Because they don’t grasp that the gospels are fantasy literature
It seems to me that most of the devout who attend church are not obsessed with studying history and science—nor are they aware of implications of seeing their faith in the context in which it arose. They have been coached/trained not to do so by their religious leaders. But it doesn’t take very much curiosity to detect the signs, the clues, that the gospels are fantasies. Right at the start of Matthew’s gospel—who the author actually was, nobody knows—we find a genealogy demonstrating the Joseph was descended from king David; this pedigree seems to have been an essential credential for Joseph’s son to have qualified as messiah. But then we read that his betrothed, Mary, was made pregnant by the holy spirit. Joseph decided to divorce her quietly, but an angel told him in a dream what had happened—so he changed his mind. The author then quotes a text from Isaiah 7:14—or rather misquotes it, since he was familiar with the Septuagint translation of this text which reads virgin, not a young woman which is in the original text.
But the author of the gospel apparently didn’t notice the major flaw here: why provide a genealogy to prove Joseph was descended from David—but then claim that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, after all? Maybe he did notice it, but just didn’t care because his specialty was writing fantasy literature. Moreover, Joseph getting a message from an angel in a dream is also a fragment of fantasy. It’s worth noting, by the way, that virgin birth is not mentioned in either Mark or John.
Please note as well that other heroes in the ancient world were promoted by their followers as virgin born. Christianity seems to have borrowed the concept.
At the opening of Mark’s gospel we read that Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and as he was emerging from the water, “And a voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’” (Mark 1:11) A god yelling from heaven is also fantasy. How many of the devout have heard any such thing? Their god would be much more credible if it had yelled from the sky at Hitler’s rallies, “Get rid of this insane leader, he will ruin your country.” Or their god could have yelled at the captain of the Titanic, “Hey, pay attention, you’re about to slam into an iceberg.” We can think of thousands of examples of how a god yelling from the sky could have saved millions of lives. But this is part of fantasy, not reality.
Also part of the fantasy imagination are demons. In Mark 5 we find the story of Jesus encountering a man who was possessed by demons. Clearly, there was no understanding of mental illness. Jesus wants to help the man, and the demons sense this, and beg Jesus to be transferred to a large herd of pigs nearby. We’re not told just how Jesus did this deed (presumably by a magic spell), but the demons get into the pigs—and they run off a cliff and drowned in the sea below.
At the opening of Luke 8, we find this story: “Soon afterward he went on through one town and village after another, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out…”. (vv. 1-2).
And this text is found in Mark 16:9: “Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.”
Just how does anyone count demons—but even more relevant: what is the evidence for demons? This also is a major indication that the author was a master of fantasy, not history or reality.
Let’s look at a few more example of fantasy in the gospels.
Jesus was credited with remarkable power over water. He could walk on it, change it into wine, and even quiet storms. Did such powers disappear when Jesus supposedly left the earth for good? There have been hundreds, even thousands, of devastating storms in human history. Jesus no longer has the power to quiet them and make them disappear?
Walking on water and changing it into wine? Either we grant that these are features of fantasy tales—or we ask for reliable, verifiable, objective evidence that such things took place. Please note, by the way, that the Greek god Dionysus was also credited with changing water into wine. It looks like one Christian fantasy writer, i.e., the author of John’s gospel, decided that Jesus could manage this miracle as well.
John took magical thinking to a high level as well. He wrote in John 6:53-58 that eternal life would be secured for those who ate Jesus' flesh and drank his blood. Thus his flesh and blood become magic potions.
We also have the stories of Jesus feeding huge crowds, 4,000 and 5,000 people, because he could magically turn just a few loaves and a few fish into vast quantities of food—there were even leftovers! In our current world, there are thousands of people who die of starvation every day. We are entitled to wonder again why Jesus is powerless to do the same thing now. After all, as the old hymn claims, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” But fantasy is not reality.
Robert Conner posted this comment on the Debunking Christianity Blog a few days ago:
“It took me a long time to realize that Christian indoctrination and iconography have already ‘told’ us what the gospels say. When we read them, we ‘read into’ them what we've already been taught, hence the credulity: To the preconditioned reader the gospels are simply reiterating what the reader already believes.” (8 September 2026)
What the reader already believes. I’ll never forget what an elderly devout Catholic woman told me a couple of years ago—I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll keep doing so: “Our priests told us never to think about what we had learned in catechism.”
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
• Guessing About God (2023)
• Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available.
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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