Some "Nice" Christians Are Praying For Me

Care to pray along?

I've prayed that if he [John] doesn't turn to Christ in good health (which I prefer), that God would make him sick so that either a) he realizes his need for Christ and converts, or b) dies so that he doesn't lead any more people to hell.

The problem is that there are many skeptics so you'd have to pray that we all convert back (how's THAT working for ya?), get sick, or die. And like it or not, my books will stay in print for decades. Either Christianity wins in the marketplace of ideas or it doesn't. If it does, then do it. If it doesn't then there's nothing you can do about it with this prayer. The Levee has broken, okay? So as Led Zeppelin sings (at 4:08 below) "Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good. Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good. When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move."

Read more »

Scot McKnight and Conversion Theory: Why Apostates Leave the Church

[Written by John W. Loftus] Evangelical New Testament scholar Dr. Scot McKnight has written a very interesting book on conversion theory, called Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy (with Hauna Ondrey, one of his “finest students”). Here is my review of it: In this book the authors have written four detailed chapter length studies of people who have converted: 1) away from the church to agnosticism/atheism; 2) away from the synagogue to the church, 3) away from the Catholic church to evangelicalism; and 4) away from evangelicalism to Catholicism. McKnight argues that all conversions go through the same process, and even if none of them are identical, they fall into similar patterns. (p.1). His goal is to describe the conversion process with hopes that the patterns that emerge can be used to explain them, with the further goal that scholars and pastors “will work out the implications of conversion theory in the pastoral context.” (pp. 231-236). He writes: "If mapping conversion theory shows anything…it shows the need for grace, humility, and openness to one another as we listen to and learn from one another’s stories. The sincerity of each convert’s (often opposite) experience underscores the need to learn from one’s another’s experience rather than denounce the other’s experience.” (p. 236) While most of us here at DC describe our leaving the faith as a “deconversion,” (which is the usual nomenclature) McKnight argues instead that leaving the Christian faith follows the same pattern of conversion itself. Deconversion stories are about "leaving from," instead of "coming to," but a deconversion follows the same process as a conversion. He writes: “All conversions are apostasies and all apostasies are therefore conversions." McKnight quotes approvingly of John Barbour in his book, Versions of Deconversion, that there are four lenses with which people see their own conversion stories:

"they doubt or deny the truth of the previous system of beliefs; they criticize the morality of the former life; they express emotional upheaval upon leaving a former faith; and they speak of being rejected by their former community.” (pp. 1-2)

Since he deals with several of the Bloggers here at DC (with some notable exceptions in Dr. Hector Avalos, Joe Holman, and Valerie Tarico) let me focus on this particular chapter of his as an example of what he does in the rest of the book (pp. 7-61). In his first chapter he provides an “anatomy of apostasy,” and he includes most of the recognized apostates and debunkers, including me (who’s story he highlights), Ed Babinski, Ken Daniels, Harry McCall, Charles Templeton, Robert M. Price, Dan Barker, Farrell Till, and many others. McKnight observes there is almost always some sort of crisis for the person. “Each, for a variety of reasons, encountered issues and ideas and experiences that simply shook the faith beyond stability.” “Guilt,” for instance, “drove Christine Wicker, a journalist, who covers the religious scene in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the faith (seen in her well-written memoir, God Knows My Heart). For us apostates there was also a crisis of “unnerving intellectual incoherence to the Christian faith," and he quotes me as saying: “I am now an atheist. One major reason why I have become an atheist is because I could not answer the questions I was encountering.” There are five major elements that are combined to cause the adherent to question the viability of his or her faith, McKnight claims. One) Scripture became part of the problem for us. McKnight writes of Kenneth Daniels that “while on the mission field, he became convinced the Bible could not be inerrant or infallible, walked away from the mission field and became an agnostic.” Of Farrell Till, he “became a skeptic and at the heart of his departure from orthodoxy was a critical approach to Scripture.” Of Ed Babinski, whom he said is “an indefatigable recorder of those who have left fundamentalism,” his problem “was the Bible’s record of Jesus’ predictions and Paul’s own expectations that he think did not come true that undid the truthfulness of the Bible. He pursued every angle he thought necessary to support his faith but his doubts could not be satisfied. ‘I became,’ he confesses, ‘disenchanted with Christianity in toto, and became an agnostic with theistic leanings.’” McKnight, who is a conservative himself, seems to lay blame for our rejection of the Bible because we held to “a rigid view of Scripture.” When we “encounter the empirical evidence of the sciences, particularly concerning evolution and the origins as well as development of life as we now know it, a rigid view of Scripture collapses….For some the whole ship sinks.” Two) The empirical realities of science also demolish our faith, he notes. Ed Babinski was “completely devoted to a six-day creation theory” but eventually “became disillusioned with Christianity and the Bible because of the lack of evidence for what was considered so central to the faith – the scientific accuracy of a simplistic theory of creation.” McKnight opines that “a simplistic theory of origins, along with special pleading theories that are designed to explain away that evidence, when combined then with knowledge of the ancient Near East parallels to both the creation accounts and the story of Noah’s flood not infrequently are the collision point for many who leave the orthodox Christian faith.” Three) The behavior of Christians is another factor in our apostacy. McKnight: “For many, the failure of Christians to be transformed by the claimed grace of God and the indwelling power of the Spirit obliterates the truthfulness of the Christian claim.” Robert Price gained an insight while attending a lecture by Harvey Cox, McKnight pens. Price is quoted as saying: “As I looked at the secular students gathered there, I suddenly thought, ‘Listen, is there really that much difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’?’ I had always accepted the qualitative difference between the ‘saved’ and the ‘unsaved.’ Until that moment … Then, in a flash, we were all just people.” Four) The traditional Christian doctrine of hell is another factor. McKnight points out that “belief in hell has led some to contend the Christian faith is inherently unjust and morally repugnant,” such that his judgment leads him to think the Christian doctrine of hell is “far more fundamental to those who leave the faith than is normally recognized.” Then he quotes me as saying: “The whole notion of a punishment after we die is sick and barbaric. The whole concept of hell developed among superstitious and barbaric peoples, and tells us nothing about life after death.” Five) Apostates also reject the God we actually find in the Bible, who is vindictive, hateful, racist, and barbaric--my words. There are other reasons, McKnight admits. There is the problem of religious diversity in which it’s hard to dispute that “one’s faith is more shaped by one’s social location than by one’s personal choice.” Then there is the problem of evil which causes many to leave the faith. Of course, I’m surprised that these last two reasons are not highlighted as reasons in their own right, especially since I highlight them in my book. But at least he mentioned them. Another suggested reason for our defection from the Christian faith comes out of nowhere, with no evidence for it at all, and guided more by McKnight’s theological persuasions than anything else. His next suggestion is not helpful to a scientific investigation of conversion theory, which I take it, is one of his aims—to merely describe the conversion process. His next suggestion is based, not on anything he’s read, but on his “own intuition,” and even admits he “did not find anyone speak in this way.” He furthermore does not find this a factor in any other conversion stories in his other three chapters, which shows his theological biases. He suggests that “the demand put on one’s life by Jesus, by the orthodox faith and by a local church’s expectations can provoke a crisis on the part of the person who wants to go her or his own way. I am suggesting that behind some of the stories is a desire to live as one wants, to break certain moral codes that are experienced as confining, and that were either forgotten when telling the story or were an unacknowledged dimension of the experience.” Indeed, “one might summarize the entire process of leaving the faith as the quest for personal autonomy, freedom and intellectual stability. These factors seem present at some level in nearly all the stories I have studied.” Christian professor Ruth A. Tucker who wrote the book Walking Away From Faith: Unraveling the Mystery of Belief disagrees with this. In a talk to a Grand Rapids, MI, Freethought group (which I have also spoken for) Professor Tucker listed five myths about people who have abandoned their faith (note # 4):

1) "They are angry and rebellious." She found virtually no evidence for this. Rather, people felt sorrow, initially. They experienced pain, not anger. 2) "They can be argued back into faith." Because the person leaving his/her faith has carefully and painstakingly dissected the reasons behind this major worldview change, the Christian who proffers apologetics is more likely to convert into non-belief in such an exchange. 3) "Doubters can find help at Christian colleges and seminaries." This is not seen to be the case. 4) "They abandon their faith so that they can go out and sin freely." Tucker pointed out that too many people who profess faith sin more often than non-believers and that this argument was not a motivational issue in de-converting from faith. 5) "They were never sincere Christians to begin with." She has come across example after example of the most earnest and devout of evangelical, fundamentalist believers who became non-theists. Dan Barker was mentioned as just one of these erstwhile believers.

McKnight goes on to discuss the “advocates,” meaning those who go on to debunk the faith they left. He finds in us an “animus” in the “constant diatribes” of ours, from Charles Templeton’s “white-hot prose” to my whole book, to Harry McCall resorting “to caricature,” or even to Dan Barker, whom he claims has much “less rancor but still finding a need to tell that story in Losing Faith in Faith.” “The ‘anti-rhetoric,’ or the rhetoric that is so negatively against what they formerly believed, is both a characteristic of all kinds of conversion but especially those whose ‘conversion’ is leaving orthodox Christianity. Not all, however, are as white-hot in their antipathy to orthodoxy.” Of course, if he actually read my book, or my posts on DC, he should know I have no rancor towards Christians and that I treat my opponents respectfully. I suspect he feels the sting of our arguments rather than those other conversions he details in the other three chapters because he is simply a Christian believer, and we argue against his faith. McKnight does acknowledge people should not minimize the anguish we apostates have when going through our crisis of faith. It is not an easy process. It is agonizing. Quoting Dan Barker he writes: “It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence. And it hurt bad. It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege. All of my bases for thinking and values had to be restructured. Add to that inner conflict the outer conflict of reputation and you have a destabilizing war.” McKnight also sees an interrelationship between us. Ed Babinski’s “fine collection of stories of those who have left the faith demonstrates an interlocking relationship at times – Babinski himself was influenced by William Bagley and by Robert Price while others were influenced by Dan Barker. There is presently, then, a connection for those who are reconsidering their faith, a connection that is filled with folks who have already traveled that path, know its rocks and its cliffs and who can guide the pilgrim away from faith.” The internet is also an important facilitator in our apostasy, McKnight understands. While doubts are not to be expressed publicly in the churches, the internet is another matter entirely…”many find their way to the multitude of sites, like Positive Atheism or Debunking Christianity, where one can hear arguments against the orthodox faith and apologies for alternative systems of thought and meaning." In the end, those of us who walk away from our faith find a sense of relief and independence when we finally decide to leave it all behind us. McKnight tells us that at some point we just had to decide, and sometimes it meant giving up our positions in life to gain the needed relief. He writes: “Harry McCall, a biblical scholar who voluntarily chose to leave Bob Jones University…chose to abandon his faith because ‘Jesus is so obviously a product of human imagination coupled with arbitrary faith that I chose to simply acknowledge the obvious rather than remain religious.”’ Robert M Price is an example of someone who found his relief akin to being “born again”: “I had to swallow hard after twelve years as an evangelical, but almost immediately life began to open up in an exciting way. I felt like a college freshman, thinking through important questions for the first time. The anxiety of doubt had passed into the adventure of discovery. It was like being born again.” McKnight finally recommends Lewis Rambo’s book Understanding Religious Conversion as “required reading for every minister and theologian.” This is a good, well researched book. I liked it very much. In one way it shows that those of us who have converted away from Christianity are not alone when we factor in the many other people who are also being converted to different theological positions. People change their minds, that’s all, and many of us do it.

A Review of David Mills' Atheist Universe

A review of David Mills, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism (Berkeley, CA.: Ulysses Press, 2006).

As an atheist author myself, I'm always curious to read other books written by fellow atheists.

I noticed that Mr. Mills advertises his book on the Secular Web, which, I understand, gets nearly thirty thousand hits every month, and that his book was the top selling atheist book on amazon.com at one time. This is impressive.

However, the number of books sold doesn't always tell us whether a book is a good one, and Mr. Mills acknowledges this (p. 14). The sales of a book may be due to the publisher's (or author's) marketing campaign strategy. One marketing strategy can be found on the back cover of Mr. Mills' book. Clearly some exaggeration is going on there of what this book actually accomplishes. There it's claimed his book "rebuts every argument that claims to `prove' God's existence," and as "a comprehensive primer" to answering religious dogmatists, it "addresses all the historical and scientific questions." This is all fluff and hype, at best. Only the ignorant would walk away from reading this one book by concluding every argument for God's existence was addressed and rebutted. Such misleading language is unbecoming of an author of a book that claims to be a "Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism," or anything else for that matter.

But since Richard Dawkins calls it "an admirable work", and since the late Carl Sagan's son, Dorion, wrote a "Foreword" to it, I thought it probably must be a good book. So I went ahead and bought it.

As I considered buying it I couldn't find any detailed reviews of it from people I knew were knowledgeable. So after reading it I thought I would do people that service, here.

Mr. Mills writes very well in a conversationalist tone, as if the reader were sitting down over a cup of coffee talking with him, for the most part. He also seems to be somewhat well read.

His book is intended for "open-minded readers who are not afraid to learn about the many conflicts and controversies between science and the Christian Bible." It's not intended to convert the "religious right-wingers," who think they belong to the one "true" religion. "Their ears and eyes and minds are closed forever. No amount of science or logic will make any difference to them." Since they know God exists, "anyone who disagrees with them is evil" (p. 21).

I don't like caricaturing people like he does here. Who is an "open minded person," for instance? Maybe there is some sense in which people are open-minded, but he never articulated what that sense is, except to say they are "eager to learn." Are these uncommitted people? Liberal Christians? Those who reject the inerrancy of the Bible? Agnostics? I just don't know. Moreover, which minds "are closed forever?" My mind was a closed mind for over two decades. Now I am an atheist. I suspect no one's mind is "closed forever" as he suggests. Besides, how does he think "open-minded" people got that way in the first place? Like me, some of them were former religious right-wingers. Since there are many people who leave the Christian faith, including himself (pp. 57-58), the question is when it can be said of a Christian that his or her mind is "closed forever?" We never can know.

I write to the Christian. That's who I aim my arguments toward. I figure if I can write to those who are supposedly "closed minded" in ways they can understand and appreciate, then others who are "open-minded" (however understood) will see more force to my arguments, and be better prepared to deal with the arguments of evangelical Christians. There are a lot of books that do nothing but "preach to the choir," on both sides of the fence. Someone has got to try to cross the great divide and try to speak so that those on the other side can see what the atheist universe looks like. But that's not a task Mills is attempting, and that’s okay.

Mills is going to write about “the tough issues.” In so doing, he admits there is nothing in his book that the reader does not already have easy access to in any local library. It’s just that he will bring those scattered bits of information and put it all together to show that “we live in an atheist universe” (p. 21-22). This is another way of saying there is nothing original in his book, which is something that can probably be said of most books. Originality for most books has to do with how the author organizes his material, and how well he expresses himself. Originality also has to do with how well the author researches into a topic. If, for instance, an author summarizes ontological arguments for the existence of God since the time of Anselm, he has produced an original work if he does this more extensively and in a greater depth than others, even if that's all he does.

Mills claims the chapters in his book are "independent and self-contained" ones. That is, there is no real flow to the book. They could just as well be separate essays in a periodical about "Atheist Topics."

Right he is about this. The first chapter is a "fun filled give-and-take" interview, in layman's terms, which claims to cover "almost every aspect of atheism," (p. 22), which it doesn't do. While I very much liked his short answers to some of the interview questions aimed at an atheist, this chapter reflects what we see in the book as a whole. In this chapter we see him dealing with mostly unrelated questions about atheism. Here we see Mills briefly and astutely answering questions about everything from his definition of atheism, to why an atheist would quote the Bible, to why people believe in God, to why believers have the burden of proof, to why he doesn't believe in God, to whether Jesus existed, to whether Jesus arose from the dead, to the existence UFO's, to the Supreme Court ruling on prayer, to whether he is afraid to die, to whether religion encourages moral conduct, to his getting arrested once for protesting a faith healer's "Miracle Crusade," to whether he celebrates Christmas, and what he'd say on Judgment Day if he is wrong, plus many more, all in the space of 39 pages.

As I said, I liked his answers. He has a way of succinctly and memorably coming up with sentences that resonate with the reader. And since he's writing to those who are "open-minded," I cannot overly fault him for the lack of in-depth answers here. It’s only when an author actually tries to write to the “close minded” that his arguments become deeper. This kind of writing requires more effort and study. It requires knowing what people who disagree with you will say in response, and in providing counter-arguments.

For example, in chapter six Mills deals with the impossibility of reconciling the Genesis creation stories with modern science. He doesn't show an awareness that there are actually two creation accounts in Genesis, containing four models of creation. There are at least nine different theories used by Christians to reconcile the creation accounts with science. He deals with just three of these theories, although, I'll grant that he does a fairly good job in dealing with these theories in the short space allotted for this in his book.

At the beginning of chapter seven, Mills claims that even if the reader has only casually read the first six chapters of his book, then he or she has become "somewhat of an expert" on the inspiration and reliability of the Bible. He goes on to claim that the reader of his book up until this point is not only better informed than most Christians about such things, but that he or she is "more knowledgeable than 90 per cent of the professional clergy in America (p. 156). Well, having been a preacher I can emphatically deny that what he wrote in the first six chapters does what he claims it does for the reader. There isn't any single book out there which will make the casual reader more knowledgeable than 90 percent of the clergy on anything.

When it comes to chapter eight, on the "Myth of Hell", the same things can be said. There are at least four conceptions of hell and many variations within evangelical thinkers, and Mills shows little evidence he understands these differences. His focus is mainly on why God should punish sinners after they die, and concludes quite reasonably that there is no good reason for God to do so. He neglected to deal seriously with the Christian argument that retribution is a good reason for punishment, which is the notion that punishment is what a criminal deserves, and something for which C.S. Lewis has argued. Besides, many Christians argue that Hell isn't a punishment for sin so much as it's finally giving sinners what they want. Furthermore, the reason Christians believe in some kind of hell after we die is because they believe the Bible is God's word, and the Bible says there is a hell. The reason why Christians believe the Bible is because they believe Jesus arose from the dead, a belief which Mills cannot effectively deal with in one page (p. 38), or two (p. 164).

Included in the "Myth of Hell" chapter, Mills offers a very brief critique of the substitutionary atonement theory, and he does a fairly good job of this (pp. 180-182). However, there are up to four major evangelical Christian atonement theories, not the least of which is Richard Swinburne's relationship theory. Mr. Mills doesn’t show how one could effectively argue against them.

I'll have no comment on why he inserted chapters on Internet porn, and on whether America was founded upon Christian principles. I'm not sure why these two studies are so important to include in a book on atheism, when he doesn't deal seriously with the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, religious diversity, and several other more worthy topics.

The main strength of his book is with the scientific basis for the evolution of life on this planet without the need for an explanation in God. No wonder Richard Dawkins and Dorion Sagan recommend it. It's because Mills is at his best when it comes to science and the origins of the universe. Whether or not you need to read Mills' book will depend entirely on how much of this literature you've read. I myself found what he wrote to be very good in this area.

If this book merely contained the chapters that dealt with the science of origins (chapters 2,3,4,5, and 11), this would be a good book. Because of these chapters it is definitely worth the cost. Mills speaks best in the area of science, not theology, and not philosophy.

When is comes to theology he misunderstands what Christian thinkers are supposed to be doing. In chapter eleven on "Intelligent Design," for instance, I find Mills rhetorically mischaracterizes ID theorists as a "cult" simply because they reject some traditional literal Christian understandings of the Genesis accounts. When it comes to a literal interpretation of the Bible, the literal interpretation is always going to be the correct one according to the particular genre of the passage in its wider context as understood by the original readers of the text. A literal interpretation of the book of Revelation, for instance, would mean we should to take it as it's intended to be taken, and that means taking it as apocalyptic literature. Christian ID theorists can further claim their interpretation of Genesis is the literal one that the true author behind the human authors of the Bible intended.

When it comes to philosophy Mills isn't any better. Mills doesn't understand some aspects of the Kalam Cosmological Argument of William Lane Craig, such that what he writes in opposition to it has only a modicum of merit. Mills uses an example reminiscent of Zeno's paradoxes (p. 237) which is supposed to show why Craig's "mathematical infinities" are "empirically ridiculous." What Mills fails to understand is that Craig distinguished between "Actual" and "Potential" infinites, although, in Mr. Mills defense, Dr. Nicholas Everitt thinks such a distinction is a bogus one, and I agree. Dr. Craig’s thought experiments about traversing actual infinites are to show that one cannot count to infinity, nor can one have an actually infinite set of books, nor can there be an actual infinite number of events stretching into the past. And it's not "special pleading" to say these rules don't apply to God since according to Christian theology God is not matter-in-motion, but a spirit. That being said, Mills does offer some good questions in opposition to Craig, such as asking what it means for God to be outside of time prior to creation, and raising the question of whether quantum mechanics "flatly contradicted" the first premise of the Kalam argument.

Again, Mr. Mills’ science is very good. However, I think he draws some conclusions from science that may not be warranted, a typical problem for scientifically minded people. Mills thinks the law of the conservation of mass-energy leads us to only "one conclusion." Since mass-energy is neither created nor destroyed, but only changed from one form to another, and because no experiment has ever invalidated this law "under any circumstances," therefore "our universe of mass-energy, in one form or another, always existed."(pp. 76, 232-233). The problem here is that there is no reason why the laws of physics, including the law of the conservation of mass-energy, apply to what I describe as the VOID ("before the Planck era"), prior to the existence of anything at all. Besides, the law of conservation of mass-energy says nothing to a Christian about whether a creator God exists, since if he exists, God would be the one to create this law in the first place, along with the stuff of the universe. If God created the universe, then he also created this law at the same time he created the universe.

I don't see why scientists think science can show us why this universe exists. Many scientific minded atheists fail to understand what the philosophy of science from Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, Frederick Suppe and Ian Barbour have all shown us. There are no uninterpreted facts. Complete objectivity is a myth. All data are theory-laden. There is a reciprocity between scientific cold hard evidence and presuppositions, assumptions and biases; all of which I call "control beliefs." Control beliefs, control how we view the evidence, especially when it comes to metaphysical and religious beliefs. That's why I'm not sure science can solve the religious questions. They must be dealt with historically, theologically and philosophically. Science plays a role, no doubt, but only as a part of the whole cumulative case against religious beliefs. Even at that, scientifically minded atheists don't seem to be able to articulate exactly why science is, in Sagan's book subtitle, "a candle in the dark." It's not just because of scientific experiments. It's because of the scientific method behind them, which is based upon a control belief that defines us as modern people. It's known as "Methodological Naturalism." We assume a natural cause for any unexplained event. This modern bias does more to undermine religious belief than any experiment does.

At least Sam Harris honestly acknowledges "no one knows how or why the universe came into being. It is not clear that we can even speak coherently about the creation of the universe, given that such an event can be conceived only with reference to time, and here we are talking about the birth of space-time itself. Any intellectually honest person will admit that he does not know why the universe exists." - Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 73-74.

I especially liked three chapters in Mills' book very much. I liked the author's description of how the solar system developed and how he concluded this is what "we would expect to observe if the solar system formed naturally" (pp. 87-104), his various and rigorous supports for evolution (pp. 105-135), and the fact that "Selective Observation" is a perceptual error that believers use to count answers to prayer as evidence for God, but fail to count unanswered prayers as evidence against the existence of God. (pp. 158-169). These three chapters form the best parts of the book. They are well worth reading.

There are some good arguments in the rest of the chapters, but because they are a tad brief, they distract from the greatness of the best chapters.

In the end, no single book can contain all of the arguments on behalf of atheism and against religion in general, or Christianity in specific. The more you want to know about these issues the more you’ll just have to read different books. I think The Atheist Universe is a great compliment to my own book which deals with the theological and philosophical problems with Christianity. Taken together our books demolish Christianity, although there will be plenty of Christians who will still disagree.

The Atheist Universe is a good book. It just does not live up to the exaggerated claims made about it, that's all.

David, I don't know if or when you plan on revising your book, but from reading it I know you still have a lot more to say, and I hope you say it.

I hope we are able to meet someday. We have a lot in common. We can learn from each other.

Answering Objections to Visions: Part Three

Answering Objections-Part Three

In my previous essays, I did my best to answer the objections raised to the hypothesis of visions that I advocate for Christian origins. My previous essays, however, do not exhausively answer all the objections that are usually raised and so more essays are needed. In this essay, I will address an objection raised by William Lane Craig, in his book Assessing the New Testament Evidence for Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus.

This objection is that the New Testament differentiates between visions on one hand and appearances on the other hand. Any hypothesis or theory of visions (which I argue for) or hallucinations (which I do not argue for), or what-have-you, doesn't explicate this difference and so any visionary hypothesis cannot in principle account for appearances because they do not fit the nature of a vision. In fact, Bill Craig, goes as far as to say that he believes that this is a fatal flaw to the vision hypothesis, like the one that I advocate. More than this, he explicitly challenges skeptics to explain the difference. While I willingly accept such a challenge, I hope that such a challenge is not stated with the intention of forcing a conversion among skeptics. I regret that Bill Craig is wasting his breath if he thinks a skeptic like me would gladly and cheerfully convert if I could not meet such a challenge. I have already spoken elsewhere what the personal consequences for me would be if I came to conclude the Christian gospel was valid: I would take my own life; I would see no reason to delay the inevitability of Hell. Never-the-less I enjoy a challenge and the more confrontational it is, the more I love to rise to the challenge, especially if answering it means putting confrontational Christian apologists in their places and just shutting them up! Craig puts forth this distinction in his book Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, as follows:

"On the difference between visions and appearances of Christ, see the discussion by Grass, Ostergeschehen, pp. 189-207. Although Grass discounts most of the visions recorded in Acts as legendary, he nevertheless concludes, primarily on the basis of Paul's testimony, that the Easter appearances took place within a community that enjoyed visions, revelations, and estatic experiences (I Cor. 12-14; II Cor. 12: 1-5; Gal. 2:1; Acts 16:9). The community recognized, however, that the appearances of Christ were restricted to a small circle designated as witnesses and that even to them Jesus did not continually re-appear, but appeared only at the beginning of their new life.

"One cannot follow Grass, however, when he attempts to draw the essential distrinction between an appearance of Christ and a vision as being solely in content, viz.., in an appearance Christ was seen as exalted (Ibid., pp. 229-32) This is undoubtedly true, but surely a vision could be of the exalted Christ, too; indeed how could a Christian believer have a vision of the unexalted Christ? Both the vision of Stephen and the book of Revelation show that the visions of the exalted Lord which were not appearances were possible for the early Church. It is of no matter whether Stephen's vision be an unhistorical embellishment as Grass thinks; the point is that the church of Luke's day was prepared to accept that Stephen saw a vision of Christ. Grass' argument that Revelation is not a vision but a picture story because of the many portraits of Christ seems to presuppose that visions must be monotone. At any rate, the point is Revelation presents itself as a vision, thus showing again that the church did not object out of hand visions of the exalted Christ.

"Nor can it be said that the distinguishing element in an appearance as opposed to a vision was the comissioning, for appearances were known which lacked this element (the 500 brethren). What then distinguished an appearance from a vision? It seems to me that the most natural answer to this question is that an appearance involved extra-mental phenomena, something's actually appearing, whereas a visions, even if caused by God, was purely in the mind. Certainly this seems to be the way in which the New Testament concieves of the distinction. Visions, even veridical visions sent by God, are exclusively mental phenomena, whereas Jesus's appearances always involve an extra-mental appearing in the real, external world. The resistance to this conclusion among contemporary critics seem largely due to a philosophico-theological rejection of the physicalism of the gospels. On this basis, Grass superimposes the form of heavenly visions onto the resurrection appearances, and contemporary scholarship has followed him in this. (See Alsup, Stories, pp. 32, 54.) But if this is done, then-apart from it's being exegetically unjustified- it seems to me impossible to differentiate a vision and appearance, which the early church clearly did. It might be said that a vision, in modern parlance, a subjective vision, that is, a self-induced visionary seeing, but that an appearance is an objective vision, that is, a visionary seeing induced by God.

"This distinction, however, will not help to solve the problem, for so-called objective visions were experienced in the church and these were not ranked as appearances. For example, Peter's vision in Acts 10: 9-17 was certainly "objective" , for it was caused by God (10: 28), but it was not in the same class of phenomena as the appearances of Jesus. More the point, Stephen's vision of Jesus was probably "objective"- Luke does not want us to take it as a self-induced hallucination-, but this was not an appearance of Jesus. But what is the difference between what Stephen saw and what Paul experienced, such that the latter could be called an appearance of Jesus ( Acts 9: 17; contrast the vision to Ananias himself in 9:10 which was not an appearance)? What is the difference between Paul's opportunity on the Damascus road "to see the Just One to hear a voice from his mouth" (22: 14) and his subsequent appearance in the temple when he fell into a trance and saw Jesus speaking to him (22:17)? It is of no help to speak of subjective vs. objective visions, for the mind of the Jewish/Christian believer, all genuine visions were "objective"-anything else would be just an illusion. It seems to me, therefore, despite the modern antipathy to "physicalism," that the difference between a visions and an appearance of Jesus was that only in the latter did he actually appear in the external world. The support for this view is two-fold: 1.) exegetically this is consistently the difference between the two; 2.) if one rejects this view, then the distinction between an appearance and a vision which was made in the early church threatens to dissolve." ( William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus footnote pgs. 68-69)"

First of all, I am not all that convinced that such a distinction really exists or that it is as strong as some Christians make it out to be. Furthermore, if I was to accept that such a distinction did exist, I would have to conclude that such a distinction is no accident nor did it arise because of divine revelation. I would conclude that such a distinction evolved in the Christian community for apologetical purposes. The scope of this essay, therefore, is to illustrate why I am not convinced that the distinction is that strong and subsequently to show precisely how such a distinction originated as a matter of apologetics in early Christianity. I believe that if such a distinction exists, then its origins as an apologetic is precisely what critics like myself would come to expect on the basis that the visionary hypothesis of Christian origins is valid. In other words, I believe that the visionary hypothesis that I am advocating actually can be made to predict that such a distinction may evolve in the early Christian communities as an apologetic, especially against heretics and critics. So let me first deal with the two answers I have proposed, that 1.) such a distinction might not exist or be as strong as Christians claim it to be and 2.) that granting such a distinction exists, it originated as apologetics against heretics and critics.

First of all, I want to make a qualifying remark about this essay. I want to state my main counter-theses in order to answer Craig's thesis and then defend my theses with arguments against his objections to them. This essay is not meant to be an extensive defense of my arguments nor an extenisve survey of historical and textual evidence for my counter-theses. I simply wish to state Craig's thesis and my arguments in terms of a counter-thesis, thereby answering Craig's objections to my counter-theses. An extensive review of historical and textual evidence will be forthcoming in a later essay or essay series and will commence as soon as I feel I have completed my analysis of arguments for and against my theses in greater detail which will take some time.

Why is it that I think that such a distinction might not really exist or be as strong as some apologists make it out to be? It seems to me that if such a distinction exists, it seems to originate with the canonical gospels themselves. Going earlier into the New Testament corpus, especially the written works of apostles such as St. Paul, such a distinction doesn't seem to exist. In 1st Corinthians 15: 3-7, it has been argued that Paul is passing on a creed to the Corinthians, one that he recieved. The creed has a list of appearances of the risen Jesus to various people. Jesus died according to the Scriptures, was buried, rose from the dead according to the Scriptures, appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve, to more than 500 people, to James, to the disciples, and finally to Paul who came into the fold rather late. The Greek word for "appear" in this creed is ophthe. Is this significant? I believe that is is. In another letter, generally regarded as authentically Pauline by many New Testament critical scholars, is the letter to the Galatian Christian Church. In it, Paul recounts how he was converted by God. Paul uses a word for God revealing Christ to Paul, and the Greek word is not ophthe but a word meaning "revelation" Is this significant? I believe that it is. From what I understand, this Greek word in Galatians is used normally to denote visions. It is the same word used in the canonical New Testament book of "Revelation". The significance of these Greek words can now be understood. I take it that Paul had a visionary experience on the road to Damascus as the word suggests in Galatians. If one accepts both 1st Corinthians 15 and the creed as authentically Pauline, and furthermore, as perfectly compatible and harmonizable with what is written in Galatians, then one has to conclude that the Greek word meaning "revelation" in Galatians is describing the same exact experience as the Greek word ophthe in 1st Corinthians 15.

Futhermore, Paul uses the same Greek word ophthe to describe the appearance of Jesus to others in the 1st Corinthians 15 creed. To me, this means one of two things: that since both Greek words ophthe and the one meaning "revelation" are both used to describe Paul's Damascus experience, that it was necessarily a vision. I take this to mean that Paul had a visionary experience on the road to Damascus and that the Greek word for ophthe in this context necessarily means a visionary experience. I also conclude that it's prima facie likely that since the same Greek word ophthe is used to describe the appearance of the risen Jesus to others, then others had visionary experiences involving altered-states-of-conciousness as well. Thus I conclude that such a distinction is either weak or nonexistent. True, I am willing to grant that the Greek word ophthe can be more than a visionary experience of some sort, but I believe that additional textual indicators must exist to modify it in such a way to make it mean that more than a mere visionary experience happened. There would have to be textual indicators/modifiers to show something physically and tangeably happened that could not be otherwise if it was an actual phyiscal and tangeable encounter with the risen Jesus who ate fish and drank in front of the disciples, something no visionary experience, whether to a singular person or collectively to a group of people at a time, could cause. I don't believe that any such textual indicators or modifiers exist in the 1st Corinthians 15 creed or in the letter to the Galatians. I, therefore conclude that it's prima facie likely that all of the postmortem appearances of Jesus were, in fact, originally visionary experiences involving altered-states-of-conciousness and nothing more.

Let me grant for the sake of discussion that there really was a distinction in the early Christian Churches between visions and appearances. Does such a distinction destroy the visionary hypothesis that I advocate? Not at all. In fact, I believe that my visionary hypothesis can be made to predict that such an distinction would arise as an apologetic against heresy and criticism, especially those of Gnostics and other heretics who share a heresy in early Christian times, the heresy known as "Docetism". This was a heresy that Jesus didn't have an actual body of flesh and blood, only that he appeared to have one. For this essay, I had originally planned to use Charles Talbert's work Luke and the Gnostics but I have since learned from very recent e-mail correspondence with Dr. Talbert, that he considers this work (an expansion of his doctoral dissertation) to be "woefully outdated" and has recommended to me a very recently updated book of his Reading Luke which was published by him in 2002 and contains his updated views on the subject. I have yet to purchase this book and fully read it and so I cannot at this time incorporate his recent work into my essay. However, I do believe that however outdated Talbert's original work on the subject was, Craig's critique of Talbert's argument, that Luke's narrative served as an anti-Docetic apologetic, fails. Let me quote Craig at length and provide my own critique of his rebuttal at various points.

"Actually, there are postive reasons to think that the physicalism of the gospels is not an anti-Docetic apologetic: (1) As we have seen, for a Jew the very terms 'resurrection' entailed a physical resurrection of the dead man in the tomb. The notion of a 'spiritual resurrection' was not merely unknown; it was a contradiction in terms. Therefore, in saying that Jesus was raised and appeared, the early believers must have understood this in physical terms."

How was a "spiritual resurrection" a contradiction in terms? While I don't necessarily adhere to the theory that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus had a spiritually resurrected body, I don't see anything as particular refuting it. The best case for the spiritual resurrection, in my judgement, has been provided by historian Richard Carrier in his essay "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb". I think that Carrier has a very interesting case but I lack the scholarly knowledge to know for absolutely sure (such as a good knowlege of Greek). I am aware of some criticisms of Carrier's arguments and I believe that any produced by such folks like Michael Licona deserve serious consideration ( I find it hard to take seriously the apologetics of Robert Turkel; am I to suppose that Turkel, who thought that the Greek word for "rise", anestemi, was used "twice for emphasis" in the gospels knows more about Greek than Richard Carrier? Am I to believe that Turkel is a better intellect than Carrier? Yeah, right! If I am to accept that, why not little green men on Mars?)

I really don't buy into most of the critiques I have seen of the "spiritual resurrection". I believe that it's a mistake made by both advocates and critics of this theory of Christian origins, to see it as a matter of "physical vs. spiritual". I believe that New Testament scholars like Robert Gundry have amply shown that the Greek word for body, soma was always and necessarily a physical substance (see his work Soma in Biblical Theology). I believe that it's better to view the argument over the "spiritual resurrection" in terms of "flesh vs. a lack of flesh". If the earliest Christians really did believe that Jesus was spiritually resurrected, I don't believe the earliest Christians would've seen Jesus' body as being nonphysical. This, I consider to be an erroneous view. Rather, I believe that if the earliest Christians would've seen Jesus as being spiritually resurrected, I believe that they would've seen the body as a physical body, just one lacking flesh (because it was made of the same heavenly substance as the sun, moon, and stars were; these were also soma lacking in flesh!). If the concept of a "spiritual resurrection" really is the best way to see Paul's discussion of the resurrection in 1st Corinthians 15: 37-50, the distinction between "natural bodies" on one hand and "spiritual bodies" on the other hand, would best be understood as a distinction between bodies (soma) containing flesh (the natural, earthly bodies) and bodies (soma) lacking flesh. All are physical but not all contain flesh. I have to repeat again; I don't necessarily advocate the theory of Christian origins that Carrier proposes. I think it's an interesting theory and I don't ultimately know how to evaluate it simply for the reason that I am not, yet, a New Testament scholar myself.

I leave the argument about a "spiritual resurrection" as an open question that I would like to investigate in graduate school when I have more scholarly resources and knowledge to do so. For the time being, I would also like to say that I have no problem accepting that the earliest Christians believed Jesus to be raised with a body of flesh and I am willing to accept this as a core historical fact and that the "spiritual resurrection" was not something believed by anyone. Even accepting this, I don't exactly think that Craig has succeeded in rebutting the contention that the resurrection narratives of Luke and John were anti-Docetic narratives. He can try and try as he may wish but I hope to show that he hasn't proven his case.

"It was Docetism which was the response to this physicalism, not the other way around. The physical resurrection is thus primitve and prior, Docetism being the later reaction of theological and philosophical reflection."

This is fine; I have no qualms with this. I can accept that the earliest Christians, such as Jesus' immediate disciples believed Jesus to have been resurrected in a body of flesh. I can accept as a core historical fact that many of Jesus' disciples believed that Jesus appeared to them in a risen body of flesh and that the visionary experiences involving altered-states-of-consciousness that they had were visions of a risen Jesus with a fleshly body. I can see Docetism as emerging as a response to this and thus the resurrection narratives serving as rebuttal to this heresy and reinforcing the earlier, yet mistaken view of the earliest disciples. It doesn't mean I accept for a moment that Jesus really did appear to his disciples and ate fish in front of them on the eve of Easter in Jerusalem as Luke's gospel says. I have no problem with a belief in a risen Jesus of bodily flesh being primitive and prior to Docetism.

I believe that the point to remember is that the Greek word for "appear" in the 1st Corinthians 15 creed only means that the groups who believed that they saw Jesus, believed that Jesus simply appeared to them. Docetism would argue, later, that Jesus only appeared to have a body of flesh. The disciples mistook the apparent body of flesh for the real thing and were thus fooled into thinking Jesus had a risen body of flesh. The key point of the Docetists was that Jesus didn't have a body of flesh but only appeared to have a body of flesh. In other words, the Docetists argued, true, that Jesus didn't have a body of flesh, but argued more importantly, that Jesus only appeared to have one. No doubt that the disciples of Jesus mistook an apparent body of flesh for the real thing, but the argument of Docetists here was simple: appearances are decieving and the disciples were victims of this misunderstanding.

"(2) Moreover, had purely 'spiritual appearances' been original, then it is difficult to see how the physical appearances could have developed. For (a) the offense of Docetism would then be removed, since the Christians, too, believed in purely spiritual appearances, and (b) the doctrine of physical appearances would have been counter-productive as an apologetic, both to Jews and to pagans; to Jews because they did not accept an individual resurrection within history and to pagans because their belief in the immortality of the soul could not accomodate the crudity of physical resurrection. The church therefore have retained its purely spiritual appearances."

Once again, I believe that it's best to see any doctrine of a "spiritual resurrection" as involving a physical body yet lacking flesh. I don't believe that there would've been any denial of physicality. The point would've been that the earliest Christians, if the theory of a "spiritual resurrection" is valid, would've believed that Jesus' risen body lacked flesh. But if Jesus was believed to have had a spiritual body, then the threat of Docetism would've been removed and the necessity of anti-Docetic apologetics would've been superflous, right? Does Craig have a good point here? I am not sure that he does. I tend to agree that the earliest Christians, if they believed in a "spiritual resurrection", might have agreed with Docetists about the risen Jesus, but Docetists went further and denied that Jesus had really suffered death on the cross (something no early Christian would've been able to accept) and that Jesus never had been born or incarnated in a body of flesh (something Christians would've found insulting and offensive).

We have to keep in mind, then, that the offense of Docetism wouldn't necessarily have been removed, because Docetists weren't just denying that Jesus had a risen body of flesh- they were denying Jesus ever had any body of flesh during his whole existence on earth. Naturally, Christians would see the need to combat it. Some Christians might've been content with rebutting Docetism up to the point of Jesus' physical death as it was seen as necessary for atonement purposes, while others would probably have gone all the way to the point of completely wiping Docetism out altogether, for they would've believed Jesus to have been vindicated by God and therefore, raised from the dead in a body of flesh.

Does Craig's second objection fly here too? Would the anti-Docetic apologetic be offensive to both Jews and pagans? That depends on whom the audience of the gospels were. Craig tends to think here (lest I am mistaken) that the gospels were written as tools to help win over skeptics. I believe that the gospels were written by Christians and for Christians and no one else. If I am right, what would it matter what Jews or pagans thought? The gospels were written by Christians and for Christians and so any anti-Docetic apologetics would be to reinforce the faith of Christian believers, not to silence skeptics be they Jews or pagans or to convince them of the errors of their ways (I'm sure Craig would love it if it were; I am sure that Craig would love nothing more than to have some undeniable proof that Jesus rose from the dead to give to modern 21st century skeptics like me, so he could drag us kicking and screaming into the faith).

Moreover, I think that Craig is grossly mistaken here. The Jews would not have accepted an individual resurrection? How does Craig know this? I don't doubt that a number of Jews wouldn't have accepted any individual resurrections before the general resurrection, but Craig is really stretching if he seriously believes that this would apply universally without any possible exception whatsoever across the board when it comes to all first century Jews.

"(3) Besides, Docetism was mainly aimed at denying the reality of the incarnation of Christ (1 Jn. 4: 2-3; II Jn. 7), not the physical resurrection. Docetists were not so interested in denying the physical resurrection as in denying that the divine Son perished on the cross; hence, some held that the Spirit deserted the human Jesus at the crucifixion, leaving the human Jesus to die and be physically raised (Irenaeus Against Heresies 1.26. 1). An anti-Docetic aimed at proving a physical resurrection therefore misses the point entirely."

I disagree. I believe that the incarnation, crucifxion, and resurrection were points of denial for Docetists. Suppose that Craig is right and the Docetists were mainly denying the incarnation and not so much the resurrection and it the narratives could hardly serve as an anti-Docetic apologetic. Even if the Docetists didn't so much deny that Jesus had a risen body of flesh, there were other Gnostic groups that did. I would at least accept that the narratives were written as some kind of apologetic against those who denied that Jesus had a risen body of flesh, even if it wasn't really the Docetists. There were four general groups, such as the Docetists, Adoptionists, Separationists, and Patripassiantists, but these categories were not so clean-cut and rigid; there was variation and spectrum within the groups.

"(4) The demonstrations of corporeality and continuity in the gospels, as well as the other physical appearances, do not seem to have been redactional additions of Luke or John ( it is thus incorrect to speak, for example, of "Luke's apologetic against Gnosticism"), but were part of the traditions recieved by the evangelists. Docetisim, however, was a later theological development, attested to in John's letters. Therefore, the gospel accounts of the physical resurrection tend to ante-date the rise and threat of Docetisim."

And how did Craig determine this? I want to know how this is any more than Craig's pontifical "say-so". Why does Craig think that the demonstrations of corporeality and continuity in the gospels are not "redactional additions"? I know for a fact that Craig accepts the Markan priority of the gospels and seems to accept that Matthew and Luke used Mark in their composition. If Luke can redact Mark's gospel and change a prediction (coming from Mark's "young man") of Jesus appearing in Galilee to a prediction of Jesus back when he was in Galilee (as Luke makes the women seem to remember Jesus' words) why can't Luke go beyond the traditions that he had in Mark (and Q?) and go onto write an apologetic against docetism, incorporating corporeality and making such narratives continuous with the rest of the narratives he composed in his gospel? How does Craig know that Jesus eating fish in front of his disciples and inviting them to touch him and showing himself to doubting Thomas were part of the traditions recieved by the evangelists? How does Craig know this?

One last point: Craig repeats himself by saying that Docetism was a later theological development, this time adding the qualifying phrase "attested to in John's letters". I don't necessarily think that Docetism originated at the time of its first mention in John's letters. I believe that Docetism was alive and well before John wrote his letters. I want to be careful here and say that I am not going to attach a precise date as to the origin of Docetism. I really don't know when it originated but I don't think it originated after Luke wrote his gospel and necessarily before John wrote his. I suspect Craig wants more than anything for this to be the case so he can make his work of trying to get modern skeptics to accept the resurrection and get them saved a lot easier. I think that perhaps Docetism originated sometime shortly after 70 C.E. and the gospels have an increasing tendency towards a more corporeal and fleshly Jesus, starting without any resurrection appearances in Mark, one which the disciples see Jesus but don't touch him in Matthew, to Jesus eating fish and inviting contact in Luke and finally a full-blown anti-Docetic apologetic in John's gospel. This may reflect various stages at which Docetism grew in strength and became a threat. Perhaps when Mark wrote his gospel, it wasn't percieved to be that much of a threat (if any) and perhaps was in its nascental stages and evolving more and more during the writing of Matthew and Luke to the point where John's opening prologue was specifically shooting down Docetism as were the letters attributed to John.

"Moreover, not even all later Gnostics denied the physical resurrection ( cf. Gospel of Philip, Letters of James, and Epistle of Rheginus). It is interesting that even in the ending of Mark there is actually a switch away from material proofs of the resurrection to a verbal rebuke by Jesus for the disciples' unbelief."

I am pleased to hear Craig say this! Not all later Gnostics denied the physical resurrection! I also believe that not all early Gnostics denied it either nor had all of them accepted it. I believe that there was a bit of variety among different sects of Gnosticism and perhaps stretching over time. Now it's question time again, boys and girls: how does Craig know that Mark's ending is meant to be a switch away from material proofs of the resurrection?

"(5) The demonstrations themselves do not evince the rigorousness of an apologetic against Docetism. In both Luke and John it is not said that either the disciples or Thomas actually accepted Jesus' invitation to touch him and prove that he was not a Spirit. Contrast the statements of Ignatius that the disciples did physically touch Jesus (Ignatius Ad Smyrnaeans 3.2; cf. Epistula Apostolorum 11-12). As Schnackenburg has said, if an anti-Docetic apology were involved in the gospel accounts, more would have to have been done than Jesus' merely showing the wounds."

I beg Craig's pardon? Eating fish in front of the disciples "does not evince the rigorousness of an apologetic against Docetism"? Was it not Craig who made this stink about the distinction between visions and appearances in the first place? How rigorous does "rigorous" have to be? Does Jesus have to take a stainless steel stake and pound it through his right hand, have his disciples verify that it penetrated by getting blood from Jesus' hand onto their hands, only to have Jesus take the stake out and have his disciples watch his hand heal itself in front of them as though Jesus is a mutant with superhuman powers like the comic book character "Wolverine" in Marvel's The Uncanny X-Men May I suggest something for readers here? May I suggest that not all anti-Docetic apologetics need be the same in terms of rigor and intensity? Docetism, I believe, just like every other heresy, started out small and grew with time. Not every apologetic designed to answer heresies like Docetism need be as rigorous as the next. Luke's apologetic is not as rigorous as would, say, John's because Docetism needn't have been considered as dangerous a heresy in Luke's time as it would've been in John's time. In fact, it may well have been in its nascental and infant stages at the time of Mark's writing which might be why Mark doesn't have any resurrection narratives designed to illustrate that Jesus really did have a body of flesh. From Mark to Matthew, Docetism might have grown somewhat and may have started to become a threat in Luke's time with it evolving to the point of a dangerous heresy in John's time. Ignatius, writing later, wants to assert that the disciples did phyiscally touch Jesus because such a level of rigorousness and seriousness would be needed to combat Docetism in his time, whereas in earlier times it probably wasn't that strong and, hence, not that big a threat and not commanding that much in terms of resources to combat it.

"(6) The incidental, off-hand character of the physicality of Jesus' resurrection appearances in most of the accounts shows that the physicalism was a natural assumption or presupposition of the accounts, not an apologetic point consciously being made. For example, the women's grasping Jesus' feet is not a polemical point, but just their response of worship. Similarly, Jesus says, 'Do not hold me,' though Mary is not explictly said to have done so; this is no conscious effort to prove a physical resurrection. The appearances on the mountain and by the Sea of Tiberias just naturally presuppose a phyiscal Jesus; no points are trying to be scored against Docetism."

Fleshly physicalism may have been a natural assumption to begin with for the earliest Christians but that needn't mean that it wasn't in need of defending by the time that the gospels were pinned. Indeed, not every minor little detail need be polemically against Docetism. These may have just been the kind of details that many Christians believe Jesus would've done had he a risen body of flesh, regardless of how much of a threat Docetism was in their minds. But the eating of fish, the showing of wounds, and Jesus preparing breakfast for his disciples are the exact sort of feats that would be expected to count aginst Docetism. Depending on the composition and the various stages in the evolution of heresies like Docetism, we can expect there to be varying accounts of anti-Docetic apologetics, with varying degrees of physical interaction and corporeality, depending on how widespread and serious the threat of Docetism or any other antiflesh heresy that existed in New Testament times was. Some accounts will not have much physical action performed by Jesus while others will have Jesus doing a lot of physical feats that a mere vision could not do. Now we come to the finale of Craig's rebuttal here...

"Together these considerations strongly suggest that the physical appearance were not as apologetic to Docetism, but always part of the church's tradition; there seems to be no good historical reason to doubt that Jesus did, in fact, show his disciples that he had been physically raised from the dead." ( Craig, William Lane, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus pgs. 330-338)"

Craig would seriously love to think this, wouldn't he? Anything to convince a modern skeptic to become a Christian. Unfortunately, it is Craig who is mistaken here, not Talbert or anyone else. These considerations, I hope to have shown, are flawed and do not make Craig's case as strong as he would like to think that they do. Craig hasn't shown how they were always part of the Church's tradition and hasn't answered Talbert's original arguments. In conclusion, though, I want to say that the fleshly corporeality of the resurrection narratives introduce a Jesus who physically interacts with the world and is no mere vision and that there is a extra-mental phenomenon at work behind the scenes. But the gospels were not written to convince post-Enlightenment skeptics like me but I believe were designed to answer those who would deny that Jesus had risen in the flesh.

The most important part is not so much that heretics at all did deny that Jesus had a body of flesh at any point of time in his earthly existence, but that he appeared to have one but really didn't. The emphasis was on appearances and this was the big point behind Gnosticism. Those blessed with the spiritual knowledge of the Gnostics knew better. The disciples believed Jesus appeared to them and Jesus did but Jesus fooled them into thinking he had a body of flesh. Jesus only appeared to have had one and the Gnostics had this sacred knowledge that Jesus didn't inhibit a body of flesh. Even if it wasn't the Docetics per se who posed a heretical threat to the earliest Christians, there were some antiflesh heretics who would need to be seriously dealt and rebutted.

This, I believe, might adequately account for the distinction between visions on one hand, and appearances on the other. Supposing that Craig is right about the distinction, I am convinced that any such distinction was apologetic in origin. This was the best way I believe that the Christians of Luke and John's community combated heretics. What's more, it also kept the lid on heretics and not only rebutted their antiflesh heresy but also prevented them from claiming any pedigree in the Church as the true disciples of Jesus and their discipleship going back to inner circle of Jesus himself. Any true Christian, any true disciples of Jesus, would have had to talk with him, to walk with him, to touch him, to have eaten with him and to have drink with him. Thus Jesus had a body of flesh after his death and rose to the heavens in it. Only the original apostolic circle was really in a position to claim any kind of pedigree and legitimacy as to being heirs of Jesus and being his disciples, because only they walked, talked, and ate with Jesus, saw him crucified, and saw him risen from the dead, and ascend into the heavens. This, I believe, explains the witness motif of Luke's gospel: to be an apostle, you have to had been appointed by those who were witnesses to Jesus' fleshly corporeality.

Thus, I believe that Craig's third objection may be answered.

Matthew

Robert Conner, Christianity’s Critics: The Romans Meet Jesus, Part 7

Robert Conner studied Greek, Hebrew, some Aramaic and even Coptic back in the mid-70's at Western Kentucky University. He's written nine books, including Jesus the Sorcerer, The Secret Gospel of Mark and Magic in Christianity, as well as a number of articles and essays. If you want a primer on what the earliest critics of Christianity had to say about this new cult then I'm publishing an essay he wrote in several parts, with approval. This is the final part, number 7. To get up to speed follow this tag.

Read more »

The Quest to Keep Jesus Relevant

[Written by Joe Holman]

The next time you drive around the historic part of your neighborhood, slow down just enough to get a look at the old-time churches. They’re big and old, especially old. Hell, some of them are so old that if you had the right forensic testing kit, you might genetically match the dried tears of a hand-and-foot slave as he waited on his master, listening to the “nonsense” from the pulpit about some new movement called Abolition. How time flies!

Read more »

The Wickedness of Praying for the Sick

Having recently finished Professor Ehrman's "God's Problem," I was struck by his decision to never say grace over food. His logic was that if there were people in the world dying every five seconds from starvation, it was tantamount to thanking God for giving this food to him, at their expense. He felt he couldn't be thankful that he had been singled out for reasons that had only to do with his birthplace, which made quite a bit of sense to me.

Thus I began to consider analogous behaviors and the first one that I thought of was praying for the sick to recover. If Ehrman's original proposition, that praying to thank the Lord for food that you have, while others are starving is valid, is it not equally valid when it comes to praying for the sick to recover?

There are 8.2 deaths per 1000 people per year in the US. Some countries are better, some are much worse. That means that with 300 million residents, there are roughly 2.5 million deaths in the US per year, or roughly 6700 people per day dying. This is in the US alone. If you assume the death rate globally is higher, say 8.6 per 1000, and you assume 6 billion people, you can see the actual number of dying people God can potentially save per day is around 140,000 (I leave others to detect the irony of this number).

Yet the person praying for the sick to recover believes that her action can affect the transcendent creator of the universe to intervene for the person they know. Imagine if it were so.

Imagine that the only thing that were keeping the death rate up was the lack of prayers for the sick and dying. Think of a statistical analysis that showed rigorously that prayer worked, but only the prayers of members of the (imaginary) Dutch Reformed Church, and only those prayers addressed to "Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whom is manifest the will of the Father" that took place in a Dutch Reformed Church. And imagine that such a prayer was shown to extend the life of the dying person by 6 hours per hour of prayer spent.

Would people convert en masse to the (imaginary) Dutch Reformed Church? Would they be willing to travel to the (imaginary) Dutch Reformed Church to pray for the sick personally for one hour to extend their lives another 6 hours? For how long would this continue? Would people quit their jobs and become professional "prayers"?

I am sure some would.

But I doubt the numbers would be very large. And I doubt the number of conversions to Dutch Reformed would be very great. And I also doubt that members of other congregations would consider the analysis valid.

So is it not more reasonable, more humane, and more just to believe that the sick die from their diseases and NOT due to a lack of prayer? Many of my family have prayed for the sick, and on their recovery been thankful to the (imaginary) Lord for speeding the recovery of the patient. Are they then not condemning the person who did not recover for not having had adequate prayer support? Do they believe the (imaginary) deity is keeping a tally sheet and only responding when a given prayer threshold has been met?

I recall well when a very close childhood friend of mine was dying from a progressive neurological disorder. I was at the hospital with him waiting for his brain biopsy. He was still lucid, but aphasic. A very well-meaning woman asked what was going on, and I explained it to her. She assured me she would pray for him and he would get better. I was sure he would not, but didn't disagree openly with her.

Should I hold it against her that he died? Is it her fault that the (imaginary) deity chose not to make an exception for my friend when he contracted this universally fatal neurological disease?

I think not. It is wicked to suggest that all people who die weren't prayed for adequately, and therefore, by the same principle, it is wicked to pray for anyone who is ill, because you suggest that your prayer had efficacy in saving them, and thus condemn as inadequate the futile prayers said for those who died.

In advance I can anticipate the apologetic responses:

1. God is inscrutable.

2. All things work together for good, and God wished these peoples' deaths as part of a divine plan.

3. The suffering and death of these people leads to increased strength of character in the face of adversity of those who survive them.

To number 1, I say if God is so inscrutable, why did he write a book about him coming to earth and healing only some people? Why doesn't he just miraculously cure all suffering people and be done with it?

To number 2, I say if there is a divine plan, why does it involve such incredible suffering, and why should we make that suffering worse by making people feel responsible for it?

To number 3, I say if I could poke a hole through your arm with a sharp stick because it would make you a stronger person to deal with it, should I?

Finally, I would ask what goes through the mind of an ill person in their final minutes when they are sure they are going to die yet they know people have prayed for them? Are they grateful the prayers were sent, even though they are going to die anyway? Or do they worry that the prayers weren't effective due to some character flaw or past "sin" which is their responsibility?

Is not the second possibility unbelievably wicked? Yet it is a certainty that a percentage of believers thus prayed for will think it. And they will think this as they leave the earth for good.

Prayer for the sick should cease. It causes pain and misery in the dying and keeps the living from accepting the nature of life and reality. Is it so hard to simply wish speedy recovery for the sick from a human perspective? Is it so hard to say that you are pulling for someone to recover and leave the cosmic workings of the universe out of it? Need we have each person who has done a bad thing in her life suffering as she expires because she thinks she is being punished?

Xavier and the Evolution of Legendary Miracles

I regularly encounter pseudo-skepticism -- reflexive doubt in response to criticism of credulous belief -- on the question of how the legend of Jesus could have developed in the period between Jesus' death and the writing of the synoptic gospels. Many Christians just don't see how or why such fantastic inventions arose from the crushing disappointment of the crucifixion of the man they supposed the Messiah (assuming here, arguendo, the historicity of Jesus and his crucifixion by the Romans at around the time commonly supposed)? "Why would these people die for a lie?" goes a common retort.

That's a fair question, even if it is offered pseudo-skeptically. But I don't think it's nearly as difficult as Christians commonly suppose. Even granting the dubious claims that all of Jesus disciples except John died a martyr's death (and indeed, this is precisely the kind of narrative we might expect as a later bit of legendary embellishment), we need not suppose a deliberate, coordinated conspiracy of lies is demanded of the situation. Rather, we need only look to the social capacity and disposition toward legend-making.

Inevitably, the pseudo-skeptic demands an example. I've suggested the legend and folklore of King Arthur, and pointed to the invention of "Newton's apple" by Voltaire as casual examples of the tendency to mythologize and embellish real people and events that capture our passions and imaginations. Reading a bit about Andrew Dickson White this week, intrigued by his provocative phrase "an asylum for Science", used in reference to his ambitions for Cornell University, a school he co-founded, I came across White's book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (which title I believe is familiar to me from the words of Bertrand Russell?). In the book, White recounts the case of Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits, patron saint of missionaries, and the man the Catholic church credits with converting more souls to Christianity than any other since Paul.

White's book (which can be read here, or at Google books complete with footnotes here) has a chapter on Xavier, in which he details the progression and development of legends -- miraculous legends -- about Xavier in the aftermath of his death. Here is why White chose to examine the case of Xavier:

"We have within the modern period very many examples which enable us to study the evolution of legendary miracles. Out of these I will select but one, which is chosen because it is the life of one of the most noble and devoted men in the history of humanity, one whose biography is before the world with its most minute details - in his own letters, in the letters of his associates, in contemporary histories, and in a multitude of biographies: this man is St. Francis Xavier. From these sources I draw the facts now to be given, but none of them are of Protestant origin; every source from which I shall draw is Catholic and Roman, and published under the sanction of the Church. " [1]

White provides his basic claim for the chapter here:

"During his career as a missionary he wrote great numbers of letters, which were preserved and have since been published; and these, with the letters of his contemporaries, exhibit clearly all the features of his life. His own writings are very minute, and enable us to follow him fully. No account of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own letters or in any contemporary document. At the outside, but two or three things occurred in his whole life, as exhibited so fully by himself and his contemporaries, for which the most earnest devotee could claim anything like Divine interposition; and these are such as may be read in the letters of very many fervent missionaries, Protestant as well as Catholic."[2]

White continues with an example:

"For example, in the beginning of his career, during a journey in Europe with an ambassador, one of the servants in fording a stream got into deep water and was in danger of drowning. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed very earnestly, and that the man finally struggled out of the stream. But within sixty years after his death, at his canonization, and by various biographers, this had been magnified into a miracle, and appears in the various histories dressed out in glowing colours. Xavier tells us that the ambassador prayed for the safety of the young man; but his biographers tell us that it was Xavier who prayed, and finally, by the later writers, Xavier is represented as lifting horse and rider out of the stream by a clearly supernatural act. "[3]

(emphasis mine in both quotes above)

According to White, Xavier is both quite keen on identifying diving providence, but claims or even mention of miracles is conspicuously missing from his writings. Not only are miracles absent from Xavier's own accounts, the man who knew Xavier best, fellow Jesuit and historian of the order Joseph Acosta, positively denies the presence of miracles in the Jesuits' missionary enterprise of the time:

"But on the same page with this tribute to the great missionary Acosta goes on to discuss the reasons why progress in the world's conversion is not so rapid as in the early apostolic times, and says that an especial cause why apostolic preaching could no longer produce apostolic results ``lies in the missionaries themselves, because there is now no power of working miracles.'' He then asks, ``Why should our age be so completely destitute of them?'' This question he answers at great length, and one of his main contentions is that in early apostolic times illiterate men had to convert the learned of the world, whereas in modern times the case is reversed, learned men being sent to convert the illiterate; and hence that ``in the early times miracles were necessary, but in our time they are not.''[4]

Over the course of the decades following Xavier's death, admiring biographers and sponsors for Xavier's canonization produced a rapid "evolution" of miracles and supernatural works that got attached to Xavier, increasingly fantastic as time went by. Here, White recalls the situation 70 years after Xavier's death:

"In 1622 came the canonization proceedings at Rome. Among the speeches made in the presence of Pope Gregory XV, supporting the claims of Xavier to saintship, the most important was by Cardinal Monte. In this the orator selects out ten great miracles from those performed by Xavier during his lifetime and describes them minutely. He insists that on a certain occasion Xavier, by the sign of the cross, made sea-water fresh, so that his fellow-passengers and the crew could drink it; that he healed the sick and raised the dead in various places; brought back a lost boat to his ship; was on one occasion lifted from the earth bodily and transfigured before the bystanders; and that, to punish a blaspheming town, he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders from a volcano: this was afterward still more highly developed, and the saint was represented in engravings as calling down fire from heaven and thus destroying the town.

The most curious miracle of all is the eighth on the cardinal's list. Regarding this he states that, Xavier having during one of his voyages lost overboard a crucifix, it was restored to him after he had reached the shore by a crab.

The cardinal also dwelt on miracles performed by Xavier's relics after his death, the most original being that sundry lamps placed before the image of the saint and filled with holy water burned as if filled with oil.''[5]

This is just a small sample of the inventory provided by White in the chapter. What is striking is not just the breadth and depth of the body of legend associated with Xavier in the years following his death, but the "whole cloth fabrication" of the stories. For most, and possibly all of the miraculous accounts given later, there doesn't even seem to be the "seed" used for later embellishment, but a kind of ex nihilo creation of a miraculum vitae for Xavier (one can feel the account of the crab returning Xavier's crucifix resonating with Paul's miraculous survival of the viper's bite on Malta in Acts).

The import of the example of Xavier, and the spontaneous appearance and evolution of miracles attributed to him should be obvious to the Christian, to the pseudo-skeptic; given a couple decades, and a cult following, the invention and development of miracle accounts -- accounts of fantastic miracles -- isn't implausible, or even novel, and relevant examples are found right inside the history and culture of Christendom itself.

I do note that White's book is now well over a hundred years old, and as science proves, a lot can be discovered over the course of a hundred and more years. I've done some googling on this, but have not found anything that indicates that White's claims in the book have been overturned by the discovery of new evidence from Xavier's writings or reports by his contemporaries that substantiate the miracles later attributed to him. If readers are aware of such a case, I stand to be corrected. But as it is, I commend the case of Xavier and his admirers to the pseudo-skeptic, as a vivid historical example of "legendation" in action, the kind of inventions and embellishments we see accounting for the death of Jesus circa 30CE and the legend of Jesus emerging over the next 50-60 years.

[1] Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (Prometheus Books, 1993), lib ii, cap XIII, p. 5.
[2] ibid., p. 6.
[3] ibid., p. 6.
[4] ibid., pp. 9-10.
[5] ibid., pp. 14-15.

Religion and Hate: A Marriage Made in Heaven

We often hear from the Christian evangelicals: “God hates the sin; but God loves the sinner.” (A non-Biblical statement used to gloss over the fact that the “loved” unforgiven sinner will fry like bacon for eternity in the Lake of Fire (Hell) because of “God’s love“). But remember sinner, you sent yourself there, not your loving Heavenly Father.

Or again: If God be for me/us, who can be against me/us?! This statement is simply an excuse to exploit religious bigotry and hatred under the guise of salvation theology. Anyone who doubts this need only read Brad S. Gregory’s Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Modern Europe (Harvard University Press, 1999) and winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press. The fly cover states:

Thousands of men and women were executed for incompatible religious views in sixteenth-century Europe. The meaning and significance for those deaths are studied here comparatively for the first time, providing a compelling argument for the importance of martyrdom as both a window onto religious sensibilities and a crucial component in the formation of divergent Christian traditions and identities. … Gregory shows us the shifting perspectives of authorities willing to kill, martyrs willing to die, martyrologists eager to memorialize, and controversialists keen in dispute.

Be it in John Calvin’s Geneva, Luther and Melanchthon in favor of death for the Anabaptist, the Catholic Inquisition or the killing of witches in New England; the Hebrew Bible set the precedence in the slaughter of all of God’s non-chosen people in the land of Canaan.

This is followed in the New Testament where even a loving “Gentile Jesus meek and mild” states:

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. (Matthew 10: 34 - 37) and Jesus in the final stage of Salvation History is depicted riding a white horse in Revelation 19: 11 - 21 wheeling a sword to the slaughter:

“And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.” (verse 21).

Even the Ku Klux Klan’s website proclaims that “Our Entire Group of Sites are Family and Christian Friendly” which is re-enforced by their own Pastor Thomas Robb of the World Church of the Creator:

A racist recognizes within their kindred people a special relationship with Jesus Christ. They recognize that race is but one aspect of living a Christian life, but such an important one that the mingling of the races, will as in the days of mingling in the scripture cause God’s wrath to fall upon his children. Peace on earth for all nations and races can only come about by adhering to Biblical truth. It is we who are the compassionate ones because we understand that true satisfaction and happiness will not be felt by everyone until God’s word and his edicts are felt throughout the land. Our job in the Knights’ is to send a wake up call, to inform our white brothers and sisters of their rightful inheritance and to ask them to repent so that God will bless our nation once again. We want God to use us to bring a message of revival throughout the world.

With Bible courses such as: The Anglo-Saxon Jesus sold in their White Heritage Book Store, the positive side of religious hate can be made very family friendly.

Finally, to show how vicious another monotheistic religious tradition can be, this is from an August 17, ‘08 new paper:

A Saudi Arabian Muslim father cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian.

The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported.
Her father read of her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report. The father is employed by the muwateen, or Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The muwateen are police tasked by the government with enforcing religious purity. The man has been taken into custody, and his identity has not been released.

The ICC pointed out the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has reported textbooks at the Saudi Arabian government school in Northern Virginia teach, "It is permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate (a convert from Islam)."
Saudi Arabian oil money is used to export Wahabbism – a version of Islam said to be least tolerant toward non-Muslims – to other nations, including the U.S., ICC notes.
ICC president Jeff King said, "Saudi Arabia has to treat Christians with the same respect that it wants Muslims to be treated in other countries. It has to stop exporting hate and persecution against Christians in other countries."

Telling Off God, the Supreme Procrastinator

A review of Fernando Alcántar’s book, To the Cross and Back

“Well, you never were a real Christian.” I sometimes hear this from pious folks who can’t process my transition from Methodist pastor to atheist. They know that their ‘walk with the Lord’—their personal relationship with Jesus—is so authentic. They’re pretty sure I never had that.

And they’re right. I believed in God and I knew that Jesus was his son, but it was alien, under my mother’s devout tutelage, to speak of ‘having a walk with the Lord.’ Nor did it occur to her—no matter how sincere our prayers—that Jesus could somehow be a pal or friend. Perhaps my atheism is easier to explain since I failed to make that personal connection with Jesus; atheism is impossible once that has happened. Because Jesus is so real.

Read more »

Now What, Christian?

The year was 1995. I was just about to begin preaching school, and when so much was going right for me as I went through every day, tinged with anticipation of the good things that awaited me in the ministry, I was troubled. I wasn't just troubled, I was stumped, disarmed by what someone, an atheist, had asked me. I was an outgoing personal evangelist for ten months before this as I hit the ground running at my conversion to save a sin-sick, dying world. I was used to facing tough questions while "witnessing" to unbelievers, but as a certain young, un-intimidating, blond-haired man sat before me (an atheist whom my preaching friends thought I had a better chance at converting), I was stopped dead in my tracks.

They were wrong. Not only did I fail to convert him, but he asked a question that totally disarmed me and made us all squirm. I had no answer for it, no sharp retort that would make me, my friends, and our faith look cool and sophisticated.

"Well, I honestly don't believe in the bible or Jesus. I've tried but I can't, so what is one to do if they can't believe?" I had no answer for him. I had never faced this question before. After unsuccessfully making an argument from Pascal's Wager, I think I remember saying something to him, like "just keep trying and God will providentially show you."

"So in the mean time, if I die without believing, am I going to burn?", he asked. After a long pause, and with an embarrassed look on my face, I said, "Yes, you will, but I will pray for you that God will grant you the time to repent."

I felt terrible saying this. The atheist was very soft spoken. He was an almost speechless kid, not particularly well versed in argument or atheology. He just couldn't believe. Our church youth group had been stringing this guy along for a while, asking him to pray and sing and come to youth functions with us. He did, but it was all to no avail. We never could convert him.

Before our conversation ended, I was compelled to say something rude. I tried one last time to guilt-trip him with a disturbing, unsettling comment that would prod him into submission to the fearsome almighty. Since the Bible made it clear to "seek and ye shall find," and "to him who knocks, it shall be opened" (Matthew 7:7), and since Jesus and his word could never be wrong, this could only mean that this young man who struck me as nothing but sincere and forthright in his desire to believe, didn't really want to believe. His heart was captured by satan, and I had to help him break free. I knew I was really honoring my God by saying this to finish off our conversation, "Too bad you're choosing to burn in Hell then! 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.'" He sharply acknowledged my slightly aggressive tone and said, "So because I can't believe, I deserve to burn?" I backed off him with something soft, like, "Just remember that in the time it takes you to come to belief, you are still lost and will burn in hell if you die in the mean time, but I will keeping pray for you." I thought I could get him to believe out of fear. But instead of getting a rise out of him, he just calmly glanced around, collecting his thoughts, and said again, "Well, if I can't believe, I can't believe now, can I? Why should I burn for following my brain?" As the discussion continued, his honesty continued to shine right through, making me yet more uncomfortable. He kept on inquiring what to do since he couldn't believe.

Out of options and desperate to make a convert, I said again what so many preachers say, "Just try and live the Christian lifestyle first and faith will develop later." He just grinned, shook his head, assuring me it wouldn't work, got into his car, and drove off. I never saw him again, and I don't even remember his name, but I think of him from time to time.

My preaching friends and I jested amongst ourselves how sad it will be to see that man's poor soul burning in Hell. One of my friends said to me, "I hope the Lord causes something bad to happen to him so he will turn to God." I shutter to think how I actually found such a statement appropriate at the time!

Leaving this discussion, I was angry at myself for not having the convincing words to convert him. I was also angry at the preachers I looked up to for not giving me the proper arguments to win over a hungering soul. I lost out to the devil. I felt defeated and weak.

Just less than ten years later, I found myself in exactly this man's shoes. In the summer of 2003, my wife, still a staunch believer, commended my soul to hell. When we began to argue over my decision to leave the ministry, I asked my wife, "What am I supposed to do? I can't believe in theism anymore. I've tried." Her words, "Then you'll just have to go to hell!" Amazing the role reversals life puts us through, wouldn't you say?

To this very day, there is no Christian who can deal with this question. They are painfully disarmed by it, and I can see why. It hurts to be out of options, to see a problem and know you can't fix it.

I want to take this time and ask our Christian readers, what do we hellbound infidels do now that your apologetics have failed, and your arguments and testimonies proven ineffective in converting us back to the fold? We've prayed and cried, and reflected on our inner-selves. We've read and studied and meditated and reflected some more on our sinful, depraved consciences, now what? What if we are never providentially led back into God-belief as most atheists aren't? What if we breathe our last breaths as unbelievers, painfully thinking to ourselves, "But I can't believe!" What should we expect when we wake up in the next world? Fire? Torture? Darkness? Tumultuous agony for eternity? When all your quips and quotes, your testimonies and trilemmas, your apologetics and promises, have failed to pierce our targeted hearts, then what?

Should we be thinking about how in hell we'll finally have the faith we wanted here on Earth and finally got the answers we sought, but now it's too late? Should we be thinking about how we had the freewill to believe, if only we'd used it, even though we couldn't use it because we couldn't believe? Should we be thinking about what we will say to God, the angels, and our fellow condemned souls as we are ushered off to the empire of the damned?

Now what, Christian? What are we to do? Where are your answers now? What witnessing tool will you whip out to finish this job? What assurances, what hope can you give us?

(JH)