Frank Zindler - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Frank Zindler

American Atheist, 1997

Some years ago during the Easter season, the Ohio State University Faculty Christian Fellowship t... more Some years ago during the Easter season, the Ohio State University Faculty Christian Fellowship took out a deceptive advertisement in the stu¬dent’s newspaper, The Lantern. Showing a picture of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, the ad posed the question “Would you lie if the truth hurt this much?” Designed to fool students into thinking that the earli¬est Christians (including the uni¬dentified fourth-century St. Sebast¬ian) had died rather than renounce their first-hand knowledge of the Christ story, the ad invited students to send for a leaflet entitled “Beyond Blind Faith,” produced by Christian apologist Paul E. Little. In the first part of this two-part critique, I showed the fallacies of the ad itself (e.g., there were no eye wit¬nesses) and also showed that Little’s leaflet was based on two fundamen¬tal fallacies: it simply assumed that Jesus was a historical figure and that the New Testament is a histori¬cally reliable document. The nativity fables were shown to be contradic¬tory and unhistorical. In this second and concluding part, the resurrec¬tion stories are subjected to critical analysis.

American Atheist, 1997

In Blind Faith Part I, I discuss an Easter advertisement in the Ohio State University student new... more In Blind Faith Part I, I discuss an Easter advertisement in the Ohio State University student newspaper THE LANTERN that had been placed by the Faculty Christian Fellowship at that school. I discuss the errors and deceptions of the ad, and then proceed to deconstruct the leaflet they were distributing to convert unwary students to a fundamentalist form of Christianity. The leaflet was titled “Beyond Blind Faith,” and it was written by the apologist Paul E. Little. The many fallacies and deceptions of the leaflet are exposed and I deconstruct the “illogism of his syllogism” claiming there are only four possibilities with regard to Jesus Christ: (1) one, is the possibility that Jesus lied when he said he was God; (2) second is that he was sincere but self-deceived, a lunatic; (3) third is the possibility that all of the talk of his claiming to be god is a legend; and (4) the fourth is that he spoke the truth and was god with a capital G. Little’s discussion of the question “What were Jesus’s credentials?” along with his “evidence” for Jesus’s miracles is reduced to absurdity. Both evidence from science and from secular biblical scholarship are used to elucidate the erroneous nature of Little’s claims.

American Atheist, 1990

Racism and religion have been associated since their common origin during the group-selection sta... more Racism and religion have been associated since their common origin during the group-selection stage of human social evolution. Religion was the “social glue” that welded together the in-group in its struggle to expand its gene pool at the expense of out-group gene pools. Racism was an essential component of all early religions, and sociobiologists have argued that there is a genetic inclination toward xenophobia, of which racism is an extreme example. It appears that racism was integral to all ancient religions of which we have knowledge. As societies and religions have evolved, however, the integral association of racism and religions has all but disappeared. Today, the only surviving ancient Near Eastern religions are Judaism and Samaritanism. Jewish self-definition is racial—a Jew is anyone born of a Jewish mother. (Farther east, Hinduism with its caste system also retains the racism essential for its self-definition.)
The Hebrew bible contains the late book of Ezra, an extremely racist manifesto. But the Pentateuch also is essentially racist, as shown by passages in Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Mishna, a compilation of “oral law,” systematized racism for the Jewish diaspora after the destruction of the Temple of Yahweh and expulsion of the Jews from Palestine. Racism, although no longer definitional, has been fostered by Christianity and Islam in the form of slavery, in which one gene pool is made to promote the successes of a different gene pool.
Although no longer essential for self-definition, racism is ubiquitous in both Christianity and Islam. The world today is much different from the world in which our reflexes evolved, the world in which religion first crept into our bones. We must change. We must adapt. We must mute the inner murmurings of primal religiosity, or our kind shall vanish from the earth, a victim of its own violence.

American Atheist , 1986

This final installment of my exposé of Jay Anson’s “The Amityville Horror: A True Story” debunks ... more This final installment of my exposé of Jay Anson’s “The Amityville Horror: A True Story” debunks some of the more outrageous impostures of his book. No tracks were made in the snow by a giant pig, because there was no snow. The temperatures for the previous three days were well above freezing and it had rained every day. The “secret room” in which pigs and dogs might have been sacrificed was actually a storage cubby under the basement stairs: 2-feet, 4-inches wide, 3-feet 6-inches long, and 3-feet, 6-inches high. George Lutz’s testimony in the transcript of the Lutz vs. Hoffman trial shows he admitted that there had been no marching band in the living room, the furniture had not been shoved up against the walls to make room for a band, and the carpet had not been rolled up, because it was wall-to-wall carpeting. The many admissions and contradictions in the transcript, and comparison with the earliest account of “the horror” by Paul Hoffman, confirm what Hoffman’s early account claimed: there were no levitations at 112 Ocean Ave. According to Hoffman, “The next night, Sunday [January 11], Lee awoke to find Kathy sliding across the bed, as if by levitation. He grabbed her, and switched sides with her so she wouldn’t slide away again.” In other words, Kathy almost fell out of bed.
NOTE: My book The Amityville Horror: An Inquest into Paranormal Claims (GCRR Press, Denver, CO, 2022) presents an exhaustive exposé of Anson’s “True Story.” A print version is available on Amazon.com, and a digital version is available for free to subscribers to Kindle Unlimited.

American Atheist, 1986

Because the Lutzes could not recall anything odd that had happened during their first week in the... more Because the Lutzes could not recall anything odd that had happened during their first week in the allegedly demon-infested house at 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, NY, when Jay Anson had to write about their “horrific experiences” he had to start his 28-day chronicle by plagiarizing plot and details from the beginning of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist. Not all events reported in The Amityville Horror: A True Story were 100% fiction. Some episodes “evolved” from trivial, actual events. The “200-pound wooden front door ripped off its hinges by someone trying to get out” grew from a cupboard-like door on a garbage shed on the north side of the house and partly from a storm door that became unhinged after the Lutzes abandoned the house.

Next: The Amityville Humbug Part III: The TRUE True Story.
NOTE: My book The Amityville Horror: An Inquest into Paranormal Claims (GCRR Press, Denver, CO, 2022) presents an exhaustive exposé of Anson’s “True Story.” A print version is available on Amazon.com, and a digital version is available for free to subscribers to Kindle Unlimited.

American Atheist, 1986

Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror: A True Story was published in 1977 and it spawned a series of ... more Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror: A True Story was published in 1977 and it spawned a series of over 25 movies, many spin-off books, and countless TV interviews. The book allegedly chronicles 28 days of horror endured by the Lutz family in a demon-infested house in Amityville, New York. The story was predicated on the notion that the mass murder of the DeFeo family (the previous owners of the Lutz house) by the 23-year-old son Ronnie DeFeo was so horrific that it could only be explained as the product of demonic possession. Part One of this three-part series tells how I became involved in the story, and presents the actual facts of the DeFeo murders, and shows how the Lutzes plotted with the attorneys who had defended Ronnie DeFeo to write a horror story. Reciprocal lawsuits in which the Lutzes and the DeFeo attorneys sued each other for fraud resulted in a 500-page trial transcript in which even George Lutz admitted that “the true story” wasn’t true.
Next: The Amityville Humbug Part II: The Exorcist and the Garbage Shed.

NOTE: My book The Amityville Horror: An Inquest into Paranormal Claims (GCRR Press, Denver, CO, 2022) presents an exhaustive exposé of Anson’s “True Story.” A print version is available on Amazon.com, and a digital version is available for free to subscribers to Kindle Unlimited.

American Atheist, 1987

Born on August 4, 1792, in Sussex, England, Shelley was yet seventeen years old when he matricula... more Born on August 4, 1792, in Sussex, England, Shelley was yet seventeen years old when he matriculated at Uni¬versity College, Oxford, on April 10, 1810. Shortly after taking up residence in the college in October of the same year, Shelley collaborated with another heterodox freshman, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, in the writing of an anonymous tract titled The Necessity of Atheism. The tract, reprinted here, appears to have been published and distributed early in 1811. The university found copies of the tract at Slatter’s printshop and ordered them burned. An investiga¬tion of the authorship of the piece led to the trial of Shelley and Hogg, both of whom were expelled on March 25,1811. The essay is reprinted here as written, except for the fact that the rather confusing punctuation of the original has been modernized, and a few clarifying connectives have been added in square brackets. In 1813 Shelley reworked the material into explanatory notes to his poem Queen Mab. Where Shelley’s later reworking of the material markedly improves or adds to the meaning, the later form of the passage is given in a footnote.
A related essay, “Percy Bysshe Sheley: Atheist, Democrat, and Lover of Humanity” is available separately on Academia.edu.

American Atheist, 1987

The poet Shelley was expelled from Oxford University at the age of seventeen for anonymously publ... more The poet Shelley was expelled from Oxford University at the age of seventeen for anonymously publishing (with Thomas Jefferson Hogg) an essay “The Necessity of Atheism.” (My annotated edition of his essay is available separately on Academia.edu.) At the age of eighteen, Shelley expanded on his philosophy in a thirty-three-page didactic poem “Queen Mab.” The young Shelley not only was a poet, his knowledge of science was second only to that of the major scientists of his day. In “Queen Mab,” Shelley quotes Newton’s Principia in Latin, Cuvier’s Comparative Anatomy and Laplace’s System of the World in French, and Archimedes in Greek. In the long poem Shelley expands on his essay “The Necessity of Atheism” and explains his “Doctrine of Necessity,” a refutation of the Christian doctrine of “Free Will.” An annotated survey of the poem is presented, along with translations where necessary.

American Atheist, 2005

Traditional 'proofs' of the existence of a god are criticized with the addition of a critique of ... more Traditional 'proofs' of the existence of a god are criticized with the addition of a critique of the "Argument from the Anthropic Principle."

American Atheist, 1999

The need to find a cure for religiosi¬ty is pressing. The world cannot survive much longer if pro... more The need to find a cure for religiosi¬ty is pressing. The world cannot survive much longer if problem-solvers’ minds are clouded by the opium of religion. We must perceive reality as accurately as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle will allow! We cannot afford illusions. The games our species is playing with us and with our environment are of life-and¬ death importance.
We Atheists must do all in our power to brew the wake-up potion that will clear the minds of our fellow men and women. We must revoke the evolu¬tionary curse that nature laid upon us when it created religion as the mediat¬ing agency for the most complicated form of sociality life on our planet has known. We must break the evil spell that religion has cast upon the castles of our minds and upon the towers of our thoughts. We must do everything in our power to free the thought-prisoners of our planet.
Not only is this an ethical necessity, it is a practical necessity as well. We, who, by whatever means it came about, have freed our own minds, cannot forev-er remain free when all about us not only are not free but are busy forging — in their ecclesiastical dungeons — chains with which once again they can confine our minds.
It is too great a job for Batman and Robin — too much even for Superman. But it is the job American Atheists has taken on. It has given its solemn promise that it shall work ceaselessly and with all its energy resources to bring about the liberation of the human mind, to free religion’s prisoners, and to find cures for all the varieties of that most deadly disease, religiosity.

American Atheist, 2004

The twentieth century witnessed an unparalleled growth in the ability of science to solve most of... more The twentieth century witnessed an unparalleled growth in the ability of science to solve most of the puzzles that have challenged thinkers since prehistoric times—puzzles which religions have ‘solved’ with the word god(s). Among the gods deprived of science by the advance of science is the Judeo-Christian god, a god who has been reduced to being a ‘god of the gaps.’ That is to say, it is ‘needed’ only to explain those small gaps in knowledge that for the moment science has not yet found convincing explanations. In response, Christianity has fought back against science in order to stem hemorrhages in membership and shrinking church incomes. In the broadcast media, the science of the 21st century CE is being used to disseminate the ‘scientific understanding’ of the 21st century BCE! The print medium has been used to attack science since the time of the first Bible printed by Gutenberg. A summary is presented of the shocking amount of printed matter available in the Christian Book Distributors Catalog being used to brainwash children and reasoning-challenged adults.

American Atheist, 1990

Genital mutilations of both men and women have their origins in humankind’s most misguided past. ... more Genital mutilations of both men and women have their origins in humankind’s most misguided past. Nonetheless, these atrocities are common today. This article explores the history of male circumcision in ancient Egypt, Israel and Judaism, Christianity, and in modern America, where it is alleged to have health benefits. Female sexual mutilation in African Islamic cultures is also examined.

American Atheist, 2004

A lecture by Frank R. Zindler at the 30th National Convention of American Atheists in San Diego, ... more A lecture by Frank R. Zindler at the 30th National Convention of American Atheists in San Diego, California, on April 9, 2004.

There are two sources of disinformation in America: political and religious. Religion seems to have been the inventor of the technique. The ways in which religious disinformation in particular now threatens the survival of the human species are illustrated with many examples from daily life.

American Atheist, 1985

The arguments of antiabortion advocates are refuted in the form of frequently asked questions or ... more The arguments of antiabortion advocates are refuted in the form of frequently asked questions or assertions being answered in terms of the embryological realities of fertilization, pregnancy, contraception, and embryological development. Biblical and Catholic theological arguments are also answered. The Bible makes no mention of abortion as such, and the “crime” of accidentally inducing a miscarriage is treated as a property crime, the penalty to which is the biblical equivalent of a parking ticket. Relevant aspects of the history of Catholic theology are also analyzed.

American Atheist, 1988

Informal fallacies of logic commonly employed by creationists and other religious apologists are ... more Informal fallacies of logic commonly employed by creationists and other religious apologists are identified and illustrated, including: (Pascal’s Wager: the Fallacy of Excluded Middle; (2) the Black-or-White Fallacy; (3) the Ad Hominem Fallacy: Abusive and Circumstantial Species; (4) the Appeal to Authority; (5) the Thirty-Million-Frenchmen-Can’t-Be-Wrong Fallacy; (6) the Irrelevant Conclusion Fallacy; and the (7) Fallacy of False Cause. Five other informal fallacies of logic are defined, and various other improper methods of religious argumentation are identified.

American Atheist, 1989

The membrane-bound cell, universally the structure that has arisen as the standard-bearer of the ... more The membrane-bound cell, universally the structure that has arisen as the standard-bearer of the living state on earth, is more than just a bag of chemicals—even though chemicals are really all the material that it contains. The cell also contains information, and it is an information-creating dynamic system. Various theories seeking to explain how both the cell’s chemical content and information content have come to be include the coacervate droplet-heterotroph theory of Alexandr I. Oparin, the proteinoid microsphere theory of Sidney Fox, the marigranule theory of Fujio Egami, and the self-replicating crystals theory of A.G. Cairns-Smith. All are explored in this third and last part of this essay.

American Atheist, 1977

The elements of which living things are composed are literally “star-dust”—the ashes of dead star... more The elements of which living things are composed are literally “star-dust”—the ashes of dead stars hurled into space after those stars exploded in Nova or Supernova events. How the elements of star-dust may have formed the proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates needed for life are explained. The famous Urey-Miller spark-chamber experiment that produced amino acids (needed for protein formation) and nitrogenous bases (needed for DNA and RNA) is analyzed, as well as the experiments of Sidney Fox who produced “proteinoid” spheres possessed of weak catalytic and reproductive properties. The problem of producing early-earth conditions with an oxygen-free atmosphere is also discussed. Catalysis on clay minerals may have helped to polymerize nucleotides into DNA and RNA. Why all the amino acids in all known living things are “left-handed” is examined, with no certain solution.

The American Atheist, 1989

In order to understand how llfe began on a lifeless earth, it is necessary to understand what lif... more In order to understand how llfe began on a lifeless earth, it is necessary to understand what life is. Life is defined in terms of a chemical cycle connecting DNA, RNA, proteins, and small molecules. The first cells were smaller and simpler than any living form of life, and the simplest life form know, the Pleuropneumonia-Like Organism (PPLO) is taken as a model for which to account in origin-of-life experiments. The role of religious ideation as a barrier to materialistic efforts to understand the origin of life is discussed. Part II: "Stardust in the Primordial Soup" and Part III: "The First Cells" will follow shortly.

American Atheist, 1986

Although “Mt. Ararat” never existed, many actual mountains have been tagged with the name of Arar... more Although “Mt. Ararat” never existed, many actual mountains have been tagged with the name of Ararat. The most popular mountain to be so named is Aghri Dagh, an extinct volcano in the Armenian region of Turkey. This article analyzes the book “The Ark on Ararat,” by Tim LaHaye and John D. Morris, critically examining three accounts of expeditions “to Mt. Ararat”: (1) The “Tale of the Three Wicked Atheists”; (2) “The Case of the (WW-1) Russian Aviators”; and (3) “The Testimony of Eva Ebling.”

American Atheists, 1986

On August 21, 1982, the Los Angeles Times carried a report of one of the most culturally embarras... more On August 21, 1982, the Los Angeles Times carried a report of one of the most culturally embarrassing events of modern times. The subject of the report was the expedition of James Irwin — a man who had walked upon the moon — to “Mt. Ararat.” At the top of a volcano nearly 17,000 feet above sea level, this product of the flow¬ering of American science and technology expected to find the remains of a wooden boat fifty percent longer than a football field and over four stories high! Irwin got his information from a New Mexico Realtor, Eryl Cummings, and his wife Violet—two ‘Arkologists.’ The information they imparted to the astronaut is shown to have come from an April-Fools’ spoof in the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung. The astronomical and geological implications of the Noah’s Flood story itself are reduced to amusing absurdity.

American Atheist, 1997

American Atheist, 1990

American Atheist , 1986

American Atheist, 1986

American Atheist, 1987

American Atheist, 2005

American Atheist, 1999

American Atheist, 2004

American Atheist, 1990

American Atheist, 2004

American Atheist, 1985

American Atheist, 1988

American Atheist, 1989

American Atheist, 1977

The American Atheist, 1989

American Atheist, 1986

American Atheists, 1986

The pericope in which Jesus cures the fever of the mother-in-law of Simon Peter in a town called ... more The pericope in which Jesus cures the fever of the mother-in-law of Simon Peter in a town called Capernaum is a complete fiction. In the first century, there was no place that was called Capernaum. Even though the Israeli tourist site now given that name may have been in existence at that time, there is no good reason to identify it with the gospel town. Simon Peter is a pre-Christian deity who was (like John the Baptizer) subdued and incorporated into the Christian system. Simon Peter is a solar city equivalent to the Samitan Simon "Magus," The Syro-Phoenician Semo, Samson, Hercules, Mithra, and Janus. Peter's possession of the keys of heaven and his association with rock, ships and water, and pillars can be explained by his derivation from the gods just mentioned. The absence of Peter's wife in the gospels is probably due to the fact that the consort of his previous incarnation, Simon Magus, was reputed to be a prostitute. Whereas Peter could be Christianized easily, his "wife" couldn't—and the only thing left of his marriage is his mother-in-law.

NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT GERASA ABSTRACT The supposed exorcism and mass sūi-cide at Gerasa ne... more NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED AT GERASA
ABSTRACT
The supposed exorcism and mass sūi-cide at Gerasa never occurred, because it was a geographic impossibility. The name Gerasa was chosen because it means Expulsion. The “exorcism” was not an exorcism in the sense of a healing of a crazy person. Rather—as with all the “exorcisms” in Mark—it was symbolic of conversion from polytheism to monotheism and the periscope of the “Gadarene Swine” is a datum in the record of the progress the early church was making against polytheism in pagan territories.

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2022

IMPORTANT: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential. It is strictly forbid... more IMPORTANT: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential. It is strictly forbidden to share any part of this message with any third party without a written consent from the sender. If you received this message by mistake, please reply to this message and follow with its deletion so we can ensure such a mistake does not occur in the future.

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2022

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2022.vol4.no1.08 This article argues tha... more READ FULL ARTICLE HERE:
https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2022.vol4.no1.08
This article argues that the dendritic (tree-like) or traditional model of Christian origins must be replaced with a plectic (braid-like) model. The dendritic model assumes that Christianity began at a specific point in both time and space-in the person of "Jesus of Nazareth"-and then branched out to form the various ancient sects of Christianity. This article asks: What if the numerous forms of "Christianity" did not all derive from a single historical figure? What if these earliest "Christianities" arose in the same way that the different forms and varieties of Egyptian, Indic, and Greco-Roman religions evolved? A new paradigm is proposed where the various forms of Christianity can be envisioned as forming by the coalescence of various threads (or trajectories) of religious tradition. Some of the threads may trace back into the mists of prehistory, others may trace to the turn of the current era, and still others may have begun in the second or third centuries CE. Not all early forms of Christianity contained the same threads. Not all threads stayed in the braid for long, and still others continued into the present. After entering the braid, threads of tradition evolved, bifurcated, branched off, or were absorbed into other traditions. Clearly, this is what we see happening today as multitudinous sects, cults, and denominations continue to arise and go extinct. As in historical geology, so too in religious history: The present is the key to the past.

American Atheist, 1996

If there never was a Land of Oz, would it be reasonable to think that a Wizard of Oz was a histor... more If there never was a Land of Oz, would it be reasonable to think that a Wizard of Oz was a historical figure? If, as I argue in this lecture from 1993, present-day Nazareth was not inhabited at the turn of the era, is it reasonable to believe in a historical "Jesus of Nazareth"? I argue that the stage on which the "Drama of the Ages" supposedly played out is just as fictional as its main characters. Nazareth, Capernaum, Bethany, Bethphage, Bethabara, and Magdala were symbolic names provided for particular events in the drama. "Aenon" is shown to be the result of a dyslexic parsing of of a Codex Bezae-like MS of Luke 3:18 by the author of John 3:23.

This is a paper I wrote for the Jesus Project 2008 meeting in Amherst, New York. I argued that it... more This is a paper I wrote for the Jesus Project 2008 meeting in Amherst, New York. I argued that it was necessary to apply scientific methods to the study of Christian origins, and the needed scientific principles are discussed. The problems of making historical research a science along the model of historical sciences such as astronomy, physical anthropology, geology, and paleontology are elucidated.
The scientific study of religion will not move very far into the humanities side of the research field until there exists an information system analogous to Chemical Abstracts, a system wherein everything known about religion has been identified, indexed, summarized, referenced, and made available in a single lingua franca. For any topic, it should be possible to learn quickly what the primary sources are, where they are located, and how to access them. Archaeology, history, chronology, neurophysiology of religious experience, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, linguistics, anthropology, comparative religious studies, bibliography—all the areas relating to the scientific study of religion need to be included. Perhaps it could be compiled as a cooperative, public effort— a Wikireligia!
It will be necessary to have instant access to all relevant primary-source manuscripts, texts, and documents, both in the form of facsimile, high-resolution images, and in the form of word-searchable text files. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) are a step in this direction. The study of Christian origins must become a science, not the focus of Christian apologetics.