Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

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Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

by Dr. Michael Parenti

Global Research, November 18, 2007
Michael Parenti Politcal Archive - 2007-01-02

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Expanded and Updated Version

I. For Lords and Lamas

Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one’s connection to all people and things. “Socially engaged Buddhism” tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society.

A glance at history, however, reveals that not all the many and widely varying forms of Buddhism have been free of doctrinal fanaticism, nor free of the violent and exploitative pursuits so characteristic of other religions. In Sri Lanka there is a legendary and almost sacred recorded history about the triumphant battles waged by Buddhist kings of yore. During the twentieth century, Buddhists clashed violently with each other and with non-Buddhists in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, India, and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, armed battles between Buddhist Sinhalese and Hindu Tamils have taken many lives on both sides. In 1998 the U.S. State Department listed thirty of the world’s most violent and dangerous extremist groups. Over half of them were religious, specifically Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist. 1

In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.” 2

As with any religion, squabbles between or within Buddhist sects are often fueled by the material corruption and personal deficiencies of the leadership. For example, in Nagano, Japan, at Zenkoji, the prestigious complex of temples that has hosted Buddhist sects for more than 1,400 years, “a nasty battle” arose between Komatsu the chief priest and the Tacchu, a group of temples nominally under the chief priest's sway. The Tacchu monks accused Komatsu of selling writings and drawings under the temple's name for his own gain. They also were appalled by the frequency with which he was seen in the company of women. Komatsu in turn sought to isolate and punish monks who were critical of his leadership. The conflict lasted some five years and made it into the courts. 3

But what of Tibetan Buddhism? Is it not an exception to this sort of strife? And what of the society it helped to create? Many Buddhists maintain that, before the Chinese crackdown in 1959, old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that “the pervasive influence of Buddhism” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.” 4

A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a somewhat different picture. “Religious conflict was commonplace in old Tibet,” writes one western Buddhist practitioner. “History belies the Shangri-La image of Tibetan lamas and their followers living together in mutual tolerance and nonviolent goodwill. Indeed, the situation was quite different. Old Tibet was much more like Europe during the religious wars of the Counterreformation.” 5 In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.

His two previous lama “incarnations” were then retroactively recognized as his predecessors, thereby transforming the 1st Dalai Lama into the 3rd Dalai Lama. This 1st (or 3rd) Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For these transgressions he was murdered by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized divine status, five Dalai Lamas were killed by their high priests or other courtiers. 6

For hundreds of years competing Tibetan Buddhist sects engaged in bitterly violent clashes and summary executions. In 1660, the 5th Dalai Lama was faced with a rebellion in Tsang province, the stronghold of the rival Kagyu sect with its high lama known as the Karmapa. The 5th Dalai Lama called for harsh retribution against the rebels, directing the Mongol army to obliterate the male and female lines, and the offspring too “like eggs smashed against rocks…. In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.” 7

In 1792, many Kagyu monasteries were confiscated and their monks were forcibly converted to the Gelug sect (the Dalai Lama’s denomination). The Gelug school, known also as the “Yellow Hats,” showed little tolerance or willingness to mix their teachings with other Buddhist sects. In the words of one of their traditional prayers: “Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings/who reduces to particles of dust/ great beings, high officials and ordinary people/ who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine.” 8 An eighteenth-century memoir of a Tibetan general depicts sectarian strife among Buddhists that is as brutal and bloody as any religious conflict might be. 9 This grim history remains largely unvisited by present-day followers of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.” 10

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” 11

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation--including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”21 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. 22

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.23

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.”24 As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

II. Secularization vs. Spirituality

What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.”25

Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.26 The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.

The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.27 Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.28

Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.29 “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane.30 In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.”31 Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.32

Heinrich Harrer (later revealed to have been a sergeant in Hitler’s SS) wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. He reported that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese “were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived.” They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants--all of which Harrer treats as sure evidence of the dreadful nature of the Chinese occupation.33

By 1961, Chinese occupation authorities expropriated the landed estates owned by lords and lamas. They distributed many thousands of acres to tenant farmers and landless peasants, reorganizing them into hundreds of communes.. Herds once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which reportedly led to an increase in agrarian production.34

Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But monks who had been conscripted as children into the religious orders were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals.35

Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that “more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation.”36 The official 1953 census--six years before the Chinese crackdown--recorded the entire population residing in Tibet at 1,274,000.37 Other census counts put the population within Tibet at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves--of which we have no evidence. The thinly distributed Chinese force in Tibet could not have rounded up, hunted down, and exterminated that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

Chinese authorities claim to have put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. They themselves, however, have been charged with acts of brutality by exile Tibetans. The authorities do admit to “mistakes,” particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when the persecution of religious beliefs reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming were imposed on the Tibetan peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect on production. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls “and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades.”38

In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit some Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal.39 By the 1980s many of the principal lamas had begun to shuttle back and forth between China and the exile communities abroad, “restoring their monasteries in Tibet and helping to revitalize Buddhism there.”40

As of 2007 Tibetan Buddhism was still practiced widely and tolerated by officialdom. Religious pilgrimages and other standard forms of worship were allowed but within limits. All monks and nuns had to sign a loyalty pledge that they would not use their religious position to foment secession or dissent. And displaying photos of the Dalai Lama was declared illegal.41

In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment.42

Tibetan history, culture, and certainly religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus mainly on Chinese history and culture. Chinese family planning regulations allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families. (There is only a one-child limit for Han families throughout China, and a two-child limit for rural Han families whose first child is a girl.) If a Tibetan couple goes over the three-child limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. These penalties have been enforced irregularly and vary by district.43 None of these child services, it should be noted, were available to Tibetans before the Chinese takeover.

For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44

In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline “Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right.”45 In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for “democracy activities” within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros.46

Whatever the Dalai Lama’s associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he did speak often of peace, love, and nonviolence. He himself really cannot be blamed for the abuses of Tibet’s ancien régime, having been but 25 years old when he fled into exile. In a 1994 interview, he went on record as favoring the building of schools and roads in his country. He said the corvée (forced unpaid serf labor) and certain taxes imposed on the peasants were “extremely bad.” And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation.47During the half century of living in the western world, he had embraced concepts such as human rights and religious freedom, ideas largely unknown in old Tibet. He even proposed democracy for Tibet, featuring a written constitution and a representative assembly.48

In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: “Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability.” Marxism fosters “the equitable utilization of the means of production” and cares about “the fate of the working classes” and “the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49

But he also sent a reassuring message to “those who live in abundance”: “It is a good thing to be rich... Those are the fruits for deserving actions, the proof that they have been generous in the past.” And to the poor he offers this admonition: “There is no good reason to become bitter and rebel against those who have property and fortune... It is better to develop a positive attitude.”50

In 2005 the Dalai Lama signed a widely advertised statement along with ten other Nobel Laureates supporting the “inalienable and fundamental human right” of working people throughout the world to form labor unions to protect their interests, in accordance with the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In many countries “this fundamental right is poorly protected and in some it is explicitly banned or brutally suppressed,” the statement read. Burma, China, Colombia, Bosnia, and a few other countries were singled out as among the worst offenders. Even the United States “fails to adequately protect workers’ rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions….”51

The Dalai Lama also gave full support to removing the ingrained traditional obstacles that have kept Tibetan nuns from receiving an education. Upon arriving in exile, few nuns could read or write. In Tibet their activities had been devoted to daylong periods of prayer and chants. But in northern India they now began reading Buddhist philosophy and engaging in theological study and debate, activities that in old Tibet had been open only to monks.52

In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on “The Heart of Nonviolence,” but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world—even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: “The Iraq war—it’s too early to say, right or wrong.”53 Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.54

III. Exit Feudal Theocracy

As the Shangri-La myth would have it, in old Tibet the people lived in contented and tranquil symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords. Rich lamas and poor monks, wealthy landlords and impoverished serfs were all bonded together, mutually sustained by the comforting balm of a deeply spiritual and pacific culture.

One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced from its murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the pastoral image of medieval Europe.

Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great cost to the rest.56 In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God’s will.

Were the more affluent lamas just hypocrites who preached one thing and secretly believed another? More likely they were genuinely attached to those beliefs that brought such good results for them. That their theology so perfectly supported their material privileges only strengthened the sincerity with which it was embraced.

It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more traditionally spiritual societies. This is probably true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural wrapping. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by side

Many ordinary Tibetans want the Dalai Lama back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but

. . . few Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China’s land reform to the clans. Tibet’s former slaves say they, too, don’t want their former masters to return to power. “I’ve already lived that life once before,” said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, “I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave.”57

It should be noted that the Dalai Lama is not the only highly placed lama chosen in childhood as a reincarnation. One or another reincarnate lama or tulku--a spiritual teacher of special purity elected to be reborn again and again--can be found presiding over most major monasteries. The tulku system is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. Scores of Tibetan lamas claim to be reincarnate tulkus.

The very first tulku was a lama known as the Karmapa who appeared nearly three centuries before the first Dalai Lama. The Karmapa is leader of a Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Karma Kagyu. The rise of the Gelugpa sect headed by the Dalai Lama led to a politico-religious rivalry with the Kagyu that has lasted five hundred years and continues to play itself out within the Tibetan exile community today. That the Kagyu sect has grown famously, opening some six hundred new centers around the world in the last thirty-five years, has not helped the situation.

The search for a tulku, Erik Curren reminds us, has not always been conducted in that purely spiritual mode portrayed in certain Hollywood films. “Sometimes monastic officials wanted a child from a powerful local noble family to give the cloister more political clout. Other times they wanted a child from a lower-class family who would have little leverage to influence the child’s upbringing.” On other occasions “a local warlord, the Chinese emperor or even the Dalai Lama’s government in Lhasa might [have tried] to impose its choice of tulku on a monastery for political reasons.”58

Such may have been the case in the selection of the 17th Karmapa, whose monastery-in-exile is situated in Rumtek, in the Indian state of Sikkim. In 1993 the monks of the Karma Kagyu tradition had a candidate of their own choice. The Dalai Lama, along with several dissenting Karma Kagyu leaders (and with the support of the Chinese government!) backed a different boy. The Kagyu monks charged that the Dalai Lama had overstepped his authority in attempting to select a leader for their sect. “Neither his political role nor his position as a lama in his own Gelugpa tradition entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is a leader of a different tradition…”59 As one of the Kagyu leaders insisted, “Dharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that teacher may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other people’s rights—their human rights and their religious freedom.”60

What followed was a dozen years of conflict in the Tibetan exile community, punctuated by intermittent riots, intimidation, physical attacks, blacklisting, police harassment, litigation, official corruption, and the looting and undermining of the Karmapa’s monastery in Rumtek by supporters of the Gelugpa faction. All this has caused at least one western devotee to wonder if the years of exile were not hastening the moral corrosion of Tibetan Buddhism.61

What is clear is that not all Tibetan Buddhists accept the Dalai Lama as their theological and spiritual mentor. Though he is referred to as the “spiritual leader of Tibet,” many see this title as little more than a formality. It does not give him authority over the four religious schools of Tibet other than his own, “just as calling the U.S. president the ‘leader of the free world’ gives him no role in governing France or Germany.”62

Not all Tibetan exiles are enamoured of the old Shangri-La theocracy. Kim Lewis, who studied healing methods with a Buddhist monk in Berkeley, California, had occasion to talk at length with more than a dozen Tibetan women who lived in the monk’s building. When she asked how they felt about returning to their homeland, the sentiment was unanimously negative. At first, Lewis assumed that their reluctance had to do with the Chinese occupation, but they quickly informed her otherwise. They said they were extremely grateful “not to have to marry 4 or 5 men, be pregnant almost all the time,” or deal with sexually transmitted diseases contacted from a straying husband. The younger women “were delighted to be getting an education, wanted absolutely nothing to do with any religion, and wondered why Americans were so naïve [about Tibet].”63

The women interviewed by Lewis recounted stories of their grandmothers’ ordeals with monks who used them as “wisdom consorts.” By sleeping with the monks, the grandmothers were told, they gained “the means to enlightenment” -- after all, the Buddha himself had to be with a woman to reach enlightenment.

The women also mentioned the “rampant” sex that the supposedly spiritual and abstemious monks practiced with each other in the Gelugpa sect. The women who were mothers spoke bitterly about the monastery’s confiscation of their young boys in Tibet. They claimed that when a boy cried for his mother, he would be told “Why do you cry for her, she gave you up--she's just a woman.”

The monks who were granted political asylum in California applied for public assistance. Lewis, herself a devotee for a time, assisted with the paperwork. She observes that they continue to receive government checks amounting to $550 to $700 per month along with Medicare. In addition, the monks reside rent free in nicely furnished apartments. “They pay no utilities, have free access to the Internet on computers provided for them, along with fax machines, free cell and home phones and cable TV.”

They also receive a monthly payment from their order, along with contributions and dues from their American followers. Some devotees eagerly carry out chores for the monks, including grocery shopping and cleaning their apartments and toilets. These same holy men, Lewis remarks, “have no problem criticizing Americans for their ‘obsession with material things.’”64

To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today’s Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”65

One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation. To some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and much of the theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.

Finally, let it be said that if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world’s greatest industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006.

Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.66

China’s natural environment is sadly polluted. Most of its fabled rivers and many lakes are dead, producing massive fish die-offs from the billions of tons of industrial emissions and untreated human waste dumped into them. Toxic effluents, including pesticides and herbicides, seep into ground water or directly into irrigation canals. Cancer rates in villages situated along waterways have skyrocketed a thousand-fold. Hundreds of millions of urban residents breathe air rated as dangerously unhealthy, contaminated by industrial growth and the recent addition of millions of automobiles. An estimated 400,000 die prematurely every year from air pollution. Government environmental agencies have no enforcement power to stop polluters, and generally the government ignores or denies such problems, concentrating instead on industrial growth.67

China’s own scientific establishment reports that unless greenhouse gases are curbed, the nation will face massive crop failures along with catastrophic food and water shortages in the years ahead. In 2006-2007 severe drought was already afflicting southwest China.68

If China is the great success story of speedy free market development, and is to be the model and inspiration for Tibet’s future, then old feudal Tibet indeed may start looking a lot better than it actually was.

Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. Some of his writings have been translated into Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

Notes:

1.
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (University of California Press, 2000), 6, 112-113, 157.
2.
Kyong-Hwa Seok, "Korean Monk Gangs Battle for Temple Turf," San Francisco Examiner, 3 December 1998.
3.
Los Angeles Times, February 25, 2006.
4.
Dalai Lama quoted in Donald Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1998), 205.
5.
Erik D. Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today (Alaya Press 2005), 41.
6.
Stuart Gelder and Roma Gelder, The Timely Rain: Travels in New Tibet (Monthly Review Press, 1964), 119, 123; and Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (University of California Press, 1995), 6-16.
7.
Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 50.
8.
Stephen Bachelor, "Letting Daylight into Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden," Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 7, Spring 1998. Bachelor discusses the sectarian fanaticism and doctrinal clashes that ill fit the Western portrait of Buddhism as a non-dogmatic and tolerant tradition.
9.
Dhoring Tenzin Paljor, Autobiography, cited in Curren, Buddha's Not Smiling, 8.
10.
Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
11.
See Gary Wilson's report in Worker's World, 6 February 1997.
12.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
13.
As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
14.
Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
15.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
16.
Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
17.
Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
18.
Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
19.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
20.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.
21.
Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 113.
22.
A. Tom Grunfeld, The Making of Modern Tibet rev. ed. (Armonk, N.Y. and London: 1996), 9 and 7-33 for a general discussion of feudal Tibet; see also Felix Greene, A Curtain of Ignorance (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 241-249; Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, 3-5; and Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, passim.
23.
Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 91-96.
24.
Waddell, Landon, O'Connor, and Chapman are quoted in Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 123-125.
25.
Goldstein, The Snow Lion and the Dragon, 52.
26.
Heinrich Harrer, Return to Tibet (New York: Schocken, 1985), 29.
27.
See Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, The CIA's Secret War in Tibet (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2002); and William Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet," Air & Space, December 1997/January 1998.
28.
On the CIA's links to the Dalai Lama and his family and entourage, see Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989).
29.
Leary, "Secret Mission to Tibet."

[arafel]

Thank you for your posting.. it is good to see a calm, composed article, rather than another rant quoting a random internet diatribe.

There is a huge gulf between any idealized history and the mundane reality of daily existence. Sadly too few both realize this difference and filter their 'facts' through it.

Cheers to a realistic view!
Karma Kadgu Calgary,
DS

[thefool]

I'll l*** your b****

cheers,
Dalai Llama

[landrvr1]

You mean Christians haven't been the only bloodthirsty religious assholes? Golly! That's not what I've been reading on the Huffingtonpost.com!!!??? WTF???

[earthloop]

Quote!
" Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences." (Par 66: or 6th from end)

Gee, I thought for a second you were talking about where I live! Just goes to show some things are truly universal! (...and that I actually read your post )

[smartass303]

Geez,
the dalai blahblah sure is silly and talking rubbish most of the time.
And yeah he had contact to the nazis.
Theocracy is a bad thing.

But

How good is a democracy acting almost like a theocracy? (your rightwing midwestern evangelist redneck pseudo christians and their votes made it legit. Its the democracy, stupid!), sure, you can hope for a *change*, lol!

i smell hipocrisy.

303

[twolf]

wow, what a lot of nit-picking.

I'm sure there's some truth in there somewhere, b0unce.

Human beings are not perfect, Tibetans aren't perfect and don't claim to be. On the whole they support peace and are a very friendly race.

I guess peoples opinions come from their own experiences and if you are bought up in an environment where Chinese propaganda is the norm, then this becomes 'your truth'.
I see it very differently and have seen, first hand, how many Tibetans have been mistreated and tortured.

I still like to keep an open mind and I can listen to both sides of the story.

[Tone Deft]

In South Korea, in 1998, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its millions of dollars worth of property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various offices. The brawls damaged the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, “it would use worshippers’ donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars.” 2

the part in bold is awesome, that's how it should be done. props. no mention of deaths.

[replicant6]

Okay so I want to know this...

What exactly is your problem with Tibetans, Bounce?

I reject your characterization and I would like to know what your agenda is.



R6

[dcease]

what i find amusing is you expect b0unce to defend his position, when i haven't seen him state a position. you are so quick to judge, seems to me you find truth in the "characterization" and it upsets you... denial and such.


fuck, it's just some words, you act like b0unce raped your mother

[b0unce]

What exactly is your problem with Tibetans, Bounce?

what an absolutely insane question.
But I'll make it very very simple (because in all likelihood that's what it needs to be):

I've got no problem with Tibetans.


There is no agenda, nothing more suspect than linking to what I believe to be interesting articles on current affairs.


So judging by your reaction, you must think this is radical material I'm highlighting ?
Do you question the agenda of all your media sources ? Or is it just when uncomfortable facts are raised, or tricky questions asked ? Can't you process this information rationally ? Should I not trust you to be able to think for yourself ?

[Martyn]

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

[rikhyray]

Canada Free Press [Friday, March 21, 2008 10:20] Brit spies confirm Dalai Lama's report of staged violence

By Gordon Thomas

London, March 20 - Britain's GCHQ, the government communications agency that electronically monitors half the world from space, has confirmed the claim by the Dalai Lama that agents of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the PLA, posing as monks, triggered the riots that have left hundreds of Tibetans dead or injured.

GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer.

For weeks there has been growing resentment in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, against minor actions taken by the Chinese authorities.

Increasingly, monks have led acts of civil disobedience, demanding the right to perform traditional incense burning rituals. With their demands go cries for the return of the Dalai Lama, the 14th to hold the high spiritual office.

Committed to teaching the tenets of his moral authority---peace and compassion---the Dalai Lama was 14 when the PLA invaded Tibet in 1950 and he was forced to flee to India from where he has run a relentless campaign against the harshness of Chinese rule.

But critics have objected to his attraction to film stars. Newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch has called him: "A very political monk in Gucci shoes."

Discovering that his supporters inside Tibet and China would become even more active in the months approaching the Olympic Games this summer, British intelligence officers in Beijing learned the ruling regime would seek an excuse to move and crush the present unrest.

That fear was publicly expressed by the Dalai Lama. GCHQ's satellites, geo-positioned in space, were tasked to closely monitor the situation.

The doughnut-shaped complex, near Cheltenham racecourse, is set in the pleasant Cotswolds in the west of England. Seven thousand employees include the best electronic experts and analysts in the world. Between them they speak more than 150 languages. At their disposal are 10,000 computers, many of which have been specially built for their work.

The images they downloaded from the satellites provided confirmation the Chinese used agent provocateurs to start riots, which gave the PLA the excuse to move on Lhasa to kill and wound over the past week.

What the Beijing regime had not expected was how the riots would spread, not only across Tibet, but also to Sichuan, Quighai and Gansu provinces, turning a large area of western China into a battle zone.

Yesterday (March 27, 2008) His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke directly about the troubles in Tibet, asking all supporters worldwide to help in any way they can, providing that this happens in a strictly non-violent way. He explained that this is a moment of crisis, and that it is all of us, rather than the Tibetans in exile, who have the potential to shift the situation.
His Holiness specifically stated, not for the first time, that Tibetan dharma cannot survive without Tibetan freedom. He explained that only Tibetan Buddhism has been able to preserve the full Nalanda tradition and its message of universal compassion, its techniques to promote inner values and its teachings on interdependence, with their extraordinary potential to bring peace and harmony to the modern world.

One of the only ways that we can influence the decisions of the Chinese government is to show that there is widespread and increasing public condemnation of their actions in Tibet. How can we do this? How can we link together all the feelings of individuals, who by themselves may feel powerless, but as a group could have an unforgettable impact?

We have a simple suggestion. We all want to stand up for Tibet. Let's do it, literally. Every day, let's commit to simply standing up. just for a few moments, with either a printed or digital photo of the Tibetan flag in our hands. Individually or in a group. Quietly or noisily. In the most creative and spectacular way imaginable. On the street, in schools, on trains and buses, in the workplace, in bars and restaurants. Let's be visible, newsworthy, fun and contagious. We want to make our feelings public throughout the world, and we want millions of people to join in.

March 31st has been designated an international day of action by the International Tibet Support Network. Will you stand up that day, wherever you happen to be? And then continue, as long as the situation lasts.

We are not only standing up for one country that is experiencing oppression, but for every act of injustice and repression that has happened personally to us, or to other people in the world.

This is something we can all do for Tibet. Who can you phone, text or email and encourage to join in? Can we make this happen across the globe, particularly during the next weeks, before it is too late? We need your help and are very grateful for anything you can do to make this happen.

With a big prayer for peace in Tibet
Valentina and Alison
http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/chine ... -tibet.htm

[hoffman2k]

Lost: A Theory on Time Travel
The Timeline of Lost

Early 1800’s: The Black Rock was a slave boat crossing the Pacific. The boat was transporting a large assortment of metallic minerals, which were highly reactive to other forces of magnetism. Unexpectedly, the boat encounters the island of LOST. Being that the island has unique magnetic properties, the magnetic materials on the boat “react” with the magnetic forces on the island, and the boat is literally hoisted onto the island. The boat, having strong levels of magnetism, creates a hole in the invisible bubble that surrounds the island – this hole is at coordinate “325”, or the “special location/coordinate” that Daniel’s team travels through to get to the island. Once the Black Rock crashes, the leaders aboard the ship, including Alvar Hanso, begin studies on the magnetic aspects of the island. Their descendents ultimately form the DHARMA initiative in the late 1900’s.



1960’s: The DHARMA initiative was created for the enhancement of the human race. What initially began as a simple research initiative developed into a massive project that was designed to test fate. At some point during DHARMA’S studies, someone managed to leverage the magnetic properties of the island to bend time and space – thus, a time machine was created. This time machine isn’t a Delorian with a flux capacitor. It’s, in fact, much simpler. Let’s say that DHARMA created a time machine, and activated it in 1960 – then, after 1 year of the time machine running, someone decides to enter the machine in 1961. They can only go back in time, and they can only go back in time up to 1 year (back to 1960, when the time machine started “running”). Furthermore, once you go back in time, you’re STUCK in the past. You cannot go back to 1961, because you now EXIST in the past. In addition to your body going through the time machine, say you contracted a deadly disease in 1965, but went back to 1960, before you developed the disease – you wouldn’t have the disease when you stepped out of the time machine in a past time.



In the beginning stages of testing the time machine, DHARMA chose to run tests on animals (namely, polar bears), as to avoid creating any time-related catastrophes or paradoxes. The first initiative of testing the time machine was to see they could extend the life of an animal. They sent a polar bear back in time a few years, and then changed its habitat to see if it could “survive.” DHARMA used the same type of mechanism to work with polar bears that Daniel Faraday had discovered back in 1996. DHARMA saw that once polar bears had gone back in time, they could survive off the island, and even in remote extreme climates (such as deserts) – thus making them partially invincible. Realizing the power of this time machine, the leaders of DHARMA opt to only keep limited knowledge of the time machine’s existence. Thus, many of the experiments on the island of LOST are just a façade to conceal the “true” research behind the DHARMA initiative.



Shortly after the experimentation with the polar bears, DHARMA starts sending people back in time. Over a few years of researching the time machine, DHARMA becomes curious to see if this time machine can allow people to alter the course of history. In order to see if people can “change a future that’s already written,” DHARMA begins simple tasking their time travelers with doing things to alter the course of history. Unfortunately, these time travelers were not able to do anything to permanently alter the future that was already laid out.



Now getting desperate to prove that there’s ANY benefit to the new time machine, the leaders of DHARMA find a group of their own people to involuntarily become “test subjects” of their next experiment involving time travel. This being: can sending people back in time permanently cure them of a deadly virus? Without proper warning, DHARMA releases a virus in an area of the island that infects many of the “test subjects.” Then DHARMA claims that they can cure the disease with this special “device,” that device being the time machine. This, however, is NOT obvious to the test subjects - they just want to get cured, and think the time machine is some type of complex vaccination. As fate would predict, the test subjects go back in time and are cured of the virus, only to be later killed by the smoke monster, as the monster is the “physical means” in which the timeline course corrects itself. DHARMA, seeing this smoke monster for the first time, is now officially fearful that this time machine will end up serving no purpose whatsoever. The only thing DHARMA has accomplished is pissing a small portion of their work-force. The surviving test subjects who weren’t originally infected by the virus become a faction of the DHARMA initiative, and are subsequently referred to as the Others/Hostiles – Richard and Jacob are among that group.



1970-1985: Ben’s mother is recruited by DHARMA to come to the island and work on this time machine. After several years of testing the time machine, she too has given up on its abilities. She has also met Richard, the leader of the Others, and he tells her about the horrible experimentation that DHARMA did to his people, resulting in the death of several of his friends. Ben’s mom quickly grows to hate DHARMA for the morals that they’re willing to ignore in the name of science. She deems it her destiny to bring down DHARMA for the pain that they’ve brought upon the innocent. But, instead, she decides to kill two birds with one stone: instead of just leaving the island and possibly angering DHARMA at her departure, she decides to use the time machine to go back in time to the point at which she came to the island. Then, she leaves the island. This way, it would appear to the outside world that she never even left to go to the island. She’s going back in time to re-live 15 years of her life that she lost out on while she was doing testing in the island. Brilliant!

1970: Ben’s mother has traveled approximately 15 years back in time, back to 1970, where she finds herself back in Oregon. She meets a great guy, marries him, and gets pregnant. But, she was childless in the alternate future that she lived out on the island. Unfortunately for her, DHARMA had not yet discovered that connections between the dying children/mothers and time travel. (Remember when Juliet sees the xray of the woman who was only 26, but with a 70-year-old womb? Apparently, a unique effect of time travel is that your womb will always age, however, your body won’t age).

When the time comes for Ben’s mom to give birth, she dies, but still manages to produce a baby boy. The reason she died was because the timeline was course correcting to replace her with Ben. In a way, Ben is the embodiment of her, and was thus “created” to fulfill her legacy as the disgruntled DHARMA engineer that would ultimately bring down the shady corporation. It’s Ben’s role to figure out how to “work around” fate, and to find a way to make the time machine “work” without using DHARMA’s methods.



1980: It’s not long after Ben’s mother’s death that their good friend Horace recommends that they go to the island. Horace is likely affiliated with DHARMA, and was sent to investigate Ben’s mother. After finding out about her death, he sent her husband and Ben to the island so that DHARMA could “contain” a potential hiccup in time. When Ben and his dad get to the island, we find out that Ben’s father was merely to become a peon for DHARMA. Ben was the real reason that they came to the island: It was Ben’s legacy to fulfill his mother’s destiny. Ben, unfortunately, isn’t aware of this at the time. He’s just trying to enjoy himself, and make sure his father isn’t too much of a jerk.



1981: After a good bit of time on the island, Ben hears and sees his dead mother outside his house on the island! The reason he sees her is because in an “alternate future,” she was actually alive and working on this island for DHARMA. She appears half-dead to him because her dead spirit is designed to “help Ben understand his destiny” so that he can carry on her legacy. Thus, her spirit is time’s way of course correcting the future.

Shortly after Ben sees his dead mom, he sees Richard in the jungle, who says “you’re not ready.” Richard is a time traveler - and a DHARMA-hater. When Ben first encounters Richard in the jungle, Richard has traveled back in time from the year 2007 to 1981. Thus, while Richard is working with Ben, Richard is not aging. Why did Richard go back in time to get in contact with Ben? To recruit him. Richard knew Ben’s mother in the alternate timeline, so he knows that Ben is an incarnation of his Mother, and that he is some type of prodigy on the island. From there, Richard and Ben then spend their years plotting on how they will ultimately bring down DHARMA, and use the time machine for tests that don’t involve killing people.



1988: Rosseau’s crew was an opposing force to DHARMA. They weren’t affiliated with the Others; however, they were going to the island to investigate “shady business practices” being conducted by DHARMA - These business practices being the releasing of the virus to the locals on the island. Unfortunately, at the point in time, other Others and Ben hadn’t conceived their “master plan” to bring down DHARMA. However, they didn’t want to expose children to the experiments of DHARMA. Once Rosseau lost her baby, she set up a looping signal. That ran for years on the island, but the signal was being blocked by the looking glass.



1981-2007: Ben grows up from the age 10 to 37, planning with Richard and Jacob the “ultimate plan” to wipe out DHARMA, the purge. In the mean time, DHARMA continues to test other unique aspects of the island in order to see if they can leverage the time machine for some other purpose. In the midst of this, DHARMA discovers the magnetic anomaly in the island via the SWAN station. This magnetic anomaly is a bubble that encompasses the entire island. Unfortunately, DHARMA only does some basic tests on this anomaly, as they don’t really know how to use it for anything. During this time, both the others and DHARMA are trying to learn how they can leverage the time machine “for the greater good.”

During the testing of the time machine, DHARMA and the others make the following discoveries about time travel. Note that there is not a specific “definition” of time travel that applies to the show – time travel is simply used as a concept in the show, and the “weird things” that we see are typically fate’s way of course correcting to preserve something that’s meant to happen in the future.

When someone enters the time machine, they can only go back in time – and only to a time where the machine was currently running.
When you go back in time, you do not de-age. For example, if you are 50, and go back 10 years in time, you do NOT have your 40-year-old body. HOWEVER, while you are re-living 10 years of your life, you body will not age until you catch up with the time in which you entered the time machine.
When you go back in time, you will still have your current hair style, tattoos, and memory. However, say you were paralyzed; fate would need to do some course correction to make sure that you are still able to play your past role in life. Thus, time travel can TEMPORARILY cure any physical ailments you may have had prior to entering the time machine. However, fate will still find a way to paralyze you once you catch up with the current time. Say the first time you were paralyzed, it was because you were pushed out of a window. Because “the universe has a funny way of course correcting,” you may get hit by a car the second time around.
When you go back in time, you can only “change” things that don’t have an impact on your destiny. In other words, if you went to church on a specific date in the past, and then went back in time, you wouldn’t necessarily go to church in your new timeline. However, if you changed a belief as a result of going to church the first time around, “fate would find a way to influence you into that belief.” Perhaps you would have a near death experience, or maybe a mysterious person would greet you in a jewelry store and tell you that you need to change your beliefs… or, maybe fate would just kill you since it couldn’t find a way to change your belief.
If you go back in time and die, you are not “totally” dead because there has already been a variation of the universe where you were alive in the future. Thus, you become “half dead” until time catches back up. In other words, your presence may be known to some people but not others. Your presence would only be known when you are required to make an impact to fate.
If you have never had a child, you cannot go back in time and give birth. Fate does not allow for a new entity to exist in a past where it originally did not exist. Thus fate would either have to kill the mother, the baby, or both in order to course correct. UNLESS, fate decides to use the baby or mother to “replace” someone else in the timeline.
Basically, the “rules of the time machine” are not governed by any physical definitions of time travel. The “rules,” if you will, are governed by how FATE decides to preserve the timeline. Thus, if you are required to do something profound in a future timeline, fate will find any way possible to preserve the timeline – we’ve seen ghosts and smoke monsters in LOST. So according to the show’s definition of time travel, fate “does have a funny way of course correcting.”



2007: Swelled with hatred, Ben, Richard, and Jacob find a way to hijack the time machine, and go back in time to the year 1996 to wipe out all of DHARMA on the island (The Purge). Note that in Ben’s original timeline from his birth to 2007, Oceanic 815 did not crash on the island and Ben did not come down with cancer. The fact that Ben, Richard and a few others lived out a life to the year 2007 gives them some unique powers: they know that they will technically remain alive until 2007, no matter what happens (unless fate deems their existence as not necessary in preserving their original timeline). This is one reason for Ben being able to survive through the whole power struggle on the island in season 4, and the reason he can take a severe beating from the Losties in almost every episode.

1996 (new timeline on the island): Having gone back in time, and realizing that there are plenty of DHARMA folk in other aspects of the world (Penny’s father), the Others need to quickly think of something that will prevent DHARMA from ever reaching the island. Thus, Ben figures out a way to put the entire island into a “time loop.” This time loop will keep the island suspended in time in the past (in the year 1996) – thus preventing any outside DHARMA people from reaching them on the island. Once Ben and Richard start the time loop, they round up the remaining locals on the island – these people ultimately grow to become the opposing force to DHARMA, the “others.”

In order to create this “time loop,” Ben and Richard snatch up the time machine from the ARROW station, and move it to the swan station. With the engineering mind of Mikhail, they are able to cement the time machine into walls deep within the swan station. In addition, Mikhail is able to “sync” the time machine up with the magnetic anomaly that encompasses the island – thus giving the Others the ability to send the entire island back in time! They then rig-up the computer system that requires the pushing of a button every 108 minutes; however, this button pushing is actually activating the time machine every 108 minutes. So, for a great number of years, DHARMA is able to suspend time on the island by “resetting” the time machine every 108 minutes. Unfortunately, one of the downsides to this is that time on the island is contained in its unique magnetic bubble – thus, time in the rest of the world is still running its course. Therefore, island time stays in the year 1996, while real world time eventually reaches the year 2004 at the time of the plane crash. The only way to pass through the island time and the real world time would be to use the “special” coordinate, which is referenced in season 4. Note that in season 3, Ben makes a comment to Richard “Remember when we used to celebrate birthdays?” Well, there wouldn’t be any reason to celebrate birthdays if the Others are repeating time every 108 minutes, and thus not aging.



1996-1996 (8 years elapse on the island): While time is staying constant on the island, the others, now invisible to the outside world, are able to continue tests in time travel. The Others want to start a new “world” on the island. They want to keep the island in its time loop forever. They believe that with time stopped on the island, the rules of fate won’t apply. But, what’s the only problem? With time suspended, and the fact that fate always kills mothers and babies, the others need to find a way to pro-create on the island. Thus, they recruit Juliet to explore the known pregnancy issue. They also find a prestigious military officer (Kelvin) to press the button, making him think that he’s saving the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the natives are living out their days while not aging (including Richard, Ben, and all of the others).

Because the island is hidden from the outside world, Ben and Richard have to be careful in letting people on and off the island. Furthermore, you can only leave the island through the “special coordinate” that the Black Rock created over a century ago. If you don’t leave through that coordinate, you could end up leaving in the year that the island exists, which would be at some point in the past – this would require you to find a “constant” between island time and real world time in order to survive. Conversely, if you were to try to enter the island from the future into the past island time (assuming you don’t use the special coordinate), then your mind would become “stuck” between the island time and the real world time – also requiring you to find a constant.

Jacob is also a time traveler with Richard and Ben; however, we haven’t seen him in his “alive” state. At some point in time after Jacob goes back in time with Richard and Ben to start the time loop, Jacob dies. However, being that Jacob lived in a previous timeline on the island up to the year 2007, his “spirit” is able to stay alive in order communicate with Ben and Richard.



1996-2004 (Off-Island Time): While the island is stuck in the year 1996, all of the main characters of LOSTS’ lives play out via flashbacks. We see the initial backstories from their second iteration through time. Keep in mind that when Ben, Richard and Jacob lived out their first timeline to the year 2007, the plane did not crash. The Losties’ flashbacks that we see in seasons 1-3 are taking place as the Others are in the time loop on the island (or the Other’s second iteration through time) – and the flashbacks are designed to represent how fate changed the lives of the Losties to ultimately bring them to the island.

For example, in Jack’s original timeline, his father was perfectly normal and didn’t end up getting killed in Australia; however, when Ben went back in time, fate created a series of events in Jack’s timeline, which ultimately brought him to the island. The same applies for all of the other Losties.

1996 (Island Time - around 2001 in Off-Island time): Richard and Ethan leave the island via the special coordinate, about 5 years into the time loop to carry out a recruiting mission. They pinpoint Juliet to explore the child birth issue on the island. She is genuinely a good person, and will do anything to help her sister. However, she is not aware of the time loop which is occurring on the island, and Ben is using her lack of awareness to keep her at the island. Since Ben was from the future, he knew that Juliet’s husband would get hit by a bus on a certain date – so he strategically timed Richard and Ethan’s visit to be a few days prior to the husband’s accident, knowing that would be a trigger to get Juliet to the island. Also, Ben knew that Juliet’s sister would ultimately get cured of her cancer and have a baby girl. That’s why Ben is so persistent on the fact that if Juliet comes to the island, that they can cure her sister. Thus, Ben isn’t a liar. He knows from his past timeline what is going to happen, and he’s manipulating things based on his knowledge.



1996 (Island Time - around 2001 in Off-Island Time): Widmore, a third party who has an obsession over DHARMA, purchased a journal of the Black Rock at an auction. The journal gave him the coordinates that the boat traveled through to get to the island. Widmore hires Libby’s husband to be the first “test subject” to try to reach the island. He give’s Libby’s husband a boat with pre-programmed coordinates – this will ultimately allow him passage into the island, through the time barrier. However, Libby’s husband unexpectedly dies, and she hands the boat over to Desmond. It’s unclear whether or not Widmore is intentionally sending Desmond to the island just to get rid of him, or if it’s a total coincidence that the boat ends up in Desmond’s hands.



2004 (Off-Island Time): Oceanic 815 crashes on the island because Desmond didn’t press the button to reset the island time back 108 minutes. Not pressing the button temporarily stopped the time machine from harnessing the power of the magnetic bubble, thus creating an opening over the island the split second Oceanic 815 flew over – 8 years into the island timeloop, and in the year 2004 outside the island. The resulting power of the current flowing through the magnetic field ripped the plane in half. We, as viewers, are left with two huge questions: was it a complete coincidence that the plane just happened to crash over the island leading Locke to not press the button OR did DHARMA somehow engineer this plane crash to happen the exact second that the plane flew over the island, knowing that specific group of people would free the island of its time loop? That, my friends, brings us back to the theme of LOST – did fate cause the plane crash, or had DHARMA staged certain “characters” to ultimately “lead” our heroes to the island… OR was it some combination of both fate and the work of DHARMA?

After the plane crashes, our heroes now exist in the year 1996 on the island, and they have taken on their physical attributes from the year 1996. Locke is healed because he hadn’t gotten into his accident until around 2002 – the same with Rose. Also, in the original timeline of the universe, Oceanic 815 did NOT crash. Therefore, if the losties ever got off the island and back into the year 2004, fate would deem that they survive at least until 2007 (which was how far the future had been written in Ben’s original timeline).



1996 (island time): All of the events in the first 2 seasons of LOST take place. The hatch is discovered and Locke ultimately ends up not pressing the button and Desmond turns the fail safe. The turning of the fail safe destroys the time machine, and now the island time is officially moving again; however, the purpose of the fail safe was to permanently set time back to the original start date of 1996! Now the island is moving at about 8-9 years behind real world time. When Desmond turned the fail safe key, his life flashed before his eyes… Well, actually, he got to “re-live” about 9 years of his life! He got to relive being rescued from the island, witnessing Charlie’s death, and then starting his life up again off the island, meeting Penny, and then ultimately coming back to the island, thus creating a full loop for his life story. Desmond could not escape his fate. The reason only Desmond got to re-live his life was some function of him being the “key turner” OR the fact that he was exposed to the extreme magnetic radiation levels in the hatch (which is referenced in Season 4). I’d venture that he was probably “at the heart of the time machine” thus, he was a little more clairvoyant to his alternate future than say, the folks who were out on the beach. And, that is ultimately how he gets “flashes” of Charlie’s death. Who knows how many times Desmond actually got to “re-live” his life. And, each time Desmond re-lived his life, he saw what would ultimately lead our heroes to getting off the island – and that would be Charlie sending out the message.



2004 (Off-Island time, after the plane crash): Widmore stages a fake Oceanic 815 plane crash because he has gotten wind that the plane may have entered the secret DHARMA research island. The fact that the plane can’t be found at the island’s location leads Widmore to believe that time travel does truly exist on the island. Widmore is a rich man, so he wants to use time travel for his own benefit.

On another side of the power struggle, there are a few DHARMA folks left in the real world, who also are desperately trying to get back to the island, ultimately to kill Ben – because he is responsible for the disappearance of their research team on the island (aka, the purge). Once DHARMA discovers that Widmore is sending a ship to the island, they round up a small crew to travel to the island as spys: Naomi, Faraday, Lapidus, etc.

Ben is on the third point of this power triangle. He knows that he’s destined to survive until at least 2007 – yet in his original timeline, he didn’t have to deal with this struggle. However, since Ben believes that there is a pre-written future for him, he doesn’t have much fear that Widmore or DHARMA will ever be able to succeed in bringing him down. So, with that, Ben sends Tom off the island to recruit Michael to destroy everyone on the boat: DHARMA and Widmore’s folks. So, from Ben’s perspective, he’s killing two birds with one stone.

1996 (island time): after Desmond is able to finally lead Charlie to his destiny and losties remove the blocking-signal, Jack is able to communicate to the freighter using Naomi’s device. Her device is a specially manufactured DHARMA device that allows Naomi to communicate in the past (on the island) with the future DHARMA in 2004 (on the freighter). Note that even Sayid pointed out how futuristic the device was – it’s futuristic because it’s used to communicate between different times!

Daniel has his friend on the freighter launch a payload in order to “test” the special coordinate that allows passage from the island. If the payload had been launched very far away from the special coordinate, it may have arrived as much as 8 years later in time! The fact that the payload arrived 31 minutes suggested to Daniel that they had almost found the exact coordinate. As for the motives of Naomi’s crew - these are working for DHARMA, they are not happy, and they are after Ben. They want to know why DHARMA was wiped out on the island.



1996 (Desmond’s timeline): As Sayid and Desmond leave the island, they pass through the time barrier between the island time and the real world time. In other words, Desmond is instantly passing from the island time of 1996 to the future time of 2004. Only Desmond is impacted by the “time transition,” because he was originally exposed to the high levels of the magnetism (aka radiation) in the SWAN hatch for the past 3-4 years. While Desmond makes the transition, his mind is meshed with the 1996 version of himself. Daniel understands exactly what is happening to Desmond – so he uses his communication device to talk to the 2004 version of Desmond in order to create a “constant” for himself so that he could eventually make it off the island. That is why when Daniel checks his log; he is able to see the newly written content, saying that “Desmond is his constant.” Daniel wasn’t actually changing the past by asking Desmond to make contact, he was just trying to figure out how he could get off the island, and back in to the present year of 2004.

Unfortunately for Daniel, Naomi, and their crew, they were hand selected by DHARMA to be guinea pigs. We’d seen in their flashforwards that they possibly knew too much about DHARMA – thus they were expendable.

As for the other crew member on the freighter who’s experiencing Desmond’s symptoms – that guy attempted to get to the island, but didn’t pass through the special coordinate. As a result, his mind was sent from 2004 to 1996, and he didn’t have a “constant” to keep his mind connected between the two timelines. As a result, he died. So, the only true way to get to the island is through the special coordinate, which allows passage between timelines.

1996 (island timeline): Once the power struggle on the island plays out, 6 “survivors” emerge and leave the island: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sun, Aaron and Sayid. It’s still unclear how the 6 get off the island, but we do know that the rest of the survivors remain on the island in the year 1996; however, DHARMA, nor Ben, ever tell the 6 that they were previously living in the year 1996 on the island.




2005: Along with the “6,” Ben has also gotten off the island. Remember that he has traveled from the future (around 2007) back in time to 1996 as well. Now that Ben is off the island, he uses Sayid to help course correct to ensure that the future to 2007 plays out according to plan. We’re not exactly sure why Sayid is killing the people that Ben chooses; however, it is likely that these people must die in order to preserve the new timeline – perhaps they are members of DHARMA, and once Ben can eliminate all of them. It’s clear, however, that Ben’s interest is now taking over DHARMA and regaining control over their time machine. Once he can obtain that, he can travel back in time to 1996, go back to the island, and restart the time loop (hopefully).

2007: Jack has lived about 3-4 years off the island in the new timeline. He knows that there are people living on the island in the year 1996 (now probably 1999 on the island). Jack may also be aware that in an original timeline, his plane wasn’t meant to crash, and he was meant to survive. Thus he tried to jump off a bridge (similar to how Michael tried to shoot himself with a gun), to test fate to see if he CAN actually kill himself. Jack then reads in the paper that Ben has died – which may create the perfect opportunity to go back to the island, assuming that Ben was previously preventing them from going back. One thing to note is that Jack and the other survivors may not even be aware that they had lived in the past on the island. However, the fact that they are still alive is testing fate, given that they were meant to die in the plane crash, years ago. I predict that the show will end with a final scene that will determine whether or not the survivors have “free will” to overcome some type of obstacle that fate would’ve deemed impossible. What is that obstacle? Only time will tell.



Conclusions:

Going forward, I can only predict a few things that will happen: Throughout season 4, I think Naomi’s DHARMA folks will infiltrate the island and there will be a cat and mouse game between the Others, our heroes, and DHARMA. I think that Jack and Ben will slowly start to see eye to eye, and Jack will start to realize Ben’s pessimistic viewpoint on fate. However, I don’t believe the “time machine” concept will come into play until the final season.

By the end of the series, I think some people will stay on the island and some will leave; however, the question will remain: will our heroes be able to “beat fate” somehow. Either way, the failure to keep pressing the button and the leading of DHARMA to the island has caused a great burden for Ben and the Others, as they now have no control over DHARMA and the island. Our only hope is that they can harness some more of the islands powers to finally allow free will to change the future and stop DHARMA once and for all!

[rikhyray]

1. The Path of Salvation

There is no consistent Christian account of how humans are supposed to be saved, although this is of the utmost practical urgency. It is absurd that the aim of Christianity is human salvation and yet Christian doctrine does not make clear how this is achieved. Indeed, there are conflicting ideas of salvation suggested by the creeds, the gospels and Paul's letters.[4] For example, one view of salvation presented in the Synoptic Gospels is that a person is saved by following a moral code.[5] A second view, one maintained by Paul, John, and the Creeds, is that a person is saved by having faith in Jesus. In other words, the first path to salvation seems to be through works, whereas the second path to salvation is by faith alone.

The second route is the one most commonly associated with Christianity. However, it is not clear just what it involves besides belief. Even when one concentrates only on the cognitive dimension of faith there are unclarities. The Creeds seem to demand the kind of belief that defines orthodox Christianity: namely, everything from the Virgin Birth to the Second Coming, from the Resurrection to the Incarnation. But John only seems to demand belief in the incarnation and Paul only seems to demand belief in the resurrection. Neither Paul nor John demands belief in the Virgin Birth or in the Trinity but the Creeds do.

So Christians who read the New Testament and the Creeds of Christianity carefully should be utterly confused for they are presented with conflicting doctrines. They will not know whether one is saved by works or by faith and, if by faith, by faith in what.

Notice that my argument does not presuppose the falsehood of Christianity. Even if Christianity were true, Christianity would be absurd since the goal is salvation yet in Christian doctrine there is no clear and consistent way to achieve it. There is in fact an incongruity between Christianity's inconsistent views of salvation and the central place of salvation in Christianity. It is as if Christianity says, "Above all seek salvation! But there is no clear or consistent way to do it!"

Could a Christian avoid this conclusion? Of course, he or she could try to interpret the New Testament so that these conflicting doctrines of salvation are harmonized or so that one of them is discounted. But such interpretations cannot be arbitrary. Absurdity should not be avoided by arbitrariness. For example, a Christian who read an earlier draft of this paper said that he found my view that the New Testament offers conflicting advice regarding salvation strained. The traditional message, he said, is that one is saved by trusting God as revealed through Jesus Christ. However, he neither cited New Testament passages to support his interpretation nor made any attempt to explain away the apparently conflicting doctrines I have cited. To be sure, one might be able to find passages that support the commentator's interpretation. But there are other passages that support conflicting interpretations. It is well known that there is a long-standing conflict between Catholics who stress salvation by works and Protestants who advocate salvation by faith. Indeed, there is a vast amount of scholarly literature devoted to trying to understand the conflict.[6] This traditional controversy and the scholarly response certainly suggest that my thesis that the Bible offers conflicting advice is hardly strained.

Another possible way of trying to avoid the problem is to maintain that since the path of salvation is unclearly specified in the Bible one should cover both bets by having faith in Jesus and also doing good works. Given the mysterious nature of God, whether this is a good prudential suggestion is unclear. After all, God may not want us to follow both paths at once. But in any case it does not avoid the main problem. It is absurd that Christians should have to use this strategy in order to avoid the problem. If following both paths simultaneously is what God wants, why is this not clearly specified? Surely the path of salvation should be stated in a way that is easy to understand.
2. The Concept of Heaven

Despite the fact that going to Heaven is the primary goal of Christianity and is held up as an end of infinite desirability, the idea of Heaven is deeply problematic both conceptually and ethically.[7] Again this strikes me as absurd. And again it should be noted that I am not assuming the falsehood of Christianity. Even if the major doctrines of Christianity were true, it is incongruous and unreasonable that Heaven has a central place in the Christian scheme of things and yet its nature is so problematic.
a. Conceptual Difficulties

First there are conceptual difficulties with Heaven. To begin with the notion of human existence in Heaven--be it disembodied or embodied--is conceptually unintelligible. In the most common theory of our heavenly existence the immaterial soul of a human being--not the body--goes to Heaven shortly after his or her death. In this interpretation Heaven is considered "a place" although not in time and space. In a second theory--one that many scholars believe is the original Christian view--Heaven does not exist now but will exist in the future with the Second Coming. With the Second Coming people's bodies will be resurrected in an altered form but will be rewarded in the space in which we now live.

With respect to the first theory it is difficult enough to imagine even in a rough way what disembodied existence would be like in time and space. How would a soul move from place to place? How would it recognize other souls? What would disembodied souls do all day long since presumably there would be no need to sleep? The problem becomes insuperable when it is combined with the idea that Heaven is outside of space and time. All of our mental concepts--for instance, thinking, willing, and desiring--are temporal notions that take time to perform and occur at some particular time. Nontemporal thinking and desiring are inconceivable. Yet on this variant, souls think and desire nontemporally.

Consider the theory that Heaven does not exist now, but will exist in the future when people's bodies are resurrected in an altered form in space, as we know it. Here we do not have those problems associated with disembodied souls and nonphysical space for Heaven is in our physical space. But still there are difficulties. Bodies that are buried decay and the atoms that constitute them become dispersed. Indeed, some of these atoms might eventually become parts of bodies of people who are now living. And much the same thing is true of bodies that are cremated. In view of problems like these theistic philosophers such as Peter Van Inwagen have argued that not even an all-powerful God can resurrect a body that is completely decayed. But since human bodies do decay this is a problem.

Van Inwagen has suggested a solution to this problem so bizarre that, were it not for his status within the field, the idea would not warrant serious comment. He has suggested that, despite appearances to the contrary, human bodies do not decay. Rather, God preserves our bodies--perhaps at the moment of death--and substitutes replicas that either rot or are cremated.[8] Unfortunately, this proposal introduces new problems. Why should one suppose that the rotting or cremated bodies are replicas and not the bodies themselves? Further, where are the preserved bodies stored? If it is held that they are stored on some distant planet or in a different space from ours, problems immediately arise. The latter possibility introduces the problem of how there could be a space different from ours. The former suggestion leaves open the possibility of future empirical verification, in that space exploration could in principle find the planet where God stores the preserved bodies.[9]

Independent of its intrinsic bizarreness and problematic implications there is something puzzling about Van Inwagen's suggestion. Why should God go to such lengths to make it appear that people pass into complete nothingness? Van Inwagen suggests that if bodies did not rot or mysteriously disappear after death, this would be sure evidence of a power beyond Nature. He says that although God wants us to believe in Him, He does not do all He can do to provide us with undeniable evidence. Van Inwagen concludes by saying, "perhaps it is not hard to think of good reasons for such a policy."[10]

Perhaps it is harder than Van Inwagen supposes. Theodore Drange has presented powerful arguments to show that the usual arguments given for God's not providing us with powerful evidence for His existence are very weak.[11] For example, one cannot argue that being presented with powerful evidence interferes with one's free will since free choice is compatible with having powerful evidence. In any case, if it were found that bodies did not rot or disappear after death, this would hardly be undeniable evidence for the theistic God since this state of affairs is compatible with many nontheistic interpretations, for example, an evil demon trying to confound us.
b. Moral difficulties

Heaven seems unfair no matter how one views it. According to the standard view of Heaven, some people are sent there as a reward for something they do in their earthly existence and some people are not. On a second view Heaven is a gift of God that is completely unmerited--some people receive it and some do not. On a third universalistic view everyone eventually goes to Heaven.

Consider the unmerited gift view first. A father who bestowed unmerited gifts on some of his children and not on others would be considered unjust and arbitrary. Surely much the same thing could be said about God if He were to act in a similar way. But suppose we accept the standard view that going to Heaven is based on merit. It still seems unfair. Suppose that Heaven is a reward for belief, for example in Jesus as the Savior. Millions of people through no fault of their own have never heard of Jesus or at least have not been exposed to Scripture. These people's failure to believe is hardly grounds for not going to Heaven.

Moreover, even if people have been exposed and have failed to believe, why should they be punished by not being rewarded? Many nonbelievers reject the Gospel message for the good reason that the evidence shows the improbability of many of the major doctrines of Christianity: the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and the Incarnation.[12] Even if these doctrines are true and not improbable in the light of the evidence, rational people surely can fail to be impressed by the evidence. It would be going beyond what the evidence dictates--if not being in conflict with the evidence--to accept Jesus as the Son of God. Furthermore, even if nonbelievers have misevaluated the evidence and it does indeed provide solid grounds for belief, many nonbelievers sincerely believe that evidence is lacking. Why would a good God want to withhold the joy of Heaven to a sincere nonbeliever who might lack sufficient insight, knowledge, or analytical skills to appraise the evidence correctly?

Now apologists such as William Lane Craig would argue that the situation I describe could never obtain in reality. Nonbelief is not basically an intellectual problem but a willful sinful rejection of the Holy Spirit. However, as I have argued elsewhere, Craig's appeal to the Holy Spirit is problematic.[13] One fundamental problem with Craig's theory is that he assumes that not only all Christians but also all people have experienced the Holy Spirit. But there is no reason to think that even all professed Christians have experienced the Holy Spirit, let alone that all non-Christians have done so.

Suppose the reward of Heaven is based not on belief but on moral behavior. This is still unfair. Millions of people have not been exposed to the moral teachings of the Bible. That they do not live according to Biblical standards is not their fault. Moreover, even those who have been exposed to the Bible may find its moral message unacceptable on moral grounds. God as portrayed in the Old Testament is often cruel and arbitrary and in the New Testament even Jesus is pictured as having a flawed moral character.[14] Moreover, even for those who accept the Bible the question is what behavior should be rewarded. What the Bible teaches concerning morality is subject to various conflicting interpretations. But how in all fairness can Heaven be a reward for following the correct moral standard of Scripture since what this represents is unclear?

Now it might be argued that people who have never been exposed to the Bible's specific ethical message would still be saved if they followed the general principles of the natural moral law, which all persons know because God's Holy Sprint imprints this knowledge on everyone's conscience. However, this retort is problematic. For one thing, there seems to be no reason to suppose that the Holy Spirit does imprint natural moral law on everyone's conscience. Whether there are universally held moral principles is uncertain. But even if there are, it is not clear how it could be shown that the Holy Spirit is responsible. In addition, given this generous doctrine of salvation it is not clear why the Incarnation was even necessary or desirable.[15]

On the other hand, advocating universalism also has its problems. What is the point of Heaven if everyone goes there eventually? What is the meaning of earthly existence with its suffering and trials and tribulations? Although in this case one can perhaps no longer complain of unfairness[16] one can complain of the meaningless of the exercise. Human existence becomes apparently absurd and a deep mystery. Why do we have an earthly life at all? Why not start life in a heavenly state?

One reader of an earlier draft of this paper objected that the unfairness or the pointlessness of the above accounts of Heaven do not show that Christianity is absurd in the incongruity sense since people still have a desire for eternal life even if it is unfair or pointless. But the incongruity I have in mind does not turn on any conflict with the desire for eternal life. Heaven, whatever else it is, purports to have ethical implications that in fact seem to be lacking on closer examination. Heaven is supposed to give a moral point to life, but it does not.
3. Christian Ethics

Another incongruity in Christianity is that the theory of Christian ethics to be found in the New Testament seems irrelevant or indefensible to many morally sensitive people including many contemporary Christians. Yet this theory is supposed to be the basis of the Christian morality. Jesus' otherworldliness, harshness, demands for blind obedience, and vindictiveness are not only morally unacceptable but conflict with the claim that he is morally perfect.[17] Moreover, his tacit approval of slavery makes him an inappropriate ethical model.

Once again it is important to note that my thesis does not presuppose that Christianity is false. Even if Christianity were true, there would be an incongruity between Christians holding up Jesus as the moral ideal and his problematic ethical views. Christians believe that Jesus is their moral ideal and yet Jesus has serious moral flaws that conflict with this ideal.

Let us consider the case of slavery in more detail. Although this practice was common in Jesus' own world, there is no evidence that he criticized it. As Morton Smith has noted:

There were innumerable slaves of the emperor and of the Roman State; the Jerusalem Temple owned slaves; the High Priest owned slaves (one of them lost an ear in Jesus' arrest); all of the rich and almost all of the middle class owned slaves. So far as we are told, Jesus never attacked this practice. He took the state of affairs for granted and shaped his parables accordingly. As Jesus presents things, the main problem for the slaves is not to get free, but to win their master's praise. There seem to have been slave revolts in Palestine and Jordan in Jesus' youth (Josephus, Bellum, 2:55-65); a miracle-working leader of such a revolt would have attracted a large following. If Jesus had denounced slavery or promised liberation, we should almost certainly have heard of his doing it. We hear nothing, so the most likely supposition is that he said nothing.[18]

Smith's judgment is confirmed by the behavior of Jesus' disciples. If Jesus was opposed to slavery, it is likely that his earlier followers would have followed his teachings on the subject. However, Paul (1Cor. 7: 21, 24) and other early Christian writers commanded Christians to continue the practice of slavery.[19] Surely, it is absurd for someone who tacitly approved of slavery to represent the Christian moral ideal.

Is it possible to try to answer this charge of absurdity? One way is to reinterpret those parts of Christian ethics that Christians find disagreeable, for example, to argue that Jesus did not tacitly approval of slavery. But although such reinterpretations must not be arbitrary and problematic, they often are. For example, it has been argued by a Christian reader of an earlier draft of this paper that if Jesus had taught that slavery was wrong, he would have been dismissed and that, historically, liberating slaves was "not in the cards." This strikes me as a rationalization. We are to believe that he preached turning the other cheek, loving one's enemies, and not looking at women with lust in one's eyes. Yet these views seem just as out of keeping with the historical possibilities as does freeing the slaves. Moreover, some people in the Ancient World did express their opposition.[20] Another way for Christians to avoid incongruity would be to profess approval of Jesus' behavior despite its manifest problems. But in fact when push comes to shove Christians don't. Thus, for example, contemporary Christians are opposed to slavery.

However, despite the evidence let us suppose Jesus was opposed to slavery and that his and his disciples' condemnation was omitted from the New Testament record. This would pose a new absurdity for Christianity: Jesus did indeed oppose slavery but the opposite seems to be suggested by the New Testament record. Thus, Christians who oppose slavery would be following Jesus but have no Biblical justification for doing so. Moreover, if God really did oppose slavery and Jesus preached against it, why would God allow that teaching to go unmentioned in the New Testament? Surely, this poses another absurdity. The Bible fails to mention Jesus' opposition to one of the most heinous practices in the history of the human race and yet Jesus is supposed to be our moral ideal.

Even if we waive these problems and concentrate on what is considered by many to be the essence of Jesus' teachings, namely, the Love Your Neighbor Commandment, there are problems. The unclarity of the commandment allows it to be interpreted in different ways some of which have unacceptable implications while others are so unclear that it is impossible to discern what the commandment entails. But it is absurd that the ethical commandment at the heart of Christianity should have these problems.[21]
4. The Atonement

Still another incongruity in Christianity is that there is no plausible theory of the Atonement; that is, of why Jesus became incarnated, died on the Cross and was resurrected.[22] Yet without this the Christian worldview makes no sense and the incarnation, death, and resurrection are pointless.

All of the historically important theories of the Atonement have serious problems. In particular, they either fail to explain why God sacrificed his son for the salvation of sinners or else they make the sacrifice seem arbitrary and pointless. Thus, they do not provide an adequate explanation of the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Note again that I am not assuming that Christianity is false. My point simply is that there is an incongruity between the lack of a plausible theory of the Atonement and the need of such a theory to make sense of Christianity. To illustrate it I will consider the Satisfaction Theory of St. Anselm.

Although the Satisfaction Theory was anticipated to some extent by earlier thinkers, Anselm developed it in an explicit and sophisticated way in the 11th Century.[23] He argued that God must save humanity via the incarnation and death of Jesus. To offer God his due, according Anselm, is to follow his will. However, he argued that when God's creatures sin this is precisely what they do not do. The sins of God's creatures insult God and detract from his honor. There is, then, an obligation to restore God's honor and to undo the insult. This is satisfaction. However, only the death of the God-Man Jesus can give proper satisfaction. Only the God-Man is able, by his divinity, to offer something that is worthy of God and, by his humanity, to represent humankind. A mere human would be unable to give the proper satisfaction since this latter must be in proportion to the amount of sin and the amount of sin is infinite.[24] Furthermore, the death of the God-Man is not unjust since the Son of God died completely voluntarily in order to restore God's honor. Those who accept Jesus' sacrifice are saved.

This theory makes assumptions that are questionable. Let me just mention four:

First, it is not clear why, if the wrong inflicted on God by humanity is infinite, it could not be properly satisfied by simply inflicting punishment on sinners for eternity. The incarnation would not be necessary.

Second, the death of Jesus, even though voluntary, seems unjust. Justice surely demands that at the very least the guilty party provide as much of the satisfaction as he or she can. Furthermore, a perfectly good person would not permit a completely innocent person to provide satisfaction on a voluntary basis even if the guilty party could not pay anything. Indeed, the very idea of God's pride being so wounded and demanding such satisfaction that the voluntary sacrifice of his innocent son is required, assumes a view of God's moral nature that many modern readers would reject.

Third, it is not clear on this theory why the death of the God-Man is necessary for satisfaction of an infinite wrong against God's honor. Why would not some other punishment suffice? If God's honor is infinitely wounded by human sin, why could it not be appeased by the eternal punishment of the God-Man, Jesus? Why the death penalty? It would seem much worse to punish Jesus for eternity than to kill him after only relatively little suffering. Even if one argues that death has a harshness that no punishment can match, it is important to recall that Jesus was dead for only a short time. It would have been a much harsher death punishment if Jesus had remained unresurrected.

Finally, it is unclear why those who accept Jesus' sacrifice are saved. Even supposing that Jesus' sacrifice provides satisfaction for the past damage done to God's honor, why should faith in Jesus now save anyone? And why should believers but not nonbelievers be rewarded?

Other theories such as the Penal Theory, the Government Theory, the Moral Theory, the Christus Victor Theory, and the Mystic Theory are also extremely implausible.[25]
5. The Concept of God

The final incongruity I will mention here is that although God is central to the Christians scheme, the concept of the Christian God is incoherent. Note that I am not just saying that belief in God is false. Rather, there is an incongruity in basing one's religion on a belief in God and having this idea be incoherent. What could be more absurd than that the central concept of a religion is inconsistent? First of all, some of the properties attributed to God in the Bible are inconsistent.[26] In some places God is described as merciful[27] and in other places as lacking mercy;[28] in some places as a being who repents and changes His mind,[29] in other places as a being who never repents and changes His mind;[30] in some places as a being who deceives and causes confusion and evil,[31] and in other places as a being who never does;[32] in some places as someone who punishes children for their parents' wrong doing[33] and in other places as one who never does.[34]

Second, the attributes specified in philosophical accounts of God are either in conflict with one another or are internally inconsistent. In my Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, I spend thirty pages analyzing in detail the incoherencies connected with the concepts of omniscience, omnipotence, and divine freedom. Here I only have time to outline my arguments connected with omniscience.

To say that God is omniscient is to say that God is all-knowing. To say that God is all-knowing in turn entails that He has all of the knowledge that there is. Now philosophers have distinguished three different kinds of knowledge: propositional, procedural and knowledge by acquaintance. Briefly, propositional or factual knowledge is knowledge that something is the case and is analyzable as true belief of a certain kind. In contrast, procedural knowledge or knowledge how is a type of skill and is not reducible to propositional knowledge.[35] Finally, knowledge by acquaintance is direct acquaintance with some object, person or phenomenon.[36] For example, for me to say that I know Mr. Jones implies that I have more than simply detailed propositional knowledge about Mr. Jones; that I have a direct acquaintance of Mr. Jones. Similarly, to say that I know poverty implies that, beside detailed propositional knowledge of poverty, I have some direct experience of it.

To say that God is all-knowing, then, is to say that God has all knowledge where this includes propositional, procedural and knowledge by acquaintance. The implications of this account for the incoherence of the concept of God have not usually been noticed. If God is omniscient, then God must have all knowledge including knowledge of how to swim. Yet this conflicts with His disembodiness for only a being with a body can have knowledge how to swim in the procedural sense; that is, can actually have the skill of swimming. Since by definition God does not have a body, God's attribute of being disembodied and His attribute of being omniscient are in conflict. Thus, since God has conflicting properties the concept of God is incoherent.[37]

One might object to my argument on two grounds. First, one might argue that God could become incarnate and gain knowledge how while He was in this state. Yes, but He would lack this knowledge before He became incarnate. However, God is supposed to be all-knowing eternally. Secondly, one might claim that God could learn how to swim by thinking about it. But this objection is based on a confusion between two types of knowing how. Of course, God can know how to swim in the sense that He would know that to swim one must move one's arms and legs in such and such a way, take a breath in such and such manner and so on. But this is not relevant to the skill sense of knowing how which consists of actually being able to swim; this is, having the physical skill. Since God lacks a body unless He is incarnate He could not have the skill sense of knowing how to swim.

The property of being all-knowing also conflicts with the moral attributes usually attributed to God. For if God is omniscient, He has knowledge by acquaintance of all aspects of lust and envy. Now one aspect of lust is the feeling of lust and one aspect of envy is the feeling of envy. However, part of the concept of God is that He is morally perfect and being morally perfect excludes these feelings. Consequently, the concept of God is incoherent.

In addition, God's omniscience conflicts with God's omnipotence. Since God is omnipotent He cannot experience fear, frustration, and despair.[38] In order to have these experiences one must believe that one is limited in power, but since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, He knows that He is not limited in power. Consequently, He cannot have complete knowledge by acquaintance of all aspects of fear, frustration and despair. On the other hand, since God is omniscient He must have this knowledge. Again the concept of God is shown to be incoherent. Yet what could be more absurd? The concept central to the Christian is God and yet this concept is incoherent.

Can my arguments be answered? Of course, one could give a different interpretation of God or of the Old Testament. In so doing one would attempt to show that the concept of God is not incoherent. But such interpretations must not be arbitrary or otherwise problematic. With respect to conflicting Biblical passages a Christian who read an earlier draft of this paper criticized my method of interpretation as neglecting the central themes and concentrating on what he called "legalistic" details. Unfortunately, he did not venture an opinion on how these details are to be reconciled or how one determines the central themes.

This same reader also tried to reconcile the conflict between God's omniscience and his other attributes by denying that God is all-knowing. In particular, this reader denied that God has complete knowledge how and knowledge by acquaintance. But this supposition has the paradoxical implications that humans have knowledge that God lacks. To put it in another way, it implies that an infinite being lacks knowledge that finite beings have. One absurdity is substituted for another.
Conclusion

The Christian doctrines of Salvation, Heaven, Ethics, The Atonement, and God[39] are of central importance to Christianity and yet these doctrines are problematic. But this is absurd in terms of the ordinary dictionary definition of "absurd."[40] This is not of course the end of the story for Christians can reject some of the interpretations my arguments turn on. Whether they can give alternative interpretations that are not arbitrary or paradoxical is another matter.
Notes

[1] Cf. Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity, (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991), Introduction.

[2] An earlier, shorter, and greatly modified version of this paper appeared in The American Rationalist, May/June 2000, pp. 3-6, with the title "The Absurdity of the Christian Life."

[3] If something is absurd in the incongruity sense, then is it absurd in the meaningless sense? If something is absurd in meaningless sense, is it absurd in the incongruity sense?

[4] See The Case Against Christianity, Chapter 7.

[5] I am aware of the subtle scholarship of members of the Jesus Seminar that tries to determine what Jesus really said. [See, for example, Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (Harper, SanFranciso, 1997).] However, the conclusion (which I accept) that Jesus did not say many of the things he is reported to have said would not affect my main point in this paper in any important way. Almost all Christians seem to believe at least by implication that Jesus did say these things. For example, most Christians profess to believe what Jesus is reported to have said in the Synoptic Gospels. But there he is reported to have said that salvation could be achieved by following a moral code. Yet they also profess to believe Paul and John. But they said that salvation is achieved only through faith. So do the Creeds of Christianity which most Christians also believe. My thesis is concerned with exposing an incongruity in common Christian belief--not what scholars may decide what Christians should believe in the light of historical scholarship.

As I understand the findings of the Jesus Seminar, the view that Jesus taught salvation by following a moral code that involves following the commandments and not being rich has moderate (Matt.19: 21-24, Luke 13:24, 18:18-25) to weak support (Matt.7: 13-14, 19:17). In terms of the Seminar's color-coding system these passages are either pink (Jesus probably said this) or gray (he did not say this but the ideas are close to his own). However, the members of the seminar seem to regard the view that Jesus taught salvation only by faith as very dubious. Thus, they reject John 14: 1-14 as representing what Jesus said although this passage is used to support the salvation by faith doctrine. (See The Five Gospels, pp. 450-1.) But most Christians do not know the opinions of the Jesus Seminar and probably would not accept them even if they did.

However, if we bring in the findings of the Jesus Seminar this seems to generate another incoherence: Many Christians believe that salvation is by faith only, but the best scholarship does not support that this is what Jesus taught. It is surely absurd that Jesus did not teach one of the most widely held Christian doctrines of salvation.

[6] I owe this point to Robert Price in personal correspondence.

[7] See Michael Martin, "Problems With Heaven," July 22, 1997.

[8] Peter Van Inwagen, "The Possibility of Resurrection," Philosophy of Religion, ed. Louis Pojman (Wadsworth Pub. 1994), pp. 389-92.

[9] However, given the vastness of space failure to find the location of such a planet would not tend to disconfirm its existence. Technically the hypothesis "There is a planet where God preserves bodies of human being who die on Earth" is an unrestricted existential statement and is not falsifiable by observational evidence.

[10] Ibid., p. 392.

[11] See, Theodore Drange, "The Argument From Nonbelief," Religious Studies, 29, 1993, pp. 417-432, and "The Arguments From Evil and Nonbelief," 1996.

[12] See The Case Against Christianity.

[13] Michael Martin, "Craig's Holy Spirit Epistemology," April 15, 1998.

[14] See The Case Against Christianity, Chapter 6. Here and elsewhere in this paper I assume that Jesus existed. Although I have argued against his existence in The Case Against Christianity (Chapter 2) I said (p. 67) I would not rely on my arguments against his existence in the rest of the book since they are too controversial. Moreover, I have not relied on them since that time in my writings on Christianity. Consequently, it would be a serious misunderstanding to suppose that I am being inconsistent in assuming the existence of Jesus in this paper. For the purposes of this paper I assume what the typical Christian supposes (that Jesus existed) and attempt to show the incongruities involved in this.

My arguments are hypothetical in a different way as well. I assume we have a good idea of Jesus' ethical views and behavior from what is said in the Synoptic Gospels. However, I argued in The Case Against Christianity (Chapter 6, p. 163) that this is assumption is dubious. As I pointed out there most Christians ignore this problem and take the Synoptic Gospels as the basis for Christian ethics. In The Case Against Christianity (Chapter 6) I followed that convention. In this paper I do so as well. I assume that the Synoptic Gospels are the basis of Christian ethics and show that the ethical views and behavior presented there conflict with Jesus as a moral ideal.

[15] See, The Case Against Christianity, pp. 208-11.

[16] I say "perhaps" because the fairness question might be raised with respect to universalism as well. Is it fair that everyone will be saved when some people have lived incredibly evil lives while others have lived wonderfully good lives? On the question of fairness in salvation see Richard Schoenig, "The Argument from Unfairness," International Journal of Philosophy and Religion, 45, 1999, pp. 115-128.

[17] See The Case Against Christianity, Chapter 6.

[18] See Morton Smith, "Biblical Arguments for Slavery", Free Inquiry, 7, Spring 1987, p. 30.

[19] Ibid.; see also Edward A. Westermarck, "Christianity and Slavery," A Second Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, ed. Gordon Stein, (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987), pp. 427-437.

[20] See for example, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd, 1948), p.254. According to Russell the followers of the cynic Antisthenes condemned slavery. Moreover, even Aristotle who is usually considered an advocate of slavery was opposed to slavery that is the result of war and conquest. See W. D. Ross, Aristotle, (London: Metheun and Co. LTD, 1956), p. 241.

[21] See The Case Against Christianity, pp. 172-191.

[22] See The Case Against Christianity, Appendix 2.

[23] L. W. Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine the Atonement, (London: Manchester University Press, 1920) Chapters 4, 5, 6.

[24] See Joseph M. Colleran's Introduction to Anselm, Why God Became Man and The Virgin Conception and Original Sin, trans., introduction, and notes by Joseph M. Colleran (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1969) pp. 44-45.

[25] See The Case Against Christianity, Appendix 2.

[26] I am indebted here to Ted Drange's Nonbelief and Evil, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), pp. 80-82.

[27] Ps 86:5, 100:5, 103:8, 106:1, 136:2, 145:8-9; Joel 2:13; Mic 7:18; Jas 5:11.

[28] De 7:2, 16, 20:16-17; Jos 6:21, 10:11, 19, 40, 11:6-20; Isa 6:19, 15:3; Na 1:2; Jer 13:14; Mt 8:12, 13:42, 50, 25:30, 41, 46; Mk 3:29; 2Th 1:8-9; Re 14:9-11, 21:8.

[29] Ge 6:6; Ex 32:14; 1Sa 2:30-31, 15:11,35; 2Sa 24:16; 2Ki 20: 1-6; Ps 106:45; Jer 42:10; Am 7:3; Jon 3:10.

[30] Nu 23:19; ISa 15:29, Eze 24:14; Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17.

[31] Ge 11:7; Jg 9:23; 1Sa 16:14; La 3:38; 1Ki 22:22-23; Isa 45:7; Am 3:6; Jer18:11, 20:7; Eze 20:25; 2 Th 2:11.

[32] De 32:4; Ps 25:8, 100:5, 145:9; ICo 14:33.

[33] Ge 9:22-25; Ex 20:5, 34:7; Nu 14:18; De 5:9; 2Sa 12:14; Isa 14:21, 65:6-7.

[34] De 24:16; 2Ch 25:4; Eze 18:20.

[35] For an account of these two types of knowledge see Israel Scheffler, Conditions of Knowledge, (Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co. 1965).

[36] See D. W. Hamlyn, The Theory of Knowledge, (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 104-106.

[37] This argument was developed in Michael Martin, "A Disproof of the God of the Common Man," Question, 1974, 115-124; Michael Martin, A Disproof of God's Existence, Darshana International, 1970.

[38] Cf. David Blumenfeld, "On the Compossibility of the Divine Attributes," Philosophical Studies, 34, 1978, pp. 91-103.

[39] I might have considered many other aspects of Christianity which have absurd implications. Perhaps a plausible candidate would be the prima facie incoherent notion of the Trinity, which is central to Christian teachings. Moreover, another plausible candidate would be the absurdity of the importance of worship of God in Christianity. See "God and Moral Autonomy" by James Rachels.

[40] I am indebted to Jeff Lowder and three anonymous readers for helpful comments on a much earlier draft of this paper. I am also indebted to Jeff Lowder for reading a later version and making detailed comments.