The Oblivious Devout Keep Christianity Chugging Along, Part 2

Horrible harms done by belief in Jesus

In my article of the same title, published here 22 November 2024, I described several ways in which the devout churchgoers manage to ignore basic realities that put their faith in huge jeopardy. Now I want to focus on one of the most damaging aspects of Christian history: the horrible outcomes of being devoted to, obsessed with, Jesus. Especially after the church achieved political power. Let’s look at a few of the consequences, a few of the things that the devout should work hard to bring within their horizons of awareness.

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Bertrand Russell’s Celestial Teapot Is More Credible than the Christian God

The quest for solid god-evidence has yielded nothing

There’s been a cartoon floating around on Facebook for a while, depicting a Christian woman asking a man, “What’s it like being an atheist?” He replies, “Do you think Zeus is real?” Her answer is “No”—to which he answers, “Like that.”  Zeus is one of thousands of gods that have been invented by human beings, and embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm. It has been so easy to jump to the god-conclusion; in the Book of Acts, chapter 28, we find the story of the apostle Paul arriving on Malta. As he was lighting a fire, a viper landed on his hand, which he shook off into the fire. But the locals were amazed: “They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.” (v. 6)

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The Blasphemy of Heliocentrism

The Pareto distribution of bible verse citations

If you’ve listened to many church sermons, you may have noticed that they often cite verses from the church’s preferred translation of the bible, or allude to verses indirectly. If you were to write down all these verses, over time you’d build up quite the list. But you might need a lot of sermons before you could reconstruct an entire bible that way. That’s because many verses in the bible sound a bit problematic to modern ears, and don’t feature in a lot of sermons. Instead you might notice that your pastor is like a long-time touring musical act, well past its hitmaking heyday, which keeps on playing its hits. What people liked in the past, they can probably like again. A cynical or perhaps realistic observer might note that the most important skill for any church pastor is fundraising (“No bucks, no Buck Rogers”), and some bible verses work better than other verses for separating the marks I mean congregants from their money. Among the more successful pastors - in terms of attracting congregants and extracting money from them - we have Joel Osteen, whose preaching style, or so I’ve read, leans heavily into “uplifting” and away from “challenging.” Thus we wouldn’t expect to see successful pastors like Osteen engaging seriously and frequently with bible difficulties, as these seem to be bad for business.

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Breaking the Grip of Indoctrination

Brainwashing is a disaster  

It is a common feature of religions that their devout followers are confident that they’ve “got it right.” Because, of course, their leaders have convinced them that they are exclusive custodians of the truth, and there are severe penalties for disagreeing or disbelieving. Since there have been thousands of religions making such claims, we can be sure they’re all pretense and nonsense. On occasion over the years, I have asked a few devout Christian friends to read/critique various chapters of the books I’ve written: I genuinely wanted their perspectives. But they usually refused, because they didn’t want to read anything that might put their faith in jeopardy (which was a big clue that they have major doubts that they don’t want to think about). One Catholic woman did agree to read one of my chapters on the gospels. Her primary reaction was shock: she didn’t know that Jesus was expected to come back. Another was angry to learn that there is Jesus-script demanding hatred of family—and even life itself—for anyone who wants to be his disciple. Several Catholics have told me they were not encouraged to read the Bible, so I was hardly surprised.

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It’s Time to LET GO of the Defective, Deficient Ten Commandments

They could not have been inspired by a good, caring, wise god

I was a teenager in 1956 when the film, The Ten Commandments, was released. I saw it at the cinema in my small town in rural Indiana. I was stunned to see the fiery finger of god—looking a lot like lightning—blast the words of the laws onto the stone tablets. “Yes, that’s the way it must have happened.” Many years later, when I was engaged in serious Bible study, my naivete and gullibility had vanished. I realized that these famous ten commandments don’t set the high standard we had supposed.

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Published: Don McIntosh's Article In Response to Mine On "God and Horrendous Suffering."

Volume 2, Issue 1 (Spring 2024) of the Trinity Journal of Natural & Philosophical Theology has just been published. Included is the response by Editor-in-Chief Don McIntosh, titled, “Horrendous Evil and Christian Theism: A Reply to John Loftus” (pp. 25-44). 

With his permission I'm publishing it in its entirety below. This isn't the first time I've published a paper by a Christian philosopher, or apologist. Just click on the Tag "Christian Scholars" below to see some others. Comment as you will. Don will be reading and may respond.

If you remember, my previous article was published in an earlier issue in the TJNPT, and can be read at The Secular Web, along with a video of it on YouTube.  

I will write a response to his response which will be published at The Secular Web. 

 

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The Horrifying Sins of Christianity, Century after Century

Victimizing indigenous peoples, slaves, women and children

A few months ago, an elderly Catholic friend explained to me how the church had guided her religious development. Regarding the certainties about god they’d been taught in catechism, she said the priests “…told us not to think about them.” Hence reading the Bible was never encouraged, because that might provoke skeptical thoughts. In fact the gospels are dangerous territory: there is so much in them that can alarm modern readers who are even somewhat aware of how the world works. Nor do the clergy want their parishioners to explore—to think about— the history of Christianity: how the church and the faithful have responded to those who disagree and resist; examples include the Crusades, the Inquisition, burning women thought to be witches. However, Christianity is guilty of so much more—so much worse—but the devout don’t want to explore these realities of history.

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Disestablished: Goodbye Church of England? But Meanwhile in America… by Robert Conner

New legislation scheduled to be introduced in Parliament on

December 6, 2023, proposes to finally, officially, separate the British government from the Church of England: 
 
“Perhaps the distressing sight of King Charles III kneeling before a bible and kissing it at his coronation ceremony hastened the decision to introduce this legislation. The coronation took place at Westminster Abbey, where Charles swore an oath before the bible to uphold the Church of England’s privileges during the ritual led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The National Secular Society, which has been campaigning for the church’s disestablishment since its founding in 1866, reports that a cross claiming what was purported to be shards from Jesus’ crucifix (sic) was part of the ritual.”^[1]
 
The new king’s oath “to preserve the Church of England, guarantees Church of England bishops and archbishops 26 seats in the House of Lords, and means state schools can be required to hold Christian worship.” Dr. Scot Peterson of Corpus Christi College remarked, “It’s been difficult to defend having an established church since the beginning of the 20th century but it is now becoming a figment of the imagination. The king being the head of the Church of England made sense in 1650, but not in 2022.”^[2]
 

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How Did Christianity Get to Be Such a Mess?

Churchgoers don’t seem to care 

Evidence of the Mess: One

When American Christians head off for church on Sunday morning, how many church buildings of other Christian brands do they pass on the way to their own denomination? Baptists would be horrified at the thought of worshipping at a Catholic church instead. And Catholics would be baffled at the style of worship at a Methodist or Presbyterian church. This is the essence of Mess One: there are, in fact, thousands of different Christian brands, i.e. denominations, divisions, sects, and cults. There has been rampant splintering for hundreds of years because the devout cannot agree on basics about god and how he wants to be worshipped.

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The Christian Illusion of Rational Superiority (Part 2)

[This is one of my earliest posts, published in January 2006] Many Christians will maintain they have a superior foundation for knowing and for choosing to do what is good. They claim to have objective ethical standards for being good, based in a morally good creator God, and that the atheist has no ultimate justification for being moral.

Consider what Dr. William Lane Craig wrote: “If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint.…” “Who is to judge that the values of Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a saint? “The world was horrified when it learned that at camps like Dachau the Nazis had used prisoners for medical experiments on living humans. But why not? If God does not exist, there can be no objection to using people as human guinea pigs.” [Apologetics: An Introduction, pp. 37-51].

The Christian claims to have absolute and objective ethical standards for knowing right from wrong, which is something they claim atheists don’t have. The Christian standards are grounded in the commands of a good creator God, and these commands come from God’s very nature and revealed to them in the Bible. There is a philosophical foundation for this claim, and then there is the case Christians present that the Bible reveals God’s ethical commands. Both are illusions of superiority. It is an illusion that the Christian moral theory is superior, and it is an illusion that Christians know any better than others how they should morally behave in our world.

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How Did Paul Know What He Tells Us About Jesus?

We often marvel at Paul's lack of interest in the life and times of Jesus. He says Jesus was born of a woman but says nothing about his mother. He tells us Jesus was killed for the sins of others but tells us nothing about where the event occurred. He tells us that Jesus was buried but he tells us nothing about the gravesite. Did Paul not think the information was available in his time?

We know Paul could read the Old Testament as allegory as we see in Galatians 4:22-31:

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Christianity Doesn’t Survive This Fatal Knockout Blow

One of several, actually

Even a casual reading of the Ten Commandments (either Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5) should make anyone skeptical that a supposedly good, competent god had anything to do with it. Here was this god’s big opportunity—alone with Moses on the mountaintop—to let humanity know the best moral principles to follow. Many ethicists have noticed three crucial items that are missing: (1) Thou shalt not engage in warfare; (2) Thou shalt not enslave other human beings; (3) Thou shalt not mistreat or undervalue other human beings because of the color of their skin. These omissions are surely an indication of defective, indeed bad theology.  

 

Slavery and racism have brought so much pain and suffering to the world. But war has been, by far, the greatest destroyer, especially as weapons have become more and more advanced—very smart people have been hired by military leaders to create devastating killing machines. This prompts us to doubt, on another level entirely, that a good god was involved in the creation of humans.

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“My overdosing on religion was becoming a serious problem”

It’s a problem for the world as well

When Christopher Hitchens died in December 2011, a volcano of Christian hate erupted. Devout folks who’d never heard of him suddenly found out that he’d written a book (2009) titled, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. They spewed rage and invective on social media, savoring the idea that Hitchens was suffering—and would suffer forever—in the fires of hell. “Love your enemy” (Jesus-script, Matthew 5:44) has probably rarely been so widely ignored. Ironically, their fury probably drove sales of the book—which even now, fourteen years later, has a high Amazon sales ranking. 

 

It is my suspicion that most of these outraged folks are also unaware of the extensive role religion has played in poisoning the human experience. The gospel of John fueled anti-Semitism, no doubt inspiring Martin Luther’s murderous rage against the Jews, which in turn helped provide the Nazi rationale for the Holocaust. The Crusades were religion-motivated wars. Slavery was easily championed by good Christians who took their Bibles seriously. Our democracy is in jeopardy because obsessive-compulsive believers want to impose their understanding of god on everyone. The evidence of religious poison is on the news every day.

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Asking for EVIDENCE for God: Why Is that So Hard to Grasp?

Sentiments about Jesus do not qualify

According to the devout, evidence for their god is so obvious, “I feel Jesus in my heart!” “Just open the Bible, it’s right there.” “People all over the world have seen visions of the Virgin Mary.” “Every day I receive guidance from my god in prayer.” “The holy spirit fills me with joy during Sunday worship.” 

 

Please note these claims are usually made by people who have been groomed from a very young age to accept what they’re been told by preachers and priests. Or maybe they converted to Christianity as adults—which is no surprise, since the marketing of Jesus is a multi-billion-dollar business. There are thousands of churches ready to welcome converts into their grooming communities.

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The Bible Can Be a Believer’s Worst Nightmare

And it’s a go-to book for sustaining ignorance and intolerance 

In my article here last week, I discussed six Bible texts that qualify as dealbreakers: upon analyzing these carefully, believers would be justified in saying, “Enough already,” and head for the exit. The cumulative impact of these six—and many more—should put traditional belief in the gutter. The feel-good Bible verses preached from the pulpit fall far short of cancelling the far too many terribly bad Bible texts. 

 

The worst nightmare becomes even more obvious when we step back and take a look at the big picture. There is no way the Bible meets the high standards that we would expect in a book written/dictated by a wise, perfect god. For a close look at this problem, check out Valerie Tarico’s article published in January 2018: Why Is the Bible So Badly Written?

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The Role of the Bible in Destroying Faith

Deceptive translators don’t want readers to see the problems 

There has been a meme floating about on the Internet: “If you ever feel worthless, remember, there are people with theology degrees.” These degrees are granted by a huge variety of religious schools, ranging from fundamentalist Protestant to Vatican-loyal Catholic. So among those holding these degrees—what else would we expect?—there is substantial disagreement regarding what god is like, how he/she/it expects people to behave, how he/she/it wants to be worshipped. This is one of the reasons Christianity has splintered into thousands of quarreling brands.

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In Memorium of Dr. Hector Avalos Written by Dr. Christopher Rollston

A Memorium of Dr. Hector Avalos was written by Dr. Christopher Rollston in the journal he edits, which included Hector Avalos's very last article.

Rollston starts with a personal comment on Facebook, saying,

Two years ago yesterday, Dr. Hector Avalos passed away. He was a distinguished scholar and a cherished friend, and he passed away much too early. In the current issue of MAARAV, I wrote an "in memoriam" regarding him. I have pasted it in below.

In addition, I should like to mention that in this issue of Maarav, one of Hector's final articles (perhaps his final article....I'm not entirely sure) is published, one entitled "By Him" or "Against Him/Them" in El Amarna 364:23?: Implications for the Destruction of Hazor. It's a very fine article and I sort of look at this as a core love of Hector's: history and philology. I'm so glad that this article appeared in Maarav. He had hoped to live to see it in print....this was not to be...but I'm so glad that it appeared within our pages. And again, the full "In Memoriam" is pasted in below.

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Does God Exist? A Definitive Non-Philosophical Case, by John W. Loftus

  This essay began as an opening statement in a debate with Scott Tomlinson, who is on the board of Reasonable Faith, an organization whose founder and owner is the premier apologist of our era, William Lane Craig. The debate took place on March 13, 2023, at the Reston Bible Church, in Dulles, Virginia. Let it be said I didn’t do all that well. But I did good enough. Since Craig has refused to debate me as a former student of his, I consider debating Scott a second best choice.

What follows is an extended and updated essay based on my opening statement, which I’m publishing after some further thought. [You can see the original PowerPoint (with a few errors) at https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2023/03/my-debate-power-point.html] 

 The thing I like most about debates is they force me to put into words my strongest arguments on a given subject at a given time. See what you think, especially since I wrote the 2016 book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy Must End, severely downplaying the role of philosophy of religion as it’s practiced. This is better than fruitlessly debating the five ways of Aquinas.

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Christianity’s Biggest Sins

Fueled by scripture’s biggest mistakes

In the second chapter of Acts we find the story of Peter preaching about Jesus, with dramatic results: “So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added” (v. 41). Most New Testament scholars grant that the Book of Acts was written decades after events depicted, all but conceding that authentic history is hard to find here; sources are not mentioned, and the case for Jesus is made primarily by quoting from the Old Testament. Moreover, the fantasy factor is pretty high, e.g., an angel helps Peter escape from prison: “Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared. A light shone in the prison cell. The angel struck Peter on his side. Peter woke up. ‘Quick!’ the angel said. ‘Get up!’ The chains fell off Peter’s wrists” (Acts 12:7).  

The early Christians were a small breakaway Jewish sect, but there’s an attempt here to exaggerate its success: three thousand were baptized when they heard Peter speak.  How would an author writing decades after the “event” have been able to verify that figure? And are modern readers supposed to be impressed that three thousand people signed up because they heard the words of a preacher? Throughout the ages many cults have gathered the gullible in exactly this way.

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Puncturing the God Fallacy, Repeatedly and Thoroughly

Religion’s greatest harm: “…the subversion of clear thinking…”

“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” This famous line from the 1976 film, Network, reflects the approach of so many secular/atheist writers of our time. Outrage is reignited, continually. 

This headline caught my attention a few days ago: Thousands of children abused by members of Portugal’s Catholic Church over 70 years. At the top of the article:

“At least 4,815 children were sexually abused by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church – mostly priests – over the past 70 years, a report by the commission investigating the issue said on Monday, adding the findings are the tip of the iceberg.” Child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht said “the 4,815 cases were the ‘absolute minimum’ number of victims of sexual abuse by clergy members in Portugal since 1950…Most perpetrators (77%) were priests and most of the victims were male…they were abused in Catholic schools, churches, priests’ homes, confessionals, among other locations.”

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