Miscellanea Agnostica

A wrestling coach at a high school in Dearborn, MI — which has a relatively high Arab population — has lost his job due to his assistant who tried to convert kids to Christianity:

A veteran wrestling coach at Fordson High School lost his job amid concerns that his one-time assistant, who is a local minister and parent of a wrestler, attempts to convert local Muslim youths to Christianity.

The decision not to renew the contract of Jerry Marszalek, a coach for 35 years at Fordson, sparked a firestorm of controversy, with 200-300 parents packing a Board of Education meeting Tuesday night to support the decision of the school’s principal, Imad Fadlallah. The board directed administrators to consider reviewing the source of complaints against Fadlallah.

The developments occurred as officials and parents grapple with conflicts over faith, education and the future of a predominantly Muslim school, amid one of the largest Arab populations in the country. …

According to Marszalek, parents and community leaders, Fadlallah and other parents have long been concerned about contacts between the wrestling team and a local clergyman, the Rev. Trey Hancock of the Dearborn Assembly of God.

Hancock, who helped Marszalek with the team for 10 years, and whose son, Paul, is now a member, confirmed that he attempts to convert Muslim youths to Christianity and that he baptized a 15-year-old Muslim student in Port Huron a few years ago.

The resulting outrage among the Religious Right™ (of the Christian variety, of course) has been palpable. Principal Fadlallah has been accused of hitting a student, apparently as part of an effort to get him fired.

I’m always amazed at the lengths Christians go to in order to express themselves religiously; in this case:

1. By breaking the law (kids are not supposed to be proselytized to in public schools)
2. Engaging in behavior that got someone else fired (Hancock’s missionizing made Marszalek lose his job)
3. Trumping up accusations against someone in retaliation

This is supposed to be an example of righteous, exemplary behavior on the part of Christians? Really?

Christians, see if you can get this: Leave other people alone, especially kids in public schools whom you are not allowed to proselytize to. Is there some part of this which is not clear to you?

Oh, and spare me the sanctimonious responses about having “religious freedom.” First of all, your freedom ends where other peoples’ begins; Muslims who want to remain Muslim are just as entitled to do so, as you are to remain Christian. Second, this is not part of an effort to stamp out Christianity. No such movement exists and in fact it could never happen since c. 80% of the country is Christian. That you think it’s happening is solely a figment of your hyperreligious imagination and is the natural product of your own religion. You cannot help but feel this way — nevertheless you have no right to force your own theological delusions on the rest of the world.

For me this item is big news. Most other people won’t really be interested — unfortunately. Hopefully you will be. It seems a Bible from classical times, the Codex Sinaiticus, will soon be made available online. This codex is a nearly-complete Bible of the 4th century. It has a lot to tell us about early Christianity, if we take the time to listen.

It contains most of the Old Testament in Greek, known as the Septuagint, and almost all of the modern New Testament, along with two additional books, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. It is very likely that whoever penned this codex considered these two additional books to be “canon” (even though, at that time, no decisive canon existed). Among the many other differences between modern Bibles and the Codex, in this ancient collection the gospel of Mark ends abruptly with the three women who found Jesus’ empty tomb running off in fear. (As it turns out, all the earliest copies of Mark end at this point, so in this the Codex is not unique.)

What’s remarkable is that it is being assembled and placed online at all. The Codex is actually no longer a single book; it’s in pieces around the world as a result of its strange history. The German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf found some loose vellum pages, in Greek, which had once been part of a larger codex, in the monastery of St Catherine in the Sinai region in the 19th century.

The full story of how the monks found the rest of it, and it ended up in pieces, scattered around, is a convoluted one and not a tale I can tell very well here; see the Answers.Com entry on the Codex for more information.

I had never thought the pieces could ever be assembled in one place — even if only online and not physically — but apparently it’s being done. But the British Museum is doing it, and the world will be a better place for it, if only to shed light on the textual history of the Bible books. If nothing else this will debunk the common myth among Christians that the Bible books have been unchanged since they were first written … this is, of course, quite untrue.

On his trip to the Middle East, Barack Obama had the following to say about the modern state of Israel:

Barack Obama called Israel a “miracle” as he courted Jewish voters back home Wednesday …

Woops, looks as if the Senator and presidential candidate misspoke. The modern state of Israel is not a “miracle” if one defines that as an event of divine intervention. Far from it. It was founded by human beings who did human work. God had nothing to do with it.

If Israel is to survive — and if it is to reach some accord with Palestinian Arabs and bring peace to the Middle East — that will have been accomplished by (yep!) human beings, not by God.

Obama essentially is robbing human beings of credit for what they accomplished, by stating that their actions were not important, it was God alone who created Israel. Not only is this factually untrue, it’s obviously insulting to people who’ve given a great deal … in some cases up to and including their lives … for their state. At the very least he owes them an apology (which, I suspect, will never be offered).

It’s surprising to think that educated Americans in the 21st century (such as the Senator) still talk about “miracles,” especially given that — as David Hume logically demonstrated centuries ago — there can never be any such thing as a definite, certain “miracle.”