Ehrman's "Armageddon": My full takedown review

Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

With a much fuller review of this book now, I can say that each time I think that Bart Ehrman can't write a book worse than his previous ones, he proves me wrong, he can, and he does.

First, this book is not, NOT, a historical-critical overview of the composition of Revelation, which limits its utility beyond fairly low-level anti-fundagelical popular exposition.

Second, this is 50 pages or more shorter than his previous two books, neither of which were themselves very good. His "The Triumph of Christianity" book was two stars and in hindsight that may be generous; it exemplifies one strain of Ehrman's recent problems on full display here. His "Heaven and Hell" book, or JW book as I call it elsewhere? Flat 1 star.

And now this.

Third, unlike some books like this, there’s no quasi-endnotes lists of biblical verses cited, so, my desire early on to know if Bart referenced Mark 13:22 — “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” — was frustrated. (Turns out he never cites this simple refutation of fundagelical end-times predictors.)

OK, off to the races.

Bart tries to say that if you include vs 38-39 of Mt 24, that changes the whole complexion of that passage. I don’t see it that way. “As in the time of Noah” is a time of judgment. See “Noah preacher of righteousness” in 2 Peter, an idea that surely was around long before its writing. Also see Hebrews 11:7, that Noah by building the ark “condemned the world.”

Second? Why does Bart insist on translating “δούλος” as “slave”? Does he do that elsewhere in the NT? I highly doubt it; I know that it’s something he’s not fixated on in his many other books. More on this below.

Next? Doesn’t Jesus himself talking about a “lake of fire” contradict Bart’s claims in his previous, JW book? I quote, Revelation 20:10, 15: “(T)he devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. … Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” It DOES but Bart REFUSES to accept that. He claims that verse 15 shows this IS “annihilation.” Nope. Nope. Nope. "Tormented day and night forever" is "the second death."

So, at this point, just one-quarter through, we’ve already got on full display two issues Ehrman has shown repeatedly in his last few books. Those are his idiosyncrasies, here over “δούλος,” and his tendentiousness, over the annihilation issue.

And, while I hadn’t yet run into the “Marcionite” issues others mentioned when this book came out, right here, we’re already down to 2.5 stars.

Next? The history of the “classical” understanding of Revelation. Several issues here. First, Augustine was NOT NOT NOT “without a doubt the greatest theologian of the ancient church.” He may have been. He may not have been. Ehrman doesn’t tell you that he’s listed on a second tier by Orthodoxy, and is probably even further back in the Coptic/Miaphysite and the Church of the East traditions. Related? He does NOT mention why the “Church of the East” does not include it, nor does he mention the Syriac Orthodox not including it until modern times. He eventually discusses this a small bit near the end, but no details. It's funny, or "funny," because near the end, he talks briefly about its poorer reception in the East.

Moving forward? No, “Koresh” is not an English version of “Cyrus” and even Wikipedia will tell you that Bart basically got that one exactly backward. “Kurush” is listed as the transliteration in to English of Cyrus the Great’s name in Old Persian, but that it may originally have been “Kurash.” Further related? I would not call J. Philip Arnold a “scholar” and I wouldn’t rate Tabor as highly as one as does Bart. See my review of Guinn’s bio of Koresh.

Next? Although he notes that 2 Thessalonians’ “man of lawlessness” is not “the Beast,” and correctly so, he yet links them together, ignoring, as he knows, that there is no such thing as a “theology of the New Testament,” only of individual books. See my extensive discussion of this issue.

Next? The next BIG fail, a Not.Even.Wrong. Bart claims Nero persecuted Christians. He did not and I have the receipts. First, that "famed" Tacitus passage is almost certainly an interpolation and, per that link, we probably know not only that it is, but who the interpolator was. Second, as I mentioned to classicist John Drinkwater in an email exchange about his Nero biography, Christians in Rome were almost certainly no more than 1/10 of 1 percent of the population in Nero's time in 64 CE. Without even newspapers, let alone electronic media, they would not have been on his radar screen. Plus, CONTRA Drinkwater, and as Ehrman would know, they weren't called "Christians" and identified as a separate movement then.

As far as Pliny and emperor worship? Also wrong, and Bart knows this, too. First, the imperial cultus wasn’t “pushed” until Decius and the Decian persecutions. Second, even then, up until Diocletian and beyond, there were provincial variations. That link above shows how nuanced and evolving this issue was. Remember, it was 200-plus years from Pliny to Constantine. 

Even in as urbanized a province as Bithynia, a proconsul like Pliny simply didn’t have time to go to the forums and agoras in any but the larger cities to enforce the burning of incense. But, this ignores the full reality of what was happening with Pliny, anyway. His letter to Trajan makes clear that, in general, he’s dealing with Christians who were narked on by their neighbors, not the general populace. Ehrman SHOULD know that; it’s clear, from Pliny’s letter. In addition, just a few years later, Hadrian modifies even that, says that Christians should only be persecuted based on overt acts and that false accusations should themselves be punished. From there on to Decius, there was no overriding imperial policy. And, that's a period of more than 130 years.

Finally, we’re at the Marcionite area. Frankly, contra early reviews, while this is not good, it's not horrible, not in and of itself. From what I originally wrote about this book per a review I had then just read, this sounded almost as bad as his previous JW book. If that were the biggest problem, the book would get two stars for sure. But, it's not a nothingburger, so let's dive in, begining by looking at how he's wrong on Christianity. First, there are hints of violence on behalf of the gospel outside of Revelation. Bart ignores that Jesus said “I have come to set father against son and mother against daughter,” and that two swords were enough. He also ignores Matthew 25 (including its talk of everlasting torment, which he tried to explain away in his previous book). Paul wished that circumcisers would castrate themselves.

Or, better yet? Best yet? Bart knows that the best Greek textual tradition in Mark's version of Jesus being asked for "healing" by a leper in Mark 1 is:

40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”

Interestingly, the NIV is about the only modern translation to chose the variant, ὀργισθεὶς, based on the verb ὀργίζω. But, I stand by it. It's a MUCH harder reading textually. Second, while the criterion of embarrassment is overstated at times, I wouldn't toss it, and this is more than "embarrassment" anyway. There's fairly solid contextual reasons to go with this reading. And, "indignant"? In the active, it is "angry," or stronger yet, going back to classical times. "Exasperated" is among other possibilities suggested by Liddell, Scott and Jones, or Strong's, in the passive. This actually good piece at r/AcademicBiblical notes two other things. One is that Mark may have been playing off Elisha's healing of Naaman. Two is that the same word is in Mark 10, where Jesus was indignant at his listeners before saying, "Bring the children to me." Oh, Ehrman admits "Jesus was angry." While this may not be last judgment angry, Matthew 25, with the Son of Man mentioned, is. (Angry to the point of condemnation unto eternal death and not annihilation, Bart.)

More angry Jesus? Calling Peter Satan comes immediately to mind. Matthew 24:2, though in a passive-aggressive middle tone of voice, if not actual middle mood, where Jesus says "stone will not be left on stone."

Or, another oldie but goodie, Bart! Jesus cursing the fig tree in Mark 11:

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

Boom.

On the Tanakh side, this ignores Yahweh's חֶסֶד, or "loving-kindness," spoken of repeatedly in Psalms. There's plenty of other low-hanging fruit on that side, too.

Bart then misses discussing the Euthyphro dilemma in “The lamb becomes a lion.” This, along with similar issues in his “triumph of Christianity” book, indicate to me that Ehrman just doesn’t come off as THAT widely read. Yes, he later mentions D.H. Lawerence's "Apocalypse," but if that weren't about Revelation, would he have read it?

As for Revelation and wrath? He misses that, in Latin Western Christianity, by 200CE, Tertullian was already talking about how one of the joys of heaven would be watching the damned in hell. It's a riff on Luke's story, in old title, of Lazarus and Dives. And, per discussion above, Dives seems to be in eternal torment. Not annihilated. I can't think of anything quite that stark, and certainly not that early, in what became Orthodoxy, but there are strains.

Beyond that, Bart misses the psychology of heaven and hell in general. Look at Dante. Everybody reads, and loves the unique, varied and macabre punishments of the Inferno. The Purgatorio is OK. The Paradiso comes off as saccharine when not outrightly boring. But, it's more than medieval Christianity. Look at Buddhism. Whether it's a one-off Amida type paradise, or non-existence via nirvana (the Hindo-Buddhist version of Bart's annihilation but on the other side of the coin!) nobody is interested in that. But look at Buddhist hells and Tibetan Buddhist demons and people are reading. Maybe that's why Muhammad (if he actually wrote that, and that's not a misrendering of Syriac instead of Arabic) populated heaven with virgins for the ghazis. Or look at Mark Twain's "Captain Stormfield" — his heaven is literarily popular in part because it's not saccharine, it's not conventional, and it has plot twists.)

On wealth and power? I’m first surprised that Ehrman didn’t go Marcionite there, too, with the Tanakh from the Torah on talking about this-life blessings for the faithful of Israel. Second, the Parable of the Talents, even if a parable and not a proclamation saying, shows that Jesus didn’t hate the rich per se. Also note “poor in spirit” in Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. All of this was just in snippets. Note elsewhere Jesus talking about taking the Kingdom of God by force. Pseudo-Paul talking about battles with cosmic powers.

Does he discuss why other apocalyptic books were NOT added to Christian canons of either old or new testaments, other than the Ethiopians including 1 Enoch? No. He mentions, but does not discuss.

Speaking of "other apocalyptic books," he also nowhere mentions Ezekiel, which was almost as big an influence on Revelation as Daniel. Gog and Magog come from Ezekiel, not Daniel. And, per things like Jack Chick's comics, Gog and Magog are big with the fundies. And, Ehrman never talks about them. And,  if he went to Moody, he knows this, too. Seriously, discussing Revelation without this? Indeed, Gog and Magog are in a Chick from earlier this year. (Surprisingly, given the now dead Jack Chick's anti-evolution stance, the tract accepts the reality of climate change.) I'm sure they were in older ones.

Side note: There's a LOT of people at Reddit's r/academicbiblical who have a hard-on for Ehrman. Ditto Gary the ex-Lutheran, whose blog may disappear from my blogroll, which needs other tweaking, too.

View all my reviews

Roundup of minor issues at r/AcademicBiblical

A new moderator removed a comment to this post by "A Casual Formality." Per a later comment that was allowed, it's clear that the OP was NOT asking a good-faith question. Whether he's a fundagelical troll, an atheist troll or a general troll, his feed makes clear he's a troll. And, it's another new-to-me moderator.

Remember, like Naugrith the Nazi there, mods can be Nazis.

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Claims on this thread that James Tabor is a "serious scholar" if that's meant to imply accuracy? No, not at all on his DaVinci Code-esque Jesus Dynasty book.

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Uhh, no, to this dude. Ehrman's The Triumph of Christianity is dreck.

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Contra this? John A.T. Robinson et al's idea that all four canonical Gospels are pre-70, and the reasoning behind it, are dreck.

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This question presumes that Jesus was crucified at Pesach rather than Shavuot, per Hyam Maccoby.

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Here's a nutter OP questioner who claims — straight up, in eventual comment — that Paul's seven authentic letters could have been (with implication that they were) written by somebody other than Paul.  He then doubles down on the stupidity when asked what if somebody claims that the Gallic Wars were written by "Julius Caesar" not Julius Caesar, or the Jewish War was written by "Josephus" not Josephus, and indicates he finds them at least "doubtful" as well. An entirely new one! (And, I'm keeping an eye on him for further nuttery.)

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Not directly a problem there, but via a comment there in a piece about the Pastorals? Tabor really dates them to the late first century CE rather than second century? At the same time, I'd never heard Jerome's claim that Paul was actually born in Gischala, in Galilee. That and other items further undercut Acts claiming Paul was a citizen. Part of why I say the last one quarter of Acts is ahistorical.

Oopses with Bart Ehrman at r/Academic Biblical

The subreddit had an "ask me anything" March 7 with Bart Ehrman. I find it "interesting" that none of the reverential genuflectors there asked Bart why he went Marcionite in his latest book. (I'm not alone in that observation or similar ones by any means.) I didn't scroll through all comments, but Apple-F returned no hits for "Marcion."  I also searched for "Old Testament," as in, the Marcionite/Ehrmanite god of the Old Testament is a god of wrath, and the three hits were all in one question, and "Tanakh" did not come up.

In the same AMA, Naugrith the Nazi asked what I see as leading/rhetorical question, trying to peddle Delbert Burkett's multi-source theory onto two-sourcer Ehrman. I've already looked at Burkett and found him wanting, with not only an overview, but 1 (bad framings), 2 (minor agreements and verb forms), and 3 (minor agreements of omissions) breakouts of how he's wanting in his later proto-Mark book. (Someone else at r/AB recommended, IIRC, the earlier book to me, then, after I got the later book on ILL and I offered my critique, tried to push again the earlier book that Naugrith references; I refer to that in breakout 3.) Ehrman has his own answer.

And, of course "Mr. Didache" there is Alan Garrow, the nutter who claims the Didache is as old as 1 Thessalonians and other stupidities, all debunked by me. He, like Naugrith, is asking a rhetorical/leading question, and dudes, it's obvious. Garrow asks if, should we set aside Q — as I presume is his wont with his Not.Even.Wrong. dating of the Didache — but keep Marcan priority, is Matthew borrowing from Luke more likely right than the other way around? NO. Even if we indulge your rhetorical stupidity, Luke is most likely about a decade younger. Maybe more. And, ex-Mormon there smokes some Garrow too.

Side note: There's a LOT of people at Reddit's r/academicbiblical who have a hard-on for Ehrman. Ditto Gary the ex-Lutheran, whose blog may disappear from my blogroll, which needs other tweaking, too.

Palestinian Jews and Christians; how correlation is not causation, Paula Fredriksen

Paula Fredriksen is right that Jesus was NOT a Palestinian Jew. Palestine as a Roman province did not exist until after the Second Jewish Revolt. (That said, contra some Zionists, Greek has a "Ph as F" sound so don't go there with your pseudo-semantics.)

She is right (numbers don't lie) about the decline in Christian percentages of modern Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.

She is wrong, though, when she implies that the Palestinian decline in the West Bank is due to the Palestinian Authority the same way in which the decline in Gaza is due to Hamas:

Bethlehem has been administered by the Palestinian Authority since 1995. Once a significant majority there, the Christian population plunged from 86 percent in 1950 to less than 12 percent in 2016. 

As for the Gaza Strip, it is even less hospitable to Christians. As the New Yorker reported in January, a count by the Catholic Church in Gaza, “once home to a thriving Christian community,” found just 1,017 Christians, amid a population of more than 2 million. After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas ended the designation of Christmas as a public holiday and discouraged its celebration. The dwindling population of Gazan Christians has been harassed, intimidated, even murdered. Were Jesus to show up in modern-day Gaza, he would find an extremely hostile environment.

In fact, the National Catholic Register piece to which she links directly refutes her attempt at bright-line causation in the West Bank:

Many people explain that the declining Christian population in Palestine is due to the overall difficulties of living in Palestine, not because of overt discrimination towards Christians. "Even Muslims are leaving; of course, it will not be as evident to see how many Muslims are leaving compared to the Christians, because the Christians are really a minority," said Sr. Lucia Corradin, a Elizabethan sister from Italy who works at the Caritas Baby Hospital. 

In Israel, where Arab Christians have comparatively more opportunities than their Palestinian counterparts, the Christian population has stayed stable. The Christian population grew by about 5,000 in the past 20 years. Today Christians in Israel number 164,700, about 2 percent of the population, a similar ratio to past decades. ... 

Nabil Giacaman, a Catholic shop owner of the "Christmas House" store on Manger Square, said media emphasis on the shrinking Christian population was part of an effort to create an internal divide in Palestinian society. "It's not about Christians and Muslims, it's not that I'm facing these issues only because I'm a Christian," said Giacaman. "As Muslims suffer, Christians also suffer. At the end, we are all Palestinian, we get the same permits and the same treatment at the checkpoints."

As I see it, per that second paragraph, it's like how the government of Israel gives special consideration to the Druze. Divida et impera, Fredriksen.

Oh, and by the way, the column doesn't mention that Fredriksen converted to Judaism and has taught at Hebrew University. Nor that she, at least until recently, split her living time between Boston and Jerusalem. At least it's West Jerusalem.

That said, as an ex-Christian Jew speaking less than fully skeptically about the Resurrection story, or trying to have her cake and eat it too on Augustine, or appearing to give higher credibility to John's historicity than warranted (given it's likely the latest of the four canonicals is problem one) her intellectual chops aren't all that. I got the above hits while Googling to see if she's Zionist. No, really. With her name and "Zionist" both in search quotes on DuckDuckGo, no hits. With "Zionism" instead, one hit, not much help; it's in the first paragraph of a book review by her.

I await her commenting on the Yahweh-ordered holocaust against Amalek and with more honesty than the lack thereof from Michael Hudson.

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Update, July 17, 2025: Israel hit a Catholic Church. That's as the Christians still remaining in Gaza continue to decry Israeli attacks. Oh, and read Ilan Pappe before bitching about Pope Francis (or Leo XIV if he continues the same stance).

The rise of the omnipresent conductor: Not good for classical music

Per this great New Yorker piece about a sad recent trend in the classical world, many modern conductors are spread too thin. Or rather than that passive voice, they're spreading themselves too thin.

The piece's focal point is Klaus Mäkelä, who not only currently runs the Concertgebouw but is tapped to help Chicago in 2027 — while (at least until he says he's leaving) staying in Amsterdam as well.

In my neck of the wood, there's a regional example:

Fabio Luisi is spread across three continents, maintaining roles at the Dallas Symphony, the Danish National Symphony, and the NHK Symphony, in Japan.

Per the piece, it's not quite as bad as its focal point conductor, but bad enough.

 And, while neither Dallas nor the NHK (dunno about the Danish National) are top-tier, they're both solidly enough in the second tier that they shouldn't be sharing a music director. A Luisi could do one or the other of the two, plus the Danish. And, even be principal guest conductor at a third, smaller orchestra if the ego or tightening corporate symphonic sponsorships demanded. But, that's it.

That said, there's more.

That is snarkily topped by this:

American orchestra subscribers have become resigned to a phony civic ritual: a foreign-accented maestro flies in a few times a season for two or three weeks, stays in a hotel or a furnished apartment, attends a flurry of donor dinners, and dons the appropriate cap when the local baseball team makes the playoffs.

Oof. When Jaap van Zweden was in Dallas, he seemed reasonably involved. But, it was the only major orchestra where he was the music director. 

Speaking of, the piece notes that he and the NY Phil have parted ways. For the Seoul Philharmonic and the French Radio Philharmonic, to style it in English? Wow, what a tumble.

Bottom line? It's like the reading of books. Ars longa, vita brevior. I have only so much time to read, or to listen.

Wiki's page on Luisi adds this, which fits perfectly with the New Yorker snark:

Outside of music, his hobbies include the production of his line of perfumes.

Oy.

That said, I posted this to Reddit's r/classicalmusic sub, and in comments to it, got some bits of pushback, though the upvote rate on the piece was high. And wrong. Yes, many big names in the past did two orchestras at once. None of them did three, that I am aware of.

One commenter agreed with me on Luisi. See here and here for more of my thoughts on him.

RIP Dan Dennett

I would normally, upon hearing the death of a figure like this, one more “pedestaled” than deserving, write up some sort of “takedown” obit. In the world of politics and public policy, at my Blogger site, I’ve done that regularly, not just for the easy targets like Henry Kissinger, but also the likes of John McCain, per my “obituaries” label there. Beyond the world of straight politics, I’ve done it for the likes of Christopher Hitchens.

And now, there’s Dan Dennett from the world of philosophy — and also, like Hitchens, from the world of Gnu Atheism. (And, yes, that’s how it’s spelled.) But, I really don’t have to do anything beyond color around the edges on this one.

That’s because the same person from whom I heard of Dennett’s passing, John Horgan, had updated a 2017 piece about him that fills in all the basics.

The biggie? Scientism is bad enough coming from a scientist; it’s far worse coming from a philosopher. (Sadly, Dennett’s not alone in that.)

On the issue of consciousness in general as illusion? To nuance Horgan, I think that “something like consciousness” exists below the surface, and is connected to something like Dennett’s subselves.

That said, I’ll go further than Horgan in one way and call Dennett a big old hypocrite. If no “Cartesian meaner” exist, then neither does a “Cartesian free willer.” Across Boston at MIT, Dennett’s peer Daniel Wegner got that one totally right. (But, per Wegner, I think “something like” free will exists in the same way as “something like” consciousness; Wegner also notes that “free will” is as much an affect, an emotional state or value judgment, as anything.)

Back to Horgan. First, he’s totally right in Dennett being wrong in claiming qualia don’t exist. The Samuel Johnson refutation suffices. Horgan rightly also notes that Dennett’s stance on this is a backdoor to David Chalmers’ p-zombies. Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

The scientism? This really raised its head with “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” First, no, the equivalent of “evolution by natural selection” is NOT some “universal acid.” Second, Darwin included sexual selection as part of his idea. What’s the analogy to that elsewhere? Beyond that, life in general is simply not algorithmic in the way Dennett claimed.

Of course, on things like that, Dennett’s hypocrisy again raised its head. In this case, he was a greedy reductionist that he liked to claim others were, but never him. (This is similar to his denial of being a compatibilist on free will.)

The biggest issue in his scientism? Per Horgan, the claim that the mind is like a computer. That was a tired old trope decades ago, and part of a series of generally wrong tropes on “the mind is like X” that started with the beginning of mechanization and industrialization in human society.

John then ties Dan’s scientism to his rejection of wonder. And, that gets its own quote:

Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real. Science has real enemies—some in positions of great power--but Dennett doesn’t do science any favors by shilling for it so aggressively.

Friend Massimo Pigliucci has dropped his own obituary thoughts. He is kinder than I, and far kinder than John, on Dennett’s relations to religion. Here’s the NYT obit that he says unduly savages Dennett there. Sorry, Massimo, he may have been the kindest of the “Four Horsemen” of Gnu Atheism, but he was one. (That said, I don’t know that, in his book on atheist preachers, he explicitly called them out for being the hypocrites there were. Having potentially been there, and having rejected their hypocritical road, I can state that with high conviction.)

On matters of will? Massimo and I are in the same ballpark, but I don’t think we’ll ever be at the same moment. I’ve encouraged him more than once to read Wegner; I don’t think he has. I don’t think Horgan has, either. I think Dennett was halfway in that ballpark, but not entirely. (Wegner’s “The Illusion of Conscious Will” talks about the illusion in a psychology of mind sense, not that of everyday sociology.)

On the Gnu Atheism, this obit also reminds me of his invention of the word “brights.” Dennett’s later claim that the religious could call themselves “supers” rang hollow.

Massimo does add one thing I’d forgotten all about, and that is Dennett’s hating on Steve Gould. Part of that was, per “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” that Dennett was an ardent ev psycher, which Massimo and I certainly are not. Part of it, IMO, with the recent death of sociobiology founder E.O. Wilson and his hating on Gould’s scientific and intellectual partner Richard Lewontin, was larger political issues. (At this point, I’ll interject that Dennett’s father worked for the OSS in World War II and most obits mention him being of “Old New England stock” or similar. )

But, let’s also end with Dennett’s good. I, too, got an introduction into non-formal logic, non-technical modern philosophy with “The Mind’s I,” a collection of essays edited by Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” fame. It was about 25 percent their own material, but much other, such as Nagel’s “What Is It Like to be a Bat?”, multiple items by the inimitable Raymond Smullyan and more. (That said, read here for a decade-old double-barrelled takedown of both.)

So, for a Facebooker in Horgan’s feed who talks about how much he learned from Dennett? So did I. But I then moved on. And unleared a fair amount.

RIP, Dan.

A monotheistic holy days mash-up with blood on everybody's hands

Christians in the world outside of Orthodoxy (unless Zelensky got the Ukranian church to move Easter as well as Christmas) celebrated Easter March 29.

Muslims had started Ramadan before that. 

Then, came the solar eclipse April 8, which means nothing to the non-superstitious.

But, the sliver of crescent moon the day after meant Ramadan was done and it was time for Eid al-Fitr.

Up next? Passover, starting Monday, April 22.

And, to wrap? The Orthodox Easter (a majority of Palestinians are Orthodox, I think, but don't quote me) is May 5.

All three of these world religions have genocidal blood on their hands against each other.

Christians, even if Hitler wasn't one, actively participated individually in the Holocaust. Centuries before that, before the Protestant Reformation, both Catholic and Orthodox leaders promoted the blood libel that Jews needed Gentile blood for matzoh. And, Pope Urban II did nothing to condemn First Crusade genocide against Jews in the Rhineland. Let us also not forget, via de las Casas, debate over whether American Indians were pre-Christian or anti-Christian, and thus, how they could be treated. Or mistreated.

Muslims? In what's widely recognized as not "just" genocide, but a holocaust, the Ottoman Empire, where the sultan was, at least nominally, the spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims as well as secular head of the empire Beyond that, per Wiki's page on the causes of this, the Empire committed further massacres before World War I that arguably also rose to the level of genocide. (So did the secular Turkish state after the war.) Those earlier massacres under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, even if not entirely religious, had a religious element. So did the WWI genocide under Mehmed V, who also formally declared jihad after entering the war. On the other hand, these and other genocides weren't entirely religious, and it's hypocritical for Jewish historians like Benny Morris to go ax-grinding.

And, we're now there. Beyond the genocide now having some degree of religious undertone, let us not forget that the Tanakh / Christian Old Testament has Yahweh ordering a holocaust — not just a genocide, a holocaust — against Amalek. Doesn't matter if it's legend/myth. Orthodox Jews, and everybody in power in Zionist Israel's government, cites it. And, historically, the forced conversion of the Idumeans at least approaches genocide. (Given that, per Yonathan Adler, most Jews didn't start regular observance of dietary and ritual purity laws until Hasmonean times, I think these conversions, as well as those of the Itureans, were indeed forcible.) And, Jews can be racist like Christians or Muslims even to fellow believers. Look at the treatment of Beta Israel.

Let's go back to the other two "western monotheisms." In addition to the jizya, many Muslim empires, nations, powers, required both Jews and Christians to wear special, identifying clothing long before popes came up with Magen David for Jews in the Rome ghetto they had created. But, and possibly by direct influence, popes did do that and it spread from there.

That said, don't get smug, Gnu Atheists. 

Stalin has genocidal blood on his hands from the Holodomor. But, don't act so persecuted, Ukrainians. By death rate, it hit harder in the Kazakh SSR than in the Ukrainian SSR. That said, Gnus, don't pull out the old bullshit about "Stalin went to an Orthodox seminary." I'll kick you in your genocidal ass.

Mao has genocidal blood on his hands from The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and in smaller degrees other Maoist-derived stupidities.

Yes, they're all genocides, at least in my book. A deliberate targeting of one's own people, or socioeconomic classes within one's own people, counts as genocide in my book just like racial or religious genocides. That makes the French Revolution one, too, does it not?

Oh, and Hitler wasn't really Christian, even if not "anti-religious" (other than against Judaism) in the way Stalin and Mao were. We'll just leave that there.