I came across an article the other day from Dr. Aaron Menikoff, a Christian pastor, who asks if the Bible is reliable for “the truth” about Jesus Christ. That’s a great question — one I answer negatively — so I was curious about his perspective. His two main arguments are:
- We should believe the Bible because Christ believed the Bible.
- We should believe the Bible because it accurately explains and powerfully changes our lives.
As far as arguments go, I’m afraid I must classify both as terrible.
Christ Believed It
Pullquote: Christ is trustworthy and He trusted God’s Word. So should we.
Regarding the first point, Menikoff says:
Such reasoning may sound circuitous or circular. It is not…. If Jesus Christ is trustworthy, then His words about the authority of the Bible should be trusted as well. Christ is trustworthy and He trusted God’s Word. So should we. Without faith in Christ, you will not believe the Bible is the self-disclosure of God. With faith in Christ, you cannot help but believe the Bible is God’s Word.
So we should believe the Bible is a reliable guide to the truth about Jesus… because Jesus believed the Bible? Sounds like a circular argument to me. And even if it could be shown that Jesus thought the Bible was reliable, what Bible would he be referring to? Certainly the New Testament wasn’t written when Jesus was alive, so he can’t be referring to that, which is the topic of discussion. We’re asking if the New Testament can be trusted about it’s extraordinary claims about Jesus — you can’t answer it by saying the Jesus of the New Testament trusts the Old Testament, therefore we know we can trust the New Testament. Only a believer could swallow that kind of circular reasoning and then have the audacity to repeat it, insisting it’s not circular.
Menikoff may want the logic to not be circular, but wishing doesn’t make it so. You can’t make logical fallacies go away simply by closing your eyes and insisting they don’t exist.
It’s Life Changing!
Pullquote: People of all religions — and even those of us who are not religious — have life-changing experiences. It’s part of being human.
In my experience there is only one argument that remains for why people believe in the Bible and Christianity — the argument from personal experience. This is known as a “testimony” and evangelism classes teach proselytizers to use them because “they are the one thing that cannot be argued against.”
Which is true, in a way. There’s no reason to argue that a person didn’t have an experience. People of all religions — and even those of us who are not religious — have life-changing experiences. It’s part of being human.
But they don’t always interpret their experiences rationally. A person may have stopped drinking a bottle of vodka a night, but that doesn’t mean Jesus had anything to do with it. They might claim that at first, saying “I once was a drunk, until Jesus picked me up out of the miry clay and changed my life. Thank you Jesus!” Yet if you dig a little deeper, it ends up there is a lot more to the story — usually you’ll find they had the help of a substance abuse program, a new community of friends to help keep them accountable, and/or a new-found religious obsession to take the place of their old addiction.
My life was changed by Christianity. It has also been changed by books I’ve read and experiences I’ve had. One of my favorite books is East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which powerfully describes human nature. Does that mean it’s divinely inspired because it gives insight into our common struggles? Of course not — it’s just a good book.
The Bible is a myth — a sweeping narrative that tries to explain the human condition. Some people (including myself at one time), find it speaks powerfully and provides a framework for understanding the world. It’s a superstitious framework, but it’s better than nothing. For people who are wandering aimlessly, have trouble being moral, or are in a time of crisis, it can be a stabilizing influence. And I’m glad it works for them!
Yet people have the same experience with the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Vedas, and others. Does that mean we must take them all to be reliable guides to truth and their holy prophets? If so, then what truth should we believe — they all contradict each other!
These arguments will not convince someone who is searching for truth. His points will get head nods from the choir, but they are not challenging or persuasive to a skeptic. He’s talking in a different epistemological language that unfortunately makes us talk past each other.
Menikoff already knows his arguments fail. That’s why he says, “Without faith in Christ, you will not believe the Bible is the self-disclosure of God.” In other words, you have to already believe the Bible is reliable to know it’s reliable — which doesn’t help any of us who question it’s reliability.
But who needs facts, when you can stick your head in the sands of faith?
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82 Comments
So we should believe the Bible is a reliable guide to the truth about Jesus… because Jesus believed the Bible? Sounds like a circular argument to me.
More to the point, we should believe in the bible because the bible says Jesus believed in the bible. If the question is, how can we know a document is accurate, it is utterly ridiculous to rely on assertions made by the document about itself, whoever is being given the voice.
You beat me to it.
Although we can assume that if jesus actually existed he probably believed in the bible (OT that is) just like most of his ignorant and superstitious contemporaries.
Regarding Jesus’ belief in the bible, I suppose a true believer could argue that Jesus did believe in the new testament because he was god and knew what would be written after he was gone. If you think about it, in the eyes of the believer, the bible was written at the beginning of time since god knew every single thing that would happen in the universe past, present and future.
I don’t think the average christian thinks that way. Because then, God would have know that he created Adam to kill practically all his off-spring but Noah, and that would have been horrible and pointless, as he could have created Noah and his mates at the beginning.
ahh yes horrible and pointless indeed. the response to that is, just because you think it’s horrible and pointless doesn’t mean it is – god is all knowing and it’s just part of his plans. the 10 year old dying of cancer? part of his plans – he works in mysterious ways you know.
Yeah right, that is what a dog also thinks when he gets beaten by his master. My master works in mysterious ways, I probably deserved it.
Of course an atheist dog would think, damned he is drunk again.
That one got me to chucklin’
In my experience, Christians really do believe that The Bible is the oldest authority – that it holds the knowledge about the beginning of time and everything after. This is why so many believe the Earth is a few thousand years old. They also believe that Christianity has been around forever, in some form or another. Judaism was in the Garden of Eden, which is the dawn of the universe, so therefore, The Bible must be that old. No thinking or questioning goes into it.
It is my impression that most Christians don’t or won’t take the trip through Logic Town that non-christians might not be so fearful of – that is, thought experiments that deconstruct their views. Like yours an Noah – or – one I usually like:
God created everything. God created Hell. Those who don’t believe in God, or trip up enough, go to Hell to be tortured unimaginably forever. He created this system of birth and death and a game to be played during it where you simply must believe in something by the end – if you do = paradise, if you don’t = eternal damnation. If God always knew everything about past, present, and future – he knew he was going to do all of this before he did it. Why did he create this game, create the creatures in it, knowing which creatures would be tortured in his dungeon? Why create such a wicked and twisted game?
“He is all knowing.” So an all knowing being decides to create the Absolute torture – there is nothing that exists worse than Hell, and he created it knowing his children – who he loves with a love that cannot be surpassed – will suffer at his hands. (We may hear objections that it is not God hurting them, however that argument would go)
If I build a fire and throw a kitten in it – I do the torturing, not the fire. If I have the power to make that kitten stay alive and the fire to burn forever and keep her in there – I am even more responsible than in the prior scenario. I am not merciful.
Why did he create this game, create the creatures in it, knowing which creatures would be tortured in his dungeon? Why create such a wicked and twisted game?
Heaven must be a F****ing boring place with nothing to do but sit all day and listen to evangelicals singing your praise.
I guess that according to religious people of all faiths (x-tian don’t hold the monopoly on that kind of stupidity) the world is just a really big D&D board for god to pass the time.
Ah, but also they will delight in observing the tormented in Hell. 100% more things to pleasantly engage the mind.
I like that thought experiment. Our lives are pitifully short and yet if we are born into a culture that has no idea about Jesus we’re doomed to suffer for ETERNITY! Yes ETERNITY – after living out say 30 years or so in a hut somewhere worshiping your cultures god. Seems a tad unfair – suffering for something you didn’t even know was wrong. Another thought experiment I like is – Does anything happen outside of god’s will? If the answer to this is no, then every murder or cruel unfair suffering of human beings is god’s will. If the answer if yes then god is not omnipotent. In conjuction with this is Would god create anything in vain? If the answer to this is no, then why did he create the billions upon billions of other galaxies? This one stumps a lot of Christians. It’s comfy to think we’re the sole reason for the universe.
One thing that always confused me with this go does temporal mechanics. Since god can do anything so he must be able to time travel back in time and change his mistakes he made before they will occur. But somehow the god in the bible has no knowledge of time travel.
>Since god can do anything so he must be able to time travel back in time and change his mistakes<
What a great comment. Perhaps the Christian god is not quite perfect, and has been going back and forth – endlessly – trying, but always failing, to make things right.
I’m not sure that #1 is coherent enough to be circular. I usually hear a variant that goes like this:
1. We know from the ministry of Jesus that God is loving and just.
2. A just and loving God would not leave us with a flawed instrument to guide our lives.
3. Therefore, the Gospels must be reliable and accurate.
This variant has the appeal of being more “coherent” as you said, although it also makes some unprovable assertions at any rate.
I’ve also heard a lot of what I’m going to call “2.a”, per your propostional layout:
2.a. We know that the Bible has been preserved via multiple translations and multiple persecutions that attempted to prevent the Bible from being placed in the hands of the common man and the common vernacular (e.g. Wycliffe, Tyndale, Luther, Knox, etc.). These translations are consistent with the earliest known fragments and sources and evidence the Holy Spirit maintaining God’s Word for future generations.
Ehhhh, maybe. Still requires some large assumptions.
Hahahahha. People really use this? Because if I were to say:
1. We know from the ministry of Jesus that God is loving and just.
2. A just and loving God would not send his creation to eternal tortue in hell.
3. Therefore, hell must not exist.
Those same people would say we can’t judge God or what God thinks is loving and just.
Yet obviously they do it ALL THE TIME.
Well, some Christians do make just that argument against the existence of Hell.
“Well, some Christians do make just that argument against the existence of Hell.”
Obviously someone making that argument is no Christian. ;-)
More to the point believing in the bible because Jesus believed in it is like saying believe in the Torah because Noah believed in it. There is absolutely nothing beyond the mythology that proves either lived…
“One of my favorite books is East of Eden by John Steinbeck, which powerfully describes human nature. Does that mean it’s divinely inspired because it gives insight into our common struggles? Of course not — it’s just a good book.”
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, is a re-working of the Book of Genesis, and a story of good and evil. (The movie, with James Dean, was a waste of celluloid.)
Except for the author’s omnipotent voice, the book explores its characters, and explores the character of what it means to be human, without recourse to the supernatural. And in that sense, the made-up story of the Hamiltons and Trasks is more true than the story of Cain and Able.
You ask “Is the Bible Reliable for Truth about Jesus Christ?”, yet you limit your question to only be responded to through the New Testament. If one holds the Old Testament to be true and accurate (which I realize is not your position), then the claims of Christ begin there. There are hundreds of prophecies that he had to fulfill, most that He would have had no control over. His city of origin (bethlehem), His family of origin (line of David), His name, the response of current day leaders to kill children at mention of His arrival, His early life in Egypt… The story of Christ started literally thousands of years before His birth, and these documents were written hundreds and thousands of years before His arrival.
On top of this, so many other prophecies written hundreds of years before He lived were fulfilled through his life, and not one was missed. How He would live, how others would respond to Him, what He would look like, how He would suffer, how He would die… There is no prophecy that is recorded about the coming Messiah in the Old Testament that was not fulfilled – with the exception of those that alert us to His final coming. Do you believe that He busied Himself with the claims of the Old Testament only to keep Himself in line with prophecies that really had nothing to do with Him? If so, He was an extraodinary man. He convinced people to talk about healings (prophesied in the OT) that He never did – because the claims of his healing go well beyond the records of the Bible. He convinced His followers to spread a story about Him (prophesied in the OT) that was not true – even to the point of their own demise – without one dissenter. He orchestrated His own execution by crucifixion (prophesied in the OT) – and the Romans obliged. He even worked it out so that one of His friends would betray Him (prophesied in the OT) – again, this is recorded in places other than the Bible. He was an extraordinary man.
If a book was written 50 years ago detailing my life and death (I am presently 41), I would be amazed, but if a book was written 500 years ago about my life and death, especially if it included details, I would be hesitant to call it a fairy tale or a myth.
Just a thought.
Ken-
Are you familiar with the wealth of criticisms leveled at this argument? Most of these OT prophesies are co-opted by the NT writers but were clearly contextually about something else. Of the 10 or so that might go beyond this there are still very strong arguments against your position. For instance, what evidence do you have that Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem?
Sorry for the short and not so precise response but I’m in a hurry and on my way out the door.
Please provide this other source at it is amazing news if true.
Can you say ’self-fulfilling prophecy’? The writers of the books that ended up in the Christian testament were very aware of the prophecies in the Hebrew testament and easily included them in their stories about Jesus. If if could be shown (and it can’t) that Mark, et al, knew nothing of the HT prophecies, we would have to treat Jesus’s fulfillment of those prophecies as, well, miracles. But…
“If a book was written 50 years ago detailing my life and death (I am presently 41), I would be amazed, but if a book was written 500 years ago about my life and death, especially if it included details, I would be hesitant to call it a fairy tale or a myth.”
Ken – presumably you are a real person. There is no evidence Jesus existed.
It would be just as easy to write a book showing how foolish the OT was – and is. Hey, there ARE books that do just that. How is it you believe a fairy tale book about an imaginary character – Jesus – but don’t believe the many books debunking the obvious nonsense in the OT?
You’re blind to reality because you start with an assumption that Jesus was real, and are therefore willing to believe any amount of nonsense in order to back up your delusion.
Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if many could fit into the many different prophecies of the bible. You say you would be amazed at someone being able to write about your life before you were even born. I would only be surprised if it accounted for every single detail even those that we all keep hidden from others. A good example of how words can be twisted check out Nostradamus and all the ways things have been said of each of his predictions have been interpreted.
I understand you believe that the NT proves that Jesus fulfilled those predictions of the OT. Now it is known that most of the NT gospels were written well after his supposed death. It is to easy to alter facts when you know that people from the actual time aren’t there to counter that they are false. A good example of this is how writers have alter the personal history of some of the founding fathers to make them into something they weren,t.
Unfortunately, Mr Ivins, a great many of those prophecies that Jesus is said to have fulfilled, are questionable. The quotations of OT prophecy found in the gospels and the rest of the NT, which the evangelists said Jesus fulfilled, actually did not apply to him. A few:
Matthew cites Hos 11:1, saying that it’s a prophecy pointing to Jesus being taken to Egypt to avoid Herod’s slaughter of newborns. But that passage was not prophecy! It was, instead, an allusion to the past (i.e. the Exodus).
Matthew also makes an even bigger mistake when he says the OT predicted Jesus would be called “a Nazarene” … but not only does the OT not contain this word, it was not even a known word in the time when OT books were written; it comes from Aramaic, not Hebrew. (In fact, “Nazarene” had no meaning even during Jesus’ supposed lifetime … it was never used, until the Nazarene movement came into existence in the late 1st century, around the time of the Roman-Jewish War and immediately thereafter.)
Note, this and other facts about the gospels are why they are dated to the late 1st century rather than closer to Jesus’ lifetime. They contain words and phrases, such as “Nazarene,” that would have been gibberish during the time he was supposed to have lived. Given the decades-long lapse between Jesus’ supposed life and the evangelists’ writing, it’s relatively easy for them to have engineered the appearance of fulfilling prophecy. That they did so in rather poor or even erroneous fashion, tells us a great deal. It may not be something you want to acknowledge, but it is there nonetheless.
The aforementioned are just two of MANY problematic “fulfillments of prophecy” which Christians believe are manifest in the NT as reflected from the OT. When you actually backtrack them, however, you find more often than not, that the quotation does not exist (e.g. Matthew and the “Nazarene” thing) or that the “prophecy” is not a prediction at all (e.g. the sojourn in Egypt).
Yeah right so the OT predicted the coming if a Christ. They only forgot to mention when exactly he would be there. So most probably many people have taken this Christ role and failed, one called Jezus was lucky to get his role far enough so people would think he was the real one.
Look predicting is simple.
• I predict a big earthquake will come that will shake the Earth.
• I predict that some person will come and start a big war.
• I predict that some person will become insanely rich overnight.
• I predict that a false prophet will come and lead people to their death.
I predict the next thread will involve a deity-eating feline!
lol
That was a good example!
Look, if my name was jezus and I read the OT, then I would find it really cool to try to live and fulfill the prophesies described in the OT. At some point in time I would start to actually believe that I am the real Christ. Look at all the sects round you; many people actually start to believe that they are god.
It is all about marketting.
I am not sure that Jesus found the Bible inerrently true. He may have relied on it as having some truth but there is zero evidence he believed it held absolute truth. He worked on the sabbath for one example. He overturned the eye for an eye scripture for another. The way Jesus used the Bible was not the way fundamentalists Christians use it today.
One of the things that ended my belief in Christianity was the fact that Jesus spoke of the flood as though it were an actual event.
“One of the things that ended my belief in Christianity was the fact that Jesus spoke of the flood as though it were an actual event.”
I also found it odd that he made that fig tree wither and die because it had no fruit on it. Being god couldn’t he just conjure up some fruit? I struck me as quite petty and unbecoming of the creator of the universe.
For me it was, “If he can’t even be relied on to know that the flood is pre-babylonian mythology, why should I listen to anything else he is claiming to know?”
“The way Jesus used the Bible was not the way fundamentalists Christians use it today.”
I think you meant old testament instead of bible. The bible hadn’t even been assembled in the life of Jesus, as far as I know. The new testament certainly didn’t exist. He probably relied on old testament literature passed down verbally, but I’m just guessing about that. Maybe someone a little better versed in biblical history could expound on that for us.
There was a canon, of sorts, of Jewish scripture in Jesus’ time. Actually it was layered. Some books were “canon” to all Jews, others by certain groups and in different arrangements. Keep in mind that I’m really breezing over this. A blog comment is really not sufficient to explain this.
First, the Torah, the first five books of the OT, were considered scripture, and were spoken of as a body under this name. It’s safe to say all Jews viewed the Torah as canon.
Second, there was a collection known as the Neviim or “the prophets.” These are Joshua, Judges, the Samuels, the Kings, and all the rest of the books which are named for prophets. While different sects viewed some of these in various ways, it’s safe to say that the books I named, as well as those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were canon, and even those “prophets” which were not considered wholly canon, were still revered by most Jews.
Third come the Ketuvim or “writings,” but those books were not accepted as a package by all the Jewish sects. Nevertheless those known as the “poetic” books (Psalms, Proverbs, Job) were considered canon by most Jews.
Now, by the 1st century when Jesus lived, most Jews were not literate in Hebrew; they knew the Jewish scriptures in translation … either in Greek, the Septuagint, or in Aramaic, the Targumim. A number of Septuagint and Targumim collections were trafficked, but the overall effect of this was to stabilize what most Jews viewed as “canon” — in a manner similar to Jerome’s translation of the Vulgate having stabilized the Christian canon later on. Particular collections ended up being more common than others.
So by Jesus’ time, there was something of a “canon,” (actually 3 of them) which as it turned out are pretty close to what is now accepted. But which canon you followed, depended on your native language (Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew if you were one of the few who knew it). It was only later in the 1st century, at the Council of Jamnia, that rabbis hammered out once and for all what was “canon.”
And one of the decisions they made was to dispense with the varied translations of the Septuagint and Targumim, and keep only the Hebrew as “canon.” Since then, Jewish scripture has been incredibly stable … much more stable than the Christian canon, which still has a lot of variation.
One final consideration to be recalled is that Judaism was not iconic or unified in Jesus’ time. Josephus famously referred to three main sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes) but there were more than that. Groups such as the Therepeutae (made famous by Philo of Alexandria) cannot be counted out, nor can one safely assume that later sects, such as the Nazarenes, did not have precedents in Jesus’ day. So while I can point to some books that all of the many Jewish sects accepted as “canon,” there was no universal “canon” (not even Jamnia accomplished that since it decisions applied only to rabbinic Judaism and not the other sects).
As for the Christian canon, it’d be best if I just refer you to this page and left it at that. I’ve already bored people to tears.
yes in Jesus’ time there was a canon to which the JEWS subscribed. What is telling is when Jesus himself quotes from a Greek mistranslation of that canon! It is the most striking example of the fallacy of the Jesus story.
I’ve already bored people to tears.
Not at all. I knew (and still know) very little about the pre-Christian period of textual adoption and canonization. This was very interesting; provided some place to start. :)
@Ken well if there was any evidence that “Jesus” was actually born and lived on this earth then you might have something there…but you don’t.
Before any discussion about your topic, you should first address the FACT that the biblical character Jesus NEVER HISTORICALLY EXISTED! Do your research! Nowhere in history is any such person mentioned. Anywhere at anytime.
While I tend to believe that you are correct, one cannot disprove a factual assertion by pointing to a lack of confirming evidence.
It is, unfortunately, not possible to “prove” that no Jesus ever existed. Really, the truth about whether or not there was a Jesus, or if there was, what he truly said and did, probably will never be discovered.
Now, what we need is a De Lorean and some plutonium for the flux capacitor…
Do you think we could speak with Jesus and fix the Bible a little bit? I’m thinking about thinks like slavery, genocide or patriarchy…
In fact, early Greek, Roman and Jewish sources make mention of Jesus. These include Tacitus (Annals), Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), Pliny the Younger (Epistles) and Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). As well, there is a letter from a Syrian, Mara Bar-Serapion, to his son. In it, he compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras and Jesus.
Please do your homewoek before you make such rash assertions
Those sources are from the late 1st and 2nd century. It is false that “nowhere in history is any such person mentioned”, but it is true that there is no mention (of any kind, historical or otherwise) of Jesus during his alleged lifetime or about a hundred years afterward.
“In fact, early Greek, Roman and Jewish sources make mention of Jesus”
If i remember correctly they make mention of Crestus or Christ which is a label meaning the anointed one and could have applied to anyone.
Sorry
“Homework”
The Tacitus and Pliny mentions are very questionable, with significant evidence that they are later additions to the text.
The most reliable mentions don’t ascribe any mystical powers to him, or describe him as much more than an itinerant rabbi preaching an apocalyptic message at about the same time that a hundred other itinerant rabbis were wandering around preaching apocalypse. The Roman occupation of Jerusalem was a fertile breeding ground for this sort of message. The fact that the name Yeshua, and incredibly common name in Judea is attached to one or more of those rabbis is pretty unremarkable.
Honestly? Your list of mentions is pretty thin sauce. There are any number of minor Roman functionaries and legionaries from the same time period that we know much much more about. Odd, considering that this mas supposedly raised the dead, and the world went dark when he died that no one ever mentions either thing.
Doing the homework on this issue is not good for building faith.
Also, what Rodney said.
FWIW using the name “Yeshua” had some symbolic importance for the movement, in addition to it having been a common name. This name is identical to that of Moses’ successor (usually called in English “Joshua” — but despite this difference in translation, they were originally the same name). Calling the new sage “Yeshua,” then, indicated the end of “the Mosaic age” and the start of a new era, “the Yeshuan age” I guess one could call it.
There’s really no way to wrap your mind around such terrible logic. Xians (not xtians because that would be christtians) aren’t really thinking when they say this stuff. In their own circles, you can say anything you want without being challenged. How useful is logic in such a scenario?
I love the argument against the appeal to emotion ‘It changed my life for the better, it can change yours too, therefore it’s true’. For an 18 year old who’d just gone through my first major depressive episode having recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I guess you could say I was perfectly primed for my life to ‘change for the better’. Since leaving the church I realise that much of the great change in my life came through the social aspects of the church (the sense of community in a church really can be something special), and can be traced easily to rational explanations that have nothing to do with ‘being saved’ or ‘having divine revelation of God’s Word as through the Holy Spirit’.
Now when I look back I recognise just how many of those life-changing moments I’ve had over the years, many from books, fiction and non-fiction alike. I remember feeling completely changed at 14 or 15 when I first read Neal Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God – a couple of years later the same thing happened when I was reading the Lord of The Rings. Again recently when reading the last installment of the Harry Potter series. It’s not so much what the books had to offer as to what I was able to see in them all. Life changed because that’s what happens, all the time.
Please excuse my Christian ignorance, but many of you seem to deny the existence of a historical Jesus. Where do you get evidence for this (or what are the major claims)? I would really like to know. Thanks!
You first … I’d be intrested in your evidence for a historical Jesus and the major claims you would make for him?
There is no evidence of his existence outside your own mythology. Using the bible to say Jesus existed is like using the flood story to prove Noah existed. Please come back with a better argument for his existence…
ali -
The argument is that Jesus was a mythical character, along the lines of Hercules or Robin Hood. There are a number of lines of argument, but it mostly comes down to arguments that the stories in the gospel are literary and theological rather than historical. The folks who promote this theory are usually called ‘mythicists.’
For a quick summary, you can read Robert M. Price’s essay Christ a Fiction. Another good starter guide is Richard Carrier’s interview on “Faith and Freethought Radio” entitled How Not to Argue a Mythicist Position.
There is still another option: Jesus was real but his tales on the bible weren’t. His life was “improved” to justify his deification
If he was real the romans took no notice and wrote nothing down, which would be odd because they recorded the most petty of crap in triplicate and then had it translated for good measure.
If he existed, he was a pretty ordinary man. He only could convince a bunch of followers, unlike Mohammad :-)
You wouldn’t expect references about every man, even in the roman empire, would you?
In fact, if he existed and was not a god or if he didn’t existed at all, I don’t think that makes any difference.
This is very possible. The problem is that any evidence that would point to such a person specifically, has been trampled by Christianity since that time. Barring some sort of major discovery, we will never know anything certain about a Jesus who may have lived but was not the Jesus of the gospels.
There is far more evidence that Santa Clause exists since many people have seen him even spoken to him than jezus. Many different books all talk about santa clause whil only one book talks about jezus.
Sometimes I wish I had an example that wasn’t so insulting to believers, but Santa Claus is the quintessential analogy for unreasonable faith.
Jesus believed it, so we should believe it? Seriously?
This is my favorite verse to prove how Jesus believed the Old Testament:
Remember Christians … Jesus believed you should kill any child that curses his father or mother. Jesus believed it, so you should believe it too.
Well…
They’re welcome to try.
I thought the oldest written records were from Sumeria and are receipts. Life changing book “Republic” by Plato. Great book. Way older than the bible written by a real guy we have empirical proof of. Maybe some Aristotle of whom we only have pieces. The biggest life change I ever had was writing about Epicurius and coming to understand what he was really about. He was not interested in just going out and having a good time, but about enjoying your life. After reading his philosophy, I really did make a change. If you use Christian reasoning, he must be God not a Greek man with a good idea. I do recommend just reading philosophy to find how others have believed. Opens the mind greatly. Evangelicals would say I have been taking over by the devil. Oh well. I like to know things and have an open mind.
I consider myself something of an Epicurean too. In the most positive sense of the word.
“Is the Bible Reliable for Truth about Jesus Christ?”
No.
How about a really tough question, like…what is Dark Energy? Or…how many licks DOES it actually take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? http://www.tootsie.com/comp_faq.php
The circularity of the argument is so bloody obvious, prima facie blatant that it must have taken some effort to describe it. (”describe how you walk” “dunno, just do”) I mean of *course* TInkerbell is real; if you don’t believe it, Peter Pan will vouch for her!
And I think people with genuine human intuitive experiences or epiphanies (”gotta get outta this gutter”) have plenty of xians around just shitting their britches to tell them what’s really causing their experience.
Well crowed!
Francesc:
“There is still another option: Jesus was real but his tales on the bible weren’t. His life was “improved” to justify his deification”
I think this is a really lame cop-out. Atheists should just decide that Jesus was totally fictional and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter.
So, am I to say that the main basis for atheism is the lack of historical evidence? If (and a big IF) the veracity of the Scriptures describing Jesus existence was proven, would atheism be falsified?
“Atheists should just decide that Jesus was totally fictional and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter.”
Fortunately, no one cares about your opinion on the topic.
“So, am I to say that the main basis for atheism is the lack of historical evidence? If (and a big IF) the veracity of the Scriptures describing Jesus existence was proven, would atheism be falsified?”
Joseph Smith was a real person. Does that make Mormonism true?
The historicity of an itinerant apocalyptic rabbi named Yeshua says absolutely nothing about the existence of a god/gods.
“I think this is a really lame cop-out. Atheists should just decide that Jesus was totally fictional and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter”
Yep, I think christians should just decide that slavery and child abuse is inmoral and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter. Atheism is not even a philosophy, it is just the lack of religious beliefs; we are not a “we”. Different opinions on some matters are natural.
And by the way, how could you “decide” that? I don’t know wether Jesus existed or not. I don’t have enough evidence of his existence, but there is a book who state he existed; and we know that a few people “close” to that moment believed he existed. I think doubt then is justified.
But don’t worry, as opinions, doubt is also natural. I don’t need to KNOW anything by divine revelation, I just can live without being certain.
Lastly, I’m not sure about the existence of an historical jesus, but I’m pretty sure that, if (and that’s a big IF) he existed, he wasn’t the son of God
Atheism would be falsified by the proven existence of god – in any of its million incarnations.
And even if someone proved, beyond doubt, that a god exists – doesn’t mean I’d worship it.
Ali:
Re “Atheists should just decide that Jesus was totally fictional and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter.”
Why is that? Who are you to decide that atheists are ONLY permitted to think that? This is a transparent attempt to invoke the fallacy of the false dilemma. Reality is that there are MANY possibilities available, not just two (i.e. that Jesus existed and was exactly as portrayed in the gospels, or that there was no such person at all). There is, for example, the possibility that there was someone named Jesus who maybe had a few followers and who died young; his followers embellished the truth of his life and said he’d been killed, ascended, and would return, in order to explain his absence. There might also have been a Jesus, about whom different stories were told, not all of them accurate and some embellished; but the groups later got together, collected all of the stories into one, and thus telescoped the embellishment. There might also have been a group of people who had certain ideas, and in order to package them conveniently and lend them some credence, they followed an old Hellenic tradition of attributing those ideas to a single charismatic teacher and came up with a life for him to explain how he taught it all.
I could go on with more proposed scenarios, but doing so is unnecessary. I’ve already shown that your forced choice between only two options, is invalid.
Re “So, am I to say that the main basis for atheism is the lack of historical evidence?”
Atheists are atheists because they don’t see any evidence for God’s existence … at all … and that refers not merely to the historicity of Jesus specifically, but to every other possible deity as well. Being an atheist means believing in NO gods, not merely not believing in the Christian God.
Atheists should just decide that Jesus was totally fictional and leave it at that; rather than having divided views on the matter.
Why? Atheism is simply the lack of a belief in a deity. Beyond that, it’s got nothin. We’ve got no creed, no gospel, no church, no central organization, nothin. It’s not a life philosophy or a worldview or a set of traditions. So there’s really no need for people to share the same views on every matter.
Plus, as Carrier pointed out, the mythicist arguments can be really arcane. You really have to know something about Hellenistic Jewish mysticism, mystery cults and ancient historiography to really get deep into the debate. Mythicism itself is really an extension of 150 years or so of Higher Criticism, so it also helps to know something about those methods. The short of it is that it’s hard to be too critical of folks who don’t accept the theory.
So, am I to say that the main basis for atheism is the lack of historical evidence?
Well, no. Firstly, as Ty pointed out, the fact that other religions may have accurate historical records do not make them true. If Muhammad was real, that doesn’t necessairly make Islam true. (and yes, there are mythicists who say that Muhammad is fictional. I don’t know their arguments, though.)
And there are plenty of Christian scholars who go at least half-way towards mythicism and still remain Christians. I’ve heard theologians and Christian historians who argue that the gospels are literary and theological works that are not reliable as history.
And of course, the mythicist argument is that the first Christians didn’t believe in a historical Jesus. They believed in a divine or semi-divine figure who never came to earth, and the stories of his baptism and crucifixion are extensive parables teaching the theology of the movement. So they believed that the gospels were fiction – since they wrote them that way – and still believed in a divine Jesus who remained in heaven.
I’m hard pressed to think of a single “main basis” for atheism, but I think a simple “lack of evidence for the existence of a deity” would probably be safest.
Hey vorjack, thanks for asking my question simply and clearly. It was a helpful response.
This may not be a related, but could I ask something else? If we look at statistics, it seems that most of the world still believes in the major religions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc — only a\small percentage (maybe abt 8%?) have declared themselves atheist. Of course, this is not a case AGAINST atheism, because statistics don’t prove anything. But what I want to ask is this: if atheism is true, then why isn’t it more obvious to the populations of the world? What is it that keeps us back from this simple truth that god does not exist? Is it a lack of intelligence?
It is often the lack of applied intelligence, but more often than not it is kept alive buy tradition, indoctrination, fear, ostracization, economics, politics, and good old ignorance.
Also, culture (tradition implies this a bit but not completely).
Quite a few imagined fairy tales, myths, and superstitions that some might not consider religious are still kept alive. Breaking mirrors, umbrella inside, Santa, Bigfoot, electoral college, profit based health care. Some of these belief systems are not logical, not rational, not proven, not scientific – but they have been around so long we hold to them simply because we are used to them.
I also forgot to add religion is a social institution. Go to any church ask the pastor what he preaches or more importantly what the particular tenets of his denomination are and then go and ask regular attendees if they believe the same thing and as often as not they won’t. They attend because friends or family do and they want to be part of the gang or not upset wife/in-laws. I can cite many times my friends (as teenagers) showed up at one church or another so a girl’s parents would let her date them. I, as a well known teenage agnostic, even officially belonged to the the local parish so I could remain a member of the softball team. As I was a kick ass short stop and had no love for the obnoxious baptist team was accepted as a nominal catholic.
“if atheism is true, then why isn’t it more obvious to the populations of the world? What is it that keeps us back from this simple truth that god does not exist? Is it a lack of intelligence?”
I shouldn’t answer for vorjack, and I’m not, this is my thought: humans are brainwashed from infancy – by their parents, by culture – to believe the otherwise incredible. I’m not sure intelligence has anything to do with it. I’m guessing those less well educated are more likely to believe something obviously absurd than those who have a broader understanding of how the world operates.
Just look at the cases of those who have suffered from the Stockholm Syndrome. For example, there is the case of the young woman kidnapped in California 18 years ago, at age 11 – after a time, she came under the spell of the monster who kidnapped her.
Patty joined her new Symbionese Liberation Army comrades after she was locked in a closet and raped repeatedly over the course of a few weeks.
We coe into the world as infants with a blank slate, which makes it easy for our parents and for our culture to instill a belief system in us, one that even the truth can’t easily rip away.
What is it that keeps us back from this simple truth that god does not exist? Is it a lack of intelligence?
That’s a good question. The problem isn’t that I don’t have an answer. The problem is that I have too many answers, and I’m not sure which ones are useful or meaningful.
Obviously, I think part of the answer lies in what other comments have said: the greatest determinate of what faith you accept is what faith your family and your society accept – and I don’t think most believers would argue with that. We’re social animals, and we’re socialized by the people in our communities. This establishes our preconceptions, and our preconceptions control what makes sense to us.
So the religion you were brought up with just makes more sense to you. To break away from that frequently requires a “de-conversion” experience that’s often just as profound as the conversion experience of born-again Christians. Read lukeprog’s story over at Common Sense Atheism for a very well written example.
So the fact that there aren’t many atheists could simply be because there aren’t many atheists. We’re not breeding fast enough and raising kids in non-religious communities. In light of that, the fact that we’re growing at all is pretty impressive.
But I think there’s something more than that. I tend to think that religion fulfills a number of cravings in the human animal.
I talk with people, and I find that many of them crave some feeling of overarching purpose to their life. Religion gives them a role in the universal narrative of God’s creation. Others need to feel that there’s some guiding force to the apparent randomness in life. Everything must happen for a reason. Some folks just don’t seem to feel comfortable without an authority figure overhead, giving their actions a stamp of approval.
Religions seem to fill some of those cravings. But different people have different cravings, which explains the different flavors within a religion – compare Rob Bell’s “emergent Church” to neo-orthodoxy. Atheists frequently seem to be people for whom these cravings are weaker, or who just have different sorts of cravings altogether. We’re therefore less attached to religion, and when doubts creep in – as they do for everybody – they meet less resistance.
So I think part of the answer may be that the conditions aren’t right for most of the world’s population to lack those cravings. I think ti’s clear that affluence plays a part of it; the world’s most naturally atheistic countries (rather than those countries where atheism is imposed) are usually the most affluent countries: Denmark and Sweden are good examples. But most of the world remains dirt poor.