In 1935, a professor of Christian history at the Sorbonne, Charles Guignebert, published a book titled simply, Jesus. I still have the worn copy that I read in college. In it he summed up the problem that has plagued New Testament scholarship for generations: “It was not the essence of Jesus that interested the authors of our gospels, it was the essence of Christ, as their faith pictured him. They are exclusively interested, not in reporting what they know, but in proving what they believe.” He also observed: "The Gospels are propaganda writings, intended to organize and authenticate. . .the legend represented in the sacred drama of the sect and to match it to the customs of the mythology of the time." Wikipedia describes Guignebert as “...one of the first French historians who approached this subject in a scientific way and not confessional.”
As an avid reader of ancient Mediterranean literature, I have come to regard Lucian as one of my most cherished Greek writers. A penetrating satirist and cultural critic, Lucian left behind numerous works, most of which apparently composed in Samosata (Roman Northern Syria) in the latter half of the second century C.E. With Syria having served as the nascent cradle of primitive Christianity, Lucian will have had an up-close familiarity with the religion, its earliest peddlers, and cult leaders. Unlike his contemporary Celsus, Lucian never wrote any detailed treatise against the religion, despite his more general campaign to expose superstition and fraudulence. In that sense, his candid appraisal of eastern Mediterranean Christians and their leaders provides one of but a few truly unvarnished external looks at the movement. For your enrichment here, I offer my own translated excerpt taken from his Greek text De Morte Peregrini (Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου Τελευτῆς), that is, Concerning the Death of Peregrinus. While the work itself, an account of martyrdom-by-way-of-stunt, merits a subsequent article here at D.C., one that I have already begun to compose, the specific segment on the Christians deserves its own special showcase here.
Careful, thorough study of Christianity’s ancient context provides an “Ah ha!” or “Uh oh” moment, depending on your perspective. For those who don’t accept Christian claims about its holy origins, it’s the former; for the devout, it’s the latter. The problem, of course, is that reality-based thinking about Christian origins doesn’t commonly trickle down to the folks in the pews, so they haven’t caught up with the news: the idea that Easter morning proves Christianity has been fatally wounded. Richard Carrier’s comprehensive essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It provides the “Ah ha!’ moment for skeptics: dying-and-rising gods were celebrated by other cults in the ancient world. As Carrier has said, “Jesus was late to the party.”
First off, it seems more than a bit arrogant to claim to be the real deal in atheist philosophy (Real Atheology, RA), but then there's nothing that can be done about that adopted name now. Nonetheless, on Twitter RA Tweeted this excerpt and asked, "Don't know where this is from, but thoughts on this?" If it were me I'd like to know where it came from, and I certainly wouldn't put something like this out there unless I thought it had some merit. Turns out it was written by Catholic apologist Edward Feser denouncing the boogyman "scientism" which we've written about before. About scientism I merely say that when it comes to the nature of nature, its regularities, and its origins, science is the only way to gain the truth. What other alternative is there?
It's disheartening that some thoughtful atheists think what Feser said is worthy of consideration. But this isn't the only time RA puts science and objective evidence in the back. They also highly recommended an essay where they agree with Christian apologist Matthew Flannagan that atheist Graham Oppy "repudiates evidentialism." They're reading and listening to the WRONG PEOPLE! I doubt very much that Graham Oppy "repudiates evidentialism" even if he may repudiate the verfification principle(s) whereby only propositions that have evidence for them are meaningful. Ask him. He should weigh in on this issue. Evidence, objective evidence, is paramount. Otherwise we are building ivory castles in the sky where the ONLY thing that matters in consistency.
When it come to philosophy almost everyone gets it wrong. Let me explain...
Christian apologists—theologians, preachers, priests, Sunday School teachers—work so hard to explain away the big goofs in the Bible, which are not hard to spot. Why not just trim the Bible? Thomas Jefferson did that with the gospels, but traditions about the holiness of the Bible are firmly entrenched. Even so, can’t a committee of distinguished theologians and church officials get together to pray hard for divine inspiration about what actually should be in the holy text? Then they could announce the results and issue God’s Updated Bible.
A few obvious deletions come to mind, e.g., Luke’s Jesus script (14:26) that hatred of family and life are requirements for following him; Matthew’s claim that lots of dead people walked around Jerusalem on Easter morning (Matthew 27:52-53); the list of new Christian skills the resurrected Jesus announced in Mark 16:17-18 (e.g., drinking poison, handling snakes, casting out demons)—after all, we know this last one is in the fake ending of the gospel. So there’s a lot of cleaning up for the God’s Updated Bible committee to do.
The chapters in this book combine to show that it’s exceedingly improbable to the point of refutation for the god of Orthodox Theism to exist. The main problem is an evidential one regarding horrendous suffering. A perfectly good god would be opposed to it, an all-powerful god would be capable of eliminating it, and an all-knowing god would know what to do about it. So the existence of horrendous suffering in our world leads us to think god is either not powerful enough to eliminate it, or does not care enough to eliminate it, or is just not smart enough to know what to do about it.
It also addresses other issues such as the lack of objective evidence for miracles, the absurdity of theistic myths, the relationship of horrendous suffering to differing theologies and religious faiths, the horrendous nature of the biblical god, the horrendous actions done because of religious faith, and how these considerations can personally lead reasonable people away from religion.
The authors discuss this issue philosophically, theologically, apologetically, biblically, religiously, historically, and personally. It’s an excellent model for how philosophers, apologists, and theologians should’ve been discussing this problem decades ago.
Thank you for reading and for your support! We think you'll find a perspective here that you don't usually find elsewhere. Never miss out on future posts by becoming a follower. To make a donation of any size please click here. If you buy anything on Amazon [US] through this link it provides a kickback at no cost to you. Thanks again!
But my call was required by understanding Dr. Peter Boghossian. I first heard of him in a video where he argued "faith based belief processes are unreliable". His target is against faith itself, faith without sufficient evidence, blind faith, which is the only kind of faith that exists. If faith involves trust, there is no reason to trust in faith.
I concluded that it's irrational to reason about religious doctrines that have no objective evidence for them.
Is it ever rational to believe a proposition that requires objective evidence but does not have any objective evidence for it? No! Is it ever rational to believe a religion that requires objective evidence but does not have any objective evidence for it? No! Just consider the gospel claim that a virgin gave birth to the son of a god, and you'll easily see this point. I've written about faith on multiple occasions, especially agreeing with what George H. Smith said about it.
No wonder William Lane Craig doesn't want to debate me on this proposition: "There is sufficient objective evidence for the miracle assertions in the Bible."
Is this claim too boring, too uninteresting for agnostics and atheists to focus on? Why are they focusing on anything else? Why? Curious truth-seekers want to know.
--------------
Thank you for reading and for your support! We think you'll find a perspective here that you don't usually find elsewhere. Never miss out on future posts by becoming a follower. To make a donation of any size please click here. If you buy anything on Amazon [US] through this link it provides a kickback at no cost to you. Thanks again!
Zuckerman is the author of several books, including The Nonreligious, Living the Secular Life, and Society without God. He is a professor of sociology at Pitzer College and the founding chair of the nation’s first secular studies program. He's uniquely qualified to help answer the most important questions believers have when considering to leave their faith. "How can you be moral without God?" "Where do you get your morals from?" My advice will be to get his book, What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life. Below are some high recommendations for it:
“Where did this story come from?” “Where did the author find his information?” “Why did the translator add a footnote?” “Does this story deserve to be in sacred scripture?” Question everything. But maybe this kind of curiosity is too much work, and it undermines the intent of those who promote the Bible as the indispensible foundation for faith. They want you to inhale, to soak in the spiritual meaning that every Bible chapter provides. But when we question everything, it turns out that spiritual meaning is often absent. Or contrived. Religious bureaucrats have tried too hard. A lot of folks have turned away from the faith because there is so much in the Bible that is worthless—or at least trends toward that end of the spectrum.
The evidence against the importance of the Philosophy of Religion is found exactly where we would expect it to be found. Just consider what it would take to be convinced that Christianity is true. The overwhelming answer is not philosophy. It's the requirement for sufficient objective evidence. See for yourselves in four definitive answers given by four different atheist writers. LINK. Our answers revolve around the five most powerful reasons not to believe. Spread the word, and don't forget to mention my book Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End.
Dr. Kip Davis on evidence that demands a verdict concerning Josh McDowell's dishonest conversion story, and what it says about McDowell's apologetics. If you skip to 48:26 you'll hear a brief summary of Davis's points and a powerful conclusion. Then go back and watch the whole damnable thing.
“Bibliolatry is the worship of a book, idolatrous homage to a book, or the deifying of a book. It is a form of idolatry. The sacred texts of some religions disallow icon worship, but over time the texts themselves are treated as sacred the way idols are, and believers may end up effectively worshipping the book.” So says Wikipedia, and adds that, “Historically, Christianity has never endorsed worship of the Bible, reserving worship for God.” I suspect this is just flat-out wrong.
Phil Bair was suggested by James K. Walker to debate me. Walker is a Christian apologist and former Mormon who is President at Watchman Fellowship. I hadn't heard of Phil before. But he seems smart enough. Anyone who has read my anthology on miracles and still disagrees gets my attention.
Phil offered two objections to my defense of the aphorism, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
ONE) Phil Bair: “You have no criteria for identifying what qualifies as extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim.” My response:
Here is Dr. Boghossian's resignation letter. I don't have the time to express my thoughts on the complex issues involved. But this is sad to me. I have appreciated my friend Peter over the years. I greatly appreciate his game changing book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. His emphasis on the inadequacies of faith and the importance of the Socratic Method for seeking belief change are of the upmost importance. This focus alone creates atheists. [See tag below]
He has been a great encourager of what I do. He has invited me into his atheism class via Skype and Zoom to talk with his students. He wrote a fantastic chapter in my anthology Christianity is Not Great and some blurbs for a few of my books, most notably the one on miracles, and my last one on horrendous suffering. He is truly a gadfly just like Socrates. I wish him all the best. If he does nothing else he has changed the world. But I suspect he's not done yet.
In the face of massive human and animal suffering, Christian apologists offer tired clichés:
·God works in mysterious ways
·God has a larger plan that we cannot see or know about
·To preserve our free will, God chooses not to interfere
Yet no hard evidence is offered to back up these speculations to exonerate God. They are mediocre theological responses to crises in the real world.
In fact, Christian theology itself undermines any credible concept of a good, competent God. God is watching carefully, i.e., Christianity is totalitarian monotheism.
Nothing we do escapes his notice: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter;for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:36-37
Moreover, prayer works because God can even read our minds. Christians believe in, love, worship, and sing songs to this God who pays such close attention to every human being.
“I’m calling out a silent rebellion by followers of Jesus—including many of his most devout disciples—against some of his key teachings. One characteristic of these teachings is that if they were uttered by anyone other than Jesus, these same believers would reject them immediately and openly, instead of pretending they must mean something else or are too mysterious to grasp.”
The book’s website includes the Table of Contents and a chart of 292 Jesus quotes that fall into four categories. (1) Preaching about the end times; (2) scary extremism; (3) bad advice and bad theology; (4) the unreal Jesus of John’s gospel.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). This is chapter 6, his last chapter on John the Baptist.
A tribal Near Eastern deity meticulously observes our every thought, word, and deed, or so the biblical texts teach their impressionable reader. The New Testament introduces this deity to converts as an all-loving parent-figure, yet—how weird and creepy can this get—an inaccessible parent who watches his “children” as if through well-stationed peepholes and hidden surveillance cams, never approaching them, speaking to them audibly, hugging them, cooking them a meal, or providing for them in any palpable, direct (read “evident”) way. According to Christian theology, the deity is “present” actively “loving” his creation; yet the cosmos machinates on in cold silence, not admitting the slightest evidence of this alleged fatherly care. Biblical religion instead requires of converts a sheer fideism, a make-believe mental assertion of divine presence and supreme love in the face of the contrary, what Luther called the deus absconditus, the god who hides.
I’ve been in book-promotion mode since my new book was published last week: Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught. One of the things I did was arrange an ad on Facebook. I carefully selected the target audience, e.g., atheist, humanist, freethinker, secular. Facebook gave me an estimate of how many people would be reached, which was pretty impressive. But as it turned out, many people who were not in my selected targets got included. That is, the ad popped up on the timelines of Christians. The reaction was predictable: Hell hath no fury...like an offended Christian.
Look for this Christian documentary in September. It bills itself as examining medical evidence for supernatural miracles, and in engaging skeptics. I was interviewed for it. "Leading atheist and skeptic voices featured in the film include authors Michael Shermer, John Loftus and James Randi who provide their perspectives." Send Proof LINK. This is quite an honor as you might guess. I hope I did my part justice.
With the Deviousness of the Texas's Abortion Law the
Texas GOP theocrats have effectively found a way to gut Roe v. Wade, and it's
disgustingly appalling to me.
I was talking with my
older brother this past weekend who said Trump's nominees to the Supreme Court
were the best actions of this twice impeached one term past President. He
said the nine Justices ought to make their decisions based on the
original intent of the Constitution. This should be the main qualification for
Supreme Court Justices, since they are not part of the legislative branch of
the government.
We disagreed. Let me
explain why originalism is a misleading misinformed bogeyman of conservatives.
The crux of the issue with regard to Christianity and other miracle based religions--especially when it comes to unverifiable and unfalsifiable miracles in the past--is this one. Dr. David Madison has repeatedly challenged believers to come up with a revelation from a god that has been verified for all. So far there are no claimants. The intractable difficultly is that there is no miracle claim in the Bible that has any--and I mean any--objective evidence for it at all! None! At all! Much less sufficient objective evidence. LINK. So I find it strange that anyone--and I mean anyone--takes the miracle claims in the Bible seriously, along with the apologists who defend them despite not having any--and I mean any--objective evidence for them.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). This is part 2 of 2 parts of his fifth chapter on the virgin birth narratives. I would disagree with Beversluis that Jesus was good moral person who offered good moral advice, but he was influenced by Thomas Paine and Jefferson's writings. [On this issue see Dr. David Madison's excellent newly dropped book!]
Increasingly, in recent decades, core Christian beliefs have been subjected to withering criticism and analysis. The problem of suffering keeps getting in the way of accepting that there is a caring, competent God in charge, as I discussed in my article here last week, God’s Credibility Is Running on Empty. But specifics of Christian doctrine also appear, after all, to be untenable: careful study of the Easter stories in gospels demonstrates that they fail to qualify as history. See especially, (1) Jonathan MS Pearce, The Resurrection: A Critical Examination of the Easter Story; (2) Michael J. Alter, The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry; (3) John Loftus’ essay, “The Resurrection of Jesus Never Took Place,” in his anthology, The Case Against Miracles; (4) Richard Carrier’s essay, “Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.”
I suspect that many Christians themselves sense that suffering—especially when it arrives calamitously in their own lives—damages their faith in God’s goodness. But the resurrection stories probably are naively accepted because the faithful have been conditioned to tolerate the high levels of fantasy and magical thinking in the gospels. They may stumble a bit if they read Matthew’s story about a lot of dead people walking out of their tombs on Easter morning, but the acclamation, “He is risen!” is usually not diminished. The apostle Paul seems to have locked in this belief: “…if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)
Pearce used to write for us here at DC. Yesterday his book was doing better on Amazon UK than the book by Dawkins! Check his book out. I wrote a provocative blurb for it:
Hitchens’s Razor, not Bayes’s Theorem, is the proper tool to use against the “absolute baselessness” of the resurrection belief (per David F. Strauss, as quoted in this book). There’s no objective evidence for it. The testimonial evidence is abysmally poor. We should therefore dismiss this superstitious belief for what it is (per Hitchens). However, if you want to take such a belief seriously, read this thoroughly documented terminal case against the resurrection based on the latest research! This is the only book you'll need. Pearce is your expert guide on all the essential issues.
I back up my claim about Hitchen's Razor right here.
This is a guest post by Neil Carter, a former evangelical who now lives as a skeptic in the deep South. It originally was posted here.
----------
I live in the Deep South, and now that the Delta variant is here, I'm back to wearing a mask again wherever I go. School started back for us last week, and masks are mandatory because our district doesn't have any wealthy white people bullying the school board into disregarding the pleas of every hospital and infectious disease expert in the country.
Americans don't appreciate expertise in general, in case you haven't noticed. Even the ones who have achieved mastery in one discipline seem to believe that makes them know as much as the experts in all other fields as well. Where I live, people are quick to believe that a radiologist on FOX News or OANN knows more about viruses than an actual epidemiologist featured on any other network. They can't seem to tell the difference---or worse, they just don't care.
Christianity in America compounds this problem because it already has a strong anti-intellectual bent built into its source material. The Bible is replete with examples of Yahweh instructing his people to do the opposite of what seems logical in order to highlight the miraculousness of their delivery in the end. "Lean not on your own understanding," the Good Book says, as does the framed word art in millions of homes all over the country.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). In this fifth chapter Beversluis writes about the birth of Jesus. This is part 1 of 2 parts. I've highlighted a few gems from him.
CHAPTER FOUR: A PREGNANT VIRGIN:
Matthew and Luke are the only Gospels that record the birth of Jesus (Matthew 2:1-23 and Luke 2:1-19). Mark says nothing about it and starts his Gospel thirty years later with the appearance of John the Baptist on the scene. The Gospel of John is, as always, a case unto itself. It starts with a famous (and Hellenistically flavored) passage about “the Word” (logos) that existed “in the beginning” and goes on to say that this Word was not only with God, but was God (John 1:1). The only allusion to the birth of Jesus is the subsequent remark that this Word “was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:11)—a remark that is so oblique that anybody unfamiliar with Matthew and Luke would never guess John was talking about the same person whose birth they record in their Gospels. John has no interest in the so-called “baby Jesus.” He sees his birth in cosmic metaphysical terms—as the incarnation of a pre-existing celestial Logos who not only was God, but who also the Creator of universe (“All things were made by him; and without him was not made anything that was made” (1:3). This heavy-duty (and stoically-influenced philosophical) terminology is completely foreign to Matthew and Luke who are comparative lowbrows concerned only with various factual details about the story.
In case this hasn’t come to your attention: one of the bullets that struck Pope John Paul II, 13 May 1981, was later inserted into the crown of our Lady of Fátima in Portugal. The pope was sure that Mary had guided the bullet to miss a vital artery, thus sparing his life. This conviction arose from his deep piety, but for those of us who are skeptical of the brain-on-piety, we wonder why Mary hadn’t guided the bullet to miss the pope altogether. Something is wrong with this theology.
Benjamin Blake Speed Watkins put up a twofold discussion starter question on Twitter, which he's very good at doing. He asked, "What are ways that atheists and theists can raise the level of discourse online? How do we get these discussions to look more like philosophy?"
Presumably he's addressing our lower levels of discourse and our lower levels of philosophy. He wanted to know how we can raise them up to better, higher standards. In what follows you'll see an egregious example of the problem he seeks to address. Since he can be a bit provocative at times, I began with something provocative.
In the face of massive human and animal suffering, Christian apologists offer tired clichés:
·God works in mysterious ways
·God has a larger plan that we cannot see or know about
·To preserve our free will, God chooses not to interfere
Yet no hard evidence is offered to back up these speculations to exonerate God. They are mediocre theological responses to crises in the real world.
In fact, Christian theology itself undermines any credible concept of a good, competent God. God is watching carefully, i.e., Christianity is totalitarian monotheism.
Nothing we do escapes his notice: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter;for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:36-37
Moreover, prayer works because God can even read our minds. Christians believe in, love, worship, and sing songs to this God who pays such close attention to every human being.
I'm posthumously posting six chapters from an unfinished book sent to me for comment in 2008 by the late John Beversluis (see Tag below). In this chapter Beversluis makes mincemeat of the characters in the Nativity Narratives as being confused and/or irrational if we take the story as historical truth. I've highlighted a few gems from him.
Today at 1 PM CDT will be a celebration of the life of Dr. Hector Avalos. Please join us. Click to read his influence here at Debunking Christianity. This is the first listing of his writings at DC.
My heart just broke at the news that Dr. Hector Avalos just died. He was a Harvard trained biblical scholar, my friend, and team member here at DC. He died after a battle with cancer. Here is hisobituary He'll be missed greatly! I wept at the news.
My heartfelt sympathies go out to his wife Cynthia and other loved ones and friends. I loved this man. I loved his scholarship. I loved him for his support of my work. I loved his demeanor and resolve. He was the greatest scholar I've ever personally met and known. He should go down in history as the greatest biblical scholar in our generation. You may disagree but that's my assessment. He made a huge difference. He will be greatly missed.
This pic of us together was taken in 2011 in South Bend, Indiana, when Hector was in my area giving a series of talks on religious violence. It was during a very short period of time when I had shaved off my goatee. His wife Cynthia took it.
Here's what I wrote about him in the dedication to my book, How to Defend the Christian Faith, as one of the scholarly friends who greatly influenced my thinking:
I dedicate this book to Hector Avalos who is expertly leading a second wave of atheist biblical scholars following the first wave of new atheists. His writings are multidisciplinary in scope (covering biblical, scientific, ethical and political issues) utilizing a variety of venues (scholarly books, journals, blog posts and newspapers), and cross-cultural in scope (in both English and Spanish). He is a one man demolition machine when it comes to debunking Christianity and its influence in today’s world.
I first gained Hector's attention when I highly recommended his book The End of Biblical Studies. Then he joined the team of writers here at DC. Here are a few of his early posts. He was relentless in countering ignorance when he was maligned. He responded with scholarship, firmness and as a gentleman. I liked how he would almost always ask his opponent a few hard questions to answer at the end.
We had a mutual admiration for each other. He came to my defense several times when I was under attack, for which I was thankful. Imagine having a biblical scholar defending you as a verbal pit bull!
To see how he supported my work, below is the Foreword Hector wrote for my book Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Fails. I share it to let readers know what he thinks is important. He thinks my work is important. If you value his opinion perhaps you should too.
It’s almost entertaining to watch liberal Christians squirm out of the clear messages of the New Testament. John’s gospel declares that Jesus is “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Jesus inherited that role as a human sacrifice after animal sacrifice had come to an end with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. So this idea is firmly anchored in Christian doctrine by John’s gospel—and elsewhere, of course—so Christianity is stuck with it. Yet, in a 20 April 2019 article in the New York Times, Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, said:
“The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own son to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts.”
