Joel Osteen: How He Hates Expertise

One of my Facebook friend posted a Joel Osteen's status on his wall. Here it is:

At first, I was amazed. Then, I was enraged.

This ... this .... ARGH, this is just ... here let me explained why I don't like that status at all.

1) Noah's flood story is not special.

There are HUNDREDS global flood stories from other religions. Is that an evidence that a great flood really happened once upon a time? Nope. There is a superior explanation. 

All civilizations were born nearby a river, since water is an essential thing for our existence. Those rivers definitely floods its surrounding several times, so it is normal for a poet, for a writer, of every civilization, of that time to write a "great flood" epic, even though no global flood ever happened.

Oh yeah, not only a flood from local river, a tsunami can also inspire ancient writers to write such epic. No global flood needed.

2) "What God has put in your heart"

Whatta heck is that? Seriously, what is that? Gut feeling? Intuition? Instinct? Desire? If you want to give an advice, please give a concrete, testable, and falsifiable one. If not, you are just a politician who give amorphous, non-definite promise to escape blame if anything goes wrong.


3) And don't forget about "God's experts" like Mr. Osteen here ...

Since #2 is NEVER clear, many people claimed to be "God's expert" to tell you what God really wants, what God really puts into your heart. Thanks to that we got the Spanish inquisition, witch-hunt, multiple crusades, and many more! 


4) The best expert has been wrong ...

Here is the irony, by Osteen's definition, GOD is the best expert for everything. Every single thing. Unfortunately, God made mistakes too!

What? You disagree? You thought that God is infallible? So tell me, how come God wiped out most living beings using the great flood? 

Oh, God also admit that He can forget His promise and plan evil, then ... surprise, surprise, he was corrected by a mere mortal named Moses! No wonder Osteen despises expert. His "best expert" is just ... not that trustworthy!

5) The Titanic once existed. The Ark never exists.

How I know it never happened? Simple, because if it happened, the  soil would record it! The permanent ice in Greenland, Siberia, etc would record it too! Since there are no record about such flood, it is safe to state that the flood never happens. 

Even if the flood really happened, there is another record that can show the existence of a population bottleneck, that shows that every single modern human being are the descendants of the 8 members of Noah's family. This can be done since our mitochondria gives accurate record about our mother, while our Y-chromosome gives accurate information about a male's father. So, using mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal analysis, we can know our common ancestors. The result is out. Nope, it is not Noah's family. The "Adam" and "Eve" are totally different. Definitely not Noah or any of his family.

That makes comparing Noah's Ark with Titanic like comparing Boeing 747 with Santa's sleigh. I bet Santa's sleigh has superior track record! 

Why Osteen spouted nonsense like this to his followers? Simple, because he wants them to hate all kind of experts that he disagree. Because he wants to monopolize truth. Yes, once again this is about power over "hearts and minds," especially "minds." What do you expect? We are talking about religion here!