You’re Sure You Know Jesus in Your Heart? Can You Verify That?

Imagination plays a major role in religious certainty

The huge ecclesiastical bureaucracy has been in charge of promoting an idealized Jesus, hence it’s no wonder Christians are confident that they know Jesus in their hearts. They fail to notice that Jesus is a product, one that is presented in the most positive ways. The church has always gotten away with this because, for the most part, the laity can’t be bothered to look at the so-called evidence; that is, to verify what they’re told about Jesus. 

 

The supposed sources of Jesus knowledge are simply not valid. They are the equivalent of smoke and mirrors. The fervent promoters of Jesus—theologians and clergy, but beginning with the gospel authors—remind us of the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz conjuring stories and fantasies. Let’s consider a few examples.

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Things the Clergy Won’t Tell You

To protect thousands of different, conflicting Christian brands 

Let’s look at four forbidden topics.

 

ONE

 

Each Christian denomination—there are so many divisions, sects, cults—screens and vets those who rise to the rank of clergy. These are the champions of the faith, as it is preached across such a wide spectrum of conflicting versions. No individual congregation would tolerate any clergy who strays far from the orthodoxy cherished by that congregation. Thus we won’t find Catholic priests stepping into their pulpits on Sunday morning to explain that Mormonism or Methodism happens to be the right brand of Christianity after all. Of course not, because all clergy are paid propagandists for their own brand of the faith. That’s how they earn their living.

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God Is Okay with Abortion—Devout Christians Tell Us So

Without intending to!

A member of the congregation is hospitalized with cancer. So fellow parishioners organize prayer marathons to plead with their god to intervene—and it works! So they claim when their friend’s cancer has been defeated, after considerable intervention by medical professionals. What a relief that god granted their wish. 

 

But what are the implications of this belief? It’s a good idea to think it through.

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Daniel Mocsny's Rebuttal of Paul Moser's Definitional Apologetics, Which Obfuscates the Fact That Christianity is Utter Nonsense!

Christian apologist and philosopher Paul K Moser is wrong, dead wrong, but at least he allows comments that disagree. I got to him though, when I said at the end of some extensive prodding, that what he believes is "utter nonsense." That comment was deleted. His main problem was that I refused to state what "objective evidence" is, putting it in quotation marks, as if he might not know. Then he chides me, saying "Note how you have ignored this key issue."

I have refrained from doing so, because doing so is an endless quagmire of me chasing him down the rabbits hole of this, then that, then this, then that, getting no closer to the truth. It's something believing philosophers of religion are experts in, and it's a trick called definitional apologetics, which obfuscates the truth. Here's a quote I wrote in my book Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End (p. 28):

Over the last decade I have found that one bastion for Christian apologists has been philosophy, especially the philosophy of religion. The scholars have honed their definitional apologetics in such a fine-tuned manner that when engaging them in this discipline, it’s like trying to catch a greased pig. Or, to switch metaphors, trying to chase them down the rabbit’s hole in an endless and ultimately fruitless quest for definitions. What’s an extraordinary claim? What constitutes evidence? What’s the definition of supernatural? What’s the scientific method? What’s a miracle? What’s a basic belief? What’s a veridical religious experience? What’s evil? They do this just like others have done over questions like, “What is the definition of pornography?” And then they gerrymander around the plain simple facts of experience. I would rather deal in concrete examples like a virgin who supposedly had a baby and a man who supposedly was raised from the dead.

The reason why I prefer to deal in concrete examples is because of how Christian philosophers use definitions to obfuscate their own theology. It isn't because I'm anti-intellectual. Nor do I think definitions are unimportant. I just want truth to prevail.

Anyway, Daniel Mocsny has written a nice rebutal of Moser's attempt which I highly recommend.

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My Engaging Debate with Paul Moser

Almost every time I have engaged Dr. Paul K. Moser on Facebook, he has berated me as being below him. This time was different, probably because it was noted that Dr. James Sennett had highly praised my first book, WIBA. 

Moser denigrated Dr. Daniel Dennett in this meme. It prompted a good discussion, starting with this response by Mark J. Mathews:

Richard Carrier and John Loftus express the same sentiment in their platforms. I'm also willing to engage their evidence for God's non-existence, if it's such a slam dunk. In fact, I'd be willing to resign my ministry tomorrow.

Okay, I thought. I'll respond. If Paul Moser reads and considers everything I said and linked to, I would think his faith took a hit. Two days ago I had posted my initial statement. Here's the rest of the engaging story:

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They’re Picking on Religion, So Onward Christian Soldiers

But a few Standards of Honesty are in order

While I was in the process of writing my 2016 book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Belief, I set up a Facebook page to promote it. When the book was published, I did weekly paid boosts to help sales. I specified the target markets, e.g.. atheists, secular, humanist. Even so—don’t ask me how—my boosts showed up on Christian Facebook pages. What horrible reactions! None of the enraged Christians showed the least interest in engaging in the issues I raised. It was all hate and hasty conclusions, e.g., you were never a real Christian, you’re a terrible person, you’re going to hell. I eventually gave up on the paid boosts. So I guess the Christians won that round.

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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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Trying to Make a Horrible Jesus Quote Look Good

But wishful thinking and tortured logic can’t make it happen

The high-profile, very wealthy televangelists—Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen come to mind—make us wonder if they really do believe in Jesus. They have played major roles in turning Jesus into big business. Their lifestyles don’t seem compatible with the ancient preacher portrayed in the gospels. Jesus, so we’re told, championed the poor and condemned the rich, e.g., Mark 10:25 (KJV): “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Luke 6:20 (NRSVUE): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:21 (KJV): “Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.’”

 

So pardon our suspicion that Copeland and Osteen—and many others—are phonies. They’re in it for the money.

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Testing our Tolerance for Tedious God-Talk

Why would a good, wise god put up with it?

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 critical study 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.

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Papias and Earliest Gospel Traditions

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. 

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Magical Thinking Is Christianity’s Biggest Mistake

There are plenty of other mistakes as well

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 how to do the study/research to find out how wrong they are.

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The Morale of Christian Clergy Is Taking a Big Hit

No surprise, given the mess their religion is in

 

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.

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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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On Revising My Book, Cancel Culture, and De-Platforming Authors

The good news is that we are revising my anthology God & Horrendous Suffering!! I'm excited about that, big time. This is a second edition from the earlier hardback published in 2021. So what is different? It’s being put out in paperback so it is less expensive. It has a horrendous looking contorted tree on the cover. I’ve rearranged the chapters into a better outline. A new chapter has been added by David Madison on World War I. Every author was given the chance to revise their chapters, and their revisions make this book better. I revised everything I wrote for this edition. It has also been thoroughly proofread, so hopefully we’ve rid ourselves of typographical and grammatical errors.

Dr. Robert M. Price will again have his excellent chapter in it from the first edition, "Theodicy: The Idiocy." GCRR President Dr. Darren Slade and I thought about this choice and decided to go with it, against the methods of cancel culture. Here's my explanation:

I'm a progressive democrat and I vehemently disagree with Price’s conservative socio/political/economical views. I suspect the other authors in this book disagree too, especially with Price's support of ex-President Trump, a malignant narcissist. Even Bill Barr thinks this of Trump, a former Attorney General who served under him. Barr said it best on Face the Nation (June 18, 2023). "Trump is a consummate narcissist” who “constantly engages in reckless conduct” and will “always put his own interests and gratify his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests. There’s no question about it.”

Be assured, Price’s conservative views do not surface in any of the chapters he has written for any of my anthologies, including this one. Price is one of our experts in theology and biblical studies. On these subjects his knowledge is worthwhile and important, despite his ignorance on other important issues. What Price doesn't yet realize, if he ever will, is that by debunking Christianity like he does, he also undermines the conservative agenda! It removes the theological support for anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+, sexism, capital punishment, racist bigotry, and the radical individualism of unbridled capitalism.

A good analogy at this point is to look at the origins of modern science. Christians argue that Christianity is true because most scientists were Christians at the time of the scientific revolution. Of course, one might as well count heads and declare Christianity is true because it's currently the world's leading religion with the most people who believe it, a known fallacy. But if we take a serious look at the data, the truth is that no matter what the origins of modern science were, the methods of science undermine the Christian faith at every crucial juncture. See my book, Christianity in the Light of Science for more. That's what Price is unwittingly doing with Christianity, and I don't mind all that much helping him do so.

I am a staunch supporter of Bernie Sanders and his progressive socio-political policies. However, I have mixed feelings about cancel culture. To be sure, cultures move on. Values change. Each successive culture decides what it will value. So every bit of progress in today's world will, of necessity, involve a clash between generations, genders, race, ethnicity, the rich vs the poor, and so on. As a culture, we are in the midst of an intense period where we’re deciding what those values will be. I support the issues that cancel culture espouses, most emphatically. There are some ideas we shouldn’t provide an audience for, or debate, for it helps to legitimize them.

That being said, I abhor violence toward others who disagree, especially bloodied noses, broken bones, bloodshed, and murder. When the conflict of ideas pushes the United States to the brink of a civil war it’s time to back off. Experts now say that the indicators show we're on the verge of a civil war, which will be a much different war, but a war just the same. I can’t say how much we should back off, nor how, or on which issues. But when our culture clash approaches violence, we need someone on our side to slow us all down by debating the issues, even the abhorrent ones. That's already being done by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and others. I think we should be tolerant of people on our side who are willing to debate these issues, even as we show support for those who use force in support of the issues through protests, civil disobedience, non-bodily harmful actions like the removal, desecration and toppling of some statues, and/or renaming of cities. Again, Price’s conservative views do not surface in any of the chapters in my anthologies. This is the line of demarcation for me as an editor. I think it should also be the one point many of us can agree on.

Way back in 2011 I had written about some historically bad secular/atheist intellectuals, who had changed the world. Intellectuals like Marx, Tolstoy, Sartre and Chomsky. I wrote about this before the Elevator Gate Scandal, the Me Too Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the Rise of Christian Fascism to power. I had mentioned some contemporary secular/atheist intellectuals who have now shown themselves to be bad people in varying degrees. I had said at the time:

The reality is that I see no significant relationship between one's personal life and the ideas he argues for much at all. The arguments should stand on their own merit. If we dismiss a person's argument because his personal life is a mess then we should dismiss a great many people's arguments for the same reason.

I know people will disagree, so let's hear it in the comments. Is a disagreement on this issue, the one where Price's chapter is included despite vehemently disagreeing with his socio-politics, an issue in which he also should be cancelled as an author?

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A Pop-Quiz for Christians, Number 8

Dealbreakers in the Bible  

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?

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“Their only hope of being rescued from the hell Hitler has made of Europe”

The ongoing scandal of god’s negligence

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.

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Cruelty, Crime and Abuse in the Name of Jesus

It never seems to stop

How does religion get away with it? It relies on the ignorance, gullibility and, yes, the complacency of those are committed to piety. And the consequences can be calamitous. In an article I posted here in January, Humanity’s Urgent Need to Outgrow Religion, I mentioned the plan to spend big bucks to build what amounts to a theme-park at the supposed site of Jesus’ baptism—but the developers have been careful not to call it a theme park. It’s a scam, a prank, a joke, because nobody knows where Jesus was baptized, in fact the gospel of John omits any mention of Jesus setting foot in the River Jordan. Yes, John the Baptist is there, but mainly to announce that Jesus is the “lamb of God who takes way the sins of the world.”  

 

But a baptism theme-park is a minor offense. We keep being hit with news about the cruelties, crimes, and abuses done in Jesus’ name. Three headlines of recent vintage illustrate the ongoing problem.

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Ciarán Mc Ardle Argues Michael Jones of "Inspiring Philosophy" Should Not Be Allowed to Sit At the Adults’ Table

Ciarán Mc Ardle sends me emails. Here's an interesting one he sent: In a recent video [Link Below], "Inspiring Philosophy" essentially argues that Christians never really believed in Young Earth Creationism until recent times.

In a hundred years time, there will be an Inspiring-Philosophy-esque apologist who will claim that no Christians ever really believed in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Plenty of quotes could be adduced to prove this. Even in the New Testament, Saint Paul seems only to believe in a spiritual resurrection. Quotes could then be adduced from Popes, saints, church fathers et al, spanning the 2,000 years of Christianity so as to lend credence to the notion that Christians never really believed in a bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was always viewed by True ChristiansTM as mytho-history.

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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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Teachings of Jesus that Christians Dislike and Ignore, Number 4

They just say NO to their Lord and Savior

 

When you’ve been nurtured on ideas since early childhood—they’re a source of comfort and derive from adults whom you trust—it can be hard to see that some of the ideas may be truly weird. This is especially true of the gospels, which remain, for far too many of the faithful, unexplored territory. There may be passing familiarity with gospel stories, based on texts read from the pulpit and heard in ritual. Of course, Christian children’s books have played a major role in making the best Jesus-script well-known, e.g., in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), and “God so loved the world…” (John 3:16, may or may not be Jesus-script: there was no punctuation in the Greek manuscripts.)

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