kids were having fun, they were engaged, and, in the true spirit of sibling rivalry, they each tried to beat one another to the punch, answering my challenges as quick as they could. What if the flamey fingertips guy just walked in and poof–he had little flames coming from his fingers right there, and you saw it with your own eyes? “NOOOO way, first I’d have some magicians check him for tricks, like wires and flame powder and stuff.”

The kids were clearly on their guard. I wondered what kind of notion they had of statistical probability. Okay, I said, what if it’s not fire–what if there was a lady who said she could tell whether a card was hearts, spades, diamonds, or clubs, when the card was face down? And what if you laid out a card on the table and she guessed what it was? “NOOOO way, it could be a lucky guess.” What if she guessed right twice in a row? “You could have two lucky guesses in a row,” the kids all agreed. How many times would she have to guess right before you gave her the million dollars? Mikayla piped up, “Um, at least like a thousand, or maybe more times.” Wow, I thought, these kids are very protective of their imaginary million dollars. Even James Randi might think they’re being a little tough on the poor psychic.

On another night we started discussing urban legends during dinner; the kids had obviously heard some, but weren’t familiar with the term. So we explained what urban legends are and also told them about Snopes.com, where researchers look into which legends are false, or verified, or inconclusive. Once the dishes were cleared off, out came the laptop, and for the better part of that night, the kids were eagerly scouring the urban legends concerning Disneyland and reading them aloud to us.

Other dinner-table conversations have been about deja-vu and how your own brain can play tricks on you–tricks that make some people think they had a premonition in a dream. A credit card commercial that shows objects grouped together to look like happy faces led to a conversation on pareidolia, or the brain’s tendency to see faces in random patterns, and how some people don’t know their brain is doing this and actually believe they see Jesus or Elvis in burnt toast.

When I listened to Brian Dunning’s “Skeptoid” podcast on backward-played speech and audio pareidolia, I was amazed at his fantastic examples of non-language mechanical tones that sound completely random until your brain is told otherwise–then it is physically impossible to not hear the random tones as English sentences! My first thought as I heard this podcast was “Wow, I need to play this during dinner!” So I did–and the kids loved it. Their faces lit up.

It was like magic–only it was real.

And, speaking of magic, once they were old enough, I took each kid to see Penn & Teller; I figured enough of my amateur efforts, let’s see how they fare with professional skeptic entertainers. They fared well indeed, sitting amazed and laughing along with me at the clever way Penn & Teller infuse their show with atheist and skeptical thinking. More recently, “Mythbusters” has become the new favorite TV show in our house–and the kids introduced it to ME, not the other way around! They now regularly choose to subject themselves to critical thinking and skepticism, and they think Jamie and Adam are complete rock stars (adulation which they totally deserve, in my opinion).

I remember, in college psychology, learning about an experiment from 1928 (back when ethics boards were a bit less strict about what was done to human subjects), in which Clara Davis studied a group of infants to see if they would self-select a nutritious balance of foods if left completely to their own food choices. One baby who was suffering from Rickets, due to a lack of vitamin D, actually chose to eat cod-liver oil–which is vile-tasting but also packed with vitamin D. His Rickets was soon cured, and afterward he refused the cod-liver oil and ate other things instead. I think children are capable of the same kind of surprisingly nutritious mental choices if we just lay the right variety of logic and reasoning methods out for them.

Alongside the syrupy, woo-ish appeal of ghost stories, magic feathers, or UFO movies, just make sure to set out some nutritional critical thinking and try to have fun with it. When it really matters, kids will know what thinking tools are best to use.

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By Navin Kumar
Article ID: 1413

The “veil of ignorance” is a thought experiment: Imagine you have to design a society. You have to decide if slavery will be permitted or not. Are women supposed to stay at home? Are they allowed to work? Or must they do a bit of both? How high are income taxes? How are they applied? After you design your society, you become one of the positions in that society.

Here’s the kicker: you aren’t allowed to choose your position. You get one at random. So you could end up male or female, rich or poor, black or white, slave or owner, scientist or secretary. Since you don’t know what position you will occupy, you are said to be designing this society from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’.

Not good enough? How would you make it better?

How would you design such a society? What would it look like? You could end up as a coal miner or a CEO. Will the CEO be heavily taxed to subsidize the coal miner’s healthcare?

Most people are risk-averse: they would rather have a million dollars guaranteed rather than a 50% chance of having 2 million dollars and a 50% chance of having nothing. This is fairly logical: with the first million you will buy what’s important: a house, a decent car, a retirement fund, et cetera. The second million will get you a fancier car, a holiday house and maybe some nice suits but the happiness (in economic terms, the utility) you get out of the second million is less than the happiness you get out of the first million.

(Mathematically, let’s say the first million gets you a utility of 50, while the second million gets you a utility of 40. If you just take the million your utility is 50. Winning gives you a utility of 90, while losing gets you zero. Therefore, if you take the gamble, you have an expected utility of (.5 x 90) + (.5 x 0) = 45. Thus taking the gamble will, on average, give a lower overall utility and less happiness.)

John Rawls, the philosopher who invented the concept of the veil of ignorance, concluded that because people are risk-averse, they would construct a society where everyone is equal rather than one where there are rich as well as poor people.

Since this is the kind of society that we would choose if we didn’t know our positions, this is the kind of society which we must try to create in the real world. Right?

To use the example above, you’d want to hedge your bets and tax the CEO if you weren’t sure if you’d become him.

Rawls took this idea one step further. He argued that people would want a society where there is equality of outcome: everyone ends up in the same place, regardless of intelligence, talent or strength, because even these things are randomly distributed at birth. You might be born stupid, weak or talentless. Wouldn’t you want to hedge your bets against that affecting you?

This equality of outcome hasn’t really caught on in a big way. Even egalitarians accept you’d need some degree of inequality to convince people to put in a decade of work to become a doctor instead of a jazz musician. Even so, Rawls’ conclusions about an equal society being a just one are very influential.

These conclusions have been subject to a variety of criticisms. Are people really that risk-averse? What about those thousands of ‘actors’ who end up doing bit roles for tiny amounts of money their entire lives so they have a one-in-ten-thousand shot at becoming Tom Cruise? And how do you decide the best ratio of security versus liberty?

Let’s focus on one criticism, that of Rawls’ society where a fixed amount of wealth must be distributed.

Everything else being equal, a person would prefer a society where incomes were $10, $4 and $4 to one where the distributions were $3, $3, $3 because in the first example all incomes are higher in all cases.

To simplify the analysis, assume that all people are risk-averse, and we’ll use the Veil of Ignorance as our tool of choice. But rather than designing a society, let’s say that the person behind the Veil is designing a civilization. He can’t decide which position he will be born into. He can’t even decide which generation he is born into. He might be born in Egypt, 2000 BC or Tokyo, 2000 AD. Would he still design an equal society?

Nope. Over such long timelines, technology changes. The more technological innovations that existed in generations preceding his birth, the better off the decider will be.

Innovation isn’t cheap and it’s getting increasingly expensive: most of today’s ground-breaking innovations require large amounts of money, energy and time. It’s also (and this is the key) very risky: most startups fail. Thus the higher the potential income from risks that pay-off, the more likely people will invest. And there’s often a powerful side benefit: innovations that fail only destroy the investor’s investments, but the ones that succeed add to the human knowledge pool and enrich us all.

A civilization which severely taxes those who become wealthy as a result of risk-taking behavior finds that many people become reluctant to take risks. In this situation, innovation slows down. Since innovations enrich all subsequent generations, reducing the pace of innovation would make everyone less well off. (Given a lifespan of 75 years, think of how many technological changes you’ll see over the course of your own life. Then think how much it would affect you if certain major advancements never happened.)

Back to our civilization planning: if there was a good chance you would end up as one of the later generations, you’d set things up so that risk-takers are rewarded, even though this means allowing for a heavy amount of inequality. This is even easier to justify when you consider the cumulative, exponentially-increasing returns from technology.

People get so caught-up in one particular perspective that they fail to see that another perspective can exist, even if one were to keep the same assumptions as before. People get so caught up in the theory of “distribute all wealth equally” that they won’t consider real-life implications, such as incentives, rewards or future payoffs.

Do the needs of the many outweigh the benefits to the risk-takers? It’s an important question. Our future depends on it.

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By Nicholas Covington
Article ID: 1412

Here’s how you can research the answer to (almost) any question you can think of, and how you can be reasonably certain that the answer is correct.

All research begins with questions. Researching a topic means you need to know more about it, which means that there is something you don’t know about it. What you don’t know forms your questions. The goal of your research is to answer these questions.

For example, here are some classics: What happened before the Big Bang? What is the meaning of life? How widespread is the H1N1 flu virus? What are the implications of Einstein’s work?

Next research the topic. Once you understand the field of study, you can likely figure out what resources you need to answer the question. For example, if you want to understand how to write well, you will be better informed if you consult an English teacher or a style manual rather than digging through peer-reviewed journal articles. So, is your question of a medical, scientific, philosophical, historical nature? Can it be properly researched?

Another question to ask: what knowledge do you need in order to answer your question? Is your question the kind of thing that you probably learned in middle school but just can’t remember? Or is it something known only by an accomplished expert? A little common sense can usually help here, and of course the answers can determine what sort of resource you should use. For example, if you want to know something about Newton’s Laws, you could probably find a good and easy-to-understand book at your local library (perhaps even in the children’s section). But if you have a question about String Theory it would probably be best to go to the adult section and find a book about modern physics written by an expert physicist.

How to find quality resources

Once you’ve gotten past those common-sense questions, the next thing you need to do is to obtain resource material (stuff that might answer your research question) and to become aware of the methods you can use to obtain these resources. These include:

1. Books: Available at the library (of course!), bookstores, and Google Books
2. Peer-reviewed articles, available by:
   1. Finding physical copies of the journals (which will be available in many libraries, especially in universities).
   2. Through an electronic database (which universities and colleges usually have, but which are sometimes funded by the state and available for public use. My home state hosts a “virtual library” which all can access for free).
   3. Through Google Scholar and other websites that act as databases for a single subject. For example, PhilPapers has an extensive collection of papers on philosophy. PubMed has a vast collection of medical and scientific literature.
   4. The author(s) of the paper. Many times I have found that I cannot access the full version of a paper that I want to read online. So what do I do? I Google the author’s name. Sometimes I add the subject that the author studies (For example, if the author of the paper I need is named John Doe and he works as a Mathematician, I google “John Doe Mathematics”). That can help you to find the author’s webpage (if she has one) and possibly some contact information. You can then get in touch with the author and write to her requesting a copy of the material. More often than not, the person is happy for someone to be interested in their work, and will gladly send you a copy.
3. Websites: These are very easily found through search engines like ask.com and google.com. If you cannot find what you are looking for in your first search, try phrasing it a bit differently.
4. Magazines: These are found, of course, in bookstores and libraries, although you can sometimes obtain certain articles by visiting the website of the magazine.
5. Encyclopedias: Primarily found in libraries.
6. Personal correspondence: On a number of occasions, I have looked up contact information of an author or well-known professor and have been able to obtain answers simply by emailing and asking. You could also write these people letters, or talk to a professor at your local university.
7. Wikipedia: Yes, folks, I’m serious! Wikipedia is a treasure trove of resources because most articles have very detailed citations with links to more reputable resources. I’m not telling you to trust Wikipedia’s word on the subject alone. Instead, also look at the references Wikipedia provides (this is what makes Wikipedia useful; it can point you in the right direction). Read the references for yourself, critically analyze them and use any relevant information.

How to identify quality resources

One question remains: how do you tell a good resource from a bad one? How do you know that the resources you are using are feeding you accurate information? After all, there are all kinds of cranks and quacks lurking around the Internet, and the standards of print publishers are rarely better. Google may offer some good tools for research, but good research doesn’t come from Google alone: it comes from a cautious user. I’ve devised a set of criteria to find out which sources are good and which are not:

1. The author of your resource should be someone well-credentialed in the field about which they are writing (or should frequently cite those who are well-credentialed). Being able to think through the problems of a complex and vast subject like, for example, Ancient History requires years of training in an academic setting. Reading the writings of historians or scientists will help you to see this for yourself: there are often certain problems within a field which an amateur thinks he can easily answer, but in reality he cannot because he has not learned enough to be aware of all the information about this problem or all the complications that may arise within it. Occasionally someone with lesser credentials is able to write something that receives high acclaim from true experts. An example is Kris Komarnitsky, an airplane pilot who wrote a book called “Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection” which was highly acclaimed by several historians and New Testament scholars. Kris’ book is easily recognizable as an exception to the rule of using mainly expert writing as resources, since his book cites a vast amount of scholarly literature, and, moreover, has been approved by many who do have the proper credentials.
2. How do the majority of scholars react to the author’s writings/opinion? This may sound like the old argument from authority, but it isn’t. Most people’s minds work reliably enough to be able to draw sound conclusions, especially concerning data they’ve worked with for decades. The majority of experts is right far more often than not, and those dissenting from the majority should not be believed by those outside the field unless the dissenter convinces the majority of his opinion, or at least proves beyond reasonable doubt that the position of the majority is hopelessly fallacious.
3. Through what venue does the author publish? Is it a venue where truth matters and there is high standard for critical thinking? This is why peer-reviewed journal articles are considered of greater worth than almost anything else. Medical doctors have no other reason to create journals except to improve their practice – there is no ulterior motive. Likewise, a publication may be seen as more trustworthy if it’s from Oxford University Press, because such institutions have strong incentive to maintain high standards of evidence and critical thinking. If they did not, confidence placed in them by the academic community would wither into nothing. On the other hand, many non-academic publishers have a primary goal to sell what makes money, whether the topic is true or not. These publications must be regarded with a higher degree of skepticism.
4. Do the author’s statements stand up to critical scrutiny? If you find a source which contradicts itself, engages in fallacious reasoning, cites poor or unreliable evidence, et cetera, you have a right to be extremely suspicious of everything this author writes. On the other hand, writers who show amazing consistency, sharp reasoning abilities, and only appeal to good evidence should be trusted quite a bit more. (A word of caution: if you ever believe you have found a contradiction in a peer-reviewed paper or book, it might be best to read the material a few times and consider alternative interpretations of the text before concluding that it is contradictory. If all else fails, contacting the author about the problem and asking for an explanation might help clear things up. Nevertheless, the point still stands that logical contradictions and obviously bad reasoning can never be accepted, no matter how esteemed the source.)

Conclusion

We all have questions that we want to answer. And we want the right answers. The best way to do this is to use this variety of research methods. This will help you find as much information as possible, and helps “filter” the good information from the bad through critical scrutiny and by asking the right questions.

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by Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1411

“The computer: an extension of the human intellect.

…soon, the ultimate tool will become the ultimate enemy.”

- Tron (1982)

Greetings, programs!

Let me tell you about a myth, a story, a fable that’s been concocted and perpetuated by certain groups in the media. It’s a story about how – with proper protection – your computer is immune to cyber attacks, viruses and other malware.

That’s the story but it’s not true. I’m talking about the myth of computer security.

There’s no conspiracy here, just unprepared software. Microsoft and various security companies are doing their best against the bad guys, who are attacking faster and more creatively than the good guys can keep up.

The days of the independent lone hacker are gone. They’re still around, of course, but the brunt of the malware industry is focused at a much higher level, where the bad guys are multinational groups, or are sponsored by enemy governments, or are run by organized crime syndicates.

So yes, there is a war. And the good guys are not winning.

With increased complexity comes increased chance of failure

The problem is that the methods of computer attack are so advanced, we need extremely complex software to protect against them. It’s so complex that security software sometimes causes more problems than it’s worth.

In May of 2010, the “Sunbelt Vipre Enterprise” antivirus software released updated versions of their malware protection, which they do multiple times per day. However, the update versions 6272, 6273 and 6274 caused the PC CPU to max out, essentially making the computer inoperable. The fix was to kill the Vipre process long enough to install the quickly-released patch, often requiring a system reboot.

That’s not too bad, right? It could be worse.

It could be, for example, like what happened in April 2010 with the McAfee VirusScan Enterprise product’s recent update version 5958. That update mistakenly identified a critical system process as being a virus. The result is that affected computers would crash and bluescreen and would no longer boot. The fix usually required a few minutes of physical access to the PC. Some unlucky users had to reinstall Windows.

I’m picking on these companies because they were recently in the news at the time I wrote this article. I can easily blame other antivirus products as well. In fact, I love McAfee VirusScan Enterprise – I’ve personally recommended it to and set it up for many of my clients. Same with Sunbelt’s Vipre Enterprise – in fact, that’s my employer’s current software of choice. They’re good products. But the very nature of what they’re meant to fix makes them complex, more invasive and unstable.

[Author's edit: Many readers took the above to mean that I endorse or recommend all versions of McAfee. Not true. I hate the preinstalled and retail McAfee junk. But the corporate-level, partner-resold McAfee software – "McAfee VirusScan Enterprise" is a good product, and is something a home user would never see. This is the only McAfee product I like. Unlike their bloated, ugly home versions, VSE is lightweight, has a tiny footprint, is super-functional and customizable, and is easily managed.

My goal in writing this section was not to recommend any AV package over another, but just to illustrate that no solution works really well, and all are open to self-inflicted damage.]

Remember that in the above cases with Vipre and McAfee, I’m not talking about single PCs in someone’s home. I’m talking about centralized networks of hundreds or thousands of computers. How would you like to be an IT admin that day, when you realize that one thousand of the computers you are responsible for are completely out of commission?

Phishing and user tricks

The previous examples are just problems where our protection fails us. But there is yet another class of malware, the kind that either tricks the user into installing it, or a kind that completely bypasses normal defenses.

Do you use Facebook? In May of 2010, thousands of Facebook users got messages from friends with this text:

“this is hilarious! lol :P :P :P Distracting Beach Babes [HQ] Length: 5:32″”

You being a red-blooded horny person, you click on the link, accept an installation prompt, and – boom! – you’re infected.

Okay, so you made a mistake. Fine.  You then go to a security seminar to learn more about protecting yourself. And who could better teach us than the technology giant IBM?

So you’re at the conference, and among the freebies IBM hands out are flash drives. You plug one into your computer, it auto-runs, and – boom! – your computer is infected.

This did happen to IBM at the May 2010 AusCERT security conference. IBM was one of the conference’s “Platinum Sponsors”, and they did hand out a bunch of virus-infected flash drives. Their response to fix the problem included these steps:

Turn off Windows System Restore (I estimate the time to do this is less than a minute)

Update your antivirus software and scan your system (perhaps an hour)

Scan your system with a second antivirus software (this would take another hour)

Back up all vital files (this might take 1-3 hours)

These aren’t so bad, until you get to the kicker:

As a “precautionary measure”, reinstall the operating system (based on the number of programs you have installed, this would take a long time and would require a lot of effort)

Did you notice anything about all of my examples? They all happened within two months of each other. I wasn’t even trying to do that. It’s easy to find such examples, and these just happened to be the most recent when I wrote this article. And they’re all high-profile with big impacts, both in time and money.

Botnets

None of these examples take into account a far more insidious attack vector: your own system may be compromised without you knowing it. Such systems are controlled by bad guys from a centralized location. Groups of these invisibly-controlled computers are called a “botnet”. Like an invisible on-demand army, a botnet uses your computer to attack large organizations (including government networks), and because of their large numbers are very effective, and the attack controller remains anonymous.

You can be infected and your computer brought into botnet control by rootkits and other hard-to-detect viruses. Methods of infection include everything already mentioned, and flaws in frequently-used software like Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash and Java.

Let me be clear on this: even if you have the latest Windows updates and up-to-the-minute antivirus software, you can still be infected with a virus. Easily.

So that’s scary. But let me be even scarier: even if all possible software is updated on your computer, you can still be tricked into installing something, including via email or by simply visiting an infected web page.

You may never intentionally install anything. You may not realize you’re being infected. But you are. And you’ll never know it.

The immune: Apple and Linux systems

With all the above said, there are people who will -  rightly – say that none of this applies to Apple or Linux machines. At the time of this writing, it’s true. Apple and Linux machines aren’t targets. Yet. This article only addresses issues with computers running Microsoft Windows. I did this because Windows is the most prevalent – currently taking about 90% of the market share – so it applies to most people. But at the rate Apple and Linux are climbing in popularity, their time will come. If they become prevalent enough, they will become targets, and they will be attacked.

If you’re running Windows, the security on your own systems is best protected by doing these things:

Keep updated: Make the aforementioned antivirus software updates, regularly update Microsoft Windows, and if you have them installed, regularly update Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player and Java.

Don’t visit bad sites: I know this may be hard for you to do, particularly for you porn lovers and file sharers (neither of which, in my opinion, are inherently bad things). But those sites contain a higher-than-average chance of exposure to virus installers.

Spam protection: Whatever your email method of choice happens to be, make sure you have spam protection. You’re taking chances without it. Even if you never ever EVER click on a link within a spammed email, you can still become infected simply by opening a bad email (via an attack method called HTML scripting).

Educate the users: this is the hard one, but in today’s world it’s required. You don’t drive a car without learning about gas fillups, tire pressure and oil changes. And you shouldn’t use a computer without knowing how to maintain its security. This includes knowing how to update the parts of the computer that need updating, and knowing what behavior is normal and what is not. In my opinion, this should be required on a personal and corporate business level – particularly when user PCs have exposure to paychecks and bank accounts and other sensitive information.

The future of computer security

What’s going to happen next? There are a lot of possibilities, but I personally have a more pessimistic short-term outlook. I believe things will get worse before they get better. Malware writers have done some bad things, but haven’t yet affected governments and top-tier businesses enough to force significant changes.

And that, unfortunately, is what the industry needs. Without a large-impact attack, the industry (particularly Microsoft) has no real motivation to make significant, costly, fundamental changes to the security of their products. I don’t want this to happen, but I fear that’s what we need before we’ll get a proper fix.

In the meantime, what can we do? Speaking for myself, here’s what I do:

I keep everything updated. I pay attention to where I’m browsing, what sites I visit and what’s happening to my computer. I know enough about attack methods to realize when something isn’t right.

The most important point: I backup all important data.

Don’t be too depressed. The ratios are on our side: given the sheer numbers of PCs out there, most of us are a tiny fish in an ocean, and the predators probably won’t notice us. Our own obscurity is our protection.

But if you’re hit by a random or directed attack, good luck. Current computer security is so weak, so easily compromised, that even a supposed “properly protected” system is vulnerable to complete takeover. Weaknesses include the system itself as well as the always-flawed human user. So protect what you can, and educate to the extent you value your systems and data.

It’s an ugly world out there. And this article doesn’t even address the newest, up-and-coming attack vector: cellphones! But relax – the next time someone sends you an instant message, I’m sure you’ll be safe.

For now.

“You won, okay? This is just a game!”

“Not anymore.”

- Tron Legacy (2010)