The authors of the four New Testament gospels had a simple goal: to promote belief in the Christ they worshipped. Scholar Charles Guignebert, in his 1935 classic work Jesus, wrote:
“It was not the essence of Jesus that interested the authors of our Gospels, it was the essence of Christ, as their faith pictured him. They are exclusively interested, not in reporting what they know, but in proving what they believe.”
In other words, they were not historians, but propagandists. In fact, intensive criticalstudy of the gospels has demonstrated that these documents do not qualify as history. Their authors don’t identify their sources, but it’s even worse than that. Matthew and Luke copied major portions of Mark’s gospel without mentioning that’s what they’d done, i.e., they plagiarized—and changed Mark’s text to suit their own agendas.
As an example, suppose a street vendor offers to sell me a Rolex watch for $50. A check online shows Rolex watches selling for $12,000 and up (way up). By coincidence, the street vendor's "Rolex" comes with no kind of certification. Instead the street vendor says "Trust me." The vendor provides no other evidence of authenticity. I would have to take the vendor on faith, since I have no evidence that the "Rolex" is real.
A watch whose authenticity I must take on faith is less perfect than a watch whose authenticity carries a bit more heft, such as appraisals by multiple independent experts (who don't stand to benefit from the sale, and who stand to lose if they can be shown to be wrong), along with a certificate of authenticity from a credible organization that has an incentive to be honest (such as being sued for damages if it issues false certificates). In the event of a dispute, I could probably get a court of law to rule on the authenticity of an expensive watch.
While I would never actually buy a Rolex when a $20 digital watch keeps time well enough, this example shows how something I can verify as genuine to a high probability beats something I have to take entirely on faith.
You can see where I'm going with this. A God whose only evidence is the preacher's command to "trust me" is less perfect than any God (or, perhaps, any thing) that doesn't require faith. Especially when the preacher or vendor who says "trust me" stands to gain if I do.
Thus if I imagine a perfect God, in line with the Ontological Argument, I imagine a God who doesn't require me to rely on faith.
In the first 2-3 centuries of the Christian religion, we observe astonishing creative diversity. As this essay reveals, this diversity characterized the movement(s) from the beginning, even in the the initial decades of Christian story-telling. When we read Papias (preserved in fragmentary form in Eusebius, EH 3.39), we find a messy description of earliest cultic "gospel" traditions. Circa 100 C.E., he composed a (since lost) five-book work titled Guide to the Master’s Sayings. Assuming his achieved prominence within nascent Christian communities even to undertake such a project and have it survive and quoted for centuries, we may surmise that Papias’s proximal acquaintance with these early story-telling communities began quite a bit prior to his published work, that is, in the late first century.
Here’s a book title that would dumbfound many devout churchgoers: This Tragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart of Christianity. The author, Dr. Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., states that the author of John intended his gospel to replace the earlier gospels (p. 180), and he refers to the “howling conflict between Mark and John…” (p. 13) Burton Mack wrote: “What a somersault, turning the page between Luke’s life of Jesus and the Gospel of John” (p. 175, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth). Peter Brancazio notes that John’s gospel “will come as an astonishing surprise. Here the reader will encounter a radically different portrait of Jesus, both in terms of his message and his person” (p. 373, The Bible from Cover to Cover: How Modern-Day Scholars Read the Bible).
If I were asked to debate a flat-earther, Holocaust denier, or someone who is convinced the moon landings were faked, I would decline the invitation. Nor would I debate an astrologer, the local store-front medium who tells futures using a crystal ball, or anyone who believes in chem-trails. All of these folks have been groomed in one way or another, by various kooks and quacks.
They haven’t done/ refuse to do /don’t know howtodo the study/research to find out how wrong they are.
I have some important things to do. So I'll be away for up to a month. You can continue to expect Dr. Madison's excellent Friday postings though!
I ask our readers to do the single most important thing to increase our readership while I'm away. If there are some posts of ours you like, link to them on Twitter, Facebook, and especially Reddit, like r/atheism, r/DebateReligion, or r/DebateAnAtheist.
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.
This book is the product of a very fruitful, rewarding collaboration with Tim Sledge, author of Goodbye Jesus and Four Disturbing Questions with One Simple Answer.
Guessing About Godis Volume 1 in a reissue of my 2016 book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, covering three problems:
What follows comes from an online book by Rob J. Hyndman, titled Unbelievable. He says of himself: "I was a Christian for nearly 30 years, and was well-known as a writer and Bible teacher within the Christadelphian community. I gave up Christianity when I no longer thought that there was sufficient evidence to support belief in the Bible. This is a personal memoir describing my journey of deconversion....In this book, I reflect on how I was fooled, and why I changed my mind."
On Thanking God for Cruel Randomness
The practice of thanking God for safety and protection, for food and drink, for health and well-being, or for any other “blessings”, might appear to be a commendable habit, but it is actually deeply troubling because of what it implies.
A miraculously intervening God is an unjust capricious God, sparing some and saving others, apparently on a whim.
If God really was selecting people to protect on the basis of some bigger picture, then you would not expect the number of people who are killed in various ways to be subject to the rules of probability. However, I can predict with remarkable accuracy the road toll each year, the number of people who will be struck by lightning, the number of people who will be killed by shark attacks, and so on. Each of these causes of death has a certain rate of occurrence that is quite predictable.
It is not just the number of deaths that is predictable, it is the whole probability distribution of deaths that is predictable. If you know the average number of deaths by car accidents in a city, then it is possible to calculate all the percentiles for that city. For example, you can estimate the numbers of deaths that would be exceeded only once every ten years. When you do this for many cities, you find that the 1-in-10-year extremes are exceeded in approximately 10% of cities each year. This is exactly what you would expect if the world was random, but not what you would expect if anyone was in control.
Car accidents, diseases, and industrial accidents all follow the same probability distribution, known as the “Poisson distribution”. The Poisson probability distribution is based on the assumption that accidents happen randomly. It is simply not possible for tragedies to appear to follow the Poisson probability distribution while actually being controlled by God. Any interventions of God that interfere in the random processes would be detectable. If they are not detectable, then they are random and God is not involved.
If we accept that the world is random, and that bad things happen to everyone by chance, where does that leave God? Either he does not exist, or he has no power, or he does not care. Whichever of those answers you prefer, God does not deserve our thanks. LINK.
We atheists are asked to imagine what would convince us that Christianity is true. The short answer is this: We need sufficient objective evidence that can transform the negligible amount of human testimony found in the Bible into verified eyewitness testimony. But it does not exist. Given the extraordinary nature of the miracle tales in the Bible, this requirement means the past has to be changed and that can’t be done. Let's explore this.
Consider the Christian belief in the virgin-birthed deity. Just ask for the objective evidence. There is no objective evidence to corroborate the Virgin Mary’s story. We hear nothing about her wearing a misogynistic chastity belt to prove her virginity. No one checked for an intact hymen before she gave birth, either. After Jesus was born, Maury Povich wasn’t there with a DNA test to verify Joseph was not the baby daddy. We don’t even have first-hand testimonial evidence for it since the story is related to us by others, not by Mary or Joseph. At best, all we have is second-hand testimony by one person, Mary, as reported in two later anonymous gospels, or two people if we include Joseph, who was incredulously convinced Mary was a virgin because of a dream--yes, a dream (see Matthew 1:19-24).[1] We never get to independently cross-examine Mary and Joseph, or the people who knew them, which we would need to do since they may have a very good reason for lying (pregnancy out of wedlock, anyone?).
1.Christians can’t agree on who is right, what god wants
When Christians are off to church on a Sunday morning, they might have to drive past a few churches of other denominations. Apparently it never crosses their minds to stop at one of these—after all, “We’re all Christians, aren’t we?” But that’s exactly the problem: Christians have never been able to agree on what Christianity is. They’ve been fighting about this for centuries; the Catholic/Protestant divide is especially pronounced. We can be sure Catholics won’t stop at Protestant churches, and Protestants—with contempt and ridicule for the Vatican—wouldn’t think of stopping at a Catholic church.
Is this an honor or disgrace? What is going on in his head? What is the message he's telling others? On his Facebook wall Albrecht wrote:
An atheist that has made me a better theist is John W. Loftus. For atheistic books, it’s hard to top John. John is fierce, brutal, and ruthless in his critique of Christianity. This is what we need. We need our faith battered and hammered. If it can survive this battery and hammering and shine through, then you have further conviction for being a devout believer. It is my firm conviction that a seasoned Protestant debater would be devoured alive by John.
People have asked me if I intend to continue debating John. The answer is a strong and firm: YES. I will continue to demolish my friend in debate after debate until the day he is sat down in Mass as a believer. That would make it all worth it in the end. LINK
David Geisler: So John why did you say to me that it could be that God does exist?
Me: Because nonsense might turn out to be right even though it's nonsense.
John, I’m really disappointed. Your answers to me are so much nonsense.
Me: Sorry. You don't know what I know. What I know can be found in my books.
John, yes I read a few. You say something can come from nothing. That’s so irrational and stupid.
Me: What I don't say is that a fully existing triune God has forever existed with three eternal persons, which are inexplicable individually and corporately.
John, it’s illogical to conclude that quantum fields are the cause of everything, and say they do not have intentionality nor morality nor intelligence. Something or someone had to create us because we couldn’t just come from nothing! Now, if something can not come from nothing then the only conclusion you or anyone can come to is that something must’ve necessarily always existed. What’s illogical about this conclusion?
Me: My position is we don't know yet. That's a good enough answer at this point. When we don't know, we shouldn't prematurely jump to any conclusions.
Me: But we can, however, eliminate some answers, complex ones per Ockham's Razor. As I have said, your complex sectarian God-answer is one of the least acceptable answers because of the complex nature of a trinity--with the deified human side of Jesus joined forever at the hip to the 2nd person of the trinity. Your god looks exactly like the invention of ancient superstitious people, who required his people do barbaric deeds like child sacrifice, reigned like an ancient uncaring despot who showed no concern for his subjects as we see in the book of Job, who doesn't show any awareness of any medicinal knowledge prior to us discovering vaccines, pain killers, or antibiotics.
Me: You presuppose your concept of god with everything you write. That is illogical!
Me: Just stop your evangelizing. You are uniformed, illogical, and delusional, no different from other religionists like the Mormons.
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?
In Acts 8:9-13, the Apostle Philip encounters The Amazing Simon in Samaria. Simon enthralled the people but Philip baptized Simon, Simon followed Philip, and was amazed by the signs and miracles he saw.
In Acts 13:4-12, Barnabas and Paul, aka Saul, traveled to Cyprus and met proconsul Sergius Paulus who had a Jewish magician friend named Bar-Jesus, aka Elymas, who opposed Barnabas and Paul. Paul temporarily blinded Elymas.
In Acts 24, Paul is brought to trial before Felix the governor. After speaking with Paul, Felix decided to wait a few days until Lysias came. Lysias was the Roman tribune who took Paul into custody.
When Paul was brought back, Felix had his Jewish wife, Drusilla, with him.
Now let's play Bingo with Acts and Antiquities of the Jews.
Antiquities of the Jews 20.7.2 [excerpt] (20.142-144a)
While Felix was procurator of Judea, he saw this Drusilla, and fell in love with her; for she did indeed exceed all other women in beauty; and he sent to her a person whose name was Simon one of his friends; a Jew he was, and by birth a Cypriot, and one who pretended to be a magician, and endeavored to persuade her to forsake her present husband, and marry him; and promised, that if she would not refuse him, he would make her a happy woman.
Acts 8:9 (NRSV)
9 Now a certain man named Simon had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he was someone great.
Acts 13:4, 6-8 (NRSV)
4 So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia; and from there they sailed to Cyprus. 6 When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewishfalse prophet, named Bar-Jesus. 7 He was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man, who summoned Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. 8 But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
Acts 24:24 (NRSV)
24 Some days later when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him speak concerning faith in Christ Jesus.
Based on my own experience—I was pastor of churches for nine years, and have authored two books critical of Christianity—I’m pretty sure of this: devout folks don’t want to think too much about issues that can undermine their faith. Which means that reading the Bible is almost a No-No. Because there is so much in scripture that should prompt educated people to say, “Well, that can’t be right.” There are so many deal-breaker texts, just in the gospels. So in this Pop-Quiz for Christians I want to focus on some of these really embarrassing texts. How can the faithful read, study, reflect seriously on these patches of scripture—and not head for the exit?
I have had a running discussion with apologist Dr. David Geisler for about two years now (just a guess). Initially he reached out to me and said he won't quit me, that he will keep reaching out to me for as long as it takes.
We've met and have an otherwise good relationship. He is a really great guy, friendly, with a good family, good reputation, and all. But like all such discussions I get impatient and tired with delusional and obtuse people who respond with illusion and sophistry. I had sent him this link, which he responded to in part, by saying:
John you say in that article “Since there’s no good reason to believe the virgin birth myth, there’s no good reason to believe the resurrection myth, either, since the claim of Jesus’ resurrection is told in those same Gospels. If the one is to be dismissed, so should the other.[13]” John, if someone has already demonstrated good evidence for the existence of a theistic God, then you cannot rule out the truth of a virgin birth off hand. Certainly, if God can do the big miracle, He can do the little miracles. I noticed that when you attack the historical evidence for the resurrection , you do it indirectly not directly…saying if we can’t believe the miracle of the virgin birth, then we can’t believe the resurrection. But then you only accept the proof of a virgin birth that could be shown in the laboratory! Is that realistic? Can we not know some things to be true even if it’s not proven in the laboratory? I think your standard to determine truth as only those things that can be proven scientifically is too one sided! How do you prove the philosophy of scientism? Furthermore, if miracles are possible, a virgin birth is possible.
I don't know any details of Dr. Rauser's resignation. Was he pushed out? I don't know. But I'm sure he'll still be around, doing his thing.
Sometime in 2011 I was approached by Rauser to co-write a book that was titled, God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. I had twin goals in co-writing it. The first one was to force Christians to think about what they would believe if the Bible itself was undermined as a source of divine truth. My claim is that they probably won't believe at all. I'm trying to drive a wedge between the Bible and the brain of the believer. The second goal is to show in a cumulative fashion that Randal's God, having the three main attributes most Christians believe in today--omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence--does not exist. Here is an excerpt from my concluding thoughts. Later, Rauser brought me up to Canada to promote our book with a debate. Here is a LINK about our book, the reviews it received, our debate, and more.
Rauser is a knowledgeable passionate apologist, one of the very best as apologists go, if being one is something to be admired. He seeks to effectively communicate the best that apologists have to offer to non-believers. He is also willing to change his mind in defense of his faith. This would be admirable, except that I have said he will say anything to defend his faith. I stand by that. He claims to have an inner witness of a Spirit guide that proves his faith is true,so he can change his mind and still claim his spirit guide is guiding him.I've critiqued such a view as nonsense.
Even though our relationship had deteriorated to the point that he blocked me from his Twitter feed, and prohibited me from commenting on his blog (which in all honesty was my fault due to an utter frustration with his obtuseness!!), I asked Randal to consider writing a blurb for my very last book on the incompatibility of God and horrendous suffering. It was released at the end of 2021. He read it then shocked me with this blurb:
As a Christian apologist, I can say that there is no intellectual objection to Christianity more daunting than the problem of horrendous suffering. In this important new book, John Loftus has gathered a diverse collection of voices that seek to build a comprehensive, multi-pronged critique of Christianity based on this most difficult problem. No Christian apologist can afford to ignore it. -- Dr. Randal Rauser, Professor of Historical Theology, Taylor Seminary.
Rauser also asked me to debate him on the topic, God of Genocide: A Debate on Biblical Violence, of which I only have my opening statement, which I find is pretty good. I wish him well, and hope that sometime in the future his spirit guide (which is in his head, and there alone) will tell him he's defending nonsense.
It’s not a stretch to say that the Bible is one of Christian theology’s biggest burdens. It portrays a god that theologians have worked so hard to modify and refine; the very rough edges have to be knocked off. Among many other negatives, the Christian god is a terror-and-guilt specialist, because nothing you say or think escapes his notice. This is Jesus-script in Matthew 12:36-37: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter,for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” The apostle Paul also had an opinion on god getting even: “…on the day when, according to my gospel, God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all” (Romans 2:16)—after all, how else would prayer work if god doesn’t know your secret thoughts? Hence devout Christians are confident that their god closely monitors every human being—all eight billion of us.
A Muslim named Bishr Nayal is commenting here at DC, which I welcome. He quoted Quran 30:58 which reads, "In the Qur'an We have explained things to people in myriad ways. But no matter what Sign you bring to them, those who are resolved upon denying the Truth will say: 'You are given to falsehood." But this quote can be used to say other believers in different sects within Islam are wrong too. Nayal, you are seeking to confirm your faith. Almost anyone can do that. Given the prolific number of religions and sects on the planet, you know that they do it. Yet you're doing the same thing! This is the worst method for determining which religion is true, if there is one.
I've written a book for you. It's called, "The Outsider Test for Faith." Read it. If you choose not to do so, then at this point you are not interested in knowing if your religious faith is true. It can be found here on Amazon. Go ahead. What have you got to lose? It's about methodology.
Bible scholars often have suspicions of interpolations but do not go as far as taking them out of the Bible unless they have old, reliable manuscripts that omit the passage. Here are some passages that were in the King James Version but have been removed, or in the case of popular passages, they are noted as missing in the most reliable old Bibles.
Boyd is leading evangelicals to fundamentally rethink their faith. This comes as the conclusion of his failed efforts to defend his original evangelical faith as an apologist. He lays out what he now believes in an introductory post, which starts out sounding victorious, even as it announces the defeat of the old evangelical Christian faith he now rejects.
We live at an exciting juncture of history. The traditional triumphant understanding of the church, known as “Christendom,” is crumbling. Out of its rubble is rising a grass-roots global movement of people who are captivated by the vision of a Jesus-looking God raising up a Jesus-looking people to transform the world in a Jesus-kind of way. And as this new kingdom wine is bursting the old wineskins of Christendom, believers and skeptics alike are being forced to rethink everything they thought they knew about the Christian faith and life. LINK.
Are you suffering from religious trauma? I did, and still do (see below). Visit this virtual academic eConference live on Zoom, hosted by the Global Center for Religious Research, on June 10-11th. It will bring together clinicians, researchers, and survivors from all over the world to discuss the latest research on religious trauma.
Here's a 15% off coupon code. Go to THIS LINK, buy a ticket to the eConference, and use the promo code LOFTUS at checkout. Thanks to the work of Darren Slade for this event and the code!
A few years ago, a devout Catholic woman was kind enough to read an early version of a chapter that ended up in my 2016 book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief. Her willingness differed from the response I got from other churchgoers—those who refused because they were Christians; they were afraid that their faith might be damaged (i.e., I don’t want to think about it). In the chapter she read I discussed Jesus-script about his coming on the clouds to bring god’s kingdom. I was surprised—but not surprised—by her reaction: “I didn’t know Jesus is supposed to come back.” How could she not know this? —because it’s right there in Jesus-script: this would be the finale of his story, his eventual triumph, initiating the kingdom. I was not surprised, however, because I have yet to meet a Catholic who has been encouraged to read the Bible. As I’ve often pointed out, the gospels are a minefield, and the clergy want to avoid having to defend them. This minefield includes 292 not-so-great Jesus quotes—well, that’s my tally, and the list can be found on the website for my book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught.
A lot of intelligent and thoughtful people comment here at DC. On this thread Daniel Mocsny offers a good comment. He responded to an aspiring apologist named David Pallmann, who has probably not seriously considered any alternative religion given his education. [See Pic] He said, "John W. Loftus hardly. We all try to rationalize our own belief systems first and seldom try to rationalize belief systems which we seldom (if ever) encounter. That's not a double standard."
Christian apologists aspire to be experts at excusing their god from ineptitude, ignorance and incompetence, when they would never consider doing the same with other gods with whom they don't agree. Am I right, or am I right?
The reason this is wrong, since I was asked, is that it's using double standards and hypocrisy in the quest for which religion is true, if there is one.
Aspiring apologist David Pallmann responded:
John W. Loftus hardly. We all try to rationalize our own belief systems first and seldom try to rationalize belief systems which we seldom (if ever) encounter. That's not a double standard. This is, perhaps, the lamest objection I've seen from you yet. 🙄
But David Pallmann, you say what an alcoholic says who claims we are all alcoholics. For surely I just introduced you to the multifaceted number of religions you reject, but refuse to consider, even after learning about them. This is another exercise in hypocritical excuse making.
