Just when I thought the holidays were perfect, Crazy Mother bites me in the ass.

Every member of my family is at least 250 miles away, and that's the way I like it on Christmas. I called them all, sent pictures, and even had a nice talk with Crazy Mother on Christmas morning -- the first interesting, mature, and non-aggravating discussion I've had with her in probably 10 years.

At the end of this discussion she mentioned that she had, for Christmas, sent a letter to the Angry Kid. This made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but I was too busy to follow it up. The letter arrived today, and my suspicions were confirmed.

It's hard to raise a child as an atheist. Harder still when the child's grandmother, who knows full well we are atheists, sends her proselytizing letters about "God's best Christmas present, his son Jesus Christ," with instructions to me to read it to her.

I told the Angry Kid that Gramma had written some silly things that I wasn't going to tell her about, but that I would read everything I could. (I probably shouldn't have said that. But it was better than the, "Oh, fuck you!" and pitching it in the trash that was my first inclination.) There wasn't much I could read, as even the stuff that wasn't about Jesus was inappropriate in a letter to a child ("I've been so unhappy... I found a new job... etc.").

I'll put the letter away so the Angry Kid can read it when she's older if she wants. Meanwhile I'm aching to pick up the phone and rupture the crazy old biddy's tympanic membranes.

No vegetarians live here.

I hope y'all had a wonderful holiday. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward all.

Who says atheists can't do a great Christmas?

Groceries we have already consumed include:

• Eggs: 3 dozen large, 1 dozen pasteurized
• Butter: 5 lbs unsalted
• Sugar: 5 lbs
• Powdered sugar: 4 lbs
• Chocolate: 4 lbs Ghirardelli semisweet
• Cream: 1/2 gallon
• Pecans: 1 lb
• Almonds: 1 lb
  

The raviolis are made, we stood in line for an hour at the market to pick up the ham and the prime rib, and smashed a huge jar of mostarda in the process. We still have 2 lbs of smelt to fry and the Christmas morning cinnamon rolls to prepare. Oh, and the sauce. And the cabbage. And probably a lot of other stuff I've forgotten.

Edited to add: Crazy mother is far, far away.

Someone's going to have trouble with her tenure review.

From Flip, a new blog, just for us academic types.

Give me jersey or give me death!

Oh, dear.

This fellow, on each application form, has refused to waive his right to read my letter.

The doctor is IN.

Finals were over two weeks ago, grades are long turned in, and Fall commencement has come and gone. There are no students anywhere. Even the graduate students have left for hearth and home. The only people around are the staff, who are forced to be here, and a few -- not many! -- faculty like me.

I am incapable of taking a vacation. Sometimes I think about what I might do if I had some time off, and I always think about how nice it would be to come in and get some work done. So here I am, in an empty (but warm and well-lit) building, trying to sneak in a quick manuscript revision before Christmas sets in.

I complain a lot, but when the students are gone I really love my job. Sometimes I even love my job when they're here.

We all get old.

Once I was hot. Now I am not. I'm okay with that.

I would rather be smart and wrinkly than foolish and taut. I would rather spend my time with a smart, wrinkly, bald man than a foolish, vain man molded out of plastic.

Mailbag Monday: Edition "Why do the kooks write so much? And why do they think I want to read it?"

From: Babu Ranganathan
To: Angry Professor
Subject: Conservative theologian no longer believes eternal torment (Article for faculty and academia)

Dear Professor Angry,

 

Greetings. Please kindly read and share my article (below) with fellow faculty, students, staff, and others (within as well as beyond the campus). This knowledge is so little known in society, even among the very educated. Articles written by me on my website may be reproduced for sharing freely with others. Thanking you for any assistance.

 

Sincerely,

Babu G. Ranganathan*

(B.A. theology/biology)

 

Traditional Doctrine of Hell Has Greek Roots

 

by: Babu G. Ranganathan*

 

Although I am a conservative Christian (Baptist), I no longer believe that the Bible teaches or supports the traditional view of hell with its doctrine of eternal torment or suffering.

 

The Bible does teach eternal punishment, but that eternal punishment ultimately is not eternal suffering.

 

Few in society realize just how much ancient Greek philosophy influenced early Christian thought on hell.

 

The ancient Greeks believed and taught that the human soul is immortal and indestructible. When early Christianity adopted
this belief then it became only logical to believe that those who go to hell must suffer eternal torment. 

 

More than anyone else, the early Church bishop Augustine influenced early Christianity's adoption of this ancient Greek belief about the nature of the soul. Augustine was a great admirer and follower of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato even after converting to Christianity. It was Plato who systematically formulated ancient Greek belief and thought concerning the nature of the human soul.

 

The Bible, however, teaches that man by nature is completely mortal and that immortality is a gift of God to be realized only on Resurrection Day for those who have put their faith and trust in God's Son Jesus Christ for salvation because Christ's death on the Cross fully paid
for our sins and His resurrection from the grave is the guarantee of future immortality for all who believe in Him.

 

Although the wicked in hell, for a period, will suffer consciously for their individual sins, the ultimate penalty for sin itself will be the eternal death of soul and body and the eternal loss to immortality. That is what the Bible means by eternal punishment - the eternal loss to immortality and life. Interestingly, even Adam and Eve were not created as immortal from the beginning. That is why there was placed the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden of Eden.

 

In Genesis 2:17 God told Adam not to eat the fruit of a certain tree (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and God also told Adam that if he did eat of it
he would die on that very day. Specifically, God said to Adam, "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." But the Biblical record shows that Adam did not physically die on the very day he disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit. Because Adam did not physically die on the very day that he disobeyed God most Christians believe that God was referring to spiritual death and not physical death.

 

However, in the original Hebrew, in which the Old Testament was written, the grammatical tense of the word "die" in Genesis 2:17 is in the imperfect mood. The imperfect mood denotes a process. Thus, what God was actually saying to Adam is that he would start dying on the day he ate the forbidden fruit. The literal translation from the Hebrew of what God said to Adam is: "Dying you will die." God was not, therefore, referring to spiritual death but to physical death. The fact that God later prevented Adam and Eve from having access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22-24) so that they would not live eternally proves that God was referring to physical death and not spiritual death.

 

The penalty for sin, then, is the death of both soul and body so that man will not live forever in sin. Not only is God not cruel in His eternal justice, but a holy God will not allow His moral creatures to exist eternally in sin. God will not immortalize sin and evil by making the wicked in hell immortal!  In fact, Jesus Himself emphasizes in Scripture that both the soul and body of the wicked will be destroyed (not kept alive) in hell (Matthew 10:28). All of this contradicts the traditional doctrine and teaching, taught in most churches, about the wicked having an
immortal soul and body in hell.

 

What about "eternal fire", "unquenchable fire", "weeping and gnashing of teeth forever and ever", the account by Jesus about the Rich Man and Lazarus, and other similar passages in the Bible that seem to teach eternal torment? The key, in many cases, is in understanding the context in which these and other similar phrases are used in various parts of Scripture.

 

For example, figures of speech such as "unquenchable fire" are used in the Bible to mean that the process of destruction is unstoppable or irreversible. We see an example of this in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel 20:47-48 where God says that when His judgment comes on the land even every green tree will burn and that the fire "will not be quenched". Obviously, those trees are not still burning. It is important to understand just why God uses such terms in Scripture as "unquenchable fire".

 

In the Bible, there were some judgments of God in which His wrath was quenched or stopped such as in the case when Moses interceded and pleaded before God for the rebellious Israelites in the desert. When Moses did this God stopped or quenched His wrath against the rebellious Israelites. Thus, when God says, in Scripture, that the wicked in the end will be destroyed with unquenchable fire what He simply means is that nothing can intervene to prevent Him from carrying out His wrath fully through to its completion. Over and over in the Scriptures God is described in judgment as being a consuming fire. God's righteous wrath in judgment is not an end in itself but a means to an end.

 

Unlike the burning bush in Exodus that Moses observed was not consumed by the fire but was preserved by God, the Scriptures teach that God, in the end, will not preserve the wicked in the fire of hell but instead will completely consume and destroy them!

 

Contrary to popular belief and interpretation, the phrase in Scripture "where their worm dieth not" is not a reference to the undying human soul or conscience. We have already seen statements in Scripture that God will destroy, not preserve or keep alive, the bodies and souls of the wicked in the Day of Judgment. The worm and fire were figures that people in Jesus' time could readily identify and understand because in that time the dead bodies of those who suffered dishonor in society were all commonly thrown into a certain valley where fire
and worms devoured these bodies. Jesus simply seeks to convey, in figurative language, that in hell (gehenna) neither the fire nor the worm will cease until the wicked are totally consumed or destroyed!

 

The word "forever" is another example. In Scripture the word "forever" does not always mean endless or eternal duration. For example, in Exodus 21:6 (KJV Version) we read that certain people were to be servants "forever". Obviously this cannot mean eternity. The word "forever" or "everlasting", in the original Hebrew and Greek languages of Scripture, simply means the entire length or duration of something. If that something is immortal then the word "forever" must mean eternity. But, if that something is mortal or temporary in nature then, obviously, the word "forever" cannot mean eternity. 

 

Scripture says in Jude 7 that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by eternal fire. These cities are no longer still burning. How, then, can the fire be called "eternal"? Because the result that the fire produced is eternal - these cities have never existed again, nor will they.

 

When the Bible talks about eternal judgment, or eternal damnation, or eternal destruction, it is in reference to the result and not the process! It is not the punishing that is eternal but rather the punishment! It is not the destroying that is eternal but rather the destruction! Just as eternal redemption in the Bible does not mean that the process of redeeming is eternal but rather its result (no one would be saved if the process of redeeming were eternal) so too the eternal judgment of the wicked refers to the result of their judgment being eternal and not the process.

 

The context of Holy Scripture teaches that the eternal punishment of the wicked is ultimately their eternal annihilation and not eternal torment or suffering as the traditional doctrine of hell teaches. As one preacher has put it: "Eternal punishment is the eternal loss of life not an eternal life of loss".

 

Eternal life in Scripture has the same meaning as immortality (i.e. Romans 2:7) which Christians will possess only in the future on Resurrection Day. Various Scripture passages teach immortality and eternal life to be a future possession for Christians. Why then did Jesus use the present tense when saying those who believe in Him have eternal life? The answer is that sometimes in the Bible the present tense is used to describe future events for the purpose of demonstrating their certainty. Scripture says God "calleth those things which be not as though they were" (Romans 4:17).

 

The Bible says Jesus Christ "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Timothy 1:10). The opposite of eternal life (or immortality) is eternal death (the eternal and literal death of soul and body) - not eternally living in torment and suffering! "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23). "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting (eternal) life" (John 3:16). The issue is not what we think eternal punishment ought to be. The issues are God's character, God's definition of ultimate justice, and God's eternal purposes.

 

Some have argued that because man was created in the image of God then all humans must possess an immortal soul. However,  being created in the image of God doesn't necessarily mean that we must possess every attribute or even possible attribute possessed by God. For example, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent - but we are not. The Bible is clear that immortality is an attribute that will be given only on Resurrection Day for those who have put their trust in Christ for salvation.

 

We must base our views of hell and the after life on what the Bible teaches, not on tradition or mere human philosophies and opinions. We must not impose our philosophy of what God ought to be upon Holy Scripture! Not many people realize the fact that in the New Testament there are different Greek words for the word "hell." But unfortunately the English Bible translates these different words for hell as one word, and this has been a cause of much confusion for those who wish to study the subject. The New Testament Greek words for hell are "hades" and "gehenna" and they both have different meanings. Hades means the unseen world of the dead and is only a temporary abode. It has nothing to do with punishment or reward. It is equivalent to the Hebrew word "sheol" in the Old Testament in its meaning. Gehenna, on the other hand, is the abode of eternal punishment of the wicked.

 

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16 has often been used by many Christians, especially preachers, as a depiction of the punishment that the wicked will suffer in hell. But this is not the case. In the first place when Jesus refers to the Rich Man being in torment in the flame of hell the Greek word for "hell" in the passage is not "gehenna" (the place of final and eternal punishment), but rather it is the Greek word "hades" (which in Scripture is the temporary abode of the dead).

 

The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, like the other series of parables before it, was used of the Lord to illustrate or depict the end of the rule of the Pharisees and to depict the end of the Jewish Era and dispensation (as represented by the Rich Man being in torment) and it was also used of the Lord to depict or illustrate the elevation of Gentile Christendom (as represented by Lazarus). Actually, Lazarus represented the poor Jews of Jesus' time who were ignored by the self-righteous Pharisees and religious rulers of Israel and he also represented the gentiles who, although rejected by the Jewish rulers, would nevertheless be accepted into the bosom of Abraham through their new found faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. The religious leaders of Israel had lived only for themselves and ignored the spiritual needs of the spiritually sick and starving people around them.

 

The concept that hades was a place divided into two compartments, one of suffering for the wicked and the other of bliss for the righteous, was a Jewish belief that had developed during the intertestamental period, the period of time in between when the Old and New Testaments were written. Thus, this particular view of hades was not canonical, that is it was not something that God Himself had revealed to the Jews through Scripture. There is no evidence in Scripture that hades is a place where the wicked suffer while awaiting their final and permanent judgment in gehenna. Such a concept of hades developed as a result of ancient Greek influences on Jewish thinking about the nature of the soul.

 

In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus was simply borrowing this popular Jewish folklore of hades to use as an illustration to make a point to the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day, but He was not necessarily endorsing the folklore as being doctrinally valid or correct. There are various passages in the Old Testament, such as in Psalms, that tell us that there is no consciousness in sheol (the Hebrew equivalent of hades in the Old Testament).

 

Some argue that the story of
the Rich Man and Lazarus is not a parable because Jesus did not formally introduce it as a parable. But, Jesus did not always formally introduce His stories as parables, and there are various examples of that in the Gospels. Now, it is true that in His parables Jesus used things that actually existed to fill in for illustrations and figures, but in the particular case of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus the Lord used a popular existing Jewish myth about hades for the purposes of constructing a story. Jesus simply used the Pharisees' own superstitous belief about hades against them!

 

Why didn't Jesus rebuke the Pharisees' belief about hades as being wrong? Jesus didn't go around always rebuking every wrong doctrine. For example, in Jesus' time it was a common Jewish belief (from the influence of Greek philosophy) that souls could commit individual sins before birth. That is why we read in John 9:1-3 that Jesus' disciples believed a certain man was born blind because he may have committed some great sin before his physical conception in the womb. Jesus didn't respond by telling His disciples that such a belief is doctrinally wrong but instead healed the blind man.

 

By no means is all of this new teaching. A minority of Christians, of various denominations, have held to this view of hell throughout the centuries. Even some very prominent Christians of the past have held to this view and there are a number (albeit a minority) of Christian theologians and scholars in the present who hold to this view. However, this view on hell, unfortunately, is known so little outside the Christian community and even inside the Christian community for that matter.

 

Many of the early Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther, held to the view that man, by nature, is entirely mortal (including the soul), but the great Reformer John Calvin opposed this view and specifically wrote against it and insisted that all of the Reformers present a united front. An excellent Internet site containing information on all of this is Champions of Conditional Immortality In History

(http://www.specialtyinterests.net/champions_of_conditional_immortality.html).

 

I highly recommend to all readers Dr. Edward Fudge's thoroughly biblical and scholarly work The Fire That Consumes (http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-14342-3). The book is foreworded by the great evangelical scholar F.F. Bruce. This book should be required reading in every seminary and Bible school.  

  

 

Another excellent book is Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi's highly acclaimed biblical and scholarly work Immortality or Resurrection

(http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/books/immortality_resurrection/).

 

I further encourage all to read my larger article The Bible Vs. The Traditional View of Hell at my website href="http://www.religionscience.com/" target=_blank rel=nofollow>www.religionscience.com  for more comprehensive and in-depth coverage of this subject. Other questions and arguments, not raised here, are answered thoroughly in my larger article. I also hope that this information will shed new light in reading the New Testament, particularly the Gospels.

 

*The author, Babu G. Ranganathan, has his B.A. with concentrations in theology and biology and has been recognized in the 24th edition of Marquis Who's Who In The East for his writings on science and religion. His articles have been published in various news outlets including Russia's Pravda and South Korea's The Seoul Times. The author's science article The Natural Limits of Evolution may be accessed at his website www.religionscience.com . The author is a resident of Boyertown, Pennsylvania(U.S.A.).

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I love Square State.

This appeared on a bulletin board at the Angry Baker's place of employment:

I need a translator for this letter.

Dear Admissions Committee,

Mr. Bronze Malheur has asked me to write a letter in support of his application to your graduate program. I am dumbfounded: not only am I astonished that he has asked me to write this letter, but also that he has any intention of going to graduate school or that he believes he could possibly be successful.

I met Mr. Malheur when he was a student in my statistics class. He distinguished himself by rarely coming to class and earning a C-. He ranked in the lower half of the class. He then began following me around like a puppy, and, for lack of anything else to do with him, I permitted him to perform menial tasks in my lab.

As a laboratory assistant, he was obnoxious and unreliable. On those rare occasions when I permitted him to collect data, the data were flawed and had to be discarded. He was incapable of being on time for anything, and consistently put his research responsibilities dead last on his list of priorities. He was always very sorry for his mistakes and lapses in judgment, and was very careful to telephone me to apologize at length and make excuses for himself. I know more about this student's personal life than I do about my sister's, and none of it makes for very pleasant reading.

On top of everything else, he is not a very pleasant person to be around. He is a groveling toady, a sycophant. Within a few hours of meeting him, his hollow flattery will chafe like a sandpaper thong. His sartorial decisions leave much to be desired and little to the imagination. The underside of his hairy belly haunts my dreams. He also experiences frequent flatulence; if you admit him to your program I recommend that you stock up on Oust. If your research involves human subjects, under no circumstances should Mr. Malheur be permitted to have contact with them.

In sum, I can think of no one with a college diploma less qualified for graduate work than Mr. Malheur. I suggest you burn his application materials and return his application fee. If you admit him to your program, you will curse the day you were born.

Sincerely,
Angry Professor

I'm not sure what this says about me.

Someone dear to me just asked me for the titles of five books that had a profound impact on me. The top three are

• Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason;
• Larson and Hostetler's Calculus; and
• Voltaire's Candide.

I have become my own copyeditor. I am not very good at it.

Apparently we weren't specific enough in our contract with McGrawHillThompsonTaylorFrancisWadsworthPearsonPrenticeHallAllynBaconFreemanWorth. What we wanted was something called a "developmental edit." We signed instead for a "cleanup edit."

Here is a sentence which, I am ashamed to say, we wrote and submitted in our final manuscript:

The new law has several potential benefits, including less time spent by politicians fund-raising problems and improved communication to their constituents.

Here is how our Indian copyeditor "fixed" it:

The new law has several potential benefits, including less time spent by politicians' fund-raising problems and improved communication to their constituents.

The same editor went through the text and carefully changed all the pronouns to "he," "him" or "his." We complain bitterly to our acquisition editor on a weekly basis, but the production editor in charge could not be less interested. Better, apparently, for a crappy book to hit the bookstores fast and then be quickly revised than to wait and market a quality product.

I hate hate hate hate hate my editors with the passionate heat of a million suns. May their buttocks be covered with boils. May only half their hairs fall out of their heads. May they suffer from recurring thrombosed prolapsed hemmorrhoids and anal fissures. May their tents be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels. May they be gang-raped by packs of marauding baboons. May their sons and daughters live in their basements and work not, yea, even unto 45 years.

Guess that department!

This department is/was housed in one of the few towers on campus. The building is early Style Moderne: it has a sleek limestone exterior with bas-relief details and a hipped copper roof. The uppermost floor (14th? 15th?) has large dormer windows that look out over Ellesiouville. It is/was a popular place to take job candidates and prospective graduate students to show them the lay of the land.

The building is being "renovated." This is both good and bad. Good: a large 1950s-era concrete tumor of breathtaking hideosity was removed from the building's ass. Bad: removing the tumor revealed more of the building's architecturally-significant details, details that were destroyed less than a week after they were uncovered to make way for new windows, doors and stairwells. Bad: a new concrete tumor, more pleasing in design but a tumor nonetheless, is being reaffixed to the building's ass. Bad: the front of the building once boasted two graceful, curving limestone wings (with lots of interior woodwork) that housed the main offices of the department, and they were removed to make the building consistent with its new ass.

Where is the department during the renovation? They have been widely dispersed across Ellesiouville, most in a warehouse several miles away, near some of LSU's experimental farms.

LSU denizens are not allowed to play.

In which I share from my class discussion board.

Sometimes the little darlings go off on strange tangents:

...i heard that the earth is still recovering from the ice age and that the earth is just naturally warming up. also, i took a bio class and talked about evolution. so i don't understand what the big deal is..if the earth gets warmer animals will adapt and new forms will emerge.

What the hell has happened to secondary education in this country? Wait -- I know the answer to that question...