Bible Defense: Of Birds And Bats (No Bees)

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. The thesis of this article presented itself quite uninvited inside my skull not long ago, and I thought it original. However, while researching, I found that the exact same argument has already been made, probably more effectively (and certainly more maturely), by others. We'll come back to that.

But, onward. I'll pretend for the moment that you haven't heard this before from anyone else- after all, a few hours ago, I hadn't.


Bible bashers like to seize on any supposed contradiction they can find in Scripture and use it to attack Christianity. If you're lucky, these issues will be presented in a calm and rational manner, leading to a stimulating discussion.

Usually though, they're phrased more like, "Silly Christians! The Bible is megadumb! NARF!" The attacker usually doesn't understand the alleged contradiction and couldn't cite the Biblical reference, but they're pretty sure that they heard about it from Christopher Hitchens or Michael Moore or George Carlin or somebody who must be right or they wouldn't be famous.

Today's example of an attack from the uninformed (or simply question from the curious): why does the Bible say that bats are birds? Does that prove the Bible can't be trusted? Leviticus 11:13-19 is a list of "unclean birds" that the Israelites were not to eat (NIV, emphasis added):

These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.

Sure enough, there's the bat, large as life and twice as ugly, clearly listed as a bird. No question about it.

Here are some reactions to this, found with a really quick and superficial peruse of the web. The first few words of each are linked to the source. Unlinked entries are from the same page as the one before. Spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar errors are presented as found, despite how it pains me to repeat them (but some PG-13 language redacted):

The Bible says that bats are birds but we all know they are mammals...? ... why should I believe anything the Bible says?


Why the bible says that bats are birds?

wasnt the bible the so called "word of God" didnt he know that bats are different from birds when he created them?


Bats are birds to the biblical God.


I realize that the Bible says that bats are birds, but they're not-- they're mammals. Yes, that's right: something in the Bible is wrong! Sorry to p*** on your parade.


The creator of the universe and all living things surely must know that a bat is not a bird, no matter what label the two are given. So how is the Bible the voice of God here?


Still, if it was the infallible word of your imaginary friend, he would tell them it was not a bird.

Your sky-buddy would have planned for the future if he knew everything... Oh, and existed.

I mean, come on, he's supposed to be all-knowing, right? Scientists aren't out to refute an old collection of fairy tales; they are out to pursue knowledge. Your pretend god would have found a way to plan for the change in the bat's classification.


God would have known that bats are not birds, and that flight does not make something a bird. He would have known about flightless birds. He would have known bats are much more closely related to rats than to birds, and would not have made Himself look foolish by having his scribes record incorrect information.

The God you claim wrote the Bible could have ensured these details were correct. That He didn’t means either a) the Bible was not inspired by God, b) it may have been inspired by God, but it was written by humans and so cannot be expected to be correct in matters of science which they were unaware, or c) God did not intend it to be correct on matters of science, and wrote it as a spiritual guide, so we should not expect it to be correct where spiritual things are not concerned.

I realize that was a lot (and I actually cut it down significantly before posting), but I wanted to make sure that a good sampling of ignorance and arrogance was provided.

I am not, nor have I ever been, an ornithologist. My interest in bird species begins at "which ones scatter my garbage all over the street if I set it out on the curb the night before" and ends at "which ones taste good fried". Sadly, there's no overlap between those two groups.

My understanding, limited though it is, is that bats are not classified as birds in the modern taxonomy. However, whether that means that this Biblical passage contains an actual error depends entirely on the meaning of the word "bird". More specifically, it hinges on the definition of the ancient Hebrew word that our modern Bibles translate as "bird".

Interestingly, I didn't find an actual scientific definition of the word "bird". Wikipedia says, "Birds (class Aves) are winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), vertebrate animals that lay eggs." Other sources seem to indicate that feathers are the key. My favourite tongue-in-cheek attempt came from a fellow named David Marjanovic, who wrote, "The definition of 'bird' is 'I know it when I see it'...I don't think there is, or should be, a scientific definition of 'bird'."

All the proposed definitions agree, though, that bats are not "birds", and I've never met anyone who claimed otherwise. Of course, I've only been around since sometime in the twentieth century. Had I lived a few thousand years ago in the ancient near east, the story may have been quite different.

The Hebrew word here translated "bird" is 'owph. That word in no way means "bird according to the scientific concept of same that will be in place by the dawn of the twenty-first century." In fact, it means something very close to "non-insect flying creature." Bats are not birds, but bats most certainly are 'owph.

Some modern Bibles, especially those of the study / reference variety, will contain a note to this effect. They are correct. The translators had a choice: either use a much less concise phrase, or go with the single word that all readers will understand and that mostly fits the bill. I consider it unfortunate that they made the choice they did, because it leads to nonsensical responses like those I quoted above.

It simply is not logically valid to attempt to apply a modern taxonomic definition to an English translation of an ancient Hebrew word, then cry Biblical error when it doesn't fit.


That said, I'd like to credit some of the places where I found this addressed and answered well. I stumbled across these while looking for either definitions of "bird" or non-Christian (and in some cases downright anti-Christian) reponses, not knowing how unoriginal my idea really was. Note that some of the attack quotes above come from comments on these sites. I didn't read everything written by the authors of these sites, so this is not necessarily a blanket endorsement, although I suspect it easily could be:

"Bat Mobile" by James Patrick Holding, on the Tektonics.org page.

Errancy.org - Bats

"Of Bats And Birds" on Vox Veritatis.


Hopefully this information will come in handy if you're ever accosted by someone wanting to argue about the birds and the bats. You may choose not to debate. However, if you decide to engage, you are now armed with a cluestick to brandish. Wield it well. A good whack with a cluestick sometimes yields wonders.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something else my wife made. I have no comprehension whatsoever of how fuzzy string gets turned into this sort of thing. I suspect witchcraft is involved.

A True Story From One Of My Jobs

One of my jobs involved handling deceased clients. That is, when our organization found out that someone with whom we had dealings had passed away, I was the guy that took care of getting all the loose ends tied up and the client's file closed. I saw a lot of death certificates, and got even more informal notes or phone calls stating that somebody was dead, which meant I had to investigate further.

In a revelation that will surprise no one who either knows me or has read this blog's archives, I frequently encountered things in these duties that I found funny. As I've said before, you can either laugh at life or cry about it, and I made my choice a long time ago.

Today's story came about when I received notification that one of our clients who we hadn't heard from in a while had passed away. Specifically, he was killed by an animal. More specifically, the notification I received said, and I quote because I must, that "he was stampled by a bull."

That's right. "Stampled."

I take this to mean "half stomped, half trampled." I hope that the bull was merciful in deciding which half to stomp and which half to trample, but deep down inside I know he probably wasn't.

Most people who heard about this assumed that the unfortunate fellow was some sort of farmer or rancher. Oddly enough, he was an accountant. The bull came in for help with an audit, and lost his temper when he heard that some of his receipts weren't deductible.

The person who notified us seemed a bit too certain about the cause of death. Was anyone around when it happened? If I were a bull planning to "stample" somebody, I'd try to make sure there were no witnesses. Then when the investigators showed up, if they so much as glanced at me, I'd accuse them of unfair profiling. "Oh, sure. Every time somebody turns up stomped into a puddle in my neighbourhood, and I happen to have a little blood on my hooves, it's the same old story: blame the bull." This is the classic defense strategy known as "playing the bull card."

For a while after we got that notice, whenever one of my colleagues announced that they were going out and added the standard "I'll be back (whenever)", I replied, "Unless, of course, you get stampled by a bull. There's a lot of that going around. It's a full-fledged bull-stampling epidemic. Or half-fledged, at the very least."

The person was usually long gone before I finished. Sometimes they were already back.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son in Minnie Mouse's fireplace.

Education Confrontation Part 3

It's been roughly three-quarters of forever since I posted part 2 of this series, but I might as well circle around to wrap it up. For those who came in late or don't obsessively memorize every word I spew onto this page, here are links to the earlier parts to refresh all of our memories: Part 1, an Interlude between parts 1 and 2, and Part 2. The Interlude was a response to my first (and so far only, to my disappointment) silly flame comment. As far as I can tell, the person who wrote the comment did so mainly to make me chortle. I especially enjoy the bit where they claim to be a small-government libertarian while simultaneously calling for my arrest on charges of disagreeing with their opinion.

A lot of troubled water has passed underneath this particular bridge since part 2. In fact, things got really weird right after I finished that part, which is a big chunk of why the series got derailed. Perhaps I'll go into more detail later. A lot of it involves things that would be news to some friends who read this, and I'm not sure whether they should find out by reading it on here. For now, I'm going to try to carry on as though much of what has happened over the last couple of months didn't. (The new developments are inconvenient, not dire, but they have necessitated some rearranging of short and long-term plans.)

I had always expected to wind up gritting my teeth and going along with a lot of nonsense from school system bureaucrats, for most of whom "useless" would be a step up. Now I pretty much know that's exactly what's going to happen. For various reasons, our son is definitely entering the public school system this fall. Extensive preparations are being made at their end for his arrival.

My philosophies have not changed. However, as almost always, I will be making some concessions and compromises. It just means a little more ulcer medication than usual. (One of my favourite moments from NYPD Blue was an episode where Andy Sipowicz glared at a suspect for a while, then rasped something like, "I'm gonna have a headache tonight because I didn't beat you." I can relate, almost anytime I have to deal with almost anyone.)

Sidebar (first in a series): I have long understood the word "compromise" as being a euphemism for "a partial solution that won't make anybody happy." I generally don't see it as a good thing.

To recap my earlier parts (and make a few underlying principles more explicit), the school system (meaning primarily the teachers and bureaucrats) has no rights beyond those specifically delegated to it by parents. I'm not qualifying that in any way. No "should", no "in my opinion". Homework is no more acceptable than your employer ordering you to do some work at home, on your own time, for no pay. (I understand that's effectively the situation for, ironically, schoolteachers. Maybe the fact that they put up with it explains why they think it's acceptable to do to others. They shouldn't, and it isn't.)

Detention, without explicit prior parental consent, is unlawful confinement. As is any "requirement" that students stay on school property beyond classroom hours (i.e., not letting students who live near the school go home for lunch) if their parents have given them permission to leave. Either one should legally be treated the same as any other hostage-taking.

An awful lot of what's wrong with modern society comes from petty bureaucrats overstepping their authority, and being allowed to get away with it. I'm as guilty of that second part as anyone. I exemplify what Paul said in II Cor 10:10; I'm much easier to get along with, and much likelier to defer to authority (either legitimate or delusional) in real life than you'd expect from reading this. I'm pretty pragmatic in everyday interactions, and it's often easiest to let someone think that you actually care what they think.

This, of course, makes me part of the problem.

Each time one of these dime-store tyrants throws their imaginary weight around and doesn't get knocked on their metaphorical backside for doing so, it emboldens them. In psychological terms, it reinforces the behaviour. Writing this makes me realize that maybe I should stop being so agreeable with them, for the greater good. The sooner these petty bureaucrats (words that I need to use together all too often) understand that they are small cogs in the big machine of society, and that their personal opinions are worth the exact midpoint of "jack" and "squat" in the course of performing their duties, the better for all of us.


Sidebar of an example (and a True Story From One Of My Jobs): once upon a time, I worked in a government office where photos of citizens were handled. I can't get too specific for various reasons, not least of which is the protection of my secret identity. One day, the staff encountered a client photo that some of them felt was inappropriate. Let's say, the client was wearing a shirt with something bluntly critical of the government written on it (not precisely accurate, but close enough).

For the purposes for which we needed the photo, it didn't matter at all. It would be cropped in such a way that the fellow's protest would never even be seen by anyone except a few of our staff. However, some people on our staff wanted to reject the photo, and there were suggestions of further retribution. Some wanted to delay his paperwork unnecessarily, and one or two even speculated that perhaps the client could be charged with something.

I was disgusted by the attitudes of my co-workers. You could argue that the client was being rude, at worst, and there's no law against that. We had absolutely no right and no basis to so much as question his photo. I argued on his behalf, but ultimately a supervisor walked by and got involved in the discussion. After glancing at the photo, the supervisor decreed that it was unacceptable. The client was to be told that he needed to have another one taken. I asked for a legal basis for this, but the supervisor refused to discuss the matter (justifiably, in a way - I answered to the supervisor, not the other way around).

This is a textbook example of what I'm talking about. The personal opinions of some insignificant cogs in a huge bureaucratic machine were allowed to override all legislation and regulations. That should never, ever happen. The client's photo was perfectly acceptable by the letter of our regulations, and that should have been all that mattered. I'd like to say that was the day I realized I wanted out of there, but I had already realized that and become a self-loathing civil servant well before then.


In my experience, the school system in even more infested with this mentality than most organizations. Perhaps it comes from working with children, who are even easier to bully than most adults. However, school system employees tend to forget the difference when the time comes to deal with parents. They quickly forget their role: they are there to support the parents, not the other way around. My wife and I are in charge of our child's education. The school system is there to assist us toward that end. Their suggestions are welcome, but we are not here to do as they say.

So, back to the main narrative of this series. We return now to April 8, 2008, in a classroom where the school principal is telling a group of parents what to expect when their children start school in the fall. Part 2 left off with my evisceration of their monthly "award assemblies".

The next thing in my notes (part of the problem with the long delay is that my memory has largely faded, so the notes become more important) is that the principal used the phrase "statistics show that" far, far more than I would have liked. I'd estimate that she said it 14,256 times - a number as valid as most reported statistics.

Along the way to my degree in psychology, I took a few courses in "research design and analysis", colloquially known to the students as Stats. There was more to the subject, especially in the advanced courses, than statistical analysis - although there was a lot of that as well.

I don't remember offhand anymore how to do a T-Square Analysis, or how to run a multifactor ANOVA. However, remembering exact procedures is not the point of education (for most fields, emergency room physicians being a notable exception). Instead, students should generally learn principles to apply, logic, and methods of researching specific questions. Memorization of specific methods, while useful in the short term, is not a good long-term strategy because methods change. Consider for a moment someone who got a degree in computer science in the early 1990s, but hasn't glanced at a computer beyond playing an occasional game since. How valuable would their dated knowledge be these days?

The main principle I took from my Stats classes was that statistics can be manipulated to say whatever the speaker wants them to say with trivial ease. It's actually extremely difficult to craft a survey, on any topic, to return reasonably objective results. That being the case, while statistics interest me, I don't put a great deal of stock in them. I've often said that I could design a survey on any issue that would return results showing that an overwhelming majority of the population feel however I want them to feel. The sponsor of research can essentially always get the results they're hoping for. The hard part is avoiding that problem, in the case where you want research to be broadly useful, as opposed to just supporting an agenda.

So, getting the impression that the principal seems to be a disciple of whatever USA Today says on their front cover pie chart doesn't excite me. Maybe she's very discerning, or very lucky, and winds up looking at useful research (which is rare) instead of agenda-bolstering nonsense (which is rampant). Maybe.

Second, when it comes to dealing with individuals, statistics are never more than starting points. Remember what I said about bullies back in part 2? Most of them do not have low self-esteem. However, some do, and trying to treat one who really does have low self-esteem with methods meant for the majority is only going to make matters worse. That principle applies to everyone that is dealt with on an individual basis for any reason. Children are not widgets, and running a school like an assembly line is doomed to failure, as are most students of such a school. Everyone deviates from the norm somewhere along the line.


Now, frustratingly (probably more so to me than the reader), I'm ending this part here, having dealt directly with a whopping one point that came up during the meeting. It's late, and I want to sleep. I'm already breaking my general rule of only posting on spiritual issues on Sunday, since it became Sunday in my time zone about an hour ago (although there is some Bible in this installment, if I wanted to be really pedantic). Now that I'm back onto this series, hopefully it won't be over two months before the next installment.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture taken out the car window.

Racism Defined

A while back, I mentioned that I'd like to discuss the inherent racism of sections of Canada's firearms laws, most of which are enshrined as the Firearms Act. The Act was called Bill C-68 before it passed, but there are plenty of folks who don't seem to understand that a bill number is no longer used as the name after a bill passes into law and still call it that. Didn't Canadians watch Schoolhouse Rock?

I'm hoping to do that soon. This is a prologue. As regular readers have surely noticed, my more philosophical posts tend to be very long. I always like to lay down groundwork and establish context for more serious discussion topics.

In the service of a few interests (getting back on the blogging horse, making my posts more concise - i.e., shorter, etc.) I'm hoping to start doing most of that background work in separate posts. Maybe I'll even remember to start the major posts, wherein I actually get to my point, with "read this first" links to the earlier posts for anybody who found a specific post by way of a search engine or somesuch.

So, this is a background post to exposing the racist elements on Canada's Firearms Act. (Sneak preview: the Act contains five special provisions that apply only to Aboriginal peoples. Not only is that fact racist in and of itself, but three of the five provisions are horribly racist and should be offensive to anybody who wasn't raised by pre-political correctness John Wayne westerns.)


My operational definition of racism is based on that proffered by Mike Adams in a 2006 article of his, aptly titled A New Definition Of Racism:

Racism – is a pathological tendency to interject race into situations where it is not relevant, merely for personal gain.

And, of course, a racist can be defined as follows:

Racist – one who interjects race into situations where it is not relevant, merely for personal gain.

As is often the case, I agree with Dr. Adams' underlying concept, but have some quibbles with details of the presentation. I would remove the words "pathological" and "merely for personal gain" from his definition of racism and adjust the other wording slightly, winding up with this:

Racism is interjecting ethnicity into situations where it is not relevant.

That pretty much sums it up for me. If we're talking about a matter where the colour of someone's skin, or the country they came from, or the language they speak are not relevant factors, then it would be racist to inject those issues into the discussion as though they were.

I changed the word "race" to "ethnicity" in my definition because I think it's more accurate. As per Ken Ham's position, which I think I've mentioned before, all human beings are members of the human race. However, I will continue to use the word "racism", because "ethnicityism" is a bit cumbersome.


By this definition, anyone who supports Barack Obama solely or primarily because he's black is just as much a racist as someone who would not vote for him solely or primarily because he's black.

Similarly, anyone who supports Hillary Clinton solely or primarily because she's a woman is just as sexist as someone who would not vote for her solely or primarily because she's a woman. (To get my views on sexism, paste the text of this article into your favourite word processor - I'm partial to OpenOffice Writer - and do a find-and-replace, replacing "rac" with "sex". No warranty against unintended results expressed or implied.)

This type of position (voting for / against someone because of their pigmentation or genitalia, neither of which seem to be relevant factors in evaluating a political candidate) is called "identity politics", and it's stupid and destructive.


While I'm in this neighbourhood, making new friends by the second, I need to touch on so-called '"reverse discrimination".

This topic requires me up front to do something I hate to do: compromise on language. The word "discrimination" is not a pejorative. It has no negative denotation. "Discrimination" means "distinguishing between", or "telling apart". One of my favourite writers, P.J. O'Rourke, once wrote something to the effect that a person who failed to discriminate between a twenty-five year-old and a five-year-old would be insane in all circumstances and jailed in some.

However, for purposes of this topic, I have to acknowledge the popular (wrong) usage of the word "discrimination", with its negative connotations.

So, about "reverse discrimination". It doesn't exist.

There is only discrimination. Whether it is bias for or against any given person or group, it is nonetheless discrimination. I have a "rule of reversal" (which will be getting its own detailed writeup sometime; I've already done a partial draft), the main thrust of which is that if the reverse of a discriminatory policy would be wrong (i.e, instead of "only women are eligible for this award", we reverse it to either "only men are eligible" or "women are not eligible", which in this case have the same result), then the policy itself is wrong, for the same reasons that the reversal would be wrong.

So, "affirmative action", "employment equity" (the Canadian government's term for institutionalized and federally approved racism), and any other such ideas, are just as wrong and just as racist as their reversals would be.


Now, on to one other relatively quick note: when I was in university, I took a lot of seminar classes. These were classes where a small group of students basically sat around a table and discussed issues at great length, with the professor usually just serving as a guide to keep things relatively on topic. There would generally be assigned reading before each class, and a paper due on the topic, but most of the real rhetorical heavy lifting got done sitting around that table.

More than once I heard fellow students say that people who were members of a minority could not be racists.

This, of course, is clearly insane.

Moreover, these poor deluded vessels of political correctness felt that this extended to other forms of discrimination (again, in its pejorative sense). Women could not be guilty of sexism, non-Christians could not be guilty of religious discrimination, etc. Anyone who was in a minority (or perceived minority - check out a census for gender populations sometime) could effectively never be wrong.

It's a viewpoint that I can't really even debate. Someone whose logic is that poor will never understand any rational argument. I've often said that if Confucius and Homer Simpson have an argument, Homer will win every time. He simply won't understand anything his opponent says. You might as well try to knock down a brick wall with a Nerf bat. The only way Confucius can prevail is to walk away - and Homer will never understand that he lost.

Unfortunately, even some prominent public figures have made statements to this effect (Spike Lee, for example, has said that black people cannot be racists). Worse, they're sometimes taken seriously.

Interestingly, by the definition of racism I gave above, saying that black people cannot be racists is itself a racist statement. Since one's melanin levels have no bearing on what intellectual and philosophical positions they may hold, claiming that they do is an attempt to interject race where it is not relevant. I.e., racism.


So, there's some background. For another sneak preview of what's coming in the imminent exposé, consider this: does a firearm automatically become any safer or any more dangerous based on the ethnicity of the person holding it? If you said "no", then there are some legislators in Ottawa who disagree with you.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of another probably-blasphemous cartoon. The captions can be translated as: (Top) - "Believer wounded by nonbelievers." (Bottom) - "Nonbeliever wounded by believers."

A Definition

No time for a real post yet again tonight, I'm afraid. Last night was spent at a Right-to-Life Association meeting, and tonight was spent shoveling my driveway yet again. I haven't even had time to wrestle with the new printer any more.

I only have time for a quick definition. I know, it's lame and juvenile, but for some reason it amuses me.


Serendipity-doo: the oddly coincidental use of hair care products.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son as a newborn. For a while this image made me suspect that his DNA was at least partially extraterrestrial.