 
Thou Shalt Not Believe:

A Refutation of the Basic Premises, Core Teachings, and Common Arguments in Defense of Christianity

John Ubhal
Thou Shalt Not Believe: A Refutation of the Basic Premises, Core Teachings, and Common Arguments in Defense of Christianity by John Ubhal

Published by Ecaiva Books

© Copyright 2016 Ecaiva Books. Printed and bound in the United States of America. All Rights Reserved. Excerpts from this book may be quoted without written permission from the publisher as long as they are properly sourced and accredited.

Any brand names mentioned in this book are registered trademarks and the property of their owners. The author and publishing company make no claims to them.

Publishers Cataloging In Publication Data Available Upon Request

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1539057727
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

[CHAPTER 1: THE BASIC PREMISES AND   
CORE TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY](Thou_split4.xhtml#ugr3Xk8aCm2JgRsk5Hf3hUB)

[CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND   
OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY](Thou_split5.xhtml#uxjrTpyRZlIwvVsI5PGOtVE)

CHAPTER 3: BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS

[CHAPTER 4: WHETHER THE BIBLE   
IS REVEALED OR INSPIRED](Thou_split7.xhtml#uZjBmE2QGpqjjzCCBKnNNq7)

CHAPTER 5: THE ORIGINS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

CHAPTER 6: THE FALLIBILITY OF THE BIBLE

CHAPTER 7: GOD'S CRUELTY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

[CHAPTER 8: GOD'S INFINITE CRUELTY   
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT](Thou_split11.xhtml#uoAvhixc8lwpS7iRTx87UxG)

[CHAPTER 9: PROPHECIES THAT JESUS   
ALLEGEDLY FULFILLED](Thou_split12.xhtml#uwoVqKvOFDIQPdxscotRck8)

CHAPTER 10: FAILED PROPHECIES

[CHAPTER 11: EMPIRICAL ARGUMENTS   
AGAINST THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD](Thou_split14.xhtml#uEX8ccw2LNulbODEP2S5tb6)

[CHAPTER 12: SOME BACKGROUND   
ON JESUS AND THE GOSPELS](Thou_split15.xhtml#uJAjXJX3iQzRg8zlp4fRgO5)

[CHAPTER 13: THE BIRTH OF JESUS ACCORDING   
TO THE NEW TESTAMENT](Thou_split16.xhtml#uvLhAVX4p9Tbz7Yf8PcktAF)

[CHAPTER 14: WHETHER JESUS WAS   
A HISTORICAL PERSON](Thou_split17.xhtml#uBTmTsGjhSjRf4o8stniMkF)

CHAPTER 15: MIRACLES

CHAPTER 16: THE SHROUD OF TURIN

CHAPTER 17: THE TRILEMMA

CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN MORALITY

[CHAPTER 19: SOME BLATANT EXAMPLES   
OF CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY](Thou_split22.xhtml#uUKrMZeIPQA72yh5eikZjlA)

CHAPTER 20: VIOLENCE, DISCRIMINATION, EXCLUSIVISM, POLITICAL INTOLERANCE, AND THE BIBLE

CHAPTER 21: THE ARGUMENT FROM MARTYRDOM

CHAPTER 22: FAITH AS AN ARGUMENT

CHAPTER 23: NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER 24: CHRISTIANITY, SCIENCE, AND MODERNITY

[CHAPTER 25: THE CLAIM THAT   
CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION](Thou_split28.xhtml#uPNtRO7Wq7jofPMkfgQIidG)

CHAPTER 26: THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

[CHAPTER 27: INTELLIGENT DESIGN   
AND THE "PRIME MOVER"](Thou_split30.xhtml#uAhBYgJa2KaaJK2GNoXFLC5)

CHAPTER 28: THE MORAL ARGUMENT

CHAPTER 29: PASCAL'S WAGER

CONCLUSION

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF CHRISTIANITY
INTRODUCTION

My Reasons for Writing this Book

I was motivated to write this book as a result of my belief not only that the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are false, but that simply believing in these premises and core teachings can cause great psychological harm. I myself experienced severe mental anguish as a direct result of my Christian faith while I was a believer, as have many Christians I have known. However, while I still feel the effects of the mental and emotional damage Christianity caused me, I do not reject the claims of Christianity because of my own negative experiences. My negative experiences do not prove that the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are not true. Only reason, empirical evidence, and a refutation of the arguments proffered by those who believe in these key ideas are capable of demonstrating their untruth.

Still, I have included an account of my personal experience with Christianity in order to provide some context for the arguments that follow. That account thoroughly explains my motivations for writing this book. Those who are interested in my personal story can begin there rather than with the arguments if they wish. It is at the end of the book.

The Structure of the Book

This book features arguments against the claims of the Bible, the basic doctrines of Christianity developed after the codification of the Bible, apologetic defenses of Christianity in the contemporary Western world, general philosophical arguments in favor of theism, and some ideas from other traditions that are relevant to my critique of Christianity.

My arguments against Christianity are against those varieties of Christianity that attempt to interpret the Bible literally, or at least make a good faith effort to base their beliefs on the intentions of its authors. Latitudinarian interpretations of the Bible only interest me where they are useful for indicating what the Bible does not teach. The reason for this is that such interpretations invariably distort the Bible's teachings, usually in order to make them compatible with the way self-identifying Christians lead their lives in the present. (I make no judgment as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.) It is worth noting that latitudinarian interpretations of the Bible are not limited to theological liberals. Even theologically conservative Christians, including most Evangelicals and many self-proclaimed literalists and restorationists, interpret some passages in the Bible in a way that justifies their present way of living and thinking over and against the clear intentions of the writers and speakers of the Bible. In other words, even theologically conservative Christians ignore or distort biblical teachings for their own ends on a regular basis.

For my part, I have endeavored to represent the teachings of the Bible and the central doctrines of the Christian religion as faithfully and accurately as possible. While I researched some Greek and Hebrew words in order to prepare to write the present work, my interpretation of the Bible is based primarily on English translations thereof.

For the purposes of the arguments that follow, theism refers to those traditions which hold that a personal being created the universe, intervenes in it from time to time, and cares about what his (or her) creatures do. In contrast, deism refers to the belief, based on reason and observation of the natural world, that an intelligent being created the universe or put the universe into motion but does not now interact with or intervene in it. This book includes a refutation of some common arguments for theism but is agnostic as to whether deism is true.

The Approach of the Book: Conversational Intolerance

Sam Harris, one of the famous so-called "New Atheists," advocates what he calls "conversational intolerance" (2005). This is a "standard of intellectual honesty" that requires all people to back up their views with actual evidence or good reasons for believing in their validity. If one accepts this standard, as I do, then no beliefs, including religious or spiritual beliefs, can be tolerated intellectually just because they are religious or spiritual. For example, it is not necessary to accept the teachings of such venerated figures as Jesus of Nazareth and Siddhartha Gautama merely because they are the teachings of Jesus and Siddhartha, even if some people regard those teachings and the individuals who taught them as sacred. While this approach holds that all beliefs should be tolerated as a political matter (i.e., there should be no legal penalty for holding any beliefs, even those that are deeply unpopular and potentially harmful if carried out—a policy known historically as toleration), there is no obligation to tolerate beliefs as an intellectual matter just because some people cherish them.

This approach to discourse has multiple benefits. First, it serves the interests of truth. When ideas are made immune from rational analysis, truth is injured. Reason, although limited, is the only way for human beings to truly arrive at or create knowledge. Knowledge is rooted principally in reflections upon experiences, not in experiences themselves. These reflections must utilize a sound method of logic or reasoning in order to be convincing to the person doing the reflecting (if he or she is rational) and those to whom the reflecting person communicates his or her ideas. In other words, ideas cannot be communicated in a persuasive way between people in public discourse except by the use of reason. Thus, to make certain ideas or people immune from the public use of reason, whether officially or through unofficial rules of discourse, is to hinder the quest for truth or knowledge.

Under the above standard, no religion, philosopher, teacher, or teaching is automatically entitled to open-mindedness, respect, or assent. All ideas must be subjected to rational analysis or criticism, then accepted or rejected on the basis of their perceived internal consistency/coherence and their perceived agreement with people's prior beliefs and experiences. Only then can their probable truth or probable falsehood be discerned with any degree of confidence.

Nonetheless, it is often prudent to be open-minded to new (or old) ideas at first, but if and when one determines they are not supported by the weight of the evidence or by any evidence at all, it is not only appropriate but prudent to reject and become close-minded to those ideas. This is what I understand "conversational intolerance" to mean.

Again, I firmly believe in toleration (which differs from tolerance in that it refers to permitting things one disapproves of rather than a non-judgmental acceptance of differences), as well as freedom of speech, the free exercise of religion, and freedom of expression, even for the most fringe beliefs and ideas. All people ought to have the right to hold whatever views they wish and to publicly advocate them. But that does not mean that baseless beliefs and ideas should not be criticized and ridiculed. There should be neither official rules nor unofficial taboos against criticizing and ridiculing these or any ideas, including "mainstream" religious or spiritual ideas. I acknowledge that my perspective on the public use of reason is rooted in the philosophies expounded by thinkers of the Western Enlightenment, but in my view it is one that should be adopted and upheld by all cultures.
CHAPTER 1:

THE BASIC PREMISES AND CORE TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY

There are many ways to describe the nature of Christianity, since people understand it in different ways within and between different cultures. However, there are some indispensable elements of the religion that are not culturally relative. These indispensable elements are all based on teachings found in the Bible.

In brief, a redeemer is not necessary if sin does not exist. Some Christians believe that all people are now bound to be hopeless sinners as a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve. Others deny the doctrine of original sin, but still affirm that "[t]here is no one righteous, not even one" and that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:10, 23). But in either case, Christianity invariably teaches that sin exists and that people need to be saved. After all, if people do not need to be saved from sin, then they do not need a savior. If people do not need a savior, then they do not need Jesus. And if people do not need Jesus, Christianity has no relevance for humankind.

Some liberal or non-literalist Christians may object to this line of reasoning, but it is difficult to see any benefit to believing in Christianity unless these basic teachings about human nature and salvation are true. If one sees value in the more humanistic teachings of Jesus and the books of the New Testament, why not embrace Enlightenment humanism instead? This philosophy holds that human life is the standard of values and all people are entitled to basic respect and dignity merely by virtue of existing, which is similar to the viewpoint that liberal Christians apparently find expressed in the teachings of Jesus and the books of the New Testament, at least after they are stripped of their supernatural elements. However, without these supernatural elements, Christianity is not only a hollow shell of its former self but completely pointless.

The Primordial Couple and the Origins of Sin

According to the Bible, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3). Some biblical apologists and scholars contend that these "days" may refer to seven indefinite time periods, but the Hebrew word for these "time periods" in Genesis, yom, literally means "day" or "days" (as in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) whenever a number is included with it in the Hebrew Bible.

According to most Christian traditions, God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. After God had created the heavens and the earth, he created Adam, the first man, and placed him in the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Syria) (Genesis 2:4-25). God then told Adam he could eat from any tree in Eden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). God then created Eve out of Adam's rib, to be Adam's wife (Genesis 2:21-22). A snake, who is identified as Satan in almost all forms of Christianity, tempted Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which she did and then persuaded Adam to do (Genesis 3:1-6). This act was the original sin, which condemned all human beings to physical death (Genesis 3:19). For it, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; as a result, Adam and all other men must toil all day in order to survive, while women must suffer great pain in bearing children (Genesis 3:16-24). Additionally, this original sin made personal sin, or each person's particular violations of God's will, possible. According to all major Christian traditions, sin condemns all human beings to eternal death or damnation. The view that sin results in damnation rather than just physical death is not the only possible interpretation of this passage, but it is the only interpretation that fits Christianity's internal logic, outlined above. The alternative, that physical death and not damnation is the result of Adam and Eve's sin, does not make a redeemer (i.e., Jesus) necessary.

Some Christian thinkers, such as Augustine of Hippo and his followers, have held that original sin is sufficient to condemn people to eternal damnation, while others hold that it is one's personal sins that lead to damnation. However, all major historical traditions of Christianity agree on the most important point: that the teaching of sin, if it is true, and regardless of the precise language used to formulate it, means that all human beings are condemned to both physical death and spiritual death or damnation unless they are saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Paul taught that the sin of Adam brought death for all of his descendants (Romans 5:12-21), though whether he was referring only to physical death or to both physical and spiritual death cannot be easily ascertained from the passage. However, taking the Bible, specifically the New Testament, as a whole, it seems that the overall teaching is that both types of death are the result of sin. In the end, the teaching of sin, whether original, personal, or both, is the starting point of Christianity. If it was not, Christianity would, by its own internal logic, lose its necessity for human beings.

Christian Sacred History in the Old Testament and the Role of the Jewish People

In order for the central narrative of Christianity outlined here to be true, the Bible must be revealed by God. And in order to be revealed by God as God is understood by Christians and taught to exist by the Bible, the Bible has to be entirely free of error. If the Bible is not entirely free of error, it could not have been revealed by a creator who is both all-knowing and all-loving, for an all-knowing creator would not make any mistakes in transmitting messages to his or her creatures if that creator loved those creatures. Because the Bible purports to teach that God is both all-knowing (Psalm 147:4-5; Job 37:16; Hebrews 4:13; 1 John 3:20) and all-loving (John 3:16; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:10), any error in the Bible would also entail a self-contradiction. (To clarify my claim that the Bible merely purports to teach that God is all-loving and all-knowing: while God is presented as all-loving in the New Testament, the actions attributed to God there, especially in the books supposedly written by John, show a God who is in fact infinitely cruel towards many people. Similarly, there are several places in the Old Testament, particularly Genesis, where God is not portrayed as all-knowing, even though the Bible teaches that God is all-knowing in many places.)

The Genesis accounts upon which the Christian creation story is based have some elements that contradict later Christian theological traditions. For example, God walks in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8), making him sound like a corporeal being, but the standard Christian view is that God is an incorporeal being (except, of course, in his incarnation as Jesus Christ). In the passage concerning the fate of the snake for its role in Adam and Eve's sin, in which the snake is forced to crawl on its belly (Genesis 3:14), there is not the slightest indication that the snake is Satan, Lucifer, or any other being with which it was   
later identified.

Adam and Eve are the first significant figures of Christian sacred history in the Bible. The second is Noah. According to the Bible, God flooded the earth, killing all living things, but saved Noah and his family because he was righteous (Genesis 6-8). Thus, according to the Bible, all human beings on earth are descendants of Noah and his wife, and further back, Adam and Eve. God also saved two of every kind of animal when he saved Noah from the Great Flood (Genesis 6:19-20). God made a covenant with Noah, the whole human race, and all animals following the flood, promising never again to destroy every living thing (Genesis 8:21, 9:11, 9:15).

The third significant figure of Christian sacred history in the Bible is Abraham (or Abram). Practitioners of the Abrahamic traditions regard Abraham's son Isaac as the father of the Hebrew people, while Arab Muslims consider Abraham's son Ishmael the father of all Arabs. According to Genesis, God gave Abraham the land that now forms the present state of Israel, as well as territory in several other modern Middle Eastern countries (Genesis 15). In a sequence that prefigured God's sacrifice of his only son (according to Christian interpretations of the passage), God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a sign of his faith (which in this case means trust in and steadfast devotion to God rather than the more common definition of belief in the absence of evidence— most references to faith in this book have the latter meaning, but some have the former meaning; it will be clear from the context which sense of the word is meant). But just as Abraham was about to kill his son, God, in the form of the Angel of the Lord, stopped him, and Abraham sacrificed a ram instead (Genesis 22).

The fourth significant figure of Christian sacred history in the Bible is Moses. The Bible teaches that God revealed the law to Moses, starting with the Ten Commandments but including hundreds of other commandments as well. (These commandments were later synthesized as the 613 Mitzvot in the Jewish rabbinical tradition.) According to the book of Exodus, God also used Moses to lead the Hebrew people out of their 400 years of slavery under the Pharaohs of Egypt.

The significance of these four in the analysis of Christianity—as well as prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and the kings David and Solomon—is that, like Jews, Christians hold that God chose one specific nation (the Jewish people) to receive messages from him after humans had been cut off from him by sin. According to all major Christian traditions, after Adam and Eve were banished from Eden, nobody besides the Jewish people knew God and his will at all prior to the first coming of Jesus Christ. But since Jews also sin and fall short of the glory of God (according to Christianity's internal logic), they too need Jesus Christ as their savior.

This is one element of the traditional Christian understanding of the significance of the Jewish people in relation to Jesus. Another is that the figures listed above paved the way for the Messiah and unique Son of God to be born as a Jew. In other words, God spoke to and through some Jewish individuals because he planned all along for his son to be born among their people. That is why they are in the Old Testament. This portion of the Bible represents the way God related to humankind prior to sending his son. In Christian reckoning, God's relationship with the human race was provincial prior to God's incarnation as Jesus Christ, while God's relationship with the human race was universal after the incarnation.

(Note that the term "Old Testament" is actually a condescending label for the books of the Hebrew Bible, as it is rooted in the Christian belief that the covenant that Jesus literally embodies according to the New Testament supersedes or matters far more than all the covenants described in the Hebrew Bible. It is also worth noting that the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament are organized differently. The Hebrew Bible is organized by book-type, into the books of the Law (Torah), Prophets (Nevi'im), and Writings (Ketuvim), while the Old Testament purports to be organized chronologically.)

Jesus

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born to a virgin who was directly impregnated by the Holy Spirit, without any intercourse, and his birth was accompanied by an astrological portent called the Star of Bethlehem. This sign indicated to three Persian Magi (Zoroastrian priests) traveling nearby that a king had been born. (Later, I will discuss some of the other deities and heroes allegedly born in a miraculous manner in other religious and mythological traditions, as well as the meaning of the Hebrew word almah, which is the word translated as "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14. Most biblical scholars believe this word refers merely to a young woman or woman of childbearing age, not necessarily a virgin.)

Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River at around 30 years of age, at which point the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). After that, Jesus was tempted by the devil for 40 days and nights in the wilderness. However, he resisted these temptations and subsequently began his ministry.

Jesus taught multiple sermons concerning morality and devotion, used many parables to explain his message, and performed many miracles. The miracles performed by Jesus are one of the major sources of the power that Christians believe their religion has, but, with the exception of the resurrection, are not among the most important events of the story. The most important events in Jesus' earthly ministry for all mainstream Christians are the crucifixion of Jesus and his miraculous resurrection three days later. To understand the significance of these alleged historical events in Christian reckoning, which cannot be overstated, we must recall what was previously said about sin.

In the Christian understanding of the world, every human being is cursed with both physical death and the second death of eternal damnation because of sin, of which all people are guilty and must repent. According to this line of thinking, as long as people remain in sin, they remain separated from God. In other words, by sinning, people choose to separate themselves from God and what is sinful cannot enter God's holy presence.

Famous Protestant theologian John Calvin believed all people are born into "total depravity," meaning they simply cannot save themselves from sin. Augustine believed something very similar. Both held to doctrines of predestination or election, or the idea that God chooses who is saved (according to both) and who is damned (according to Calvin, but really this is just the corollary of Augustine's notion of single predestination) from before the foundations of the world and nobody has any control over his or her eternal fate. Thus, according to them only God can choose whether we are saved or damned. In contrast, the Dutch Protestant theologian Jacobus Arminius held that people have a quite limited, but still real, choice as to whether they accept Jesus and his saving grace or reject him. (The Arminian view is the primary one in Evangelical and Pentecostal circles in the contemporary United States.) In any case, all of them agree that only God can save humans from the consequences of their sins.

This is exactly what Christians believe Jesus did when he died on the cross (as recounted in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19). Based on the Old Testament, Christians believe that God's sense of justice can only be satisfied by means of a sacrifice and that God's sense of justice must be satisfied in order for sins to be forgiven (Romans 3:25-26). In Old Testament times, animals were sacrificed to atone for the collective sins of the Jewish people, as well as to atone for individual sins (see, e.g., Leviticus 4-7). However, none of those sacrifices could bridge the gap between God and humanity, since none of them were capable of removing or overcoming sin (Hebrews 10:1-14). Christians believe that Jesus, on the other hand, was the only person who could atone for the sins of all humankind. Christians believe that only the sacrifice of Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, and only for those who have faith in Jesus, specifically in the atoning power of his blood (Hebrews 10:15-18; Romans 3:22-25).

There are other possible interpretations of Jesus' crucifixion, but theories of substitutionary atonement, which hold that Jesus was killed in place of sinners, are by far the most popular today and have the most biblical support. Other theories, such as the ransom theory (the belief, supported by such passages as Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, and 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23, that Jesus' death was a payment for the debt that all people owe to Satan, death, or even God himself), the moral influence theory (the belief that the primary purpose of Jesus' death and resurrection was to bring positive moral change to humanity, supported particularly by passages like 1 Peter 2:24), the theory that the crucifixion represents the ultimate triumph of good over evil, and the Universalist theory of atonement (the belief that all people without exception are saved by Jesus' death and resurrection), while they have been advocated by some notable theologians and apologists, are minority viewpoints, and are not as well supported by the Bible as the various theories of substitutionary atonement. There is also a debate among different Christian denominations over whether the atonement is limited or unlimited, that is, whether Jesus' death was a propitiation only for those predestined for salvation or whether his death was a propitiation for all people, who are then free to accept or reject it.

Under the theory of substitutionary atonement, since he was a member of the human race, Jesus was eligible to be the sacrifice for the whole race (C.S. Lewis explained this notion in a straightforward way in Mere Christianity at 53-59). Yet while Jesus' humanity made him eligible, he was only worthy of being the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the human race because he was the only person in the history of the world who was divine and therefore without sin (1 John 3:5 and 1 Peter 2:22). Thus, Jesus was uniquely eligible to truly atone for the race and all of its individual members, according to the internal logic of Christianity. When Christians speak of Jesus being a "gift," this is what they mean: humans had fallen into sin, become separated from God, and continue to separate themselves from God through their own sins, but Jesus bridged the gap between humankind and God by clearing the debt owed by the human race collectively and by each individual member thereof for sin. Now, through Jesus, people may come to know God the Father. According to the traditional forms of Christianity, one can only do this through Jesus, whether he and his saving grace are mediated by church officials and sacraments, as is taught in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, or whether a person can have a direct "personal relationship" with Jesus, and thus with God, as is taught in most forms of modern Protestantism.

Just as Jesus' death bridged the gap between God and humankind, so his alleged resurrection from the dead paved the way for the resurrection unto eternal life in the presence of God for all believers, or in other words, for all those who are filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:10-11). According to the New Testament, Jesus died on the Friday after Passover (Good Friday), then rose from the dead the following Sunday (Easter). One of the major selling points of many Christian apologists is that, according to them and their religion, Jesus was the only person in the history of the world to actually conquer death and return to life, body and all. It was not rebirth in the Hindu or Buddhist sense, i.e., the soul taking on a new body or the impermanent components of an impermanent and ever-changing "self" reorganizing themselves in a subsequent lifetime. Rather, it was a case of a person actually dying and then coming back to life as the same person. Jesus' resurrection also introduced the possibility of the deification of humans by sharing in Christ's nature through the Holy Spirit. "God became man, so that man could become God," according to Athanasius and several other prominent theologians. Not only did Jesus' crucifixion bridge the gap between God and humankind; his resurrection fulfilled the promise of eternal life.

The Holy Spirit, the Early Church, and the Spread   
of Christianity

This is not the end of the story. So far, God had been experienced as the creator of the universe (in the Old Testament) and as the Eternal Word made Flesh (Jesus), but he had not yet been experienced as an actual presence inside of those who believed in the Father and the Son. It was at Pentecost, just after Jesus allegedly ascended (physically) to heaven, that the being now called the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles in a house in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-4). According to the Christian tradition, the apostles now had God within them, as did all other members of the Church, or the collective body of believers in Christ, who were true representatives or "sons" of God thereafter (Romans 8:14-15). The apostles spread the "good news" (the literal meaning of the word "gospel"), far and wide, as instructed by Jesus (see, e.g., Mark 16:15; note that many biblical scholars believe this passage was not in the earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark).

Christianity then spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire as well as many other lands in Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. Thanks to Roman and later Germanic imperialism within Europe in the Middle Ages, then European and North American imperialism and proselytization efforts in the rest of the world in the modern period, it is now the religion with more adherents and practitioners than any other. (Overt violence has also played a role in gaining converts in some cases, though not in all.)

Two rituals were important in the early church: baptism by water, as John the Baptist had done to Jesus and many others (Matthew 3); and the Eucharist or communion, which then consisted of an entire meal. The purpose of this latter ritual was to emulate the Last Supper (described in Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 22), where Jesus stated that the bread represents his body and the wine represents his blood. Because his body and blood are the source of the "new covenant" (Luke 22:20) between God and humankind whereby all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven and gain eternal life, the communal meal was and is an affirmation of this covenant.

The End of the World and the Last Judgment

The story still does not end there. The notion of an imminent end of the world (or at least the present age) is ubiquitous in the Bible, in both testaments and in Christianity in general. Jesus made many prophecies concerning the end of the world or the present age of the world, and he said it would come within the lifetimes of the apostles' generation (Matthew 24:34; Mark 13:30). Among canonical books, the Books of Revelation and Daniel provide the most graphic accounts of how this was supposed to (and how many contemporary Protestants believe it still will) occur. Other books of the Bible that discuss the coming end of the world include Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and Zechariah in the Old Testament and the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians in the New Testament.

There are different schools of interpretation concerning the Bible's passages regarding the coming end of the world. Some believe that all of the prophesied events happened in the past. Others believe that these prophesied events are an allegory for the cosmic conflict between good and evil and the ultimate triumph of God over Satan. Still others believe that the events prophesied are ongoing and have been since Jesus' resurrection and ascension. However, the interpreters who have most influenced me and who, in my opinion, have the most biblical support are those who claim that the prophesied events are beginning to happen now and will all come to pass in the near future. This was my reading of the Bible prior to encountering any other viewpoint. I had no idea about the theology of dispensationalism or premillennialism. (Premillennialism is the belief that Jesus will physically return to earth prior to reigning over a literal thousand-year period of peace on earth. Dispensationalism is the belief that God has related to humans in different ways under different covenants throughout history. Specifically, dispensationalists hold that the Church and Israel are distinct entities, and that God has yet to fulfill all of the terms of his covenant with the nation of Israel. I believed in both of these doctrines when I was a Christian fundamentalist, although I placed far greater emphasis on premillennialism than dispensationalism.) I had never heard of the Left Behind series or The Late Great Planet Earth when I first read the Book of Revelation, but I thought the events described therein were happening or would soon be happening all around me. If the Bible is trustworthy, an honest reading of Daniel, Revelation, and the apocalyptic prophesies of the other books of the Bible supports the thesis that the majority of end times prophesies in the Bible have yet to come to pass (Matthew 24:34 and Mark 13:30 notwithstanding).

The end of the story is the Last Judgment. There are two places where this event is described in the New Testament: Matthew 25:31-46 and Revelation 20:11-15. Paul claimed that the saints (i.e., Christians who have been resurrected to eternal life) would judge the people of the earth and the angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). According to both the Gospel of Matthew and the Book of Revelation, some people will receive everlasting life. They will dwell in an inconceivably beautiful New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1-5) while all nonbelievers and sinners will suffer everlasting punishment (Revelation 20:15, 21:8). The punishment is characterized as fire in both books: as "eternal fire" in Matthew 25:41 and as a lake of "fire" and "burning sulfur" in Revelation 20:10, 20:14-15, and 21:8. According to the Bible and later Christian tradition, the punishment described in these passages will last forever for the unrighteous, or rather, for unregenerate sinners. (It is worth pointing out that the Bible does not teach that only those who do not believe in Jesus will be damned. If the Bible, particularly the Matthew 25 passage, is reliable, many people who proclaim to believe in Jesus will also   
be damned.)

Now, the most biblically rigorous advocates of the view that damnation does not consist of eternal conscious torment, Universalists and annihilationists, have attempted to interpret Matthew 25 and Revelation 20-21 as referring to either a temporary punishment (Universalists) or actual destruction (annihilationists). However, a literal reading of these passages in the context of the New Testament as a whole suggests that they plainly refer to eternal or everlasting conscious torment, as does a literal reading of Matthew 18:8-9. This passage especially seems to indicate everlasting conscious torment, since it encourages amputation and gouging out one's eyes if one's limbs or eyes cause one to sin—there would be little incentive to do these things unless the alternative to life was conscious eternal torment, as the possibility of simple nonexistence would not be enough to justify such drastic measures.

The Bible's teaching of eternal damnation certainly helps explain why conservative Christians (here referring to those who see the above narrative or a large part of it as the literal, actual truth), are often actively (not just intellectually) intolerant of other religions and unapologetically aggressive in their proselytization efforts. They believe their earthly "battle" to win converts has eternal consequences. However, I do not believe this justifies their actions.

Conclusion

The above narrative is, of course, not the only way Christians understand the world and the significance of Jesus. There are around two billion Christians on this planet, give or take a few hundred million, and obviously not all of them understand their religion the same way. I am sure many people disagree with portions of what I have written. However, I do think the above narrative is one that the vast majority of Christians would accept in its general form, even if they would not accept all of its particulars.
CHAPTER 2:

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND   
OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Apocalypticism and Messianism in the Hebrew Bible

Between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE, apocalyptic ideas, which had hitherto played little role in the Jewish tradition, came to occupy a prominent place in Jewish prophetic thought. One of these ideas was the expectation of a coming Messiah who would lead the people of Israel politically, uniting them all and ushering in an age of peace and prosperity for Jews and Gentiles alike (Isaiah 2:2-4, 11:10; Jeremiah 23:5-8, 33:14-18). In addition, the belief in resurrection of some of the dead also emerged in this period (Isaiah 26:19; Ezekiel 37:11-14). The belief that Yahweh is always on the side of the righteous and opposed to the wicked, while it can be found in the Torah, was strongly emphasized by most of the biblical prophets of the eighth through fifth centuries BCE.

An apocalyptic idea that came to be emphasized at a later period was a belief in a coming last judgment or end of the world in which the righteous will be rewarded and the evil will be punished (Daniel 12:1-3; note that Daniel is the newest book in the Hebrew Bible, dating from the second century BCE). The belief that Yahweh has a powerful adversary responsible for the existence of evil and for tempting people to engage in evil thoughts and actions also emerged much later.

Judaism in the First Millennium BCE

According to the book of 1 Kings, the First Temple in Jerusalem was constructed by order of Solomon, King of Israel, in the 10th century BCE. In approximately 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon destroyed this temple, and the prophet Jeremiah devoted much of his book of prophecy to chastising his fellow Jews for causing the destruction of the temple by incurring God's wrath. From 586 to 539 BCE, the inhabitants of Judea, including Jerusalem, were exiled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II. However, the Temple of Solomon was rebuilt by decree of Cyrus II, founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, in 538 BCE. Cyrus had liberal and religiously tolerant policies, especially by the standards of the time, and created a society that, contrary to popular belief, was far more egalitarian than anything any city-state of ancient Greece had to offer. As slavery was banned in the Achaemenid Empire (due to its official Zoroastrianism), the Achaemenid Empire was even more egalitarian than Ancient Athens, where the majority of residents were slaves. Cyrus's policy of religious tolerance led him to order the rebuilding of Solomon's temple. His edict is contained in Ezra 6:3-5.

In the fourth century BCE, Alexander III of Macedon conquered much of Southwest Asia. His empire quickly broke apart into several smaller empires following his death, including the Seleucid Empire that ruled over ancient Israel. Antiochus IV of this regime aggressively attempted to Hellenize Judea, even going so far as to order the worship of Zeus at the Second Temple. Needless to say, traditionalist Jews were not too pleased about this, and a group of them, the Maccabees, successfully revolted against Antiochus and took power in Judea. After a tumultuous power struggle that lasted until 129 BCE, Judea became independent. This period of independence lasted until 63 BCE, when Judea was annexed by the Roman Empire. The Second Temple lasted until 70 CE/AD, when it was destroyed by the Romans.

The Teachings of Zoroastrianism and Their Influence on Judaism and Christianity

The primary religion of the Achaemenid Empire was Zoroastrianism and Cyrus II was himself a practicing Zoroastrian (Boyce 51). Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, probably lived between 1700 and 1500 BCE, since the language of his Gathas (hymns) indicates that the person who wrote them lived in a Stone Age society, and they are similar to the language of the Hindu Rig Veda, which is from around 1700 BCE (Boyce 18). It is also possible that Zarathustra lived in a later Bronze Age society that had not yet begun to use bronze on a regular basis (Boyce 18). Zoroastrianism taught that there were two gods opposed to each other from the beginning of time, Ahura Mazda (or Ohrmazd) and Angra Mainyu (or Ahriman), and that the former created time as a way to fight against evil. Right now we are in the Time of Mixture, when good and evil are competing for supremacy, but good and the good god Mazda will ultimately prevail (Boyce 27). Each person will be judged after death. Those who have been good on balance will be taken to Paradise, while those who have been wicked on balance will be taken to hell or a place of torment, and those who have an exact balance between their good and evil deeds will go to a place lacking both joy and sorrow (Boyce 27). At the end of time there will be a resurrection of the dead and a last judgment, a final ordeal where all people must pass bodily through a river of molten metal. To those who have been righteous, this river will feel pleasant to the touch, but to those who are wicked, it will produce a burning sensation. Here, the wicked will be killed in a second death and cease to exist altogether (Boyce 28). All evil will be destroyed, and the world will be perfect and blissful, a dwelling place for the righteous.

Zarathustra (or Zoroaster, as he is known in Greek) taught the ideas of a Last Judgment, individual judgment, a dual heaven and hell, and eternal life for both soul and body before anybody else (Boyce 29). Over time, Zoroastrianism developed the belief that there will be a world savior who will be born to a virgin (known as the Saoshyant), but he will be fully human and will lead humanity in the last battle against evil (Boyce 42). There is no concept of grace in Zoroastrianism, but there is also no notion that all people deserve to suffer in hell for all of eternity for even one violation of Mazda's will. In fact, there does not seem to be eternal damnation at all in Zoroastrianism, just suffering in hell for the unrighteous prior to the last judgment, then their complete annihilation after the last judgment.

The prophet Isaiah (that is, the author of First Isaiah) lived in the eighth century BCE, nearly two centuries before the destruction of the First Temple. However, most biblical scholars believe that chapters 34 and 35, as well as chapters 40-66, were written by a different "Isaiah" after the Babylonian Captivity, when the Judeans returned to their homeland (Jewish Study Bible 782-83). Judaism probably had the idea of the Messiah as a human political leader, as well as the belief in resurrection of the body, before Zoroastrianism. (In fact, it is likely Zoroastrianism adopted these particular ideas from Judaism.) However, the belief in the virgin birth of the Messiah and the idea of the Messiah as a world savior originated in Zoroastrianism, not Judaism.

By the time Jesus was born, several Jewish sects, most notably the Pharisees, taught the doctrines of postmortem reward and retribution for one's deeds in life, bodily resurrection of the dead, a judgment after resurrection, and eternal life either in glory or in torment depending on the balance of one's deeds (see The Antiquities of the Jews Book XVIII, Chapter 1). Jesus and the early Christians of course taught similar doctrines, although Christians of the apostolic generation expected the Messianic Age to begin during their lifetimes, as Jesus prophesied.

It is highly likely that Zoroastrianism influenced the development of the ideas of individual judgment, heaven and hell, a coming last judgment, a coming savior who will be born to a virgin (as noted previously, Isaiah merely prophesied that an unnamed child would be born to a young woman of childbearing age), and eternal life for a united soul and body, in both Pharisaic Judaism and Christianity. These ideas were not part of Judaism until after the Second Temple was rebuilt by order of Cyrus II, but they were part of Zoroastrianism prior to that time. As mentioned above, it is likely that the Zoroastrians were influenced to some degree by Jewish beliefs and practices as well. One branch of Zoroastrianism, Zurvanism, was even monotheistic (though it is debatable whether Judaism influenced this development, as monotheism has been far more common in human history than many people realize).

Hellenic Influences on Christianity

The Greek antecedents of Christianity are also quite clear. First, the idea of the Messiah as a "God-man" or Son of God is unequivocally not present in the Hebrew Bible. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible would have regarded such an idea as a form of pagan idolatry, blasphemy, and a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Messiah of the Hebrew Bible, if he comes, will be a man who leads the Jewish people to victory over their enemies and ushers in an age of peace and prosperity for the whole earth. But he will unequivocally not be divine.

However, the belief in people who were both human and divine was widespread in the Roman Empire and the cultural world of Hellenism, which included Judea. There were at least some Hellenized Jews from the Alexandrian conquests onward, but there were probably not too many among the temple priests and their sectarian representatives, the Sadducees, who had the most political power and influence in Judea prior to the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple. But it is not at all far-fetched to believe that some Jews could have adopted a belief in the possibility of divine humans, and it is especially not surprising that such a belief could have become widespread in the Roman Empire in a fairly short amount of time as a result of apostolic evangelism, since most Roman citizens were already predisposed to believe in divine humans.

The motif of a "dying-and-rising god" is also foreign to pre-Hellenic Judaism, and even most forms of Hellenic-era Judaism. However, dying-and-rising deities were not at all uncommon in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Among them were Dionysos, Attis, Adonis, and Persephone. There is no independent corroborating evidence for Jesus' resurrection, so there is every reason to believe that the early Christians merely borrowed this motif in order to propagate their nascent religion among Gentiles. C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton argued that Jesus actually died and rose from the dead and that this event was prefigured in these earlier myths. However, it is far more probable that early Christians borrowed this motif in order to gain converts.

The mystery cults of ancient Greece held out the possibility that participants in their rituals could gain eternal life and conquer death by so partaking. The early Christian community had many of the same trappings of a mystery cult: its members practiced water baptism to initiate people into the community, they ritually drank the blood and ate the flesh of Jesus in their ritual of the mass/communion/Eucharist, and they used an esoteric symbol (the fish) to show members of the Church how to find the local Christian community.

Finally, the idea of blood atonement is present in the Hebrew Bible, but not for all human sin and error, for the collective guilt of the entire human race, or as a means of avoiding eternal punishment. So even this idea represents an innovation by early Christians over and against their parent religion of Judaism.
CHAPTER 3:

BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS

I want to make clear that I acknowledge that Jewish Hebrew Bible scholars understand Hebrew better than I do, and I also acknowledge that trained Christian biblical scholars have greater knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic than I do. However, it is equally true that many scholars of the Bible do not have the precise translation of the words of the Bible into modern languages as their primary concern. In fact, many of them—probably as a result of their great intelligence—seem to try to make biblical passages fit the expectations of either modern people generally or their specific intended audience. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but a lot of times it seems to distort the actual words of the Bible and other alleged sacred and important historical texts beyond recognition.

While fundamentalists and other theologically conservative Christians do the same in some cases (I point to several notable examples in the chapter "Some Blatant Examples of Christian Hypocrisy"), for the most part they seem to be more honest about the Bible's contents. Admittedly, I have only read English versions of the Bible and researched the meaning of some Greek and Hebrew words, but it is hard to believe that the English versions (which, at least in my reading, overwhelmingly agree with each other in both content and expression regardless of their date and country of publication) could vary so widely in meaning from the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic originals that they present entirely different versions of Christianity.

It is true that the precise meaning of words varies from language to language, culture to culture, sub-culture to sub-culture, and even person to person. It is also true that translations will inevitably invoke different assumptions and biases in the speakers of the language into which texts are translated than those of the speakers of the original language (and ultimately, again, in each individual speaker of each language).

However, it is also true that while translating, say, agape, as love or charity is problematic given the slightly different ranges of meaning the word agape has in Greek versus love or charity in English, it is far more accurate to translate agape as love or charity than it is to translate agape as "hate" or "happiness" or "apple pie," or even a far more similar word like "benevolence." (The word agape obviously means nothing remotely similar to hate, happiness, or apple pie: I am including such dissimilar words to emphasize that it is usually possible to approximate the meaning of a word when translating it from one language to another.)

Extrapolating from this, while it is possible to interpret the Bible in many different ways, some ways of interpreting it are far more accurate and reliable than others. And in my experience, fundamentalists and other theological conservatives generally have what seem to be the most honest and accurate interpretations of the Bible. I personally do not like any of the versions of Christianity that theological conservatives proffer as authentic. Emotionally, I strongly prefer the versions of Christianity proffered by theologically liberal Christians. However, it would be fundamentally dishonest of me to pretend that Christianity teaches what liberal Christians make it out to teach.

A rather harmless example of a liberal Christian belief that seems blatantly dishonest is the belief that "[d]o not judge, or you too will be judged" (Matthew 7:1) means that individuals should accept all lifestyles and individual choices as morally acceptable, when the Bible (both testaments) is explicitly hostile and judgmental toward those who engage in, e.g., sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, and serial sexual relationships. An additional example is the New Testament's hostility to and harsh judgments against those who amassed wealth and participated in the wider cultural world of Ancient Rome.

A far more harmful example of a blatantly dishonest belief by liberal Christians is their rejection of the existence of hell on the grounds that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). While logic and reason dictate that such blatantly cruel divine acts as tormenting people for all of eternity are incompatible with the idea of divine love or the divine as love, even if one invokes God's justice or holiness to justify belief in hell, the Bible very specifically and vividly teaches that hell exists as an eternal fire of everlasting punishment. This is the teaching of Jesus in the gospels. To put this in contemporary language, a "Red Letter Christian" must believe in hell as an eternal fire of everlasting punishment in order to seriously heed Jesus' message. The denial by a professing Christian of the existence of hell is harmful because (1) it is a blatantly dishonest interpretation of the Bible, often on purely emotional grounds, and (2) anybody who reads the Bible honestly, including a person from a liberal Christian background, will see right through such a dishonest interpretation immediately. Such a person will then be left with the uncomfortable choice of pretending to accept a false and sanitized version of Christianity, genuinely accepting Christianity and all of the beliefs and practices that such an acceptance entails (whether because he or she believes it is factually true or on the basis of faith), or rejecting Christianity altogether.

Furthermore, theologically liberal Christians almost never articulate a position that is even refutable based on logic and reason. In contrast, while theologically conservative Christians may not look at the "evidence" (if it can be called that) for Christianity in a balanced or completely honest way, at least they purport to rely on some sort of evidence. Even if this evidence is almost always flimsy or even ridiculous, it at least represents an attempt to justify beliefs on the basis of experience, logic, and rational argumentation.

Theologically liberal Christians may think they have the upper hand by, e.g., rejecting the historicity of the Great Flood or the virgin birth of Jesus. However, all this does is show that liberal Christians have rejected some of the key premises of their religion and have removed any remotely reasonable basis for believing in these premises. They can, of course, still be believed on faith. But since literally anything can be believed in faith, this is not an argument in Christianity's favor.
CHAPTER 4:

WHETHER THE BIBLE IS REVEALED OR INSPIRED

Obviously, Christians believe that the Bible was revealed or inspired by God. Liberal Christians tend to think that God inspired its writers (in the modern secular sense of the word "inspired"), not that God revealed it to them verbatim through the Holy Spirit, whereas conservative Christians think that the Bible is the verbatim will and testament(s) of God revealed by the Holy Spirit working through the authors of its books. Conservative Christians usually cite 2 Timothy 3:15-17, 2 Peter 1:20-21, and 2 Peter 3:2 to make their case.

2 Timothy 3:15-17 reads as follows: "[A]nd how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." It is important to note that the New Testament in its present form did not exist when 2 Timothy was likely written, in the late first century (Just). Thus, it is highly probable that this quotation refers to the Old Testament alone, as that was the main scripture used by the Church prior to the codification of the New Testament.

2 Peter 1:20-21 reads as follows: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." 2 Peter 3:2 reads as follows: "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles."

Neither 2 Timothy nor 2 Peter defines which texts are scriptural and which are not. A conservative Christian may argue that God revealed the books of the Bible so that the Bible as it exists in its present form contains all the texts God intended it to contain. However, this argument is circular. One cannot establish that the Bible was revealed by God without referring to passages in the text that say that it was so revealed, but one cannot establish that the Bible is inerrant without establishing that it was revealed by God. Furthermore, the Bible's status as revelation is very questionable due to the fact that many of the Bible's historical claims have never been independently corroborated.

Another problem with the conservative Christian claim is that there are passages in the Bible that explicitly state they are not God-given. These passages are 1 Corinthians 7:12, "To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her"; 1 Corinthians 7:25, "Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy"; and 2 Corinthians 11:17, "In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool." Ex-fundamentalist Winston Wu, who has some of the strongest arguments against Christian fundamentalism I have read, gives a detailed critique of the doctrine of biblical infallibility in Argument # 1 of his Debunking Christian Circular Arguments and Assumptions, including a discussion of these three passages.
CHAPTER 5:

THE ORIGINS OF THE   
NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament is not a continuous narrative but a collection of distinct writings, as is the Old Testament. Most of the New Testament's books are letters, and most of these are written by (or at least attributed to) Paul. The only non-letters are the four canonical gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and Revelation.

The New Testament as we now know it was first formalized in response to the canon created by the bishop and famous heretic Marcion. Marcion rejected the Old Testament altogether and included only one of the current canonical gospels, a modified version of the Gospel of Luke, in his own canon. Marcion was excommunicated for rejecting the Old Testament, but his canon prompted the second-century Church to determine which books it considered authoritative and which it did not.

It is interesting to note that many people who practice even "conservative" forms of contemporary Christianity lean toward rejecting the Old Testament, the move that got Marcion excommunicated. These Christians distinguish between the "law-giving" God of the Old Testament and the "loving" God of the New Testament. As I argue below, this distinction is baseless. God is even crueler in the New Testament than he is in the Old Testament. Second, Jesus believed that the Hebrew Bible he knew was revealed by God and even claimed that all things in the law would be fulfilled before the end of the world (Matthew 5:17-18). To reject the Old Testament is to reject texts that Jesus quoted repeatedly and never really questioned. Furthermore, the alleged prophecies that predicted the coming of Jesus are all in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is thus indispensable for all Christian traditions.

The development of the New Testament was a gradual and uneven process. However, Eusebius, a fourth-century apologist and historian, created the first known list of the 27 texts that would come to make up the New Testament as it exists today (Eusebius, Book III, Chapter XXV). According to Eusebius' account, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Book of Acts, the Pauline Epistles, 1 John, and 1 Peter are undisputedly authentic. In contrast, Eusebius disputed the authenticity of James, Jude, 2 Peter, and 2 and 3 John. Regarding Revelation, Eusebius wrote that its authenticity is accepted by some and rejected by others. Eusebius' was not the only extant version of the New Testament in the fourth century, but it gradually became the accepted version: the Latin Vulgate, developed later in the same century, contained the 27 texts listed by Eusebius.

While the New Testament is not quite an arbitrary collection of texts, the origins of most of its texts are not known with certainty. However, because the New Testament as it has existed since the time of Eusebius is regarded as divinely revealed by Christians, no matter what the textual evidence suggests about its origins, it is not necessary to dispute the origins of the New Testament's texts at present. A typical biblical scholar would argue that Mark and the "Q Source" (the postulated source of the textual material that is found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but is not found in the Gospel of Mark) were written before the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and influenced these two later gospels. This is how scholars explain the fact that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke contain more details than the Gospel of Mark. While there is very strong evidence that Mark was a textual source for Matthew and Luke, this cannot be proven with certainty. Because of this uncertainty, theologically conservative Christians remain steadfast in their belief that Matthew and Luke are similar to Mark because they record the same actual historical events, and they deny that the Q Source ever existed.

Finally, I will list the approximate dates of composition of the 27 books that currently make up the New Testament according to acclaimed New Testament scholar Marcus Borg. The earliest documents, seven of Paul's letters (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 2 Corinthians, and Romans), were composed in the 50's CE (Borg 31). The Gospel of Mark was composed in the 70's CE, while James, Colossians, the Gospel of Matthew, and Hebrews were composed in the 80's CE or possibly the 90's (Borg 31-32). The Gospel of John, Ephesians, and Revelation were composed in the 90's, while Jude and 1-3 John were composed in the 100's (Borg 32). The Gospel of Luke, Acts, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Peter, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus were composed in the 110's and 2 Peter was composed in the 120's or later (Borg 32).
CHAPTER 6:

THE FALLIBILITY OF THE BIBLE

The Unreliability of the Bible

The Bible does not establish its own legitimacy or authority. Without outside corroboration of its claims, there is absolutely no reason to accept the validity of any of them. Any person can write anything he or she wants in any book and claim that it is true. However, without some kind of evidence to support one's claims, it is unreasonable to expect other people to take them seriously. Another way of putting this is that no part of the Bible (or any book, for that matter) is reliable on its face. It is prudent to start with the presumption that every book that claims to state facts or truths about the universe, including the Bible, is unreliable in the absence of supporting evidence. Otherwise, it would be virtually impossible to have consistent beliefs, since so many books with so many contradictory claims purport to state truths or facts about the universe, often to the exclusion of all or almost all other truth-claims. Thus, it is best not to think that the claims of the Bible—or any person or book about history, the nature of God, the nature of human beings, or any other topic—are probably true on their face and need to be disproven. It is far more reasonable to think that these claims are untrue on their face and need to be proven true, or even likely to be true, by at least some evidence in order to warrant   
serious consideration.

The common retort that the Bible mentions actual dates, historical events, and places is easily refuted by pointing out that many works of fiction also mention actual dates, historical events, and places but nevertheless do not describe events that actually happened. For example, H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds takes place in and around 1890's London. Of course, London is an actual place and the 1890's was an actual decade, but Martians did not invade Earth in the 1890's or at any other time. To take another example, part of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe takes place in 1940 England during the Luftwaffe's Blitz. 1940 was an actual year, and the Blitz by the Luftwaffe between 1940 and 1941 was an actual historical event, but there is no evidence that there is an actual place called Narnia, nor is there is any reason to believe that there is a house in the English countryside with a magical wardrobe that can transport one to Narnia.

Despite the fact that the Bible mentions some actual dates and some actual historical events that occurred on or around those dates, it is still safe to say that no empirical evidence supports many of the claims of the Bible and of Christianity, including almost all claims that are central to the Christian story. Specifically, there is no evidence for the factuality of the creation stories of the book of Genesis; the Great Flood (at least the specific details given in the Bible); the covenant with Abraham and his descendants; the exodus from Egypt and revelation of the commandments to Moses; the virgin birth of Jesus; the resurrection; or even the crucifixion.

While not all individual Christians believe the Bible is infallible and inerrant, without this belief Christianity loses any persuasive power it might otherwise have. This belief ought to be regarded as essential by all Christians, including stereotypically less bibliocentric Christians like Roman Catholics, Orthodox believers, and Mormons. For if the Bible is not inerrant, and is instead just a collection of stories, laws, discourses, and parables written by human hands, then there is really no reason to take it or the claims of Christianity derived from it more seriously than one takes any other collection of literature or the beliefs   
derived therefrom.

The requirement that the Bible be infallible and inerrant in order to be considered superior to all other textual collections means that even one error in the Bible would refute the doctrine of biblical infallibility (as well as, of course, the doctrine of inerrancy). It would prove that the Bible was written exclusively by human beings, not by God, at least in part. And if even a single passage of the Bible can be demonstrated to have been written exclusively by humans, it would be impossible to differentiate which other passages were divinely inspired or revealed from those that were invented or exaggerated by the Bible's writers. For it is reasonable to expect mistakes and inconsistencies in books written solely by human hands, but a book written, dictated, or revealed by the allegedly omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe ought not to have even a semblance of error or inconsistency. If either of these is present, the book's infallibility and inerrancy must be rejected outright.

Is It Idolatrous to Regard the Bible as the Word of God?

Many theologically conservative Protestants believe that the Bible is the Word of God, yet they often seem not to think about the implications of this position. First, it arguably violates the first of the Ten Commandments, against having other gods before Yahweh (just as regarding God as three persons in one rather than simply one arguably does). Many Christians do not consider it idolatrous to believe the Bible is part and parcel of one of the persons of God. Yet this belief means that an actual physical book, whether written or spoken, is God, and that God has taken on at least two physical forms, Jesus and the Bible. So Christians who believe that the Bible is the Word of God have arguably made the Bible into "another god" before Yahweh, just as Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians have arguably done with their church traditions, church hierarchies, and saints. (Catholics and Orthodox Christians argue that their "veneration" of saints is not worship, but in practice there does not seem to be any significant difference between the two activities. It seems likely that this distinction between veneration and worship was invented to justify the continued existence of pagan and quasi-pagan practices in Christian countries.)

Second, treating the Bible as the Word of God gives it the same title and status as Jesus. The first chapter of the Gospel of John describes Jesus as the incarnation of the Word of God, through whom all things were created and who existed with God the Father in the beginning. Yet if the Bible is the Word of God, then it too has existed since the beginning, through it all things were created, and, as God's speech, it is one and the same as Jesus Christ. It does not make logical sense to think of either a man or a book existing with God in the beginning, but it makes even less sense to think that both of them co-exist with God as the very same attribute or aspect of God. In Christianity, it makes no sense for the Bible to be considered the Word of God. It can only be said to describe the Word of God if one wishes to remain consistent with Christianity's internal logic.

Nevertheless, even if one rejects the Bible's status as the Word of God, it still needs to be infallible and inerrant in order for the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity to warrant serious consideration. Its writers still need to have been directly and unquestionably inspired   
by God.
CHAPTER 7:

GOD'S CRUELTY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

To repeat an argument made by many nonbelievers that has never been successfully refuted, the omnipotence and omniscience of God mean that, if he exists, he is ultimately responsible for all the suffering of all sentient beings, whether in this lifetime or in a future mode of existence. If the God that Christians believe in exists, he must necessarily be both all-loving and omnipotent, as well as omniscient. If God is truly all-loving, he will necessarily prevent suffering if he can. If God is omnipotent, as the Bible teaches in Psalm 135, Jeremiah 32:17, Hebrews 1:3, and elsewhere, he has the power to prevent all suffering. If he chooses not to, then he is not all-loving. If, on the other hand, God is all-loving and consequently wants to prevent all suffering but does not have the power, then God is not omnipotent. If God is both able and willing to prevent suffering, then there should be no suffering. If God is neither able nor willing to prevent suffering, then "God" is hardly worthy of the name. (This argument is known as the "Epicurean Paradox" as a result of being attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus by early Christian theologians who saw him as the archetypical atheist.)

Countless Christian theologians and apologists, as well as many theologians and apologists from other traditions, have attempted to make the case that God is all-powerful and all-loving but not responsible for suffering, sin, and damnation. Yet none of these arguments have succeeded because they have all, without exception, violated the basic laws of thought postulated by Aristotle and others, particularly the Law of Non-Contradiction.

The cruelty that God shows in the Old Testament is not an argument against Christianity in itself but only an argument against any view that God is love or loving, at least exclusively. It is not an argument against the existence of a creator or intelligent designer. I will only give a few examples of God's cruelty in the Old Testament, which can be characterized as "this-worldly cruelty." There are many examples to choose from, so I will try to use those that are most illustrative. Note that many of the reported events described below probably never happened, bringing up a huge dilemma for those who believe the Bible is revealed: if they affirm the historicity of these events, they affirm that God is violent and wrathful, but if they deny their historicity, they deny the validity of part of the Bible, which calls the whole thing into question.

The Book of Joshua

The Book of Joshua is full of descriptions of Joshua and his army's bloody, genocidal conquests of Canaan, all ordered or sanctioned by God. Because the Book of Joshua presents God at his most violent, I am including two passages from that book.

Then the Lord said to Joshua, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in."



On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times ..., except that on that day they circled the city seven times. The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the people, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the Lord.... But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into his treasury."

When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.



Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. (Joshua 6:2-5; 15-21; 24)

Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city."

So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders: "Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don't go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, 'They are running away from us as they did before.' So when we flee from them, you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The Lord your God will give it into your hand. When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the Lord has commanded. See to it; you have my orders."



When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai. But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city, as the Lord had instructed Joshua. (Joshua 8:1-8; 24-27)

Some Examples from 1 Kings, Genesis, Exodus, Judges,   
and Daniel

Another fairly well-known story from the Old Testament is the massacre of the 450 prophets of Baal by Elijah for their failure to perform a miracle when summoned (1 Kings 19:20-40). In other words, these 450 prophets were put to death for worshiping an allegedly false god, illustrating the Bible's general attitude towards other religions: hostility. Another example of God's cruelty often used by critics of Christianity and the Bible was previously discussed: God's commandment to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to test his faith (Genesis 22:8-10). Although God retracted this directive, it is still disturbing that he used it as a test of Abraham's faith.

The theme of sacrifice or death of the first-born son occurs another time in the famous narrative of Exodus (as well as, of course, in the canonical gospels), where God strikes dead the first-born son of every family in Egypt to get the Pharaoh to free Moses and his people from slavery (Exodus 12:21-39). Literal human sacrifice also occurs in the Old Testament: in Judges 11:30-40, a man named Jephthah vows to offer whatever first walks out of his house upon his return from victory in battle as a burnt offering to God. The first being to come out is his daughter, so he kills her as vowed.

In another well-known tale, the Book of Daniel features a violent act of collective punishment in the passage known today as "Daniel in the Lions' Den" (Daniel 6). In this passage, the Babylonian king throws Daniel into a den of lions for praying to Yahweh after the king issues a decree that no being besides himself may be worshiped for thirty days. The king is actually quite fond of Daniel, but throws him into the lions' den when some of his local administrators report that Daniel has worshiped a being beside himself, simply for the fact that it violates his decree. However, Daniel is saved by one of Yahweh's angels. When he sees that Yahweh has saved Daniel, the king throws the men who accused Daniel of worshiping another god, as well as their wives and children, into the lions' den. There the lions kill them by crushing their bones.

Job

Another disturbing book of the Bible is the Book of Job. While this book is often interpreted as the story of a man who keeps his faith in God throughout countless trials and tribulations, the beginning of the story features God telling Satan to basically make Job as miserable as possible without killing him in order to test his faith (Job 1:6-12). The end of the story presents God's "answer" to Job's request for God to tell him what sins he has committed to deserve his fate: he asks where Job was when God created the heavens and the earth (Job 38). God then asks Job if he dares to question God's goodness, justice, and ways in general, being a mere mortal (Job 40:1-14).

This non-answer is really just the oldest version of the copout explanation that God's ways are too mysterious for humans to understand, which many Christians use whenever confronted with the fact that the Bible teaches that God intentionally causes a significant amount of suffering in this world and an infinite amount in the next. God's character in Job is actually not very mysterious. There, God is portrayed as a capricious and omnipotent dictator on a power-trip who allows people to be made miserable for sport. In fact, God encourages Satan to torment Job in an almost completely detached manner because of Job's unfailing devotion to him. It would be like the U.S. Government agreeing to a request by members of the Islamic State movement to massacre the family of, then torture a service member who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in battle to see if he or she remained loyal to the United States.

Ultimately, the Book of Job attempts to brush over God's almost unimaginable cruelty by having God provide "answers" to Job's objections that are not actually answers. The book also teaches that betrayal of those who give one unfailing devotion is justified as long as God is doing the betraying. The Book of Job shows God at his most dementedly cruel, at least in this-worldly terms.

The Meaning of "You Shall Not Kill"

Finally, I will briefly touch on the commandment not to "kill" in Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17. The commandment is not "You shall not kill," but rather "You shall not murder," or in other words, "you shall not illegally take the life of another." The meaning of this passage can only be understood by understanding the other laws contained in the Torah. The Torah requires the death penalty for numerous offenses, such as cursing one's mother or father, adultery, homosexual sex, bestiality, and serving as a spirit medium (see Leviticus 20). Thus, the Old Testament clearly does not regard the execution of criminals as a violation of the commandment not to murder. Neither is the wartime killing of one's enemies, including noncombatants, covered by this commandment. Only killing that is defined as illegal counts as murder, and thus this commandment can be conveniently interpreted to justify many different varieties of homicide, especially by those who hold political power.
CHAPTER 8:

GOD'S INFINITE CRUELTY IN   
THE NEW TESTAMENT

A note on this chapter: I have used the original Greek terms when translating the eschatological concepts of the New Testament in order to clarify precisely what the New Testament teaches concerning salvation, damnation, and the end times, as these teachings provide some of the strongest reasons for rejecting Christianity. Because the New Testament indicates that Jesus himself taught that eternal damnation and eternal torment await unrepentant sinners and the unrighteous in general, it is fair to say that Christianity is one of the cruelest systems of ideas and practices in human history at its very core. In fact, because of these almost unfathomably horrific teachings, which are essential to the Christian message, unless the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity can be proven true, there are not even legitimate sentimental grounds for believing in the message of the New Testament. For the last two thousand years, many, though certainly not all Christian apologists have sought to sugarcoat their tradition's superlatively cruel teachings concerning damnation and the end times, but a faithful reading of the New Testament does not allow for   
such saccharization.)

The Old Testament is replete with descriptions of God's unfailing cruelty towards both the enemies of Israel and the people of Israel, including some who have unwavering devotion to God. Yet while the God of the Old Testament is almost unfathomably cruel, the God of the New Testament is even crueler still. In fact, the New Testament is one of the most demented collections of writings ever penned by human hands. The Old Testament can at least be salvaged to some degree as a collection of myths written by a people attempting to assert itself in the face of constant opposition from invading armies with greater power and constant oppression by foreign rulers. However, the New Testament is full of false and sugarcoated doublespeak, the likes of which have rarely been attempted.

The hypocrisy and falsity of the idea of love found in the books of John would make any reasonable person shiver with an icy contempt; for the New Testament features a doctrine of great eschatological cruelty—the most severe one found in any major religion. And in case one might be tempted to interpret such eschatological cruelty metaphorically, it is reiterated again and again by all New Testament writers and it is made abundantly clear that the literal interpretation of most of these passages is intended. These passages occur in all four canonical gospels. They are the ugliest in Matthew and Luke and the most hypocritical in John. Such passages also occur in Paul's letters, Peter's letters, John's letters, Jude, and in their most delightfully sadistic form, in the Book of Revelation (which is itself attributed to John, the "apostle of love," though scholars usually dispute that the same John who wrote the gospel bearing his name also wrote Revelation).

Before proceeding, it is worth noting that other religions also teach the existence of hell and the competition over which tradition has the greatest level of eschatological cruelty is far stiffer than many people may realize. I will cite just a few examples. In Islam, hell is generally considered permanent and punitive for nonbelievers, but impermanent and purgatorial for believing Muslims who have sinned in this life. Few Westerners are aware of this, but Buddhism also teaches that there are multiple realms of suffering where a person can be reborn for many classes of evil deeds. Though these realms are impermanent, lifetimes in them last a very, very long time, as in billions or trillions of earthly years. These are not isolated teachings, but pervade Buddhist texts from both the Pali Canon and the Mahayana corpuses, as well as popular Asian Buddhist literature. Jainism teaches the existence of these kinds of hells, too, as does Hinduism—the Mahabharata, Book of Manu, and many other Hindu texts provide graphic accounts of them.

Eternal Life, Eternal Punishment, and the Last Judgment

Even among fundamentalists, and especially among Evangelicals and Pentecostals, it is fashionable to claim that people put themselves in hell by choosing not to have a relationship with God or accept Jesus as their savior. Their concept of hell is like that of C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. It is meant to sugarcoat it. They would deny this is the intention, but why else would they avoid describing the graphic torment portrayed in the New Testament? This account is influenced by Plato and later Platonists, including Christian Platonists like Augustine—it is analogous to people "choosing" the shadows in the cave instead of the light from the sun outside the cave in Plato's famous allegory from the Republic. Those who have this understanding of hell see the references to fire in the Bible as metaphorical and the state of hell as consisting of separation from God, not literal physical torment. If hell is merely separation from the Christian God, and not eternal torment, then it sounds very appealing indeed. But that is not all it is, not by a faithful reading of the New Testament. (In fact, it is not "separation" at all, if all sinners, not just those who worship the "beast" or have his mark, suffer the eternal torment with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and Jesus described in Revelation 14:10-11.)

According to the New Testament, God, in the person of the Son Jesus Christ, will judge all people at the end of time. Those who are not "his people" will be cast or thrown into the lake of fire, the second death, after being judged. They will be thrown in there by God or by his angels, who are his servants.

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown [Gk. eblēthē] into the lake of fire [Gk. limnēn tou pyros]. (Revelation 20:11-15) (emphasis added)

Now, the lake of fire is not necessarily the same as the "hell" of the gospel passages, where it is called Gehenna in Greek (Ge Hinnom in Hebrew) after a valley outside Jerusalem where children were sacrificed to the gods Molech and Baal according to the Old Testament (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 32:35), which Jesus used as an analogy for the postmortem state of unregenerate sinners. However, because both the lake of fire and Gehenna feature fire as a means of punishment according to the New Testament, it seems likely that they are intended to be descriptions of the same thing. Gehenna may refer to the holding place of sinners prior to the Last Judgment (this holding place is called Hades, after the Greek god of death/underworld, in the Book of Revelation) and the lake of fire to the eternal torment that follows this judgment, but both undeniably feature great suffering according to the New Testament.

In Revelation 20, it is not entirely clear that people will suffer in the lake of fire, i.e. that they will be tormented, but it seems highly likely this is the meaning. If God intended for people to merely cease to exist, the dead would simply be annihilated rather than resurrected and brought before the throne where Jesus sits as the judge of all people in the biblical passages describing the Last Judgment. And as previously discussed, Jesus taught people to literally maim and mutilate themselves in order to avoid eternal punishment, as the following passage illustrates.

If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. (Matthew 18:8-9)

If Jesus believed that hell is annihilation rather than actual torment, why would he have encouraged people to take drastic physical measures to avoid hell? What incentive could there possibly be to follow Jesus' advice on this point if the alternative to eternal life is mere nonexistence?

Furthermore, in Matthew 25:41-46, in the passage known colloquially as "The Judgment of the Nations" or the "The Sheep and the Goats," Jesus himself claims that those who do not help their neighbors in need will suffer eternal punishment in eternal fire. While this particular passage has little to do with faith and a lot to do with works, Jesus' teachings as a whole hold that nonbelievers will not be saved because they cannot atone for their sins without accepting him as their savior. Here are the relevant passages from "The Judgment of   
the Nations":

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left . . . .

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matthew 25:31-33, 41-46)

The Greek term translated here as "eternal punishment" is kolasin aionion, while the term translated as "eternal life" is zoen aionion. The term translated as "eternal fire" is pyr to aionion. The word aionion, which is the etymological root of the word eon, has an ambiguous meaning, so some interpreters (specifically those of a Universalist or annihilationist bent) take it to refer to a non-eternal "age" rather than "eternity." Kolasin literally refers to the pruning of trees. Zoen (or Zoe) means simply "life." I am not certain which view of the meaning of the word aionion (or aion) is correct, but I have always understood it to refer to eternal punishment for several reasons. First, this passage opens with the coming of the Son of Man, which I understand to be something that will happen in preparation for the literal end of the world. Second, it makes no sense to speak of zoen aionion as "eternal life" if kolasin aionion does not refer to "eternal punishment," since the same word aionion appears in both cases. In the end, it is very difficult to read these and similar New Testament passages concerning the eternal destination of unregenerate sinners as referring to anything other than everlasting punishment or torment, because such an interpretation is plainly inconsistent with the message of the New Testament as a whole, particularly its narrative of salvation.

There is some uncertainty in the New Testament about precisely who will judge all people in the end times. From the passages already cited, it is clear that Jesus will do so. However, it appears that Christians will do so as well. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 that the saints (i.e., saved Christians) will judge the world and will even judge the angels at the last judgment. However, no matter who the judges will be, the New Testament unambiguously teaches that all people will be judged in the end times.

There is yet another significant passage concerning damnation in Matthew: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell [Gehenna]" (Matthew 10:28). The "One" in this passage clearly refers to God, since only God has the power to destroy souls or resurrect bodies in order to destroy them. Thus, the New Testament clearly teaches that God directly sends people to or destroys people in hell.

As mentioned above, some interpreters (i.e., annihilationists) claim that Gehenna and the Lake of Fire refer to actual destruction, not a conscious state of continual suffering. This would be far less horrendous, to be sure, but unfortunately this is not what the Bible teaches to be true. The reference to "eternal punishment" in Matthew 25:46, the references to the darkness or outer darkness in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet and the Parable of the Talents, and the reference to torment with fire and sulfur in Revelation 14:10-11 directly contradict the annihilationist interpretation.

In the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king preparing a wedding banquet for his son where those who are invited refuse to come, instead ignoring or killing the servants sent by the king to summon them. As a result, the king indiscriminately invites people off the street. The rest of the passage reads as follows:

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless.

"Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

"For many are invited, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22:11-14)

In the Parable of the Talents, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who entrusts three servants with a different number of talents (i.e., units of currency) in proportion to each's ability. Two of the servants earn more talents than they were originally entrusted with, while the third buries his single talent in the ground. The third pays dearly for his failure to invest his talent and use it to earn more. This passage is clearly an analogy for the fate of those who fail to put the gifts God has allegedly given them to good use.

"'Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:28-30)

The following point should hardly need to be made, but it does because many Christian apologists vehemently deny God's responsibility in the damnation of humans. Such Christians usually claim that God does not want people to be damned. But if God did not want to people to be damned, he would have chosen not to create hell/a state of damnation. Some would claim that his justice or holiness requires eternal punishment. For example, American theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards claimed that God must throw people into hell, since any sin against God's law is a sin against an infinite being and thus requires infinite punishment without atonement, which can only be had through the blood of Jesus ("The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners" I-II). However, God, being omnipotent, gets to decide what counts as holiness or justice in the first place, so God could have chosen to avoid defining justice or holiness in terms that require eternal punishment for acts contrary to his will. Furthermore, acts contrary to God's will are not possible if God is omnipotent and omniscient.

The other standard Evangelical belief concerning this is that God gave people free will, and there must be consequences for freely chosen actions against God's will. Otherwise, according to this line of reasoning, God is unjust. First of all, God is supposedly omniscient, so he knew ahead of time that Adam and Eve would sin and cause the fall of humankind, and that eternal damnation would be one of the consequences of sin, yet he gave them and all subsequent humans free will anyway. A Christian apologist would likely respond that it is not the place of humans to challenge God's ways because God can do whatever he wants, and God apparently thought that giving people free will was worth the cost of many people being damned. According to this line of thinking, God does not need to run his plans by his creatures before implementing them, so it is irrelevant whether particular creatures understand them or not. This appeal to God's authority is similar to the copout argument mentioned in the previous chapter that attempts to excuse all of God's cruel conduct on the grounds that humans cannot understand God's ways. But while that argument is an appeal to human ignorance and the limitations of the human mind, this argument is an appeal to God's totalitarian and inescapable power. It is hard to imagine how it could possibly be just to give people free will knowing that everyone prior to the coming of Jesus would be eternally tormented as a result, and most people after Jesus would (or at least could) meet the same end. This is not the behavior of a God who is loving, forgiving, or merciful. In fact, such behavior is far more callous and cruel than the behavior of any human being who has ever lived.

The following analogy can help shed light on the Christian doctrines of sin, death, and damnation: parents tell their two-year old child, who does not know the difference between what is defined by the parents as good and what is defined by the parents as bad, not to eat a cookie in an open cookie jar on top of a counter. Another adult comes along and tells the child to eat the cookie because it will make him or her feel really happy, which the child finds appealing, so the child eats it. The child's parents then throw the child out of the house and force him to fend for himself on the streets, telling him that he must be punished by great suffering for taking the cookie. Then on top of that, once the child dies, the parents tell their child that because he or she owes a debt to the parent that cannot be paid, the child must be brought back to life and tormented continuously to pay off the unpayable debt, in order to satisfy the parents' sense of justice. First of all, would any parent impose something like this on a child? If the parents knew that free will would lead to this by the moral standards they created, wouldn't the parents choose either to create less harsh moral standards or, if they had the power, not give the child free will to violate them, if the parents truly loved the child?

Furthermore, the existence of free will, if indeed it exists, does not justify eternal suffering. Humans are finite beings with finite lifetimes and all of their choices are likewise finite. If there is a universal moral code given by God, such as the one that God allegedly gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, then that code too must be finite and created. However, I anticipate that some people will claim that the law given by God is part and parcel of God's being, as are God's holiness and justice, and that God's justice, God's holiness, and any commandments given by God are therefore eternal and not finite or created. However, because the law that God allegedly revealed to Moses came into existence in time, and was given to an actual person in time, this argument is not easily sustainable. (The doctrine of the Incarnation is difficult to sustain for similar reasons.) Thus, any violation of God's law would warrant only finite punishment and even then not in the form of torment or torture.

Another thing that is incompatible with eternal suffering is the idea that God is love or loving or like a father to people. If this were the case, God would not allow anybody to be tormented eternally, not even the most violent and cruel people in the history of the world. And any punishment imposed would have to be for the purpose of education and/or deification. However, torment in fire does not help people learn, nor does it make people more Godlike, so there would have to be more effective means of punishment if God were truly loving.

Many people have a problem with a God who allows children to get cancer and the like. But what about a God who torments children and other people for all of eternity? Is this not infinitely worse than causing suffering in this lifetime? I know the reason many people do not think about the problem in this manner is that they do not believe in an afterlife or at least doubt the accuracy of the New Testament's description of it. But imagine for a second that what the New Testament describes is actually the case. It is, after all, what a large portion of Christians still believe to be literal fact. It would be infinitely worse than any suffering experienced in this lifetime.

It is worthwhile to briefly discuss the clearly nonbiblical idea of an "age of decision." The idea that there is an "age of decision" past which it is okay to damn people for not accepting Jesus is popular in American Christianity but has absolutely no basis in the Bible—the only children praised in the New Testament are those who have faith in Jesus to begin with, and children do sin by Christian standards, even in infancy. On top of that, some passages in the Old Testament explicitly teach that children are evil from birth, and even from conception, such as Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, and Job 15:14-16. I also feel compelled to point out that if there were an "age of decision," and all children who died before it would automatically experience eternal life and avoid eternal suffering, there is a strong argument to be made that adults would have a moral obligation to kill children before they reached that age. If the tradeoff really were a lifetime of 100 years at most (and almost always less) of possible happiness versus an infinite amount of time of definite suffering, killing children before they reached the age where they would be damned for nonbelief would be the greatest act of love or   
compassion imaginable.

On the other hand, if children were really born under the curse of original sin or inevitably going to commit even one personal sin (as all are, according to Christianity), if all were destined for damnation unless they accepted Jesus as their savior, and if there was a chance they would not accept Jesus (this chance has existed in the case of all people ever born, including all children with Christian parents), then procreation would be an act of almost unimaginable cruelty. If even miscarried and aborted fetuses go into limbo, as many Catholics believe (without biblical or even official Church support), then sex itself is recklessly cruel. By these standards, sex is not evil because it is polluted but because no matter how safe it is, there is a chance of conceiving a fetus who might either go into limbo if he or she dies before birth, or worse, be damned for rejecting Jesus in life. If there is no state of limbo, then sex is not cruel in itself, but abortion is the only guaranteed way to avoid a child's damnation, making it the most moral choice a person can make after conceiving if the Bible's teachings are true. If sin in the Christian sense really exists, then it is not worth the risk of the child's damnation, even if the risk is somewhat small (such as the case where both parents are devout Christians), to conceive and give birth to a child.

Christopher Hitchens criticized the Christian (and Islamic) belief about the nature of the world in a debate with his brother Peter at Grand Valley State University ("Hitchens vs. Hitchens"). He started by claiming that even if one can conclude that deism is true, one is still very far from demonstrating the existence of the god of any version of theism through rational argument. He next pointed out that it is actually a source of great relief to have no basis for believing in the existence of any theistic version of God, especially the versions of God taught in Christianity and Islam. A belief in these teachings is almost invariably a "totalitarian belief" and is, in the end, "the wish to be a slave." It is a tyranny that begins before one is born, continues through this life, and even continues after death. As Hitchens termed it, it is a "Celestial North Korea" (the audience laughed at this phrase, but despite its polemical flair, it is chillingly appropriate). Hitchens then asked, "Who wants this to be true?" (This rhetorical question has a simple answer: "Nobody in their right fucking mind.") "Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?" I must point out that slaves do not usually desire their slavery—why theistic believers do is baffling.

One reason that many theists do not question this state of affairs might be that they think their version of theism is true whether they want it to be or not. Another reason is that, in some cases, individual theists have had a psychological breakdown at some point that made them think that slavery to God is more desirable than their ordinary life, which in their eyes may be or may have been a form of slavery to sin (as Paul describes it in Romans 6:15-23), i.e., to things like their careers, other people, or addictions. Still, it is difficult to see the appeal of believing that eternal torment awaits those who do not believe unless one has irrefutable proof that it does. And even then, only an extreme sadist would want to believe this.

The greatest and most earth-shattering point Christopher Hitchens made in the aforementioned debate is that while North Korea has the cruelest and most totalitarian government in human history (even though North Korea's present government is truly horrific, this claim is debatable), at least it is possible to, as Hitchens phrases it, "fucking die and leave North Korea." He next pointed out that the Qur'an and Bible do not offer people a way out of suffering at all. According to these texts, people do not cease to exist at death but continue to exist eternally. Whereas all people can gain relief from even the most extreme forms of suffering in this lifetime at death if Christianity and Islam are not true, if Christianity or Islam is true, "[t]he tyranny, the misery, the utter ownership of [one's] entire personality, the smashing of [one's] individuality, only begins at the point of death"   
("Hitchens vs. Hitchens").

If the New Testament contained a factual description of reality, the suffering it describes, which is imposed by God, would be infinitely more severe than all human atrocities combined. According to the Book of Revelation, the death of all nonbelievers, or Satan's army at the Battle of Armageddon, will be at the behest of or even by Jesus himself, who will be riding on a white horse with a sword protruding from his mouth (Revelation 19:11, 15). People will be killed in the "the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty" (Revelation 19:15). If all presently living non-Christians and let's say, for the sake of argument, half of the nominally Christian population of the world were killed there, it would amount to six billion people, which is probably more than have been killed by all human governments combined. Second, the eternal torment of people is infinitely more cruel than all the suffering imposed on all the people tortured and killed in the Holocaust, the Soviet Union, Mao's China, North Korea, Khmer Rouge-led Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, 1994 Rwanda, the Armenian Genocide, the lands Japan occupied prior to and during World War II, and the genocide of Native Americans in California and other parts of the Americas, because at least they were able "to fucking die." Even people who allegedly suffered at the hands of Joshua and other Hebrew generals and prophets were able to die and leave their suffering behind (i.e., if hell does not exist—it seems unlikely that these people would have been spared damnation by the Bible's standards if hell exists).

Perhaps the best way to visualize the Christian idea of hell is to imagine the Holocaust over and over again for all of eternity while the "saved" watch the suffering and even delight in it, at least according to some accounts, such as those of Tertullian, "Saint" Thomas Aquinas (see Summa Theologica, Part Three, Section 94, Article 1), and Jonathan Edwards (see his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"). It would make Hitler look like a fly buzzing in a person's face by comparison. (I realize that invoking Hitler or Nazism to criticize the position of one's opponents has become such a cliché that doing so is often considered a logical fallacy in its own right in contemporary discourse, but I maintain that there are occasions when it is appropriate to do so. So did philosopher Leo Strauss, who coined the term Reductio ad Hitlerum to describe the fallacy of making irrelevant comparisons to Hitler or Nazism, that is, comparing one's contemporary ideological opponents to Hitler or Nazis for reasons unrelated to the acts of genocide, persecution, and extreme cruelty for which Nazis are rightly vilified. When discussing what Christianity, Islam, and other traditions teach will happen in the end times, the comparison to Hitler or Nazism is quite appropriate.)

The cruelty of the Christian God is greater than all human cruelty combined. Is it evil? Well, by definition it would not be if Christianity were true. But is it cruel in the sense that it demonstrates a disposition to "give pain to others"; a willingness to or pleasure in hurting, tormenting, or afflicting others; an utter lack of "sympathetic kindness and pity"; and mercilessness (Webster's Revised and Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language)? Yes, it absolutely is.

Even if the annihilationist viewpoint were the correct understanding of hell, as some maintain, it would not make the Christian message any more likely to be true, and it would not negate the cruelty that God shows toward people in both testaments. Christianity would still have a fundamentally misanthropic message that idealizes absolute submission (or "slavery," to use the Bible's preferred term) to a totalitarian dictatorship (or rather, "kingdom," to again use the Bible's preferred term) and the will to submit to it. In fact, even if the teaching of Universalism, according to which all people will eventually be saved, was the correct interpretation of the New Testament, it would still not negate the "this-worldly" cruelty attributed to God in both testaments, nor would it negate their idealization of absolute submission and   
self-mortification.

(For an excellent overview of the three different major theories of hell popular among Christian apologists today and throughout the history of the religion, see Steve Gregg's All You Want to Know about Hell: Three Christian Views of God's Final Solution to the Problem of Sin. Gregg holds that Christianity's core message of repentance and absolute submission to Jesus Christ is more important than the teaching of hell or what hell actually entails. I disagree with Gregg about what the Bible teaches concerning hell, but even if I held that the Bible teaches the annihilationist or Universalist view, I would still reject Christianity because of the falsity, cruelty, misanthropy, and totalitarian nature of its central message.)

Now, I want to emphasize that I do not think that humans are basically good, or that humans are pure and noble, or anything like that. I merely hold that humans are not to blame for the suffering that exists within themselves, in the societies they live in, or in the world in general. I hold that either nature or the creator of nature (if the world was created) is ultimately responsible for all suffering. This does not completely exonerate humans, as humans seem to have at least some free will, but it does acknowledge that humans are not responsible for the fundamental conditions in which they are born, live, and die.

The Idea of "Love" in the New Testament and Christianity

In the Inferno, Dante Alighieri wrote that there is a sign over the gates of hell claiming that God's love even made hell. Here is the full quotation from Canto III:

Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!

As mentioned above, one common Christian apologetic interpretation of hell is that humans can choose to be independent from God, or they can choose to have a relationship with God, with the former leading to greater unhappiness or lack of fulfillment in this lifetime and torment in the next and the latter leading to greater happiness and fulfillment in this lifetime and heaven in the next. However, it is difficult to conceive how independence from God entails torment, especially of the graphic physical variety described by the Bible and Dante. Furthermore, the fear of hell, which is impossible to avoid for those who believe in these doctrines, does not lead to love. Rather, it leads to the desire to avoid damnation by any means necessary. It quite sensibly leads to selfishness, as the desire to not be tormented eternally is selfish and will only include love if love is thought not to conflict with this desire. In fact, the "love" that follows from the this desire, if any, is necessarily insincere, at least for those who are honest with themselves about what Christianity teaches, since God's cruelty in tormenting people or allowing people to be tormented eternally is blatantly obvious to those who read the Bible honestly and sincerely. Martin Luther, who was probably more honest with himself than any other Christian in the history of the religion, understood this when he wrote the following:

This is the highest degree of faith—to believe that he is merciful, who saves so few and damns so many; to believe him just, who according to his own will, makes us necessarily damnable, that he may seem, as Erasmus says, 'to delight in the torments of the miserable, and to be an object of hatred rather than of love.' If, therefore, I could by any means comprehend how that same God can be merciful and just, who carries the appearance of so much wrath and iniquity, there would be no need of faith. (Luther, On the Bondage of the Will, Section XXIV)

While he may not have been as blunt and honest as Luther, Dante perfectly captured the contradictory nature of the Christian doctrine of love in the Inferno. Of course, it is possible to say that "hate is love" or "cruelty is love," but not without thinking that it is valid to believe in contradictions, in doublespeak. Parental discipline of a child may be out of love, but authentic disciplinary punishments rooted in love are temporary and do not consist of torment or torture. If they do, it is considered child abuse and forbidden by law (at least in most countries). Tormenting people for all of eternity, or torturing them for even a short amount of time, cannot possibly be out of love but only out of wrath, hatred, or cruelty—that is, unless the contradictory proposition that "hatred is love," "cruelty is love," or "wrath is love" is true. In that case, rational discourse about love and hate or love and wrath is impossible, and reflecting upon them cannot lead to knowledge. (Luther also understood this and so discouraged the use of reason in trying to understand God in the same section of On the Bondage of the Will where the passage quoted above is located.)

The worst doublespeak is in the writings of John, in the gospel and first letter attributed to him. John's gospel is the most exclusive of the four canonical gospels, drawing a line in the sand between those who follow Jesus and those who do not, who "belong to [their] father, the devil" (John 8:44). The following quotation is often used by Evangelical and fundamentalist apologists to support Christian exclusivism: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). However, more liberally minded interpreters hold that here Jesus is saying nobody gets to the Father except through the Logos or Word, which is universal and present in all cultures and all of creation, since it was through the Word that the world was created, according to John (1:3). However, the Gospel of John also features the following passage:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth....

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's Side, has made him known. (John 1:14, 1:17-18)

John claims that only Jesus has made God known, not the Word as a reality present throughout the world. Furthermore, people must believe in the name of the Son, which is Jesus (or more accurately, Yeshua), not Logos, to have the right (or power) to become children of God (1:12). The "loving" God of John only includes and loves those who accept the Son as savior. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that the Father loves them because they have loved him and believed he came from God (16:27). Those who keep Jesus' commandments are those who love Jesus, and those who love Jesus will be loved by the Father (14:21). Finally, in the Gospel of John, Jesus commands his disciples to love each other as he has loved them (15:12).

What does this love, known as agape in Greek, mean? In the abstract, it means selfless, non-self-seeking love that always desires what is best for others. It is not affection. It is more like unconditional care, concern, and non-enmity for others. In Christianity specifically, the word has different applications to believers and nonbelievers. In relation to believers, it means principally getting along and being there for them in their time of need, but it also means "helping" them to not sin by policing their behavior and warning, admonishing, and rebuking them for behaving sinfully and holding incorrect views about God, the world, and humanity. In relation to nonbelievers, love means first and foremost trying to get them to accept Jesus as savior because only believers are saved, and in fact only believers truly love God (and are truly loved by God) according to John.

What about John 3:16, which reads as follows: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life"? This is possibly the best-known passage in the entire Bible. Some liberal Christians like to quote it without bothering to provide context or even mention the passages that immediately follow it.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. (John 3:17-21)

Nonbelievers are condemned. "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him" (John 3:36). The Gospel of John, like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, teaches that people are either with Jesus or against him (Matthew 12:30; Luke 11:23). There is no middle ground. Christian love is ultimately exclusive to those who accept Jesus as savior. All others are excluded, condemned to endure God's wrath. The Book of Revelation actually has a lot in common with the Gospel of John: both not only teach that nonbelievers will be condemned but that they deserve to suffer for their sins. Both books are almost dualistically exclusive of nonbelievers. The Gospel of John's idea of love is very limited and intolerant, as it is presented as consistent with the condemnation of those who disagree with or do not accept the words of Jesus as children of the devil. John's concept of love is predicated upon absolute devotion to Jesus and every word he says, as well as every word John writes, without question. Questioning Jesus or John is a sign of being a nonbeliever and not having the Spirit of God or God's love within oneself.

According to 1 John 4:8, "God is love." Now, if God is justice or God is love, then God is simply an abstract quality that humans experience in their own lives. If on the other hand God is like justice or like love, then God is like abstract qualities that people experience. If God is just or loving, then God is a lot like a person. A personal God would have qualities like being just or loving, but would not be justice or love. Otherwise God would not in fact be personal.

In perfect cultish fashion, John warns Christians not to listen to antichrists—that is, Christian preachers who do not have the same message as John (1 John 2:18-28). He does not simply say they are wrong or disagree with them using reason. Rather, he condemns them as enemies of Christ because they are his ideological enemies. As John puts it, "We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us [i.e., John and Christians who agree with him]; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood" (1 John 4:6).

Another favorite theme of John is the evil one, or the devil. Of Christians, including himself, he writes, "We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one" (1 John 5:19).

Finally, John is not the only early Christian who discussed the idea of love. Paul discussed it in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, a well-known passage that is quoted at numerous weddings (despite the fact that the type of love this passage is about, the previously-mentioned agape, is not the primary type of love for which people in any culture get married). Like John, Paul's letters indicate that Paul thought his understanding of the person and mission of Jesus was uniquely authoritative. Thus, the love mentioned in this letter is also necessarily a very exclusive form of love that permits the rejection and condemnation of all nonbelievers and the world in general.

Can these passages be taken out of context to support a notion of God who is actually loving rather than using them as a vehicle and pretext for relentlessly condemning nonbelievers and Christians who disagree with one's own views, as John and Paul did? Perhaps, but it requires an extremely selective use of scripture. Furthermore, it is far easier to find such ideas in the teachings of Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich, Sufi poets like Jalal-ad-Din Rumi, early Hasidic Jews, the Guru Granth Sahib (Sikhism's holy book), and Hindu Vaishnava and Nirguna Brahman poets. So at that point, why bother using the Bible at all, if one is not even going to attempt to heed the whole thing? (The same critique also applies to church tradition for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians.)

Guilt and the Christian Views of Humanity and the Self

In Christian parlance, the "good news" is the news that Jesus has been killed for one's sins and raised from the dead so that one may have eternal life and avoid eternal punishment. But the view that one is a sinner at all is baseless. Is the world full of suffering and hardship? Yes. Do humans cause considerable hardship and suffering for other humans and animals and oppress each other more than all other species? Absolutely. But are humans to blame for this, as the Bible would have us believe? There is no evidence that we are, but there is considerable evidence that we are not. In fact, the evidence suggests that humans are continuous with the rest of the biosphere in almost all respects, and that humans are not the reason the biosphere is adversarial, features a constant struggle for survival for all living things in the face of scarce resources and numerous calamities, and is full of suffering. The scientific evidence regarding our species' past and the history of life on earth shows that death and competition for resources have always been part of the biosphere, since long before hominids walked upon the earth.

The evidence suggests that it is not even the fault of humans that we have a drive, instinct, and general tendency to impose suffering on massive scales and/or loyally follow those who do. These tendencies can be explained by genetics and neurology. By all scientifically credible accounts, even forms of violence that are not rooted in competition for resources either have a physiological-neurological origin or can be explained in terms of natural human motives and responses that have not been adequately deterred by the motives and responses that tend to eschew violence (see, e.g., Pinker 497-568).

Even if competition for resources, neuro-physiological factors, and other natural human motives and responses are not adequate to explain the pervasiveness of violence in human history, then the culprit is some as-yet unknown factor. And again, if the universe, including humans, was created by a single all-knowing and all-powerful being as Christianity and other theistic traditions teach, then that being is responsible for all suffering and all of its causes, not any creature.

In any case, the view that one is a sinner tends to lead to guilt, but unlike guilt for specific actions that harm specific people or sentient beings—which is not even that difficult to remedy in the majority of cases—this specifically Christian form of guilt is a general sense of inadequacy that never really goes away. Even when one accepts Jesus as one's savior and becomes a "child of God," one cannot take any credit for this and must regard oneself as worthless without God's grace. In the (non-Pelagian) Christian understanding of the human self, the self has no value because it is inadequate. It is inadequate because it is incapable of righteousness on its own. And this inability to be righteous cannot but produce feelings of guilt, since it requires repentance whenever one behaves imperfectly. But according to Christianity, behaving imperfectly includes even sinful thoughts, such as doubting God's ways or the Bible's teachings in the slightest, making imperfection (and by extension guilt) impossible to avoid for a believing Christian.
CHAPTER 9:

PROPHECIES THAT JESUS ALLEGEDLY FULFILLED

The same standard that applies to the rest of the Bible also applies to its prophecies. Unless there is independent corroborating evidence that they have been fulfilled, there is no reason to trust that the Bible is recording verifiable historical events as they actually occurred. The New Testament was written with a specific missionary agenda in mind, so there is every reason to believe its authors would try to make specific events in the life of Jesus fit prophecies from the Old Testament in order to convince others, particularly fellow Jews, that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. Of course any references to the Old Testament would have been more readily understood by Jews, who were already familiar with the Old Testament, than by Gentiles. (The fact that most Jews have been aware of the actual contents of the messianic prophecies probably helps explain why most Jews have rejected the claim of Jesus and his followers that he was the Messiah.) In addition, there is every reason to believe the authors of the New Testament pretended that Jesus and the apostles produced miracles that many people witnessed in order to bolster Jesus' and their own reputation as authentic bearers and embodiments of divine truth.

The Immanuel Prophecy

The "Immanuel Prophecy" of Isaiah 7:14 has already been mentioned in connection with the doctrine of the virgin birth. It is also highly relevant to the present discussion. Here it is along with surrounding passages to provide context:

When Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Pekah son of Remaliah king of Israel marched up to fight against Jerusalem, but they could not overpower it.

Now the house of David was told, "Aram [Syria] has allied itself with Ephraim [the Kingdom of Israel, which had split from the Kingdom of Judah about 200 years earlier]"; so the hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind.

Then the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub, to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Washerman's Field. Say to him, 'Be careful, keep calm and don't be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood—because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and of the son of Remaliah. Aram, Ephraim, and Remaliah's son have plotted your ruin, saying, "Let us invade Judah; let us tear it apart and divide it among ourselves, and make the son of Tabeel king over it." Yet this is what the Sovereign Lord says:

"'It will not take place, it will not happen,

for the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is only Rezin.

Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be too shattered to be a people.

The head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is only Remaliah's son.

If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.'"

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, "Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights."

But Ahaz said, "I will not ask; I will not put the Lord to the test."

Then Isaiah said, "Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of men? Will you try the patience of my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right. But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria."   
(Isaiah 7:1-17)

The surrounding context makes it clear that the purpose of Isaiah 7:14 is to give Ahaz a sign that the Kingdom of Judah will not be invaded by its neighbors and that he will not lose his position as king. In order for this sign to have been relevant to Ahaz, it would have had to have been fulfilled while Ahaz was alive, and while Isaiah (or the prophet of First Isaiah, chapters 1-39 of the present Book of Isaiah) was prophesying, in the eighth century BCE. Furthermore, commentators have frequently pointed out that Isaiah 7:14 is in the present tense, reading that the young woman is currently pregnant, not that she will one day become pregnant (see, e.g., Golding 1, qtd. in Till). In other words, the young woman in question would have had to have been pregnant for hundreds of years for Jesus to be the child in question. Thus, the most reasonable conclusion is that the author of the Gospel of Matthew took Isaiah 7:14 out of context to support his extraordinary claims about Jesus.

To Us a Child Is Born

Isaiah 9:2-7 reads as follows:

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.

For as in the day of Midian's defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.

Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

This passage, which is frequently quoted in churches at Christmastime, refers to a coming king or government leader. Despite the fact that some New Testament figures called him the King of the Jews, Jesus was obviously not a king or government leader in the literal sense during his earthly ministry. Thus, the only way this passage can be considered consistent with the New Testament is if it refers to the Second Coming, when Jesus will supposedly defeat the forces of evil and reign over the earth as king for a thousand years before the Last Judgment (Revelation 19:11-20:6). However, because the eschatological prophecies of the Second Coming have not yet happened, this prophecy was not or has not yet been fulfilled by Jesus and thus cannot be considered evidence for the truth of the Bible or the divinity of Jesus.

The Bethlehem Prophecy

Micah 5:2 reads as follows: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." The Gospel of Matthew claims that Herod, the Roman-appointed ruler of the region, used this prophecy to determine where Jesus would be born so he could send the Magi there (2:3-8). However, it is clear from the very words of this passage that Bethlehem refers to a clan of Judah, as Bethlehem is said to be "small among the clans of Judah," not small among the towns or cities of Judah. Clearly, this passage refers to a clan of the tribe of Judah, not a town in the Davidic Kingdom of Judah. As he did on many other occasions, the writer of Matthew took a passage from the Hebrew Bible out of context in order to make it appear to prophesy the events of Jesus' life. Based on their other uses of Old Testament prophecies to bolster their claim that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God, it seems likely that the authors of Matthew and Luke made up the claim that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to claim that Jesus was born in David's hometown.

The Massacre of the Innocents

Jeremiah 31:15 reads as follows: "This is what the Lord says: 'A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.'" Matthew claims that this passage contains a prophecy of a massacre of young boys known colloquially as "The Massacre of the Innocents" that supposedly occurred in the vicinity of Bethlehem after Jesus was born (Matthew 2:16-18). According to Matthew, Herod ordered this massacre in order to kill Jesus. However, Matthew's claim that Jeremiah prophesied this massacre is problematic for two main reasons, even if the massacre actually occurred. First, the Jeremiah passage refers to the vicinity of Ramah, which was several miles north of Jerusalem, whereas Bethlehem, where the slaughter occurred according to Matthew, was and still is south of Jerusalem. Second, the next verse makes it clear that Rachel's children were prophesied to "return from the land of the enemy" (Jeremiah 31:16). In the story reported in Matthew, in order for this prophecy to have been fulfilled, the boys would have had to have come back to life after being massacred by Herod. However, in the account given by Matthew, there is no indication that this occurred (and of course the very suggestion is absurd by any empirical standard, though of course not by Christianity's internal logic).

Out of Egypt

Hosea 11:1 reads as follows: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." Matthew repeats this passage (2:15) when describing the flight of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod's Massacre of the Innocents in the Bethlehem area and their subsequent return to Judea. As with the other alleged prophecies discussed above, it is likely that the author of Matthew made up the flight to Egypt in order to make it appear that this prophecy was fulfilled by Jesus. It is also possible that he took this passage, which only literally refers to the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, to make it appear that something he believed literally happened to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus was prophesied long ago. Either way, his testimony is highly suspect, as it is in most of his other "fulfilled prophecy" claims.

Seventy "Sevens"

Daniel 9:24-27 reads as follows:

"Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.

"Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him."

This passage is often cited as one of the strongest pieces of evidence for Jesus as the Messiah. American skeptic Jim Lippard has already provided a comprehensive breakdown of the problems with using this passage to support this claim. I will briefly summarize some of his main points. The word translated as "sevens" in this passage can refer to several different units of time: periods of seven ordinary years, periods of seven weeks, or periods of "years" of 360 days apiece (Lippard). Such vagueness alone surely counts as evidence against a prophecy having been fulfilled. Allowing for wiggle room in interpreting prophecies in itself calls the credibility of such prophecies into question, as it is only reasonable to assume that a book dictated or revealed by God would be able to clearly communicate important information to human beings, even in later translations.

In any case, four different possible starting points constituting the decree in Daniel 9:24 have been cited by Christian apologists, and several possible choices for endpoints, namely the birth, ministry, and crucifixion of Jesus, have been cited by apologists as the events referred to in this passage (Lippard). The "sevens" in this passage have, in turn, been interpreted variously as periods of seven ordinary years, periods of seven years of 360 days apiece, or periods of sabbatical cycles. All of these different interpretations have been made in order to get a date that fits or might fit the lifetime of Jesus.

Famous Christian apologist Josh McDowell has suggested that three decrees are possible as the referent of Daniel 9:24: the decree of the Persian king Darius in Ezra 6:1-9, the decree of the Persian king Ataxerxes in Ezra 7:11-28, or the "decree" of Ataxerxes (which is not a decree at all) in Nehemiah 2:1-6. However, the Ezra decrees do not work for any time during Jesus' life, while the decrees and letters of Artaxerxes have nothing to do with restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem. In any case, Daniel does not clearly indicate what the "sevens" in this passage refer to, so any dates calculated based on this passage are speculative attempts to make Jesus' life fit the prophecy. Another problem with the Book of Daniel is that very few scholars believe it was actually written by the prophet Daniel in the seventh or sixth century BC/BCE. Rather, it was written around the time of the 160's BCE Maccabean Revolt. Part of it was not even written in Hebrew but in Aramaic. (It is no accident that the Book of Daniel is not in the "Prophecy" or Nevi'im section of the Hebrew Bible, but in the section of general writings, the Ketuvim.)

Alleged Prophecies of Jesus' Miracles

Isaiah 32:1-4 and 35:5-7 have both been read as prophecies of Jesus' miraculous healing abilities. They read as follows:

See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice.

Each man will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen.

The mind of the rash will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear. (Isaiah 32:1-4)

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.

Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.

In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. (Isaiah 35:5-7)

According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus healed a deaf and mute man (7:31-37) and a blind man (8:22-25; see also John 9:1-12). According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus claimed that because of him the blind would receive sight, the deaf would hear, and the lame would walk (11:5). However, there is again no reason to trust that these Gospel passages refer to actual historical events, given that their authors had a specific missionary agenda in mind. The last three events described in the second passage did not happen during Jesus' ministry and have not happened at any time since, while the first passage is too vague to be considered to have been fulfilled by Jesus in any meaningful sense. The first passage does not describe to what the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, or to what the ears of those who hear will listen, or what the mind of the rash will come to know and understand. Furthermore, it describes a king, which again, Jesus was not in any literal sense during his lifetime.

Psalm 16:8-11 reads as follows:

I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,

because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your   
right hand.

Peter quotes this passage in Acts 2:25-28, proclaiming that God's act of raising Jesus from the dead is a fulfillment of this Psalmic "prophecy." However, the Psalms are devotional songs attributed to David and are not even intended to be prophetic in nature. Christians use the fact that David remained in his grave after he died as evidence that he was not speaking of himself in this passage but of one who really did conquer death. Yet if this passage is truly about Jesus, why would Jesus, who is supposedly the One True Son of God, have to have the path of life made known to him? Furthermore, Jesus experienced "decay" during his crucifixion, even if the decay was reversed upon his resurrection. This passage is clearly problematic and cannot be considered a "prophecy" of Jesus. It certainly cannot be considered a prophecy that Jesus actually fulfilled through his alleged resurrection (which itself has never been convincingly demonstrated to have occurred).

The Suffering Servant

Isaiah 53 is probably the most important prophecy in the Old Testament from a Christian point-of-view. Therefore, I quote the entire chapter, as well as the verses that precede it, below:

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness—

so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,   
and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him,   
and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants?

For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and   
be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)

This passage seems to speak of Jesus. There are two possible explanations for this. Either Jesus really did fulfill this particular prophecy, or the authors of the New Testament made the events of Jesus' life and death fit this prophecy in order to make him appear to be the "suffering servant." There is no evidence that Isaiah prophesied that the suffering servant would be divine, the Son of God, or even the Messiah in this passage. It is likely that the belief that Jesus "bore the sin of many" and God "laid on him the iniquity of us all" was an interpretation crafted onto Jesus' crucifixion by his disciples based on their knowledge of the above passage. Furthermore, we cannot overlook that many Jews have been killed over the last 2,700 years since (Second) Isaiah made this prophecy. Maybe it was not Jesus but a different Jewish figure who Isaiah had in mind.

Jewish Hebrew Bible scholars often claim that the "servant" in Isaiah 53 represents the Nation of Israel collectively, and the "many nations" and "many kings" are surprised by the success of this little nation (see, for example, Jewish Study Bible: Tanakh Translation, 2004, 891-92n.). These scholars further claim that the idea of vicarious suffering would be unusual for the Hebrew Bible, while the idea of collective guilt would not (Jewish Study Bible, 892n.). However, in this case I am inclined to disagree with these scholars, as this passage seems to speak of an individual in no uncertain terms. 
CHAPTER 10:

FAILED PROPHECIES

Daniel's Prophecies Relating to Antiochus IV

Daniel 11:1-39 reports events almost exactly as they happened in Jerusalem and the Near East in general between the reigns of four Persian kings of the Achaemenid Empire and the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, including the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon (the Seleucid Dynasty is named after one of his generals) (Jewish Study Bible 1662-64). Antiochus IV set up the worship of Zeus in the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which, not surprisingly, greatly offended many of the Jews living there. However, the prophecies of Daniel 11:40-45, which predict the doom of Antiochus IV in an apocalyptic war with his neighbors after he conquers some of them, do not correspond to what actually happened (Jewish Study Bible, 1664n.). In fact, this passage predicts that Antiochus IV will be defeated in the time of the end, i.e. at the end of the world. The world obviously did not end in this fashion. Thus, Daniel 11:40-45 is a failed apocalyptic prophecy and itself disproves the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

The Throne of David

2 Samuel 7:11-16 and 1 Kings 9:4-9 discuss how long the throne of David will last. They read as follows:

"'The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:11-16)

"As for you, if you walk before me in integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.'

"But if you or your sons turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name. Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. And though this temple is now imposing, all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff and say, 'Why has the Lord done such a thing to this land and to this temple?' People will answer, 'Because they have forsaken the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why the Lord brought all this disaster on them.'" (1 Kings 9:4-9)

These two passages contradict each other. The first states that the throne of David will "endure forever," without conditions. The second states that the throne will only last if Solomon and his descendants remain faithful to Yahweh. The first passage contains a false claim by God himself. He tells David that his kingdom will endure forever, which it of course did not in any literal sense.

Some Christian apologists like to give passages like this a "spiritual" interpretation, claiming that through Jesus David's kingdom has lasted and will last forever (despite the fact that Jesus can only be a descendant of David or the begotten Son of God, not both). However, this notion of the kingdom is clearly not what is meant in the quoted passages. There, it refers strictly to a political entity. Furthermore, the "offspring" who becomes king in the first passage quoted above will be punished for doing wrong, which Jesus never did according to the New Testament and Christian tradition. Therefore, this passage cannot safely be read as a prophecy of Jesus from any perspective.

In the second passage, serving other gods is the sin that will cause the people of Israel to lose their kingdom. In traditional Jewish reckoning, this would include worshipping Jesus or any other proclaimed Messiah as divine. More importantly, the second passage sounds like a hasty attempt to justify the end of the Davidic kingdom and destruction of the First Temple in order to gloss over the earlier passage from 2 Samuel. In any case, these passages contradict each other, and the first one turned out to be false. As with many of the passages cited in this chapter, these alone disprove the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

Ezekiel's Prophecy of the Destruction of Egypt

Ezekiel 29:8-14, 19 reads as follows:

"'Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will bring a sword against you and kill your men and their animals. Egypt will become a desolate wasteland. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

"'Because you said, "The Nile is mine; I made it," therefore I am against you and against your streams, and I will make the land of Egypt a ruin and a desolate waste from Migdol to Aswan, as far as the border of Cush. No foot of man or animal will pass through it; no one will live there for forty years. I will make the land of Egypt desolate among devastated lands, and her cities will lie desolate forty years among ruined cities. And I will disperse the Egyptians among the nations and scatter them through the countries.

"'Yet this is what the Sovereign Lord says: At the end of forty years I will gather the Egyptians from the nations where they were scattered. I will bring them back from captivity and return them to Upper Egypt, the land of their ancestry. There they will be a lowly kingdom.'"



"Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am going to give Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will carry off its wealth."

As Egypt has never been uninhabited or a desolate wasteland for forty years, this passage is a clear example of a failed prophecy. In addition, the prophecy that Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt and plunder its wealth was never fulfilled, at least not during Nebuchadnezzar's or Ezekiel's time. Furthermore, as Nebuchadnezzar, who died over 2,500 years ago, is the prophesied conqueror of Egypt, this prophecy clearly does not concern events that have yet to occur.

Jesus' Failed Prophecy of the Second Coming

The most important failed prophecy in the Bible, and the one most often cited by Christianity's critics (most famously by the renowned New Testament scholar and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer), is one that Jesus himself allegedly made. It can be found in Matthew 24:1-35. I quote the entire passage here because of its significance:

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. "Do you see all these things?" he asked. "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be   
thrown down."

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"

Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

"So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time.

"So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

"Immediately after the distress of those days 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'

"At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (Matthew 24:1-35) (emphasis added)

This passage has been subject to a variety of interpretations by Christians. However, the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of the sky did not happen before the generation of Jesus' disciples passed away, nor has it happened at any time since. The sun has not become darkened and the moon has not stopped being illuminated by the sun. Stars have not fallen from the sky (this is, of course, physically impossible) and the heavenly bodies have not been shaken. According to this prophecy, "the end" will come after the "good news" has been preached in all nations. The Christian message has been preached in all nations by now, but it had not been while Jesus' disciples were alive. Therefore, this prophecy was not fulfilled as predicted. The phrase "[t]his generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened" cannot be interpreted any other way if one wishes to read the Bible faithfully and accurately.

This prophecy turned out to be false. The fact that Jesus said that neither he nor the angels know when these events will happen, "but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36), does not excuse the incorrectness of Jesus' prophecy, especially not if he is the one true Son of God, as ignorance about anything is incompatible with divine omniscience. It is possible to argue that God is not omniscient, but this argument is incompatible with the Bible as a whole, as well as every individual book except Genesis. There is no way around the fact that Matthew 24:1-35 was a failed prophecy made by Jesus himself, though Christian apologists have long labored to find one.
CHAPTER 11:

EMPIRICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD

Introduction

In this and all subsequent chapters that concern biblical doctrines that can be evaluated empirically, my standard of interpretation is what the best available evidence suggests. Since apparently empirical claims about the universe in a book do not count as actual evidence but rather need to be supported by actual observations and measurements to be accepted as true, the Bible's words do not in themselves count as evidence for the truth of any proposition. Put another way, unless the Bible's words are supported by outside evidence, any claim that concerns phenomena described by the Bible with even a shred of empirical support must be regarded as more likely to be true than the Bible's teachings on that subject. If there is a theory (in the scientific sense: a model that has been repeatedly supported by empirical evidence and not yet falsified, and explains a large set of data more parsimoniously than any competing explanation) concerning matters the Bible purports to explain with actual observable evidence in its favor, it is much more likely to be true than the Bible's claims.

Individuals who understand the nature and limitations of science do not treat science as infallible or as the sole and final arbiter of truth and falsehood, although apologists for scientism, or the belief that only science provides accurate knowledge about the universe, often treat science this way. In authentic science, there is never certainty, since better models for understanding observable phenomena continuously emerge as a result of the disciplined enquiries and measurements of scientists. Science is respectable as a method for acquiring knowledge about empirical phenomena precisely because it does not purport to provide certainty. But it does provide explanations of what can be experienced by the five senses, analyzed mathematically, and interpreted by the faculty of reason that are more probable than others, since it is based on observation and not mere conjecture, dogmatic acceptance of traditional beliefs, or the ideas contained in alleged sacred texts.

Admittedly, even science can be dogmatic, as scientists do sometimes cling to established paradigms and their own pet theories even when overwhelming evidence requires that they be modified. However, the danger of this happening in science is far lower than in religion or even philosophy, since it is possible to use actual observations and measurements to challenge scientific dogmatism, whereas there is rarely much empirical evidence to challenge religious or philosophical dogmatism.

To recapitulate the portion of the Christian narrative that concerns us here, unless Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden literally existed, the original sin never happened, human beings are not under the curse of sin, and there is no need for a redeemer. If sin does not exist as something that separates human beings from God, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus were and are not necessary to bridge the gap between God and humanity.

The most famous texts that describe Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are the Bible (the book of Genesis) and the Qur'an (Surah 2, Al Baqarah, or The Cow). Neither text was written by individuals who used empirical evidence to reach their conclusions. According to Christian beliefs, the story of Adam and Eve contained in Genesis was revealed by God. However, there is significant empirical evidence that contradicts the Book of Genesis (and, of course, the same evidence also contradicts the Qur'an).

A liberal religionist may object that while they are not literally "true," sacred texts such as the Bible provide the moral and ideological foundations for the communities that regard them as sacred and are "true" in that sense. However, unless the claims of such texts are literally true, they lose all their persuasive power, since they are then mere human creations that do not give any real information about the way things are. Any such information, if it exists, must then be read into them, but in that case what is read into these texts is true, not the literal information they convey. Besides, "sacred texts" always seek to convey information about the nature of the world and those things they consider ultimately true and meaningful, even if that is not their only function or purpose. (It is worth briefly noting that not all religious practitioners treat their sacred texts as mere conveyors of information. Some treat them as having meaning in and of themselves as divine sound, divine speech, or sacred language. Even so, it is still the case that all sacred texts are written in order to convey information that their writers regard as true and meaningful.)

If sacred texts were meant by their writers to be allegorical works of fiction (which they have not been in the vast majority of cases), they have no direct relevance to the human quest for truth, no more than, say, the works of William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. Again, it is possible to read what one considers to be actual truths into works of fiction, but when one does this, one does not thereby prove that what the texts literally claim to be the case is indeed the case. In fact, in reading alleged truths into them, one implicitly acknowledges that what they literally claim to be the case is actually not the case. To analyze anything but the truth or untruth of alleged sacred texts' claims is not merely a hindrance to any honest search for truth; it is also more of a slap in the face to the religions that claim these texts as revelations than an honest rejection of them (not that these religions deserve respect). Thus, I take the claims of such texts seriously and seek to refute them as they are presented. However, the truth of their claims is absolutely not self-evident. Nor should any text be seen as immune from criticism, since such an approach hinders the human quest for truth, especially where legal restrictions protect certain texts and the ideas they contain from criticism.

Analysis

The Book of Genesis is already empirically inaccurate in the first three verses. Here, morning and evening are said to have occurred before the sun was even created, and the earth is said to have been created before the sun (Genesis 1:1-19). Origen, an influential third century Christian apologist, recognized that it was impossible to speak of literal days and nights before the sun was created and recognized that a literal interpretation of Genesis was not logically tenable as a result. So should we.

Even if one interprets the creation narrative (Genesis 1:1-25) nonliterally, one must still deal with the most important part of the creation narrative as far as human beings and the Christian tradition are concerned: the creation of Adam and Eve and their sin against God (Genesis 2-3). The story of the primordial couple and the Garden of Eden has almost immeasurably significant consequences for the human race if it is true. If its truth could be proven, it would confirm that there is a God and provide strong evidence that the book of Genesis, and by extension the other five books of the Torah or Pentateuch, are revealed by God. It would not be merely a piece of intellectual curiosity. It would mean that all humans owe their allegiance and loyalty to this particular god, who would then simply be God in the sense in which the term is usually understood. (It is important to acknowledge that there are multiple names for God in the Hebrew Bible, including YHWH/Yahweh, Yahweh-Elohim, and Elohim. "Elohim" is a plural noun in Hebrew, so Christians have historically interpreted references to Elohim as references to the Trinity. However, it is very unlikely that this was the intended referent for the Hebrew author or transcriber of Genesis, whether it was Moses, as the Jewish and Christian traditions have long held, or somebody else. Most scholars, such as Cassuto (18), now believe this word originally referred to multiple deities, including some non-Hebrew deities, but not the Christian Trinity.)

If the story of Adam and Eve were true, it would at least narrow down the list of religions that are possibly true to just Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Baha'i, as these four traditions all teach that Adam and Eve were literally the first humans created by God, that they sinned against God, and that the Torah is divinely revealed or inspired. Thus, it is of the utmost importance to figure out whether belief in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, as well as God, Satan, and angels and other demons, is valid or not. Again, to do that I look at what the best available evidence suggests.

The first question that emerges is whether the genesis accounts of the Abrahamic religions can even be falsified in the first place. Fortunately, they can. The Genesis account of the Jewish and Christian traditions holds that humans were created independently of other animals from the dirt or dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; cf. Surah 30:20 of the Qur'an). So if there is any kind of biological continuity between humans and other animals, it refutes a literal interpretation of Genesis. The Genesis account also holds that the first humans lived in Mesopotamia after being placed there by God (2:8-14). If the human race originated anywhere other than Mesopotamia, this claim is refuted.

There is a Christian apologetic interpretation of geological evidence called "flood geology," which is a central tenet of the school of mythological thought known as Young Earth Creationism. (Generally speaking, Young Earth Creationists attempt to interpret the Bible literally and honestly. They understand that it is not the place of one who believes the Bible is revealed by God to question the Bible or interpret it to agree with one's own preconceived notions.) This interpretation holds that fossils and other paleontological remains that have been dated back tens of millions to billions of years by paleontologists are actually the result of the Great Flood that destroyed all living things but Noah, his family, and two of every species, as described in Genesis 6-8. According to Young Earth Creationists, these remains are really only a few thousand years old. They cite other flood stories in other cultures, such as the one contained in the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, stories from China, stories from the Americas, etc., to back up this claim. If there is no evidence that this flood ever happened, or if any fossils discovered were lodged in the earth prior to the alleged flood, this interpretation is refuted.

Finally, the biblical account holds that the world was created in six days with God resting on the seventh. According to some interpreters, the days in Genesis 1-2 refer to time periods of indeterminate length. The word for each of these time periods in Hebrew, yom, can have more than one meaning, but the fact that morning and evening both occur on each day and the fact that the word yom refers to a literal 24-hour period every other time a number is coupled with it in the Hebrew Bible clearly lead to the inference that the days cited in Genesis 1-2 also refer to literal 24-hour periods (Stambaugh). From an examination of the genealogies reported in the Bible, the seventeenth century Anglican bishop James Ussher concluded that the earth's creation commenced on October 23, 4004 BC. If any human being lived prior to 4004 BC, or if there is evidence that the universe came into existence prior to that date, Ussher's claim is falsified. If the days of Genesis 1-2 are not literal twenty-four hour periods, this part of the Bible is not falsifiable and thus does not provide any useful information either way.

Anthropological Evidence against the Genesis   
Creation Narrative

The prevailing theory of evolution, if true, would show that humans are biologically continuous with other animals and thus could not have been directly created from the dust of the ground by the alleged creator of the universe, thus refuting the Genesis account. The fossil record and genetic evidence show that humans are continuous with other animals, since it is possible to observe gradations of genetic similarities between humans and other organisms—i.e., we have the most genetic commonality with chimpanzees, followed by gorillas, followed by orangutans, followed by other primates, followed by colugos, followed by tree shrews, followed by lagomorphs and rodents, etc. Of course, this does not prove with absolute certainty that humans have our nearest common ancestor with chimpanzees among all the world's organisms, but it leads to that inference, as it is (by far) the interpretation that best fits the evidence.

I am not an expert in biology, so I recommend a close reading of Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson's "Immunological Time Scale for Hominid Evolution," where these two researchers postulate that the divergence between humans and other apes occurred four to five million years ago based on their measurements of the strength of immunological cross-reactions of blood serum albumin between multiple pairs of organisms, including humans and chimpanzees and humans and gorillas. There are other lines of evidence for the recent genetic continuity between humans and other apes, which are related to an examination of East African hominid fossils, including the famous 3.2 million year old hominid fossil "Lucy" and the more recently discovered 4.4 million year old fossil "Ardi" (see Gibbons).

Lucy is a largely intact fossilized skeleton of a female Australopithecus, an early hominin species that existed between three and four million years ago. Lucy was discovered by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 1974. Ardi was also discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia, by paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and is a member of the Ardipithecus Ramidus, an even older species of hominin that existed over four million years ago. Ardi provides particularly striking evidence for the recent divergence between bipedal hominids and other apes, as researchers believe that Ardi both walked upright and moved on all fours on top of tree   
branches (Gibbons).

Not only does the fossil record indicate a continuous morphology between species, but the science of genetics provides a theory explaining how such adaptations occur. Genetics has changed the way evolution is understood. To summarize the prevailing view of contemporary geneticists and evolutionary biologists, genetic variation within a species exists as a result of random genetic mutations, and populations of a given species evolve as a result of changes in gene frequency caused by genetic drift (increases and decreases in the number of genes in a given population over time), gene flow (the transfer of genes from one population of a species to another), and natural selection. In the long run (that is, over tens of thousands of years or more), these variations can become so great that what was once a distinct population of a species becomes a new species in its own right.

It is possible to poke holes in almost all scientific discoveries, especially in sciences that examine observable data that are very old, such as evolutionary biology, paleoanthropology, and geology. However, to repeat what was said earlier, science is not about finding absolutely certain answers but finding the most probable answers to questions based on observable evidence. Even if one were to poke holes in the genetic research of Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson or the anthropological research of Donald Johanson, Tim White, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and the Leakeys, it would not prove that alternative beliefs about the history of the human race are valid or more likely to be valid than theirs. In matters that science can provide information about, any alternative explanation for a set of data must be demonstrated by at least the same weight of observable evidence as an accepted or competing scientific explanation to warrant serious consideration.

Accounts contained in ancient texts do not count as such evidence unless they are also backed up by repeatable observations. If the stories of the origin of humans in the Bible, Qur'an, Vedas, and other sacred texts, the various human origin myths of non-literate peoples around the world, and the claims of modern biologists and anthropologists are to be considered equally plausible explanations of human origins, they all must be backed up by actual observations in the present. Otherwise, it would be impossible to determine which one is valid or most likely to be valid, and only faith in one or the other would be possible. However, the claims of modern biologists and anthropologists are backed up by actual observations, and these observations could also be made by anybody capable of applying the well-established, peer-reviewed techniques for investigating genetic or anthropological claims of the fields of genetics and physical anthropology, respectively.

Based on fossil and genetic evidence, it is highly likely that the modern human race originated in Africa between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago. However, there is a competing hypothesis which holds that modern humans emerged or evolved in several regions of the world simultaneously. Both hypotheses are supported by evidence, but neither is compatible with a literal reading of the biblical account. The earliest skeletons of anatomically modern humans, which are 160,000 years old, were found in the Afar region of Ethiopia, although these are part of an extinct subspecies according to scientists (Sanders). There is also genetic evidence for the African origins of the human race. Specifically, all humans are believed to have one common female ancestor (see Cann et al.; see also Vigilant et al., Keinan et al., Chen et al. and Brown).

It is true that there are skeletons of modern humans from what is now the state of Israel, from a cave on the slopes of Mount Carmel no less, that date from 80,000 to 100,000 years ago (Liu et al.). However, as stated above, the biblical narrative requires that the first humans lived in Mesopotamia, so even the remains found on Mount Carmel do not support a literal biblical account.

Dating biological remains is a notoriously imprecise science, but some evidence is more reliable than no evidence. So the fact that dating techniques like electron spin resistance, radiometric (which is the most common technique and includes carbon-14, uranium-thorium, and uranium-lead as well as other types of dating), and optically stimulated luminescence yield widely varying estimates does not prove that they are invalid. In fact, they are more reliable than any dating method that does not rely on actual observable evidence, which includes pretty much all techniques but those just listed.

Similarly, even if the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection were thoroughly disproven, there would still not be any tangible empirical evidence that favored a theory of intelligent design or special creation instead. These would still have to be established on the basis of actual evidence that people could observe, and/or laboratory experiments that could be repeated.

Other Evidence against the Genesis Creation Narrative

Geologists almost unanimously agree that rock strata that can be observed in the present formed over tens of millions to billions of years and that fossils found in these strata are millions to billions of years old. There is great uncertainty in the science of dating fossils and rocks in general, as with most sciences where the distant past is the primary object of study. Furthermore, only certain specific conditions can lead to the formation of fossils in the first place, so the knowledge gleaned from them is limited in many ways. Dating fossils consists of dating rock strata within which fossils are embedded, since the radioactive elements needed to perform radiometric dating are rarely found in fossil beds themselves. Dating rocks, like dating other natural phenomena, depends on the assumption that conditions on the earth remain relatively (but not necessarily completely) stable across time. Little to no knowledge about the earth's past would be possible in the present if this assumption were not made or if it ended up not being true.

Still, it is possible to date rocks that contain radioactive elements with known half-lives and rates-of-decay. Radiometric dating has revealed that some rocks on earth are at least 3.8 billion years old and probably older (Stanley 14). The imprecisions of radiometric dating have been discussed above, but certain elements and isotopes of those elements decay at known rates in the present, meaning that this method of determining the age of the earth is the most effective one that humans now have. Fossils have provided the bulk of the evidence for the relative age of rock strata around the world (Stanley 155). The ages of these fossils/strata are, again, found through radiometric dating techniques. All of them are far older than the 6,000 or so years that a literal interpretation of the Bible would require.

While mainstream geological theories about the physical history of the earth may contain large amounts of uncertainty and an assumption that may not be true (that the physical conditions of the earth have not changed, at least not very much, over time), they still have far more evidence in their favor than any religious beliefs about the physical history of the earth, which truly have no empirical foundation. Furthermore, as with the prevailing theory of evolution, even if mainstream geological theories about the physical history of the earth were thoroughly refuted, this would not make the biblical explanation true or more likely to be true by default; the latter would still require outside corroborating evidence in order to be regarded as empirically credible. Such evidence simply does not exist.

Finally, there is substantial evidence for the Big Bang Theory. While this theory is not opposed to the idea of an intelligent creator or designer in itself, it does hold that the universe is some 14 or 15 billion years old and so also contradicts a literal reading of the Bible. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two employees of Bell Laboratories, discovered cosmic background radiation with a temperature of just a few degrees above Absolute Zero, as predicted by the Big Bang Theory (Greene 348-49). Penzias and Wilson's discoveries provide hard evidence for the Big Bang and thus convincingly show that the universe is far more than 6,000 years old.

Geological Evidence against the Genesis Flood Narrative

Before discussing the evidence against flood geology, it is necessary to reiterate what was said above about the theory of evolution: some evidence is more reliable than no evidence. As discussed above, advocates of flood geology hold that all fossils that have ever been found are only a few thousand years old. These advocates have creative and detailed explanations for how they believe the flood caused rapid fossilization and rock layer stratification to occur in the past 6,000 years or so (see, e.g., Sarfati). They claim that the many flood stories found in mythologies throughout the world provide imperfect accounts of the flood that the Bible describes correctly. They do not, however, adequately explain why the biblical account should be regarded as more reliable than accounts from other regions of the world. All they do, if they address this problem at all, is make the circular claim that the Bible is revealed by God, the true God, while other texts and myths are not.

In any case, there is simply no evidence that any flood of the magnitude believed in by Young Earth Creationists and other biblical literalists ever occurred. Stories about floods from multiple cultures do not prove that the event or events they describe actually happened. The only way to determine whether it is likely that such a flood occurred is to examine the available evidence in the present. Unless there is evidence that a flood of the magnitude described in Genesis occurred in the first place, all possible explanations of how such a flood may have occurred and how humans and other land-based organisms may have survived it, including the Bible's narrative, are irrelevant. If there is no evidence that such a flood ever occurred, then the foundational proposition of flood geology is not based on empirical evidence.

Evolutionist Mark Isaak provides a detailed breakdown of why the belief in such a flood is problematic in his essay "Problems with a Global Flood," as well as in The Counter-Creationism Handbook. In "Problems with a Global Flood," Isaak provides convincing reasons to believe that the weight of the evidence is against such a flood having ever occurred. Among the pieces of evidence he cites are a lack of expected differences in ice cores between layers that would have been deposited during the flood and those deposited at other times; differences in the relative ages of mountain ranges; a lack of signs of a natural disaster of this magnitude in tree ring records; a lack of evidence in sea bottom cores; and the fact that the polar ice caps never floated off their beds. These reasons alone are sufficient for strongly doubting that a flood of the magnitude described in Genesis or any other mythological source has ever occurred while humans have walked the earth.

Concluding Remarks

Sin is a poor explanation for the present human predicament, as well as the present state of the world as a place full of suffering. Christianity teaches that human beings suffer, both in this lifetime and in the afterlife, because of the sinful act of the primordial couple and because of the continuing sins of all human beings. This view does not accord with observed reality. There is no evidence that the biosphere was ever anything but an adversarial system with rampant competition between and within different species and cooperation only when in the perceived interest of each participating organism. There is no indication that humans began their existence free from suffering and death. All observations of humans in the present and reconstructions of past human societies show that death has always been the apparent end of all and that either productive work or taking that which others have produced through their labor has always been necessary for survival for any length of time. Furthermore, there is simply no evidence that sin is the reason humans suffer and have suffered throughout their history on earth.

There is also no hard evidence for the existence of an intelligent creator or designer, even if it is a reasonable conjecture. However, even if the universe was created, there is no evidence that the creator has ever interacted with the human race or other animals. The belief that sin has separated humans from God is therefore lacking in any empirical foundation. Furthermore, the fact that humans are born, suffer sometimes, and die would be attributable to the creator if such a being existed, unless there is a more compelling reason than has hitherto been presented by any major thinker to believe that the being that created or gave rise to the universe is not responsible for all that goes on within it.
CHAPTER 12:

SOME BACKGROUND ON JESUS AND THE GOSPELS

The Unreliability of the Gospels

It is entirely possible that the historical person named Jesus upon whom the canonical gospels are allegedly based never lived and that the details of his life are wholly made up. However, it is equally possible that a charismatic preacher named Jesus (or Yeshua) of Nazareth who claimed to be the Messiah lived in Roman-occupied Judea during the time of Caesar Augustus. But even if such a man lived, it is not at all certain that the details of his life as described in the canonical gospels are accurate. In some instances, these gospels even contradict each other with respect to some of the details of Jesus' life. In any case, the historical reliability of the canonical gospels is questionable because there is little independent corroborating evidence for their claims.

Many critics of Christianity have noticed the contradictions and discrepancies in the canonical gospels, including the American philosopher and revolutionary Thomas Paine (1736/37-1809). In Part II, Chapter II of his Age of Reason, Paine pointed out that the genealogies of Matthew (1:6-16) and Luke (3:23-31), which trace Jesus' paternal ancestors back to David (which makes no sense if Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit), disagree about the number of generations between David and Jesus (Matthew lists 28, while Luke lists 43). In Matthew, an angel tells Joseph that Mary, though a virgin, will give birth to Jesus (1:20-21), while in Luke an angel identified as Gabriel appears to Mary to provide this information (1:30-31). This story of the angel's appearance, as well as the claim of virgin birth itself, are missing from Mark and John. According to Mark, Jesus was crucified at the third hour (15:25), while according to John 19:14 it was at the sixth hour. The four canonical gospels all have different versions of the wording of the note attached to Jesus' cross. Only Matthew mentions an earthquake, the tearing in two of the curtain of the temple, and dead saints emerging from their tombs and appearing to people in Jerusalem at the moment Jesus died (27:52-53). Apparently, none of the other gospel writers noticed these events, or if they did they did not think they were important enough to mention. Such contradictions and discrepancies provide further evidence that the Bible is not only not inerrant, but not even trustworthy in recounting the central historical claims of Christianity.

As with the rest of the Bible, in order for the gospel accounts of Jesus' life and teachings to be considered reliable, they need at least some independent corroboration from impartial or hostile sources. Just as it would be foolish to accept the claims of Mormons that Joseph Smith was an authentic nineteenth-century prophet and that the current president of the LDS Church is also a prophet at face value, so it is unwise to simply accept the claims of Jesus' early followers about him. These followers had an agenda, namely to convert people to their worldview and ideal lifestyle, and their claims about Jesus cannot be understood apart from the "saving message" they sought to convey.

A Summary of Jesus' Ministry in the Gospels

All four canonical gospels have narratives of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, which is the main reason they are included in the New Testament. However, the three Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so called because all three provide roughly the same overview of Jesus' life and teachings—are structured differently than the Gospel of John. The former three purport to recount the life of Jesus as a historical narrative, whereas the latter is more of a theological reflection that attempts to describe who Jesus is, using his life and deeds primarily to illustrate his character and his identity as the Son of God.

In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus begins his ministry by being baptized, then proceeds to teach with parables and sermons (including his most famous "moral" sermon, the Sermon on the Mount) while performing many miracles along the way. Eventually, Jesus is crucified by order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea at the time, after being condemned by Sadducees, Pharisees, and various Jewish leaders, and as a result of being betrayed by his disciple Judas. On the third day, after being killed by crucifixion, Jesus rises from the dead, and forty days later he ascends to heaven. Between his resurrection and ascension, he visits his disciples, including Thomas, who, according to John, doubts Jesus' resurrection until he can feel Jesus' hands and side for the wounds he suffered during his crucifixion (which is why he is sometimes referred to as "Doubting Thomas"). In all four canonical gospels and the Book of Acts, Jesus exhorts his disciples to preach his message and the "good news" about his death and resurrection everywhere they go. While the above accounts have been taken as literal history by most Christians for the last two thousand years, there is no independent corroborating evidence to support them.

The Problem of Disagreeing with Jesus

No text, person, idea, or object should be immune from rational analysis or criticism, whether positive or negative, even if some people regard that text, person, idea, or object as sacred. This includes Jesus, his apostles, and their teachings, as well as the rest of the Bible. In addition, Paul should not be the target of ridicule for those who do not believe in Christianity as he so often is. I have a sneaking suspicion that he is only the object of so much vitriol because people are afraid to criticize Jesus and his ideas, whether because they were raised to think and still believe that Jesus is off limits to all criticism; because they know they would offend many people by doing so; because they are unaware of Jesus' teachings and actually think his message was the same as that of modern humanists; or because they subconsciously worry that there will be terrible consequences in the afterlife for saying or thinking anything negative about Jesus. The truth is that in many respects Paul deserves less criticism than Jesus. While both men were very intolerant and exclusive of those with differing ideas (if the New Testament is to be trusted), Paul at least attempted to use reason to back up his views despite his sweeping condemnations of the "wisdom of the world" (1 Corinthians 1:20, 3:19).

I will also note that Christopher Hitchens was absolutely correct when he claimed that even if Jesus was born to a virgin and rose from the dead, it would not prove that his moral teachings are true nor that his father is or was God ("Turek vs. Hitchens"). Jesus' moral and metaphysical teachings must be accepted or rejected based on their coherence and agreement with human experience and the historical record, not based on whether miracles accompanied them.

To clarify, when I say that Jesus should be criticized and his status as God or the Son of God rejected, I do not mean to claim that I find everything about him worthy of condemnation. For instance, I admire his courage, for he surely had no shortage of that (again, if the accounts written about him are reliable). Neither did the founder of the denomination in which I was raised, Martin Luther, have any shortage of courage, even though I find most of his ideas highly objectionable. I also want to emphasize that I believe there is never any justification for using torture to punish people, whether in this world or in any other, so I have great contempt for the Romans' use of crucifixion as a form of punishment for anyone, regardless of the alleged offense it was used to punish. I also view it as utterly barbaric to persecute people for what they believe alone, so here again there is no justification for the way the Roman authorities treated Jesus (if indeed he existed and was crucified), nor for the way that Roman leaders routinely persecuted Christians, Jews, and others deemed enemies of the state for their refusal to worship the gods of the Roman Pantheon, recognize the divinity of the emperor, recognize the legitimacy of the imperial government, or participate in the wider society.
CHAPTER 13:

THE BIRTH OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born to Mary while she was still a virgin (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-35, 2:1-7). Jesus was conceived miraculously by God via the Holy Spirit, one of the persons of God, not through sexual intercourse with Joseph, Mary's husband (or rather fiancé). Many liberal Christians believe Jesus was not actually born to a virgin, but unless Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit he is not literally the Son of God. If Jesus is not the Son of God, there is no basis for the Christian message of atonement through his blood, since Jesus had to be both human and divine for this to work, as discussed in Chapter 1. Matthew teaches that the virgin birth was prophesied in Isaiah 7:14, which again reads as follows: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel."

However, the word translated "virgin" here, or almah in Hebrew, has nothing to do with virginity in the Hebrew original but was translated as parthenos, the Greek word for "virgin," by the compilers of the Septuagint, the most famous translation of the Hebrew Bible into Ancient Greek (Sweeney 161). In the Hebrew Bible, the word almah (or alma) is a reference to a young woman of childbearing age but does not provide any indication as to whether she is a virgin (Sweeney 161). The word for virgin in Hebrew is bethulah, which actually appears in the Hebrew version of Isaiah five times (23:4, 23:12, 37:22, 47:1, and 62:5).

However, even if the word almah in Isaiah actually meant "virgin," it would not provide even the slightest amount of evidence that a historical person named Jesus (or Yeshua) was actually born to a virgin. There would be a more probable explanation for why the authors of Matthew and Luke claimed that Jesus was born in this manner: that they made it up or were influenced by another person who made it up in order to make Jesus' life story fit the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 and in order to make Jesus seem uniquely extraordinary in the eyes of both Jews and Gentiles. Because there is no independent corroborating evidence for Matthew and Luke's claims, which are truly extraordinary, there is no compelling reason to believe the virgin birth of Jesus ever took place.

Furthermore, myths of conception by means other than sex (that is, by miraculous means) occurred in other cultures prior to the birth of Jesus, for example with such figures as Krishna, Zarathustra, and the historical Buddha. As with the claims of Matthew and Luke that Jesus was born to a virgin, no independent corroborating evidence has ever emerged to support these other supposed nonsexual conceptions. The obvious takeaway from this is that all claims of human birth by nonsexual means are false or at least very likely to be false. However, if these claims were not all false, it would still not prove that the teachings of those born in this manner were true or likely to be true. No correlation between the manner of a person's birth and the veracity of that person's teachings has ever been established.

Another important point to note about the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy is that Immanuel (meaning "God with us") refers to a proper name, not a title. Many Hebrew names have a root that invokes one of the names of God. For example, the Hebrew form of the name John means "God is gracious," Elijah means "My God is the Lord," and Joshua means "God is savior." In fact, Joshua (or Yeshua) is Jesus' name in Hebrew, not Immanuel (or Emmanuel). In other words, Immanuel Kant fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 more than Jesus on this particular point.

The following point should not need to be made, but it is often overlooked by both apologists and critics of Christianity. In Matthew 1:1-17, the descendants of Abraham through David, then David through Joseph (Mary's husband), are listed. In Luke 1:27, Joseph is again referred to as being of the house of David. This is important because Isaiah 9:6 connects the coming Messiah (who is given the attributes "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace") to the throne of David, implying that the Messiah will be an ancestor of David. The purpose of listing the genealogy of Joseph's descent from David is to show that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham and of David and that Jesus will be given his ancestor David's throne. However, as previously mentioned, if Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, if Joseph had nothing to do with Jesus' conception, and if Joseph was the one descended from David in his marriage to Mary, then Jesus cannot be an ancestor of David. He is either the son of God or he is the son of Joseph and descended from David and Abraham. He cannot be both.

The Gospel of Matthew first claims that Jesus was born to a virgin, then uses astrology to prove that Jesus was and is the prophesied Messiah. According to Matthew 2, three wise men from the East followed a star in the night sky to Jerusalem in order to look for the king of the Jews. According to Matthew, after allegedly being told by Jewish priests and teachers of the law that the Messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem according to Micah 5:2, Herod sent the wise men to Bethlehem where they found Jesus.

It is likely that Matthew appealed to astrology in order to convince Gentiles of the divinity or lordship of Jesus, since many people at the time in the Greco-Roman world believed that the stars determine a person's fate. Astrology is now considered by most people (and all people who value empirical evidence in the slightest) to be a pseudoscience. But if astrology is indeed a pseudoscience, we must reject all of its contemporary and historical applications, including the one in Matthew.

The distance between Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph allegedly lived, and Bethlehem is about 110 kilometers (~70 miles). Matthew and Luke both teach that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill the Micah prophecy (Matthew) and in order to assert that Jesus was born in the city of David (Luke), which is Bethlehem. Luke claims that the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus then issued a decree requiring people to go to their fathers' ancestral hometowns in order to register in a census (2:1-5). According to Luke, it was while registering in Bethlehem, where Joseph went because he was descended from the House of David, that Jesus was born.

Outside of Luke, there is no evidence that any such census was ever conducted. In fact, the idea of having people register in their fathers' ancestral hometowns, rather than having Roman or local Jewish authorities travel from town to town to collect information, is absurd. It would have been a logistical nightmare for the Roman authorities to try to register all people in their empire in this manner. There is yet again a more likely explanation why Luke claimed this census occurred. Luke needed a pretext for claiming that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to make it fit Jewish expectations about the coming Messiah, particularly the previously discussed prophecy of Micah 5:2.

As also discussed in Chapter 9, Matthew claims that Mary, Joseph, and Jesus fled to Egypt at the behest of an angel to fulfill a prophecy from Hosea 11:1. Out of fear, Herod massacred all children around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger, again in supposed fulfillment of a Hebrew Bible prophecy (Jeremiah 31:15). Fortunately, there is no evidence that this massacre of infants ever occurred, but the author of Matthew probably made this claim for the same reason that he made all the others: in order to make Jesus' life-story fit certain prophecies from the Hebrew Bible.

Given that the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were "interested parties" with an agenda to convert people to their way of thinking and acting and were trying to prove their case by any means at their disposal, it is not sensible to trust their claims in the absence of independent corroborating evidence. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke attempt to make Jesus' life story fit Jewish expectations of the coming Messiah from the Old Testament. Thus, there is no basis for accepting their narratives as historically reliable.
CHAPTER 14:

WHETHER JESUS WAS A HISTORICAL PERSON

Roman Historians' Accounts of Jesus

The Roman historians Flavius Josephus, Mara Bar-Serapion, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, and Eusebius all mentioned Jesus in their writings. Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian and Roman citizen who wrote a detailed history of the Jewish people called The Antiquities of the Jews in 94 CE/AD. Josephus mentioned Jesus in his history as follows:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day (Book XVIII, Chapter 3).

At first glance, this passage appears to be strong evidence for the historical existence of Jesus. However, there are significant problems with the historical reliability of this passage, the most glaring of which is that not one Church Father prior to Eusebius (late 3rd to early 4th century CE/AD), including Origen, Jerome, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Justin Martyr, ever mentioned this passage, despite its immense polemical value (I owe this insight to Wu, Argument # 6).

These same Church Fathers, especially Origen, frequently used references to non-Christian historians' claims about Jesus, including those of Josephus in The Antiquities of the Jews, to argue against their opponents. As one of the foremost Christian apologists of the third century—and, indeed, the entire history of Christianity—Origen was a very prolific writer and researcher who would not have missed such a favorable reference to Jesus in Josephus' writings and would not have failed to mention this passage in his own writings if Josephus had actually written it. Furthermore, Origen claimed that Josephus did not accept Jesus as Christ, even though the passage from Josephus quoted above plainly describes him as such (B. Smith).

The fact that no Church fathers prior to Eusebius cited the aforementioned passage in The Antiquities of the Jews is strong evidence against it having been present in the original version in its entirety. The more likely explanation is that some segments of the passage (specifically, those parts that describe Jesus as Christ, imply that he was no mere mortal, and describe his coming back from death on the third day) were interpolated by Eusebius or another Christian apologist to give others the impression that outside corroborating evidence existed to support Christian claims about Jesus' resurrection and divinity (Doherty).

Another point that must not be overlooked is that Josephus wrote this history for a Roman pagan and a Roman Jewish audience. He was hostile to every other agitator and messianic claimant of the first century CE (of which there were many), so it is unlikely he would have made an exception for another then-little-known messianic claimant like Jesus (Doherty). Furthermore, the fact that Josephus was writing for a Roman audience means that his audience would not have readily approved of his claim that Jesus was unjustly crucified. They would have at least expected an explanation of why the crucifixion was unjust.

A Christian apologist could claim that it was not necessary for Christian writers to refer to a non-Christian's claims about Jesus and that it would have been seen as unnecessary by early Christian apologists to refer to the assertions of a nonbeliever to prove the existence of the saving mission of Jesus. However, this objection is entirely without merit. The quoted passage from Josephus would provide far more real support for claims concerning Jesus than any statement by someone with a personal "axe to grind" concerning Jesus' existence and his alleged saving mission, such as a Christian apologist or an anti-Christian atheist.

Mara Bar-Serapion, a Stoic philosopher from Syria, wrote in the late first century of the "wise king" of the Jews who was unjustly killed like Socrates and Pythagoras before him (Cureton xiii-xiv, 73-74). This passage provides reasonably strong evidence that a man claiming to be the King of the Jews, or who was proclaimed as such by others, actually existed. It is possible that this passage refers to Jesus of Nazareth, or it could refer to another individual about whom this claim was made. However, even if this passage refers to Jesus, it proves absolutely nothing about Jesus' divinity, his status as the Messiah, or his alleged miracles. If it refers to Jesus, it proves only that one Stoic philosopher thought that Jesus was a wise man on par with Socrates and Pythagoras, who were also unjustly killed merely for teaching wisdom to others. Bar-Serapion claimed that the deaths of all three were avenged by God. (It should be noted that when Stoics spoke of God, they meant something very different than Jews or Christians of the First Century, though whether Mar Bar-Serapion shared the common Stoic belief in God is uncertain. For the most part, the Stoics had a pantheistic, materialistic conception of deity. Their idea of God was much like that of Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein.) Bar-Serapion also claimed that Socrates lived on through Plato, Pythagoras through a statue of Juno, and Jesus through the laws he promulgated (Cureton 74). Significantly, Bar-Serapion did not claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. If Bar-Serapion believed that Jesus had conquered death in this manner, he undoubtedly would have regarded him as superior to Socrates and Pythagoras.

Finally, Tacitus referred to Jesus' crucifixion in Book 15, Section 44 of his Annals. In this same book, Tacitus mentioned Nero's oppressive persecution of Christians, who Tacitus accused of believing in a "mischievous superstition." Tacitus' contemporaries Pliny the Younger and Suetonius described legal actions and persecutions directed against Christians in their works but wrote nothing historically reliable   
about Jesus.

Other Accounts of Jesus' Life and Teachings

The following accounts are based on the BBC documentary film Did Jesus Die? According to one of these accounts, which is based on some of the so-called Gnostic Gospels, Jesus did indeed die during the crucifixion, but was married to Mary Magdalene when he died. According to this account, Mary Magdalene was pregnant with Jesus' child at the time of the crucifixion, and afterwards moved to present-day France, where she gave birth to the child. This, in turn, gave rise to a divine bloodline. The general contours of this account will be familiar to those who have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or seen the movie. However, there is no evidence for this account apart from the claims of the medieval neo-Gnostic Cathar sect and the lore surrounding the Knights Templar and the pseudo-historical Priory of Sion.

According to both of the other accounts of Jesus' life in the documentary, Jesus was crucified but survived his crucifixion. This is not as impossible as it sounds. In fact, in his autobiography Flavius Josephus reported that one of his own acquaintances had survived crucifixion (The Life of Flavius Josephus Section 75). The documentary points out that Jesus could have survived his crucifixion and that the vinegar or wine given to Jesus while he was hanging on the cross could have been an anesthetic used to knock him out and make him appear dead. In other words, it is possible that Jesus was merely resuscitated, not resurrected. It is also possible that Jesus and his disciples mistakenly believed he had been resurrected.

In its exploration of the possibility that Jesus did not die on the cross, the documentary questions the historical reliability of the passages in the Bible that refer to the ascension. It then discusses the possibility that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. As in the account above, Mary Magdalene then moved to what is now France. But according to this account, Jesus also could have moved to present-day France (incognito, since that area at the time was part of the Roman Empire, where Jesus was a condemned criminal).

After discussing the "Jesus-to-France" account, the documentary provides yet another account of what might have happened to Jesus after the crucifixion. According to this third account, he survived the cross but did not flee west into the heart of the Roman Empire. Rather, he fled east and out of the Roman Empire altogether. Judea was, after all, on the eastern fringe of the empire, making this escape route both more sensible and more likely for a condemned criminal like Jesus to take. Jesus may have been trying to gather the lost tribes of Israel to take them back to Judea. (While this sounds far-fetched, the Messiah was prophesied to unite and rule over the kingdom of Judah and the people of Israel politically in Jeremiah 23.) In addition, the documentary claims that it was relatively easy to travel east to Parthia (present-day northeastern Iran) and India by boat or overland at the time.

(As an aside, the documentary then makes some egregious factual errors. It discusses the Tibetan Buddhist tulku tradition whereby a child is selected as the new human manifestation of a recently deceased lama and claims this could have been what happened to Jesus. The documentary claims that the Magi or wise men described as bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh could have been Buddhist lamas recruiting Jesus as a tulku after witnessing astrological portents. As romantic and intriguing as this might sound to some, there are many problems with this claim. First, the Magi were likely Persian and were therefore most likely Zoroastrian priests. Second, and more important, the tulku tradition is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. However, Buddhism did not exist at all in Tibet until the sixth century CE and did not establish a permanent presence there until the eighth century CE. Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism, the form practiced in Tibet and out of which the tulku tradition emerged, did not exist anywhere in the world until the middle of the first millennium CE, when it first emerged in India. The first recognized tulku was born in the thirteenth century CE. So the claim that Jesus could have been the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist lama or considered to be such is just plain silly.)

The documentary then discusses a manuscript found by a Russian traveler at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery that reports the coming of a man named Isa from Judea in the first century CE. According to the translation of this manuscript, Jesus was raised as a Buddhist monk starting at the age of 14, then returned to Judea at the age of 29. This period in Jesus' life is often referred to as his "lost years," since there are no biblical references to Jesus' whereabouts between his infancy and three-year preaching tour starting around the age of 30 other than one reference in Luke 2 to Jesus sitting with rabbis in the temple courts in Jerusalem at the age of 12.

(As another aside, the documentary makes the ridiculous claim that some of Jesus' teachings, such as the lesson that "the meek ... will inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5) and the assertion that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24), are consistent with Buddhism. This ignores the fact that Buddhism has no parallel idea to the kingdom of God and that the Buddha never taught anything like the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth, as the teaching that freedom from anger, hatred, and desire leads to liberation from the endless cycle of death and rebirth is not the same as the teaching that the "meek shall inherit the earth." On top of that, the Buddha's teachings are not anti-wealth with respect to laypeople. In fact, while the Buddha forbade monks and nuns to even handle money, the Buddha taught that gaining wealth is virtuous for laypeople as long as they earn it by means that do not cause harm to others. (See, e.g., the Adiya Sutta.) This attitude is very much unlike that of the biblical Jesus and the authors of the New Testament, who are uniformly hostile to the acquisition and retention of wealth and to the wealthy. None of the foregoing is meant to deny that there are occasionally vague parallels between Buddhist and Christian morality. It is possible to find parallels between any two traditions if one is selective enough.)

After this, the documentary provides a more believable narrative. According to it, there is a tradition among some of the people of Kashmir, who see themselves as the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel (they even call themselves "Bene Israel"), that a man named Isa or Yus Assaf returned to Kashmir in the first century CE and claimed to be Jesus of Nazareth. According to this account, Jesus lived and died in Kashmir. To this day there is even a tomb in which Jesus is supposedly buried in Srinagar, the summer capital of the modern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The first shrine was built over this tomb in 112 CE. The tomb is arranged from east to west, in the Jewish way, as opposed to north to south, which is the standard Islamic way. (Islam is the majority religion in both the Indian-controlled and Pakistani-controlled areas of Kashmir. Hinduism, in which corpses have traditionally been burned on funeral pyres, is also widely practiced in Indian Kashmir to this day.) Next to the tomb are carved footprints with scars resembling those of a crucifixion victim.

For the sake of completeness it is worth noting that some sources, including some Gnostic writings and the Qur'an, claim that Jesus was not actually crucified. This claim has no basis other than the say-so of the Gnostic writers and Muhammad (or, according to Islamic tradition, Allah), so there is just as little evidence for it as for the New Testament's claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

I have not reported these alternative accounts because I believe that one of them is true and the standard Christian narrative is not. Rather, I have reported them because one of them, the account that holds that Jesus moved to Kashmir after surviving crucifixion, has more independent corroborating evidence in its favor than the narratives contained in the canonical gospels and the Book of Acts: the claim that Jesus actually existed, was crucified, survived his crucifixion, and subsequently moved to Kashmir is far more plausible on its face than the explanation that he was resurrected from the dead and ascended into the sky forty days later. Even the "Jesus-to-France" account, which is supported by folklore, is arguably just as reliable as the account found in the canonical gospels.

While all of these alternative accounts are improbable, they are not more improbable than the accounts contained in the Bible. In addition, the scant and uncertain references to Jesus in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews (which lead to the inference that somebody named Jesus who gathered many followers did in fact exist in first century Judea and was crucified) and the bemoaning of the crucifixion of the wise king of the Jews by Mara Bar-Serapion (which leads to the inference that somebody proclaiming or proclaimed to be the "King of the Jews" was crucified in first century Judea) tell us absolutely nothing of the veracity of the miracle and resurrection claims in the four canonical gospels. In the end, there is not enough independent corroborating evidence of what Jesus did or who he was to justify trusting the canonical gospels over other accounts of Jesus' life, crucifixion, and resurrection, though, again, there is also not enough independent corroborating evidence to believe that any of these other accounts are reliable.

Conclusion

On balance, it seems quite likely that Jesus was a historical person who actually lived in the Roman province of Judea in the first century CE. It also seems likely that Jesus was crucified by the Roman Empire as a political criminal, since the Romans used crucifixion primarily to punish political offenses and offenses committed by slaves and other lower-class individuals. Furthermore, while the Romans were not the enlightened paragons of justice they are often made out to be today, they were fairly specific and non-arbitrary in the punishments they imposed.

However, that is all that can safely be said about Jesus. Perhaps Jesus was a healer and performed what those who witnessed his actions believed to be miracles, but there is no reliable independent evidence to corroborate this belief today. The Roman historians who wrote about Jesus and the early Christians barely mentioned this aspect of his ministry. (As discussed earlier, the one reference to it, in Josephus's The Antiquities of the Jews, is historically suspect.) On top of that, Jesus was not the only person of his or any time who claimed to have miraculous powers. Without strong reasons in the present for believing the declarations of these miracle workers, the claims of all of them, including Jesus, should be rejected.

The notion that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven must also be rejected. The resurrection and ascension narratives of the Bible are absurd for many reasons. First, the ascension narrative in the Book of Acts implies that God's abode literally exists above the earth. Of course, modern astronomers have not yet found this abode above, so this view has been falsified by empirical investigation. Second, if 500 people really had witnessed Jesus in the flesh after his resurrection, as Paul claimed in 1 Corinthians 15:6, it would have been too incredible to keep quiet, even in educated Roman circles. Yet the only evidence for the resurrection and ascension is the say-so of the authors of the New Testament. And again, their testimony is unreliable because their primary goal in writing their various works was to convince people to convert to their nascent religion. Like the claim of the virgin birth, the claims that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and ascended into the sky, while not without parallels even in the rest of the Bible, need an extraordinary amount of evidence in their favor to warrant serious consideration.

In the end, there is no evidence that Jesus was born to a virgin, performed miracles, died for the sins of the human race, was resurrected from the dead, or ascended into the sky, apart from the say-so of the New Testament. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but no extraordinary evidence has ever emerged to support these claims. Ultimately, they can only be believed on faith alone. And since literally anything can be believed on faith alone, this is not an argument in favor of Christianity.
CHAPTER 15:

MIRACLES

Miracles in Christianity

Many Christians, more than most nonbelievers probably realize, believe in Christianity because of Jesus' alleged miracles. They believe that Jesus' miracles make him stand out from other figures who claim to have been divine, prophets of God, and/or enlightened sages. Jesus' three most famous alleged miracles are probably feeding the four or five thousand, turning water into wine, and walking on water. All four canonical gospels recount the story of Jesus feeding five thousand people (four thousand according to Matthew) who had gathered to hear him speak by converting five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food to feed everyone present (in Matthew 15, Mark 6, Luke 9, and John 6). Three of the four canonical gospels claim that Jesus walked on water (Matthew 14:26, Mark 6:49, John 6:19). And only the Gospel of John describes Jesus allegedly turning water into wine to serve to the guests at a wedding he was attending in Cana (John 2:1-12). However, since none of these claimed miracles have been independently corroborated or even mentioned outside the Bible, there is no reason to believe they ever happened.

According to Mark 16:15-20, those who believe in Jesus will be able to drive out demons, pick up (poisonous) snakes with their hands, drink deadly poison without being hurt at all, speak in new tongues, and heal the sick by laying their hands upon them. As evidence against the second claim, the founder of the modern snake handling movement in Appalachia, George Hensley, died of an untreated bite from a diamondback rattlesnake (Kimbrough 133). He was not the only snake handler to die this way. With respect to the third claim, I know of no example of somebody with proclaimed faith in Jesus drinking deadly poison and not being hurt at all. As for the fourth claim, I know of no example of a Christian who has gained the ability to speak actual languages other than his or her native tongue as a result of faith in Jesus. (The "speaking in tongues" one encounters in modern Pentecostal churches would sound like gibberish to any disinterested observer and would be easy for even a hardened nonbeliever to imitate, so there is no reason to believe that the sounds uttered during these experiences are the words or phrases of actual languages.) Finally, healing by the laying on of hands is a common practice in multiple world regions and multiple traditions, but it, along with other forms of faith healing, energy healing, and mental healing, frequently does not cure diseases. While these types of healing have been reported to work as placebos in some cases, there is no evidence that they have any discernible impact on the pathophysiology of diseases (Gorski).

According to Luke 24:50-53 and Acts 1:1-11, Jesus ascended into heaven, in fact literally into the sky, in front of his apostles. According to Acts 1:9-10, Jesus "was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them." The two men dressed in white then told the apostles that Jesus would return again. This event would also be quite impressive if any evidence existed that it actually happened. It is somewhat similar to the biblical accounts of Elijah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11) and Enoch being taken by God without dying (Genesis 5:21-24). However, there is no evidence that any of these events actually happened apart from the say-so of the Bible, which again does not constitute any kind of proof.

As previously mentioned, Paul claimed in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that over 500 people saw Jesus after he was resurrected. However, one person's claim that 500 people saw Jesus after his resurrection is a lot different than the actual testimony of those 500 people. If a man were accused of killing a friend he was hiking with in the woods and insisted that his friend had not been killed but had been abducted by aliens, the accused man could claim that 500 people saw a spaceship come down and abduct his friend. Unless the accused man provided the names and whereabouts of at least some of these 500 people, and unless they provided their own explicit testimony corroborating his, no reasonable person would believe that these 500 people even existed. The same applies to Paul. His claim that 500 people saw Jesus after the resurrection is not believable without the testimony of at least some of these supposed eyewitnesses.

The majority of Christians believe that Jesus was and is God. If a human performed the miracles and feats of wonder attributed to Jesus, it would be remarkable and praiseworthy. Yet for God, these deeds would be very feeble. If God is omnipotent, he has the power to do whatever he wants, and if he is omniscient, he knows how to change anything in the universe for the better. The Christian God, if he existed, would not merely have the power to heal the sick; he would have the power to eradicate all diseases on a whim. If Jesus were one of the persons of God, he also would possess this power. If Jesus possessed the power not just to cure the sick, but to eradicate all forms of illness from the face of the earth, yet merely cured a few sick people, he achieved far less than he was capable of achieving—in fact, far less than a loving god of the type that Christians claim to worship could accomplish if he existed. If Jesus had this power yet healed only a few people, it would represent a great failure of philanthropy on his part. Only healing those with faith in him and/or his message would also be a philanthropic failing, as it would show a love or compassion of the pettiest variety. In any genuine altruistic system of values, such party favoritism would be frowned upon if a mere mortal showed it. How much more must it be frowned upon in a god who supposedly loves all people and shows no partiality.

Some Examples of Miracles in Other Traditions

Reports of miracles are not confined to Christianity. The practitioners of many traditions claim that miracles have been performed by their founders, saints, and/or patron spirits. For example, the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism reports many miracles that were allegedly performed by the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni, and by some of his early disciples. In the Maha-sihanada Sutta, for example, the Buddha claims to have the ability to disappear and reappear at will, manifest multiple bodies, walk through walls and mountains, dive in and out of the earth as though it is water, and fly through the air sitting cross-legged. He claims to remember all of his countless past lives and many eons of world-expansion and world-contraction, and to be able to clairvoyantly see in every person's case where and how the five impermanent elements that constitute that person in this life would be reconstituted in future lifetimes.

In addition, many narratives of the Buddha's birth report miracles that allegedly occurred during his mother's pregnancy and immediately after he was born. According to what is probably the most famous account of the Buddha's life, Ashvaghosha's Buddhacarita, the Buddha was born out of his mother's side. Upon being born, the Buddha's body had a golden hue, and he took seven steps immediately after his birth. After taking these seven steps, he said that he was born for "supreme knowledge" and the "welfare of the world" and that this birth would be his last (Ashvaghosha Book I). According to Ashvaghosha's account, several other auspicious events accompanied the Buddha's birth: pure streams of water coming down from the sky at the behest of the principal Vedic deity Indra; an auspicious constellation appearing in the sky; and the other Vedic deities holding a white umbrella in the sky over the Buddha to protect him from the elements.

While Ashvaghosha lived about 600 years after the lifetime of the Buddha, miracle claims like the ones he made in the Buddhacarita were not at all uncommon among Buddhists before, during, or after his time. The only Buddhists who have ever claimed otherwise on a large scale are educated Buddhists in modern Asia and the West who realize, when they are honest, that accounts like these are incompatible with modern science. (For the most part, Buddhist modernists insist, based on their own selective interpretations of Buddhist texts, doctrines, and practices, that Buddhism is either compatible with modern science or is scientific in its own right. These claims are just as dubious as the similar claims made by Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and practitioners of other religions. In addition, Buddhist traditions generally teach that the Buddha taught to the needs of his hearers, which has led numerous modern followers to claim that Buddhist teachings that seem incompatible with a scientific understanding of the universe, including references to miracles and other paranormal phenomena, were really just a skillful way for the Buddha to present his insights to certain audiences. Of course, if this is the case, it is impossible to know which parts of the teachings attributed to the Buddha a practicing Buddhist should take seriously.)

Many Hindus also believe in the reality of miracles. In fact, a miracle involving statues of Hinduism's elephant-headed god, Ganesh (or Ganesha), allegedly occurred recently on four separate occasions. On September 21, 1995, and again in 2006, 2008, and 2010, statues of Ganesh in India, the UK, the U.S., and elsewhere, in temples and homes alike, allegedly drank milk offered to them (Mikas). Apparently, no milk spilled when the statues were fed. According to those who believe this miracle happened, there is no convincing scientific explanation for it (Das). Even many non-Hindu and skeptical Hindu reporters claimed to have witnessed the miracle (Das). Some scientists attributed the statues' milk drinking to capillary action or surface tension, but according to believers in the miracle, nothing like it has happened at any other time, and according to witnesses it stopped abruptly within 24 hours (Das).

Analysis

Do any of these alleged miracles have anything to do with truth? One problem with arguing that they do is that the traditions discussed here, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, have different claims about the nature of reality. In fact, all of them have hundreds of different narratives about the truth within their traditions. Hindus often believe that all (or many) major religions are paths to liberation, but Christians and Buddhists tend not to agree. Most forms of Christianity teach that only Christ, whether through faith or church sacraments or some other means, brings salvation, while Buddhism generally teaches that while practitioners of other traditions can be reborn in a temporary blissful realm for good conduct or devotion to various deities in this lifetime, people cannot realize nirvana or bodhi (Buddhism's rough equivalent of the Christian concept of salvation) except through Buddhist teachings and practices.

Reason is our only reliable tool for determining which claims about reality are likely to be true and which are likely not to be true. Experiences, including apparently "miraculous" experiences, can perhaps provide some insight, but even these must be interpreted. Clearly some interpretations are more sensible than others, but mystical explanations are usually not as reasonable as explanations rooted in sensory experiences. Even if accounts of miracles could provide information about the nature of the world, these accounts still need corroborating evidence from nonbelievers in order to be regarded as even remotely plausible. The Ganesh milk miracle has more independent corroborating evidence in its favor than any other account of any miracle in the history of the world, yet even the legitimacy of this phenomenon is very questionable. (As mentioned above, some scientists have offered surface tension and capillary action as possible explanations. While I acknowledge that those claiming to be "skeptics" sometimes come up with explanations for paranormal phenomena that are even more far-fetched than the claims of believers in the paranormal, in this case the scientific explanations seem far more reasonable than the claims of those who believe in this particular miracle.)

Barring a denial that this was in fact a miracle, which would be devastating for the miracle claims of the New Testament (since, unlike the Ganesh milk miracle, the alleged miracles of the New Testament have no independent corroborating evidence in the present to support them), the only way for a Christian to claim that this miracle is illegitimate is to claim that it was produced by the devil or another evil spirit. However, if Christians deny the validity of the Ganesh milk miracle on the grounds that the devil produced it, they open themselves and their tradition up to similar allegations. Either way, Christians have no means of showing that the Ganesh milk miracle is a fraud or produced by the devil except by quoting the Bible or other Christian texts. However, this claim would be a nonstarter, as the devotees of Ganesh could just as easily quote various Hindu scriptures in response.

David Hume's Critique of Miracles

David Hume was one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment. In his seminal work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume held that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish" (Section X, Part I). There, Hume defined a miracle as a "violation of the laws of nature" and thus as something that cannot occur, since in human experience these laws are never violated. Hume's argument that people who witness a miracle are more likely to be either lying or mistaken than to be telling the truth has considerable merit in most situations, but at the same time it is not free of problems. (I will note that while I interpret Hume's argument to be one against the very occurrence of miracles as well as one that asserts there is no testimony sufficient to establish that a miracle has occurred, some commentators believe his argument consists only of the latter assertion.)

While Hume's contention arguably sets up a higher standard for miracles than other experiences that people have, it at least encourages people to try to find the most reasonable explanation for the occurrence of any phenomenon, including one of mysterious origin. The falsity of the Ganesh milk incident, for example, would not be more miraculous than its truth, but if there were hundreds of eyewitnesses to the event, some of whom did not even believe in Ganesh or in miracles, then their testimony would still lead to the inference that what these witnesses claim happened did in fact happen. However (and this is perhaps Hume's point), the fact that there were so many witnesses would not prove that the event witnessed was in fact a miracle, especially not when there truly are more plausible explanations. For example, while many non-Hindus witnessed the Ganesh milk incidents, and while this leads to the conclusion that the events they witnessed likely happened, the most plausible explanation is not that these incidents were caused by the actions of an elephant-headed god but rather that they occurred as a result of a known physical process like surface tension or capillary action. Still, the views of a person who dogmatically insists that the Ganesh milk incidents could not have happened without actually witnessing the events in question should be dismissed more readily than actual eyewitness accounts, especially the eyewitness accounts of those known to have been disinclined to believe in Ganesh or in miracles at the time they witnessed the events in question.

Another problem with Hume's contention is that it potentially allows an event that eyewitnesses regard as a miracle to be considered an as-yet undiscovered law of nature and thus allows the occurrence of miracles to be denied by definition. To again use the Ganesh milk incidents, if it could be empirically shown that an elephant-headed god called Ganesh exists and caused his statues to consume milk offered to them or directly consumed milk through his statues, then Ganesh's existence could be redefined as a natural property of the universe. This would, in turn, allow Hume's critique of miracles to remain intact. In other words, Hume's critique is arguably tautological, but only insofar as it is used to deny the supernatural by definition rather than through an argument from, say, the absence of evidence.
CHAPTER 16:

THE SHROUD OF TURIN

The "Shroud of Turin," or the burial cloth in which Jesus was allegedly wrapped, is one of the major pieces of "evidence" that some Christian apologists use to argue for the rationality of believing in Christianity. Yet there is simply no evidence that the "shroud" is from Judea at the time of Jesus. A typical example of a Christian apologist claiming that the shroud is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus can be found on the Shroud of Turin Blog at shroudstory.com. On the homepage, the blog's author, Dan Porter, claims on the one hand that the shroud is probably authentic but also states that there is not enough evidence to arrive at a scientifically sound conclusion and that nobody knows how old the shroud actually is.

A sample of the shroud has been carbon-14 dated by three different labs (Damon et al.). All three labs came up with a date of either the thirteenth or fourteenth century CE for the sample. If this date is correct, then the shroud is approximately 1,200 or 1,300 younger than Jesus and could not have been his burial cloth. While the accuracy of these tests has frequently been questioned by believers in the shroud, the carbon-14 dating of this sample is the only scientific evidence in existence, either way, for or against its authenticity. Therefore, until alternative evidence emerges that contradicts it, this evidence must be regarded as the most reliable information about the shroud.

Some who believe in the shroud's authenticity claim that the sample dated was not part of the original garment. However, this claim is based on the speculations of those who want the shroud to be authentic, will attempt to poke holes in any evidence that indicates it is not, then will turn around and claim that the very existence of any holes in the evidence for its inauthenticity supports the belief that it actually was the burial cloth of Jesus. However, in order to convincingly demonstrate its authenticity now, these believers would first need to find reliable samples of the shroud, then have them tested by independent third parties. Unless and until they do this, the weight of the evidence is still against their claims.

Furthermore, even if the tested segment of the shroud is a re-stitch from the Middle Ages or yielded an inaccurate date, this tells us nothing about its origins. It tells us that nobody knows the shroud's age, not that it was the actual burial cloth of Jesus. As stated numerous times above, evidence against a scientific hypothesis is not evidence for the claims of the Bible or of Christians generally. Such claims must be corroborated by independent scientific evidence in order to be considered scientifically valid. It is not enough to show there are holes in scientific evidence that contradicts the Bible or Christian doctrine. (For further discussion of the claims for and against the authenticity of the shroud, see Inquest on the Shroud of Turin by Joe Nickell, which argues against its authenticity, and The Shroud by Ian Wilson, which argues for its authenticity.)

It is equally noteworthy that the first person known to have mentioned the shroud, Pierre d'Arcis, Bishop of Troyes, wrote that the shroud was a forgery in a letter to Antipope Clement VII in 1389 (Dutton). Beyond noting d'Arcis's claim in his "Requiem for the Shroud of Turin," Dutton provides strong arguments against the shroud's authenticity. One of these arguments is that Joe Nickell, author of Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, was able to produce a negative image similar to that of the shroud through a simple rubbing method. Another argument is that the alleged bloodstains on the shroud would not be so tidy if they were actually composed of blood, nor would the blood be as red as it still is if the shroud were really 2,000 years old.

However, while there is overwhelming empirical and historical evidence against the shroud's authenticity, the most damning piece, from a Christian or biblical point-of-view, is not the empirical and historical evidence for its inauthenticity. Rather, it is the fact that the Gospel of John's account of the burial of Jesus contradicts what the shroud would indicate about Jesus' burial. According to the Gospel of John, when Peter went to the tomb where Jesus was buried, he found the linen wrappings in which Jesus had been buried lying on the floor of the tomb, while he found the cloth that had been on Jesus' head "separate from the linen" (John 20:7). There is no mention in John of a miraculous image of Jesus on the cloth, which, as leading Protestant reformer John Calvin points out in his Treatise on Relics, would have been a glaring omission on the part of John. Also according to John, Jesus was buried "in accordance with Jewish burial customs" (19:40), which consisted of wrapping the body in one sheet and covering the head with a separate cloth (John 20:5-7; see also Calvin 239, where Calvin points out that Jews of his time still used two separate sheets to bury the dead). Yet the Shroud of Turin allegedly covered Jesus' whole body, and an alleged image of both his face and body, including his puncture wounds, appear on the garment.

Calvin also provides convincing historical reasons for rejecting the validity of the shroud from a Christian point-of-view in his treatise. He points out that it is very unlikely that the apostles who supposedly found Jesus' burial sheets, Peter and John, would have failed to mention that his likeness appeared on these garments (John 20:1-8; Calvin 238). In Calvin's words, "either St John is a liar, or all those who boast of possessing the holy [shroud] are convicted of falsehood and deceit" (Calvin 239). A third possibility is that the Gospel of John is not reliable and the Shroud of Turin is a forgery.
CHAPTER 17:

THE TRILEMMA

The trilemma is the apologetic claim that Jesus' words and actions indicate that he either was (1) God, as he claimed to be, or he must have been either (2) crazy or (3) evil. This claim is based on the belief that a person who claims to be God has either deceived himself or herself into thinking that he or she is God, which only a crazy person would do, or knows that he or she is not God but claims to be anyway, which is a lie of the most sinister sort. While Jesus was certainly not the first person in the history of the world who claimed to be divine, Christians apologists (most famously G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis) have often found it significant that Jesus made this claim as a Jew, i.e., as a member of a religious and ethnic group that did not even seriously consider the idea that a human being can be divine, in contrast to Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Egyptians, etc. It is important to clarify that the Jews of the first-century Roman Empire did not adhere to some pure Judaism uninfluenced by the prevalent currents of thought in the Greco-Roman world. Many Jews of the time, especially those who were well-educated, were Hellenized and Romanized. Many of them engaged with the prevalent ideas of the time, including Jesus' contemporary Philo of Alexandria, who combined Judaism with Platonism and other Greek philosophies, and Christianity's original apologist, Paul.

It is entirely possible that Jesus and his early followers were influenced by the idea found in the Greco-Roman cultural sphere and elsewhere that humans can have divine parents or divine origins. After all, as literary critic Harold Bloom points out and I discuss in Chapter 2 and elsewhere, the view that the Messiah is God incarnate and died to atone for all human sin is not compatible with the idea of the Messiah found in any book of the Hebrew Bible, nor is it compatible with the Hebrew Bible's non-incarnationist monotheistic tendencies in general (Bloom 114). As Bloom claims, only an intentional misreading of the Hebrew Bible makes it possible to harmonize it with the New Testament's claims about Jesus (115). It is certainly more likely that the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement were derived from Greek and Roman religious ideas (or a syncretic Hellenic Judaism) than from the Hebrew Bible.

Nevertheless, Christian apologists still frequently use the trilemma as an argument in favor of Jesus' divinity. They do so despite the fact that C.S. Lewis, who made this argument most forcefully, clearly understood its limitations. He quite reasonably used the argument against those who claim that Jesus as he is described in the New Testament was a great moral teacher but not the Messiah or Son of God (Mere Christianity 52). However, he did not use it to attempt to prove the divinity of Jesus, though many subsequent Christian apologists have.

The point of Lewis' version of the trilemma is that, while it is possible to cut all miracles and references to the supernatural out of the gospels as Thomas Jefferson did in his version of the New Testament, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, it is not possible to do this without completely altering the meaning and message of the gospels. The gospels do not just contain moral teachings. They contain countless reports of miracles performed by Jesus and they claim that Jesus was killed by crucifixion and later rose from the dead. They claim that all those who accept Jesus as their lord and savior will gain eternal life, while all those do not will suffer eternal damnation. The Jesus of the canonical gospels makes these claims, describes the future fate of believers and nonbelievers in the afterlife and after the Last Judgment, and claims the authority to forgive all sins. If the canonical gospels are reliable, then Lewis is absolutely correct that it is nonsensical to believe that Jesus was simply a great moral teacher. If, on the other hand, the extant accounts of Jesus' life and teachings in the canonical gospels are not reliable, then it is not possible to know whether or not Jesus claimed to be God.

If one does not arbitrarily strip away the supernatural elements of the canonical gospels and one acknowledges that they portray Jesus as having really preached that everyone who does not believe in him will be condemned to eternal torment, it becomes easy to dismiss Jesus' teachings as indescribably cruel and/or insane. They are certainly not examples of love or good will for one's fellow humans. By any sincere altruistic or egoistic standard, they are not moral. The teaching that all people will suffer eternal punishment for any action or thought that goes against God's will if they do not accept Jesus as their savior is not compassionate, loving, or altruistic, while Jesus' promotion of self-sacrifice, self-denial, and self-hatred as virtues is incompatible with any form of egoism. Underlying these teachings is a notion of a totalitarian universe ruled by a dictatorial creator-king who voluntarily torments people for all of eternity for a wide variety of sinful acts and thoughts against his will.

Yet even if Jesus' teachings were neither insane nor cruel, this still would not prove that he is or was God. As already mentioned, there is no convincing reason to accept the gospels as factual descriptions of history. Even if Jesus existed, it is quite possible that he never claimed or intended to claim he was God. Furthermore, as Richard Dawkins points out, even if the Gospels are reliable accounts of Jesus' life and teachings, it is possible that Jesus made a sincere mistake about his divinity, like many other people who have claimed to be God (117). In addition, most insane people do not say things that are crazy all the time, and insane people do not necessarily behave in a manner that most people would otherwise regard as evil. In other words, it is quite possible that Jesus was both insane (for thinking he was God) and a teacher of an impeccably great moral code (I of course do not think he taught a great moral code, but those who do would presumably cite his teachings to love one's enemies, turn the other cheek, and lay down one's life for one's friends).

One common objection to Dawkins' point is that such a "mistake" would be indicative of mental illness and would mean that Jesus was crazy, not evil or the Son of God. However, even many people in the modern world claim to be divine or enlightened who do not seem insane or evil to those who know them personally. Concededly, people who make such claims today are ordinarily regarded as insane by secularists and atheists and evil by theists, but the actions and words of some of these individuals do not suggest that they are simply evil by conventional moral standards. For example, a Florida preacher named Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda claimed to be Jesus Christ (as well as the Antichrist); Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon claimed to be the Second Coming of Christ; and Franklin Jones, who ultimately changed his name to "Adi Da," claimed to be fully enlightened. There is no indication that any of them were mentally ill (assuming that claiming to be divine or fully enlightened is not itself a form or foolproof sign of mental illness—if it were, this fact alone would resolve the trilemma). While there is certainly a strong argument to be made that all three (Jones above all, but the other two as well) were abusive and self-centered charlatans, like so many people who claim to be divine or fully enlightened, and were therefore evil by most conventional moral standards, it is possible to argue that their behavior was not evil by these standards. In other words, it is at least possible that all three of these men were genuinely mistaken and neither insane nor evil. For the same reason, it is possible that Jesus, if in fact he existed and claimed to be divine, was simply mistaken and not insane or evil.

But again, even if Jesus was insane, it would still be possible that he was not at the same time evil by altruistic standards. It would be ludicrous to regard a person with a mental illness as evil or inclined toward evil merely for having such an illness. From a strict consequentialist perspective, it is possible to assert that some mental illnesses are evil because they cause people to act violently and cruelly toward others. However, mental illness does not necessarily make a person's conduct more cruel or antisocial, even though it can in some cases. It is possible that Jesus was deluded yet moral, though again I maintain that his teachings are not moral by the standards of any genuinely altruistic moral code. (For the sake of clarity, I will note that I do not personally embrace any variety of altruism as my personal standard of values. I am using it as the standard here because it is the world's most popular standard of values today, even if very few people live by it consistently. While there is a reasonable argument that some of Jesus' teachings are moral by altruistic standards, it is quite clear that none or almost none of Jesus' teachings are moral by egoistic standards. This is true whether the egoism in question is the "subjective" egoism of Max Stirner or the "objective" egoism of Ayn Rand.)

Finally, it is worth pointing out that from a Christian point-of-view, the "Jesus was evil" option in the trilemma does not mean that Jesus was more good than bad on balance. It requires that Jesus never acted "badly," since he could not have been God unless his behavior was morally flawless all the time. Christians often attempt to get around this with the circular argument that Jesus did not sin because he was God and was God because he did not sin. Well of course he did not sin by Christian standards; he did not sin by definition according to these standards! However, by other traditions' standards he sinned, and rather badly at that. For example, while the Qur'an denies that Jesus ever claimed to be God (Surah 5:116), the Qur'an teaches that the claim by a mere mortal that he or she is God constitutes the unforgivable sin of shirk or association of something other than God with God. The gospels hold that Jesus claimed to be God and, as a result, almost all Christians believe that Jesus was and is God. Thus, if Jesus claimed to be God, then Jesus was truly evil by Islamic standards. Similarly, by Jewish standards, Jesus violated the first of the Ten Commandments, which ordered the Hebrew people not to have any God other than Yahweh. This clearly makes him evil by those standards as well. Stated generally, if there is a universal moral standard that differs from the standard underlying the teachings of Jesus, then it is very likely that Jesus committed moral transgressions by that standard, at least on occasion. If he did, this would negate Jesus' divinity by the internal logic of Christianity, as well as the internal logic of any other tradition that teaches the existence of morally perfect divine incarnations.
CHAPTER 18:

CHRISTIAN MORALITY

Because even thoughts can be sinful in Christian reckoning, it is impossible to practice Christian morality consistently. This is quite a serious objection to it. Morality is only useful if it is capable of consistently guiding people's actions according to specific values. Values based on an unattainable ideal are not helpful because it is only possible, by definition, to attain that which is actually attainable.

To illustrate the impracticality of Christian morality, one need look no further than the teachings attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels. For instance, in Matthew 19, after Jesus says that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and his disciples ask him who can then be saved, he claims that "[w]ith man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:24, 26). Thus, according to Jesus people can only be moral with the help of God. Furthermore, despite teaching that it is impossible to be moral without the help of God, Jesus nevertheless tells his followers to "[b]e perfect ... as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

But why give people a conscience if it is impossible for them to be moral, let alone perfect, without the help of God? Why give them a law to follow, as God allegedly did to Moses? Why did Jesus even teach the Sermon on the Mount or the parables if this is the case? Why did God give Moses the law if he knew that nobody would or could follow it, that it would not benefit a single person who did not accept Jesus as savior? These questions are especially significant if we remember that Christianity teaches that anyone who sins even once is tormented eternally in hellfire unless that person repents and accepts Jesus as his or her savior in this life. (To clarify, this is what Protestants generally believe and, in my reading, what the New Testament teaches. Roman Catholicism teaches that believers who die in a state of venial sin go to purgatory first, then to heaven, while nonbelievers go to hell. Orthodox Christians generally interpret hell more figuratively but believe that loving God and sincerely seeking God's forgiveness are essential   
to salvation.)

If Christian morality is impossible to practice consistently, then hypocrisy is inevitable. Jesus frequently condemned hypocrites, but all people are hypocrites if the New Testament's moral code is universally binding and "[t]here is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God" (Romans 3:10-11), "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), and those who claim to have no sin deceive themselves (1 John 1:8). Because hypocrisy is inevitable in Christian morality, guilt and shame are inevitable too. People cannot think highly of themselves if they behave hypocritically. Many conservative Christians are opposed to self-esteem developed outside of faith, but people who have a low regard for themselves tend to be quite dysfunctional and depressed. (For evidence of this, see Reasoner's study. Also see the study by Dickerson et al., which mainly discusses the biological effects of feelings of shame and guilt but mentions a connection between shame and depression. Kaufman's The Psychology of Shame and other works offer a thorough and balanced discussion of shame, including its negative psychological effects. Kaufman also makes useful distinctions between guilt and shame. Generally speaking, shame is social while guilt is individual, and many psychologists even consider temporary guilt a useful mechanism for motivating individuals to change their behavior. However, Christianity makes a virtue of guilt as more of a permanent underlying sense of inadequacy, which is not the temporary sort of guilt that is useful in inspiring people to amend   
their behavior.)

In my experience, dysfunctionality and depression are exactly what attempting to put every tenet of Christian morality into practice leads to. Some Christians do not worry very much about the morality of their everyday conduct because they believe it is impossible for a person to behave morally on his or her own, without the grace of God. Other Christians pick and choose which biblical moral principles they personally like and just try to follow those. But attempting to put every tenet of Christian morality into practice by, for instance, trying to never feel lust when one sees a beautiful woman (Matthew 5:28), castrating oneself if one does feel such lust (Matthew 5:29-30), turning the other cheek when hit by another (Matthew 5:39), and following the other moral teachings of Jesus, not to mention those in the rest of the Bible, cannot but end in failure. This is not a point in favor of Christianity, as many apologists claim, but shows that its moral code is positively suicidal or self-destructive. (Apologists teach that this is a point in favor of Christianity because, according to them, Christianity alone offers a way out of the sinfulness that causes violations of the moral code imposed by God. According to this line of thinking, one can relax a bit once one accepts Jesus as one's savior, since that is the sine qua non of salvation. Still, most conservative Christians believe that one has a duty to try to be as moral as possible even after being saved, as this is clearly counseled by the New Testament.)

C.S. Lewis held that all humans are "little idiots" in a state of foolish pride who can only be removed from that state through humility—that is, through knowing God as vastly greater than themselves in every way and either seeing themselves as "small, dirty object[s]" or not thinking about themselves at all (Mere Christianity 124-25, 128). Lewis's view is the only one that can emerge from a serious consideration of the actual teachings of the Bible, especially the New Testament. As indicated above, the Bible teaches that all humans are thoroughly incapable of behaving morally without the grace of God. That is why conservative Christians often believe that one cannot be moral without being a Christian (not just a theist or religious person, but a Christian in particular).

Thus, Christian morality not only inevitably leads to hypocrisy and guilt but also leads to self-effacement when one does not take a pick-and-choose approach to it. The attempt to put all Christian moral principles into practice consistently is thus a form of masochism (while this is true as a general rule, I also know it from experience). For this reason, I hold Christian morality, including the precepts taught in the Sermon on the Mount, to be absolutely undesirable and positively irrational, since it is incompatible with living a genuinely happier and more fulfilling life, the goal of all sensible morality. Furthermore, one cannot feel genuine love for others when one is consumed by self-effacement, feelings of guilt, and the constant worry of being judged by God and/or other Christians.
CHAPTER 19:

SOME BLATANT EXAMPLES OF CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY

While it does not disprove Christianity, and while hypocrisy exists in religions and philosophies other than Christianity, some Christians are almost intolerably self-righteous and judgmental while failing to live according to or consistently advocate all Christian moral principles. Thus, it is useful to point out some of the more egregious inconsistencies found among contemporary Christians in the United States and Europe. I am less familiar with the moral beliefs and practices of devout Christians in cultural regions such as Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia, so I do not know the degree to which my criticisms apply to them.

The Christian Virtues of Detachment and Hatred

If the Bible is to be trusted, Jesus was a homeless preacher during the entire course of his missionary career. He went from town to town in Judea, using parables, direct exhortations, public chastisements, rebukes, and miracles or acts of wonderment to spread his message. He encouraged his would-be disciples and followers to give up all their possessions and follow him on more than one occasion, as the following passages illustrate.

Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."

Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."

But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." (Matthew 8:19-22)

Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."

Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:61-62)

Here we find Jesus instructing people not to bury their own parents when they die. People are not even to say goodbye when leaving home. They are not to have any attachments, even to those they love. In fact, they should not hesitate to leave home at all, even if it worries those who love them. Jesus illustrated his lack of attachment to his own biological mother and siblings in the following passage, which is a good example of his "family values":

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."

He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:46-50)

An even more provocative example is the following:

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:25-27) (emphasis added)

Many contemporary Christians try to water down this passage because they refuse to believe that Jesus actually would have encouraged people to hate their own families, and (one suspects) because it would be inconvenient for their own lives.

Jesus could have chosen to use a word other than "hate" to convey his message. He did not. The Greek word translated as "hate" in the above passage is miseo. Many Christian apologists would have people believe that this word means "love less," but the word miseo appears many times in the New Testament, and means "hate," not "love less," in every other passage where it occurs. Some passages where the word miseo appears include Matthew 24:9-10 (where Jesus tells his disciples that they will be hated by all people because of him), Luke 6:22 (where Jesus tells his disciples that they are blessed when people hate them because of him), as well as Matthew 6:24, Matthew 10:22, Mark 13:13, Luke 1:71, Luke 21:17, John 3:20, John 7:7, John 15:18-19, John 15:23-25, and John 17:14. Most of these passages speak of those who hate Jesus and his disciples. If the word miseo means "love less" rather than "hate," it means that Jesus was telling his disciples that the world would "love them less" because of his name. Perhaps Nero and the other Roman emperors who persecuted Christians merely "loved them less" than the other inhabitants of the empire. I am, of course, being facetious. Clearly, miseo means something stronger than "love less" in these passages, so why would it not have the same stronger meaning in Luke 14:25-27? Most likely, contemporary Christians do not interpret the word miseo in Luke 14:25-27 as "hate," not because it does not actually mean hate, but because they personally do not want the Bible, especially Jesus, to encourage people to hate their family members. Now, there is a strong argument to be made that literal hate for one's parents would contradict the commandment to honor one's father and mother, which is one of the Ten Commandments. But the author of Luke wrote what he wrote. He could have used words that mean "dislike" or "love less"—such as aparesko (which literally means "dislike"), antipatheia ("aversion"), or aphiletos ("lack of affectionate regard")—but he did not.

So much for "family values" in the contemporary Evangelical Christian sense. Jesus encouraged people to literally leave parents, spouses, siblings, and even children behind. He was not saying that one should love these less than one loves God, as many contemporary commentators would have us believe. He was saying that people must hate their "loved ones" and must hate their own lives in order to be his disciples. Those are his words, not mine, and not my interpretation of them.

A person who gave up family life to wander as a homeless mendicant in the contemporary West would be regarded as completely irresponsible and perhaps even crazy, but a faithful reading of Luke leads to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus did not agree. The family values of the contemporary English-speaking West are based far more on pagan Roman and Germanic customs than the customs of the ancient Hebrews and inhabitants of Roman-occupied Judea. (According to Saller, pre-Christian Romans considered the basic family unit to consist of a father, a mother, children, and, in households that had them, slaves. According to Young (17), the husband held the most authority within the household in pre-Christian Germanic societies, while the wife was responsible for raising children and maintaining the household. Young (17) indicates that the pre-Christian Germanic family was thought to consist of father, mother, children, and occasionally slaves.)

There are some contemporary cultures where a fairly large number of people seem to have ascetic values similar to those advocated by Jesus. For example, in present-day India and Nepal, many Hindus still regard a life of renunciation of all worldly ties, including family relationships, as not only legitimate but the most respectable of all lifestyles. This lifestyle is much closer to what Jesus taught as the ideal, and is much closer to the life that Jesus actually lived, than any mode of living that people in the contemporary West consider socially acceptable. Even when presented with these facts, most theologically conservative Christians come up with a watered-down interpretation of the above passages that suits their current lifestyle, but this does not change the words of the Bible.

It is also important not to overlook that the passage quoted from Luke 14 teaches that self-hatred (or hatred of one's life, which is basically the same thing, since this life is truly all any of us knows exists) is a virtue. So much for Christianity being compatible with self-esteem or self-love. Now, many Christians are full of self-love and self-righteousness while condemning the pursuit of self-esteem for its own sake. Such Christians typically believe they are the "elect" and hold that their faith in and humility before God allow the Holy Spirit to work through them, and that this, and not their own sense of self-importance, is what makes them confident. But one cannot believe that one knows a truth that most people in the world do not, believe that one will be saved while most of the rest of the world will be punished in eternal fire, and be "humble" in any meaningful sense.

Wealth and the Wealthy in the Gospels

Many modern-day Christians, especially in the United States and Europe, think that wealth and income should be left out of any discussion of Christianity, or they even think that the canonical gospels teach that prosperity is a virtue. The problem with the former viewpoint is that Jesus frequently discussed wealth and the wealthy and did not worry about making people feel uncomfortable when he did. The problem with the latter viewpoint is that Jesus absolutely and unequivocally did not preach prosperity, as the following passage illustrates.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Matthew 6:19-24)

Many people, including many Christians, would claim that one can make money without serving money and that the main point of this passage is about the state of one's heart. But in the above passage Jesus teaches people flat out not to gather possessions. In effect, his teaching is that the very act of storing up treasures on earth will cause one's heart to be attached to the things of this earth. He says one cannot serve both God and money, implying that God and money simply and utterly contradict each other. In case his point is not abundantly clear in the above passage, he makes a similar point even more forcefully in the following passage:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:25-34)

Here Jesus is clearly saying that just like the flowers of the field, which "do not labor or spin," so those who seek the kingdom of God will not need to labor, but will be provided with what they need without needing to work for it. Jesus criticizes those who "sow" and "reap" (i.e., engage in agriculture), as well as those who "store away in barns" (the practice of storing grain is as old as agriculture itself), i.e. those who work in order to acquire their necessities and try to ensure that the fruits of their labor are not wasted. This is what "the pagans" do. Admittedly, this passage holds that God will provide adequate food, drink, and clothing to those who seek his kingdom and his righteousness, but this passage teaches these things will be given (or "added unto" them, to use the language of the King James version; both are translations of the Greek prostithemi), not that individuals who seek God's kingdom and righteousness will have to work for them. (It is worth mentioning in passing that the Bible never once says that "God helps them that help themselves," even though this quotation is often falsely attributed to the Bible. This quotation was used by Ben Franklin in the 1736 edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, while the more familiar form of the quotation, "God helps those who help themselves," was used by Algernon Sidney in 1680 in his Discourses Concerning Government.)

Jesus was not a capitalist, nor was he a socialist or communist. He taught people not to work at all. Rather, he taught them to wander homelessly, follow him, and seek the kingdom of God, and that God would provide them with food and clothing. Based on Matthew 6:25-34, there is no reason to believe that God will provide anything beyond the most basic necessities to those who give up everything for his sake. No houses, means of transportation, or money will or even need to be provided.

In case Jesus' very explicit teachings on the accumulation of wealth, the moral status of those who have wealth, and the need to renounce all things, even family ties, were not crystal clear to his audience, he gave an even more explicit lesson in Matthew 19:16-30:

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

"Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, "'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?"

Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. (Matthew 19:16-30)

Sometimes it seems that Jesus did teach that deeds are the main thing that bring one eternal life and that it was Paul who taught that one is saved by faith, not Jesus. However, the main point to take away is that even while Jesus teaches that "many who are first [those who renounce the world to follow Jesus] will be last, and many who are last [those with simple faith and few good deeds] will be first" to enter the kingdom of heaven, he strongly encourages people to give up wealth and leave their families to wander homelessly. He claims that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. This claim means that even if all things are possible with God, the odds of gaining eternal life are still stacked strongly against the rich. Many people in the contemporary West attempt to get around this by claiming they are not rich, but most people in the contemporary West are rich compared to even the average wealthy resident of Roman-occupied Judea 2,000 years ago. If it is really easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, then almost all contemporary Westerners are in deep trouble.

Though he repeatedly hammers his point about wealth and renunciation into peoples' heads in Matthew, Jesus is even harsher in Luke. In the version of the Beatitudes found in Matthew, Jesus is content to pronounce that "the poor in spirit,... those who mourn,... the meek,... those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,... the merciful,... the pure in heart, ... the peacemakers, ... [and] those who are persecuted because of righteousness sake" or on Jesus' account are blessed and will be rewarded in the future, either on heaven, on earth, or in both realms (Matthew 5:3-12). However, Luke claims that the poor (not the "poor in spirit"), the hungry, those who weep, and those who are persecuted because they follow Jesus are blessed and will have their fortunes reversed in the future (6:20-22), and he also has Jesus say   
the following:

"But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets." (Luke 6:24-26)

Some people give a "Buddhist" interpretation to the Beatitudes in Luke, thinking that Jesus is saying that happiness, wealth, being well-fed, etc. are impermanent states that will eventually cease and give way to suffering. However, this is clearly not the intent. To say "woe to" people is to condemn them, not to instruct them on how to live better lives by pointing out that their current state is impermanent.

There are admittedly some passages that might seem to contradict Jesus' anti-wealth message, such as the following:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:7-12)

However, this passage does not provide the slightest indication that asking for more possessions or money will help one to enter the kingdom of heaven. On the contrary, based on Luke 6:24, there is every reason to think that seeking possessions and/or money will cause one to get one's reward in this lifetime (at best), not in heaven. Prosperity theologians often quote this passage, as well as John 10:10 and Matthew 25:14-30, to support their position. However, none of these passages offset Jesus' explicit condemnations of wealth and the wealthy in the other verses quoted above.

There is one other passage from Luke that provides a nice segue into what the Book of Acts teaches about wealth, colloquially known as "The Rich Man and Lazarus":

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked   
his sores.

"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In [Hades], where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'

"'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" (Luke 16:19-31)

The rich man is in Hades here, which is not necessarily the same as Gehenna (the word translated as "hell" in most contexts), despite the fact that in many English versions of the New Testament, including the one just quoted, Hades is also translated as "hell." But the rich man in this passage is in Hades because he received "good things" in this life while Lazarus received "bad things," which is perfectly in line with the Beatitudes as presented in Luke. Part of the reason the rich man is being tormented in the afterlife seems to be that he failed to even let Lazarus eat the scraps from his table. This passage features Jesus' most explicit condemnations of wealth and the wealthy in the canonical gospels.

Does Jesus mean that his followers should literally hate their family members? Does he really just want people to care less about their possessions? Perhaps. But if one believes in the Bible literally, it is probably better not to take any chances. It is probably better to do what Jesus tells one to do. This includes renouncing possessions and family ties, not merely "loving them less" than one loves God. Jesus states plainly that one cannot serve both God and money. He does not teach that one should love money less than one loves God, but rather that one should not seek wealth at all. This is an often-unused application of the "don't take any chances" interpretation of Jesus' words, which Christian apologists frequently present as the best approach. With the stakes being eternal life versus eternal damnation, it is the most reasonable tack for a person who believes literally in the Bible, especially the canonical gospels, to take. Yet modern Christians rarely, if ever, do this. They rarely renounce their possessions, family ties, and wealth. Jesus taught people that they should do these things for their own benefit primarily, not merely so that the poor can be provided for (although he clearly considered that important as well).

Wealth and the Wealthy in the Book of Acts

The Book of Acts, also attributed to Luke, has a few passages that explicitly concern economics and politics, and it has a slightly different teaching concerning wealth accumulation and sharing than the canonical gospels. It is in fact communistic, although the communism it advocates is not a top-down, centrally-planned economy. It is not Marxist or Leninist but is more like the anarcho-communism of many nineteenth century Russian anarchists (e.g., Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Bakunin). However, if the Book of Acts is to be trusted, the apostles had quite a bit of power in the early community, based largely on their prestige in knowing Jesus either in the flesh or in a vision, as Paul claims to have known him. In the early Church, the apostles apparently controlled both donated resources and the distribution thereof to those in need (which admittedly makes the communism of the early Church appear to have been at least somewhat centrally-planned).

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. (Acts 4:32-35) (emphasis added)

This is communism. There is no question about it. But it is clearly not Marxism or Leninism, as it is not implemented by any human government set up for the purpose of serving the interests of the working class over and against the (former) owners of the means of production. But that does not mean that it is not authoritarian. It is in fact enforced by the "ultimate authority," God the Father, through the apostles. This is illustrated by the following passage:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.

Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"

"Yes," she said, "that is the price."

Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. (Acts 5:1-11)

Because this passage treats the failure of Ananias and Sapphira to give all of their money to the apostles as an attempt to deceive God, it equates lying to the apostles with lying to God. If the Book of Acts is reliable, this passage seems to illustrate several things about the early apostle-led Church. First, it was authoritarian and the authority of the apostles was considered not only bestowed by God but none other than the authority of God. In other words, it was a theocracy, even though it was not organized as a formal state. Second, peace was not its only policy, as this passage clearly shows that the apostles and their followers acquiesced in what they believed to be the violent acts of God. Third, sharing wealth and property was expected and even required in the early Church. For this reason, the early Church can only be characterized as highly authoritarian in both matters of economics and matters of personal morality.

Other Passages that Concern Wealth and the Wealthy in the New Testament

Another series of passages that rail against wealth, as well as trade, appears in Revelation 18:3, 9, 11-19, where the merchants and kings who serve the whore of Babylon are decimated for fornication with Babylon (whatever that means), luxury, and greed. This leads to a celebration of the destruction of Babylon. Babylon in this passage represents Rome at the time when John wrote the Book of Revelation. But given the luxury, greed, and debauchery that define it from an early Christian perspective, it is not a stretch that Rastafarians think the modern West is the new Babylon.

There are still other famous passages that illustrate the points made above, such as this one, the meaning of which is self-explanatory:

As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. "I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on." (Luke 21:1-4)

There is also this one from Paul:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

In modern American English, "all kinds" means "a lot, but not all," but I know of no reason to impute this modern colloquial use of the term to the translation of the term from the original Greek. Thus, the translation "the love of money is the root of all evil" (which is found in the King James Version) conveys the exact same point. This is a critique of greed, not of having money. However, Jesus criticizes merely having money on numerous occasions, so it is safe to say that the New Testament considers both undesirable.

With few exceptions, Christians since the time of Constantine have not even attempted to live according to either the ascetic principles of world-renunciation found in the gospels or the communistic practices presented as the ideal in Acts. In fact, most Christians have interpreted these passages away, most likely because they are incompatible with their own lifestyles and do not accord with their predetermined values. Instead of molding their values to the teachings of the Bible, they seem to have molded the teachings of the Bible to their values.

Thus, even Christian fundamentalists remain "pagans" in several key respects. They adhere to pagan family values, according to which leaving one's family to search for the kingdom of God is generally regarded as immoral behavior, and they believe in capitalism, in the ownership of the means of production by the upper and middle classes and the acquisition of wealth through hard work and sound investments. This is one thing liberal and conservative Christians have in common: they both do hermeneutical gymnastics with the New Testament in order to make it support whatever lifestyles they currently lead, even if their lifestyles run contrary to the plain words of the New Testament. For example, a wealthy suburban family attending an Evangelical megachurch is no more moral by the Bible's standards than a homosexual couple or a dating couple that has sex before marriage. Conservative Christians in the contemporary United States tend to treat homosexuality as more immoral than fornication and grossly more immoral than the accumulation of wealth, while liberal Christians tend not to condemn any of these three pursuits in themselves. However, the Bible condemns all of them.

None of the foregoing analysis of the New Testament's teachings concerning wealth and the wealthy is intended to make wealthy individuals feel negatively about themselves. Rather, its purpose is to point out that it is not possible to be a consistent Christian or   
"follower of Jesus" unless one actually renounces one's wealth and worldly possessions.

Christianity and Divorce

Some opponents of Christianity claim that Christians in the contemporary United States have a higher divorce rate than non-Christians. It is irrelevant whether they do or not, since divorce is explicitly forbidden by Jesus (altogether in the Gospel of Matthew and except in cases where the wife is unfaithful in the Gospel of Mark), making even a single case of divorce among professing Christians a form of extreme hypocrisy. Jesus condemns divorce way more adamantly than he ever condemns any other sexual sin, with the exception of feeling lust for a woman other than one's wife. So churches, especially those that claim to follow the Bible literally, ought to exclude those who have been divorced at least to the same degree that they exclude homosexuals, whatever degree that is (i.e., whether it consists of not allowing pastors to be gay or it goes further and prohibits even parishioners from being gay). Here is what Jesus says about divorce:

"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery." (Matthew 5:31-32)

In Mark, Jesus elaborates further:

Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

"What did Moses command you?" he replied.

They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery." (Mark 10:1-12)

In the above passages, divorce is equated with adultery, a violation of the Ten Commandments. Homosexuality is condemned in both the Old and New Testaments (Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and Jude 7-8) and fornication is considered immoral as well (particularly, at least by direct implication, in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9). But divorce is rarely emphasized as a major social problem by the religious right, at least not publicly and not nearly as often as homosexuality and fornication. There are no calls for laws to ban divorce in all cases except where a wife cheats on her husband from the religious right, even though by the Bible's standards there ought to be. It is not surprising that conservative Christians oppose homosexuality so vociferously. They are literally commanded to do so, not just in Leviticus but in the New Testament, where Jesus himself defines marriage as between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-6). However, it is utterly hypocritical that these same people often do not say a word about issues like divorce. It is all the more hypocritical when those who have been divorced condemn homosexuality or sex outside of marriage.

Other Examples of Christian Hypocrisy

The overt sexism and misogyny of the Bible have been well-documented by other sources, but I will cite a few examples. In the New Testament, Paul taught that wives should submit to their husbands because the husband is "the head" of his wife (Ephesians 5:23). He also taught that women should not speak in church, teach men, or have authority over men (1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Timothy 2:12). As previously discussed, even Jesus taught that divorce is only acceptable when a woman commits adultery and not in cases of abuse or the husband's infidelity. On the other hand, the Old Testament is full of much more extreme forms of sexism and misogyny, such as its teaching that upon accusation by her husband that she is not a virgin, a woman who cannot prove the accusation false must be stoned to death by the men of her town (Deuteronomy 22:14, 20-21).

Fortunately, few Christians, even those who are theologically conservative, put such overtly sexist and misogynistic biblical teachings into practice today. However, their failure to do so is hypocritical and in direct violation of the Bible. If the Bible is divinely revealed, all people are obligated to accept the deeply sexist and misogynistic worldview of the Bible as valid, whether they want to or not.

The following is just a point in passing. Christians rarely turn the other cheek, even though Jesus explicitly instructed his followers and would-be followers to do so. In fact, Christians very often instigate violence. It is true that people in all religions instigate violence (there have even been Jain kings who have instigated wars and used state power to punish criminals), but that does not mean that it is justified for Christians to do so. Christians are, after all, supposed to no longer be of this world and thus not subject to worldly temptations, at least not in the same way that nonbelievers are. (See the next chapter for a more detailed treatment of these issues.)

Conclusion

The foregoing examples of Christian hypocrisy are not evidence against the truth of Christianity's basic premises and core teachings, but they are evidence that many of those who have considered themselves Christians both today and in the past have not followed the examples and teachings of Jesus and his apostles, and frequently have not even tried to do so. Of course, many Christians have not thought that they needed to follow Jesus' example, since the main emphasis for most Christians throughout the history of the religion has been the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and what they signify, not Jesus' moral teachings as contained in his sermons and parables, nor the moral teachings of the apostles.

As I argue in the previous chapter, it is impossible not to be a hypocrite if one attempts to live according to all the tenets of biblical morality. This is particularly true of the New Testament's moral code, as it is impossible to put into practice without significantly greater self-control than the average human has. Of course, many Christians agree, and claim that Jesus taught his moral code to show both what God expects of humans and what humans can never achieve on their own. However, I maintain that this makes the moral code of Christianity both useless and psychologically harmful to those who actually attempt to live by it. 
CHAPTER 20:

VIOLENCE, DISCRIMINATION, EXCLUSIVISM, POLITICAL INTOLERANCE, AND THE BIBLE

Atrocities have been committed in the name of most religions and philosophies at one time or another. Whenever worldly power or the attempt to gain it has been combined with any religion or philosophy, acts of violence and cruelty have almost inevitably followed. Still, it is sometimes possible to trace the use of violence in the name of a religion or philosophy back to its premises and core teachings. In both testaments, for example, it is easy to point out ways in which the Bible directly encourages persecution and discrimination. Some of these teachings, as well as others found in later Christian traditions, have been instrumental in much of the historical violence carried out in the name of Christianity and the Christian conception of God.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to clarify that atrocities committed in the name of a faith or ideology do not disprove its truth, even when the atrocities committed are explicitly supported by ideas found in the texts, myths, laws, and doctrines of the religion or philosophy in question. However, when such atrocities are clearly grounded in the teachings of a particular religion or philosophy, it is foolish to accept that tradition's validity without overwhelming evidence for its truth. Such acceptance can cause harm not only to the person who believes in it, but even more to those who disagree with or violate its teachings and norms.

The Witch Craze

One of the most infamous examples of the Christian use of the Bible in support of unspeakable atrocities is the so-called Witch Craze of Europe and Colonial America between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. While the Witch Craze was a continuation of policies begun by the Roman Catholic Church during the Inquisition, especially following Pope John XXII's papal bull Super Illius Specula, it should not be confused with the Inquisition (Russell and Alexander 76; Bailey 122). Whereas the Inquisition was carried out by officials of the Roman Catholic Church, trials during the Witch Craze were carried out by a combination of church officials, secular officials, and hysterical mobs. And unlike the trials of the Inquisition, witch trials were carried out by Catholics and Protestants alike.

While many liberal and even conservative Christian apologists argue that hunting and executing witches is the result of the incorrect interpretation or corrupt application of biblical teachings, the truth is that such practices have explicit precedent in the Torah. While it is true that the Torah contains numerous legal prohibitions and prescriptions that modern people would find absurd, pointless, and/or sadistic, several Torah passages could easily be invoked to justify the slaughter of tens and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of women, men, and occasionally children during the Witch Craze. These passages are as follows:

"Do not allow a sorceress to live." (Exodus 22:18)

"I [God] will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people." (Leviticus 20:6)

"A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:27)

Let no one be found among you . . . who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. (Deuteronomy 18:10-11)

These passages prescribe capital punishment for those who serve as mediums or spiritists and specify the method of execution. As such, they could easily be used to support both torturing and executing accused witches in Christian countries. In both Europe and Colonial America, condemned witches were frequently tried and executed based solely on anonymous accusations that they associated with the devil and other demons. The accused almost always denied the accusations, but they could not disprove them, so the authorities generally tortured the accused to get them to confess. The only thing those who carried out the witch trials got wrong by the Bible's standards was the method of execution (condemned witches were usually burned alive, hanged, hanged then burned, decapitated then burned, or blown up with barrels of gunpowder, rather than stoned as required by Leviticus).

C.S. Lewis claimed that if witches—that is, people who sell themselves to the devil and thereby gain supernatural powers with which to hurt others—actually existed, it would be morally right to kill them (Mere Christianity 14). According to Lewis, the only reason societies no longer condemn and execute witches is that witches are no longer believed to exist. This argument comes close to justifying the massive atrocities of the Witch Craze, as it merely criticizes the perpetrators of this systematic form of extreme brutality for being mistaken about the facts. It does not regard these perpetrators as less moral than modern people who do not execute alleged witches.

Lewis' argument may sound reasonable on the surface, but it is in fact a very dangerous way of thinking. Imagine if we chose to apply this logic to another group, say the Nazis. If we followed this line of thinking, we could start with the fact that the Nazis believed the Germans were the master race, the purest descendants of the original Aryan people, and that Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and "degenerate" members of the German race were hindering Germans' ability to live and act as the master race. The Nazis killed members of the aforementioned groups because they believed it was necessary in order to realize their full potential. If we followed Lewis' thinking, we could say that it is only because they were mistaken about the fact that there was such a thing as a master race, and that they were that race, that the Nazis committed these acts of genocide. If one adopted Lewis' reasoning, one could argue that the Nazis were no less moral than non-Nazis merely for committing these atrocities. Using Lewis' reasoning, one could further conclude that if the Nazis had been correct about the fact that they were the political party that represented the master race destined to dominate the world, it would have been morally right for them to exterminate other races and "inferior" members of their own race in order to make this possible. Obviously, this line of reasoning about Nazi beliefs is not worthy of serious consideration. For the same reason, Lewis' reasoning about the Witch Craze is not worthy of serious consideration.

Homosexuality

The Bible is also explicitly intolerant of homosexuality, as the following passages from both testaments illustrate:

"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable." (Leviticus 18:22)

"'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.'" (Leviticus 20:13)

God gave [men] over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders . . . will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion [see Genesis 19]. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

It is also worth pointing out that Chapter 20 of Leviticus prescribes the death penalty for cursing one's father or mother, committing adultery (if Jesus' words on the subject are taken into account, this includes both getting a divorce and lusting after a person other than one's spouse), and engaging in bestiality (for which the animal must also be killed), while having sex with a woman during menstruation carries the vaguer penalty of being "cut off" from one's people for both the man and the woman involved. Still, it is clear that homosexuality is explicitly condemned throughout the Bible, along with several other varieties of "sexual immorality." Thus, Christian intolerance for homosexuals has explicit biblical support.

Anti-Semitism

There is a surprising amount of anti-Semitism in the New Testament. It is the most extreme in the Gospel of John, where "the Jews" are condemned throughout (even though the author of the Gospel of John probably did not intend to condemn all Jews by using such language, it can easily be read as outright demonization of all Jewish people), while the Gospel of Matthew contains the single most anti-Semitic verse. In Matthew 27:25, the Jews present when Jesus appears before Pontius Pilate ask Pilate to crucify Jesus rather than the criminal Barabbas, saying "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" This passage, more than any other, has been used to justify the persecution of Jews in Christian countries for the imaginary offense of deicide. Many pogroms have been carried out around Easter in European countries, such as in Lisbon in 1506, Odessa in 1871, and Chisinau in 1903, as a direct result of the belief in collective Jewish guilt for the crime of deicide. Persecution of Jews has, of course, not only occurred around Easter or only in Christian countries, and it has not only been carried out in retaliation for supposed deicide. Jews have also been persecuted in Christian countries for many other reasons, including ridiculous accusations such as blood libel and host desecration, though unlike the view that Jews are collectively responsible for Jesus' death, these other grounds for persecuting Jews do not have explicit biblical support.

While the Roman Empire was indisputably intolerant of Jews, its bigotry paled in comparison to the prejudice of medieval Christian countries towards Jews. After Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, demonization and persecution of Jews, including confining them to ghettos and preventing them from owning land, became the official policy of most Christian European governments for the next sixteen centuries. This policy became especially common following the First Crusade in 1096. Persecution of Jews in Europe, including the massacres that occurred in Germany in 1096 and in the twelfth century, and the mass expulsions of Jews that occurred on multiple occasions, was one of the most salient features of the Crusades. (This fact alone should forever put to rest the patently false claim of many Christian apologists that the Crusades were wars of self-defense.) Today it is well-known and widely acknowledged that outright persecution was the official policy of many European countries towards Jews until the middle of the twentieth century. However, the fact that hatred for Jews has direct precedent in the New Testament is not widely acknowledged by Christian apologists today. (To set the record straight, the persecution of Jews has also been the policy of most Islamic countries throughout the history of Islam. While it is true that medieval and early modern Jews fared better overall in Islamic countries than in Christian countries, it is still true that Jews were and still are second-class citizens in most Islamic countries, and Jews in the past have often been persecuted and forced to convert to Islam in these countries.)

Persecution of Heretics, Apostates, and Nonbelievers

As discussed above, in the Bible Jesus is presented as very intolerant and exclusive of those who do not agree with him or accept him and his message. People are either with him or against him and those who are against him will one day suffer God's wrath. This is particularly true of Jesus as he is portrayed in the gospel, letters, and apocalypse attributed to John.

Jesus and the man who allegedly baptized him, John the Baptist, emphasize Jesus' message of "love" in passages like the following:

But when [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

"I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3:7-12)

"A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matthew 7:18-19)

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned." (John 15:5-6)

Such passages can be applied to the present world as easily as to the future or the afterlife. In fact, passages such as these have been used to justify the Inquisition and other acts of homicide and genocide in the name of Christianity, and these acts have even been carried out by members of the clergy in some cases. Now it is true that these verses can be interpreted as eschatological or metaphorical, and that one can live peacefully as a Christian in the present life. In fact, that is what Jesus seems to have wanted his followers to do. There are multiple communities, such as the Amish, that do just this. However, violent, exclusivist passages are also part of the Bible, including many of those attributed to Jesus himself and his apostle of "love," John. These can easily be used to justify acts of violence and cruelty in the present. Thus, the Bible itself and Jesus himself are not completely blameless for the violence committed in the name of Christianity, even if they are not as explicitly blameworthy as the likes of Gregory IX, Urban II, Charlemagne, Innocent III, Theodosius I, Nicholas V, Dominic de Guzman and the order named after him, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, Francis Xavier, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Rutherford, and Huldrych Zwingli.

Slavery

Many commentators have pointed out that the authors of the Bible, including the New Testament, did not condemn slavery. In fact, Paul explicitly supported slavery in Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9-10, and elsewhere, while Jesus used metaphors that could easily be read as condoning slavery in several sermons and parables. The most prominent example is Luke 12:42-48. This passage refers to doulos, the Greek word for "slave" (not "servant," as it is often translated to make it more palatable to modern audiences). It teaches that using violence (i.e., blows and cutting to pieces) against an unfaithful slave is just. Now, this is a metaphor for what God does to unrighteous believers, as verse 12:46 makes clear. Thus, it uses an analogy to acts of cruelty used by human masters against their slaves to describe the way that God deals with the unrighteous. Given that this section treats brutal violence by God as justified, it is safe to say that this passage does not object to the use of violence by human masters against their disobedient slaves. Even if one could interpret Luke 12:42-48 as a mere analogy rather than a statement in support of slavery, this is not the case with Luke 17:7. In Luke 17:7, Jesus teaches that it is only natural to expect a slave to wait on his or her master during dinner even after the slave has worked all day in the fields for his or her master's benefit. In any case, even if it possible to interpret away the gospel passages that concern slavery, it is still true that Jesus failed to condemn slavery despite the fact that it is probably the cruelest form of systematic oppression in human history.

To put the matter simply, if the Bible is revealed by God, then slavery is moral. Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21 (especially 21:7-8 and 21:20-21), Luke 17:7, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9, Paul's letter to Philemon, 1 Peter 2:18, and many other verses make this abundantly clear, while not a single biblical passage condemns slavery as immoral. Now, it is true that many abolitionists in Christian countries have cited passages from the Bible as part of their efforts to abolish slavery, but the Bible only supports abolitionism if it is creatively misread, certain passages are taken out of context, and the passages just cited are ignored or relativized. Defenders of slavery have also frequently cited the Bible, and they have not had to resort to creative misreadings or taking passages out of context to do so. (One aspect of slavery characteristic of the modern West prior to the twentieth century that the Bible does not support is slavery based on skin color, but slavery is systematically cruel regardless of its basis or rationale, so this does not exonerate the Bible.)

Conclusion

Again, none of the foregoing is intended to deny that violence has been carried out in the name of many other religions, philosophies, and political ideologies, such as Islam, which rivals Christianity as the most violent religion in world history; communism; fascism; Hinduism (the caste, or jati, system was generally enforced by official violence prior to independence, including by the British, who exacerbated and rigidified the social divisions created by the caste system; additionally, groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS frequently carry out violence in the name of Hinduism in contemporary India); Buddhism (although it is probably true that less violence has been committed in the name of Buddhism than most other traditions, some violence has been committed in the name of Buddhism throughout its history, including in Japan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan in the last 100 years); and the ideologies of all the many conquerors from Central Asia throughout history.

One other point worth mentioning is that violence in the name of Christianity does not only include the Inquisition, Crusades, and European Wars of Religion, but also includes European colonialism and imperialism between the sixteenth century and mid-twentieth century, and even modern Western ideologies rooted in the Enlightenment values of freedom, individual rights, free trade, republicanism, and democracy to some extent. These qualify as violence in the name of Christianity because the overlap between colonialism, imperialism, Enlightenment values, and modern Christianity has frequently been so significant that they cannot be understood separately from one another. This is especially true in light of the fact that Christian missionaries and church leaders in modern Western countries generally supported colonialism and imperialism before the middle of the twentieth century because of the golden opportunity these aggressive exercises of political power gave missionaries to proselytize to non-Christians throughout the world. It should also be noted that the violence carried out in the name of the aforementioned Enlightenment values includes both radical violence and governmental violence carried out for the stated purpose of spreading them. However, the clear lack of biblical support for colonialism, imperialism, and Enlightenment values means that it is unfair to blame Jesus or the authors of the Bible for the fact that modern colonialists and imperialists have often invoked the Bible and their particular versions of Christianity to justify their atrocities.

Even if one wishes to argue that none of the foregoing violence can be attributed to the teachings of the Bible, Christianity has still had more violence carried out in its name than most religions and ideologies. This fact at least challenges any claim that Christians are not "of this world" and that Christianity has had more positive effects on the world than other religions, philosophies, and political ideologies. However, the argument that none of the violence carried out in the name of Christianity is based on the teachings of the Bible is unsustainable, as there is clear textual support for active persecution, political intolerance, and oppression of fellow Christians and non-Christians in both testaments of the Bible. There is also textual support for accepting even the worst forms of political oppression as the will of God, as the New Testament holds that all worldly leaders are appointed or allowed to rule by God (Romans 13:1-7) and does not provide the slightest indication that there is an exception for genocidal dictators and conquerors like Hitler, Timur, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Aurangzeb, Kambanda, Pol Pot, and Leopold II.
CHAPTER 21:

THE ARGUMENT   
FROM MARTYRDOM

The argument from martyrdom is the claim that Jesus' apostles and other early followers would not have died for what they knew to be a lie. Now it is almost certainly true that early Christian martyrs would not have died for what they believed to be a lie. However, this does not prove that what they believed was in fact the truth. The truth of their beliefs must be established on other grounds, especially in light of the fact that Christianity is not the only religion that has had martyrs. If dying for what a person believes to be the truth proved the truth of what that person believes, then many different beliefs have been proven true over the years, some of which contradict each other.

Martyrdom in Non-Christian Traditions

The most persecuted religious tradition in world history is Manichaeism. Its founder, the third-century Persian prophet Mani, died in prison while awaiting execution at the behest of the Zoroastrian priesthood of Sassanid Persia. At its zenith, Manichaeism was practiced from Western Europe to China. It was a true world religion, like Buddhism and Christianity before it and Islam after it. Yet Manichaeism and all of its practitioners were completely wiped out over the course of about a thousand years, principally as a result of persecution in most of the lands where it was practiced: its homeland of Persia, other regions where Islam later became the predominant religion, the Roman Empire (under both pagan and Christian emperors), and China. In parts of Central Asia, Manichaeism was slightly more successful for several centuries, but the genocidal Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century essentially brought about its extinction. If amount of systematic persecution endured were the measure of truth, then Manichaeism would be the one true religion.

An Indian religion that emphasizes the importance of its martyrs is Sikhism. The followers of this religion suffered relentless persecution at the hands of their Mughal overlords from Jahangir's reign in the early seventeenth century to Shah Alam II's reign at the end of the eighteenth century. The Mughals were the last of a long line of Turkic, Persian, Mongol, and Arab Muslim invaders and rulers who killed tens of millions of indigenous South Asians over the course of a millennium prior to the arrival of British and other European imperialists. This is not to say that these later imperialists did not commit any atrocities. On the contrary, European imperial powers, such as the United Kingdom and Portugal, frequently had policies that were just as brutal and even as genocidal as those of the Muslim hordes in South Asia. The imperial policies of the British, for example, were the direct and proximate cause of multiple famines in India that killed millions of people between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. (See Davis for a thorough account of these. While one should be wary of his Marxist perspective, the great famines of the Victorian Period that he describes were at least partially a result of the political and economic policies of Western countries in the lands they colonized. These policies were similar in many ways to British policies that were one of the primary causes, if not the primary cause, of the so-called Irish Potato Famine of the 1840's and 1850's.)

Aurangzeb (1618-1707), the last truly powerful Mughal emperor, was probably the most brutal of them all. He imposed strict sharia on all of his subjects; destroyed thousands of Hindu temples; killed a multitude of non-Muslims and Muslims who did not embrace his particular version of Islam; and forcibly converted many non-Muslims to the faith. (See Khan 199. As with many historical figures, some historians dispute the brutality of Aurangzeb, but even a cursory study of his reign reveals a record of blatant religious intolerance and almost unimaginable cruelty towards those he perceived as his enemies or as enemies of his strict brand of Islam. Comparisons between his policies and those of recent radical Islamic movements like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State are not at all far-fetched.)

Two of the ten Sikh gurus were executed by Mughal emperors (the fifth, Arjan, by Jahangir, and the ninth, Tegh Bahadur, by Aurangzeb) for failing to convert to Islam. Tegh Bahadur was also executed for objecting to Aurangzeb's forced conversion of Hindus. The tenth guru, Gobind Singh, was assassinated on the orders of a local Mughal governor. Countless other Sikhs, as well as countless Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists were killed by their ruthless Muslim overlords. (Two things to note: First, the notion of "Hinduism" as a unified world religion and "Hindus" as a unified religious group originated in the 19th century. I use the terms "Hindu" and "Hinduism" for the sake of simplicity. A detailed discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using these terms to describe past events is beyond the scope of the present work. Second, I realize that by emphasizing that most of India's invaders before the modern period were Muslims, I am casting Islam and Muslims in a negative light. I do not intend this as a criticism of all Muslims, but it is impossible to deny that an inordinately great amount of violence has been committed in the name of Islam. It is also impossible to deny that the sacred texts of Islam, the Qur'an and the Hadith, provide explicit precedent for the use of violence in order to both defend and spread Islam, even if certain isolated passages in the Qur'an and Hadith, which are usually disregarded by orthodox Muslim scholars on the grounds that they were superseded by later revelations, teach otherwise. Full disclosure: I oppose Islam just as much as I oppose Christianity, and for a similar reason—Islam's basic premises and core claims are demonstrably false, and the "moderate" interpretations of some Muslims cannot erase Islam's many explicitly cruel and intolerant teachings.)

The Sikh tradition came to emphasize the importance of its martyrs more than any other South Asian tradition, in large part because the Mughal emperors (with the exception of Akbar) made martyrs out of so many Sikhs. This is reflected in, among other places, Sikhism's central prayer, the Ardas. Sikhs were butchered and generally mistreated by the Mughals, yet persevered in their faith, as did many Hindus and Jains under Mughal rule. Many non-Muslims in South Asia were martyred by the Mughals and previous Muslim invaders and rulers, in fact probably far more than were martyred in early Christianity even according to apologetic accounts.

Martyrdom in the Early Church

It is, however, undeniably true that many early Christians were martyred by the Roman Empire and that Roman imperial persecution helped the nascent religion grow in popularity throughout the empire when people saw the courage of those who endured such persecution with equanimity. Had the Roman emperors and regional rulers not carried out such ruthless persecution, Christianity may never have become as popular as it ultimately became. The persecutions carried out by Nero and several other Roman emperors were clearly cruel and oppressive. Yet it is still true that the blood of the victims of pagan Rome's persecution of Christians does not prove the truth of Christianity any more than the blood of Mani and his followers proves the truth of Manichaeism or the blood of Sikh, Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist victims of Muslims invaders and rulers in India proves the truth of their traditions.

Christian Persecution of Non-Christians and Other Christians

Many martyrs have also been made in the name of Christianity. For example, the Jewish, Muslim, Cathar, pagan, and Orthodox Christian victims of the Crusades were killed specifically in the name of Roman Catholic Christianity. Many Christian apologists hold that the Crusades were wars of self-defense, but during the Crusades all the inhabitants of various cities were put to the sword, regardless of age or gender, such as in the bloody 1099 Siege of Jerusalem. During the 1204 Siege of Constantinople (which was a Christian city at that time and remains the home of the Archbishop of Constantinople, the highest ranking bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church), Catholic crusaders raped, murdered, and pillaged their way through the city. Around one million people were killed by Crusaders in the Middle East, while 200,000 Cathars were killed during the Albigensian Crusades in Southern France in a clear act of genocide against a minority religious group (Rummel 70). Suffice it to say that the view that the Crusades were wars of defense is patently absurd and untenable if one examines the available evidence fairly   
and accurately.

The Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, and heretical Catholic victims of the Spanish Inquisition provide another example of explicit persecution in the name of Christianity. The Church, Catholic secular authorities, and the offices of the Inquisition in the New World combined to kill 350,000 people (Rummel 70). As previously mentioned, multiple European pogroms against Jews were also carried out in the name of Christianity, often with the full support and even at the instigation of various Christian churches.

Even today there are militias that self-identify as Christian in Africa (such as the Christian militias of the Central African Republic that recently engaged in ethnic cleansing of Muslims in that country and Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda), India (such as the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland), and other parts of the world which forcibly convert non-Christians to Christianity and commit massive human rights violations on a regular basis. And as previously discussed, much of European colonialism, including much of the catastrophic bloodshed that went along with it, was carried out in the name of Christianity and in alliance with Christian churches and missionaries. (In fairness, I should point out that Christian missionaries sometimes vocally opposed the atrocities committed by colonial administrators.)

Even some of the foreign policy decisions of the United States that have resulted in human rights violations overseas have been made on the basis of the Christian convictions of their perpetrators. For example, John Foster Dulles, Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State, was the mastermind of two coups d'état that directly replaced democratically elected leaders in Guatemala and Iran with oppressive military dictators on the grounds that the deposed leaders, Jacobo Arbenz and Mohammed Mossadegh, respectively, were "communists." (In fact, both leaders were freely elected social democrats who respected the basic civil rights of their citizens and whose only "crime" was to challenge the exploitative and quasi-imperialistic practices of the United Fruit Company and British Petroleum, respectively, which were fully supported by the countries where those companies were based.) Dulles masterminded these coups largely on the basis of his devout and militant Christian faith, and these coups led directly to brutal regimes that systematically violated human rights. Now, most American wars and other military actions (whether defensive or expansionist) have been carried out in the name of freedom, democratic-republican values, and nationalism rather than Christianity, though whether it is possible to disentangle Christianity from these values is debatable. But again, because I contend that Biblical Christianity is unequivocally not compatible with these values and in fact must be rejected in order to justify believing in them, I do not attribute the violence carried out in their name to the core premises and basic teachings of Christianity.

Conclusion

I point out these examples of Christian persecution of adherents of other religions and other Christians not in order to claim that Christianity is responsible for these atrocities but rather to challenge the common Christian apologetic argument that the martyrdom of some Christians, especially early Christians, helps to prove the truth of Christianity. If martyrdom is proof of truth, then the truth-claims for which non-Christians have been martyred must necessarily be true, just as much as the truth-claims of Christians who have been martyred. However, since many of these truth-claims conflict with each other, the argument that martyrdom proves anything about the truth or falsehood of a martyr's beliefs fails regardless of the truth-claims for which it is made.

Furthermore, if martyrdom is proof of truth, then the corollary of this is that official representatives of an alleged system of truth who feel the need to make martyrs and persecute others to establish the validity of their claims or protect their claims from those with differing views, have beliefs that must be regarded as false or likely to be false. If they feel compelled to suppress ideological challenges, it is only reasonable to assume that it is because they are afraid that any challenge to their system will cause people to doubt and ultimately disbelieve it. If they could establish the truth of their claims using evidence and reason, there would be no need to persecute those who challenge their claims.

Ultimately, the argument from martyrdom and its corollary are not valid. There is no discernible relationship between the truth of a proposition and persecutions carried out by those who do not believe it against those who believe it on the one hand, or persecutions carried out by those who believe it against those who do not believe it on the other.
CHAPTER 22:

FAITH AS AN ARGUMENT

Many Christian apologists, especially those from Evangelical and Pentecostal backgrounds, use their personal experiences of God, such as near-death experiences where they claim to have encountered God and personal conversion experiences of being "born again" (a concept that comes from John 3:3-8), as evidence for the truth of Christianity and the New Testament. Contemporary Evangelical Christians consider being born again to consist of a personal conversion experience where a previously unregenerate sinner accepts Jesus Christ as her or her personal savior. They attribute this experience to the grace of God made manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and believe that it forever changes the lives of all who experience it for the better. Among Pentecostals, it is widely believed that being born again also entails "speaking in tongues," in words or noises that would sound like gibberish to an outside observer, but which, according to them, actually come from the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals derive this notion (and their name) from an alleged historical event recorded in the Book of Acts. Now, according to the biblical account, when the apostles began speaking in other tongues (Gk. glossolalia), each person among the multitude who witnessed the event in Jerusalem heard his or her own native language being spoken, not incoherent gibberish (Acts 2:1-6). Thus, the version of "speaking in tongues" found in contemporary Pentecostal churches is not the same as the "speaking in tongues" found in the Bible.

In any case, the "born again" experience is a staple of contemporary Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and preaching the "good news" of Jesus' death and resurrection to others is a significant component of the brand of Christianity found in most such churches. If born-again Christians stopped at claiming that their experiences changed their lives for the better it would still not prove that Christianity is true, but it would be far more difficult to justify arguing against them. However, those who claim to have been born again almost never stop at simply claiming that their lives have been improved as a result of their experiences. In general, they go a step further and claim that no other religion/philosophy, person, or book can bring about the utter positive change in a person's life that Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible can.

This claim has no rational basis. The only way to sustain it is to tell all people who claim to have had a profound, life-changing experience as a result of, say, praying to Krishna, practicing Buddhist mindfulness meditation, experiencing satori after years of Zen Buddhist meditation, engaging in the Sufi practice of the remembrance of God, or even embracing atheism—all of which have led to positive changes in peoples' lives—that they are wrong and that they are still missing something. In fact, the same type of argument could be used against the Evangelicals and Pentecostals who claim to have been born again. To many atheists, their experiences sound like nothing more than experiences of intense emotions. Many Buddhists would argue that such experiences increase ignorance or delusion by causing the illusory belief that there is a permanent self or soul to become more deeply entrenched, even those that are characterized by serene, absorptive bliss. I cite this example not because I agree with Buddhists on this point but to show that the claims of Evangelicals and Protestants to have had distinctively transformative experiences are no more reliable than the claims of Buddhists and others to have had transformative experiences as a result of practicing their own traditions. In short, even if peoples' beliefs change their lives for the better, it does not mean that their philosophies are true or more likely to be true than others, including those that do not change peoples' lives for the better.

The argument that one is saved and personally transformed by being born again is not a rational argument. It is an argument from faith. It is a claim to be privy to knowledge and experiences that will allow one to be saved, while not allowing one's neighbors who have not been born again to be saved. It can only be made on the basis of the Bible (the Gospel of John and/or the Book of Acts) and personal experiences, not on the basis of any independent rational or empirical grounds. A devout Pure Land Buddhist could make a similar claim about Amida's saving power based on his or her personal experiences and the larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra. A devout "Hare Krishna" could make a similar claim about Krishna based on experience and A.C. Bhaktivedanta's interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and other sacred texts. Yet because all such claims can only be made on the basis of faith, not observable evidence, there is no way to objectively determine which of these claims are valid and which are not.

The biggest problem with faith is that literally anything can be believed on faith, even patently absurd beliefs. One can believe that there is a spaceship trailing a comet that one can board by committing suicide, on faith. One can believe that an alien dictator killed people by detonating nuclear weapons inside volcanoes millions of years ago and that the peoples' souls came to be possessed and brainwashed by aliens, on faith. One can believe that one will be reborn in Paradise for blowing oneself up in the name of God, on faith. One can even believe that nine-hundred dodectillion llamas jumped out of Cotopaxi and flooded the whole world by spitting simultaneously and that this caused a great flood like that described in the Book of Genesis, on faith.

While anything can be believed on faith, nothing can be known by faith. One cannot know Amida Buddha exists even if one believes with all one's heart that he does. One cannot know that the 39 souls of people who committed suicide en masse boarded a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet in March 1997 even if one has faith that they did. Nor can one know that Jesus was crucified for the sins of humankind and rose from the dead three days later, and that these events were a central part of God's mysterious plan, on the basis of faith. 
CHAPTER 23:

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

Christian apologists often use near-death experiences (NDEs) to support their claims. Now, I will state right up front that it is foolish to attribute all NDEs to mere hallucinations or physiological reactions to external stimuli. NDEs where the experiencer visits what he or she perceives to be other realms of existence are not inherently invalid merely because they contradict naturalistic assumptions about the universe and have not been proven to reflect "the way things are" using the scientific method. It is true that hypotheses concerning them are not easily falsifiable and that they can hardly be evaluated scientifically, but the view that only science provides accurate knowledge about the universe, or scientism, is a dogmatic position without any foundation in the scientific method.

At the same time, it is not possible to jump from the fact that a person has had a particular NDE to the conclusion that any particular religion or philosophy is true. It is always possible that the person having a particular NDE has either manufactured it based on the familiar images of his or her culture/upbringing or has interpreted the things he or she experienced using those familiar images.

NDEs are about the only evidence of any kind for the existence of an afterlife or personal continuity after death. There are also reported cases of past-life remembrance that serve as the only evidence for rebirth or reincarnation, which will be discussed briefly at the end of this chapter.

A considerable amount of research has already been done on NDEs. Kevin Williams, who operates and maintains the website Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife at www.near-death.com, has published some of his findings on the website, and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the phenomenon. In more than half of the NDEs documented on the site, people experienced God and/or love, while about a third of NDE experiencers met Jesus ("Common Elements are Found in Near-Death Experiences"). About one-fifth of the people who had NDEs reported on the site had a hellish experience. It is important to keep these numbers in mind throughout this chapter.

What follows are several NDEs that may be relevant to the question of whether Christianity is true. Some NDEs of non-Christians without any clear Christian content will also be discussed. Two of the most famous recent stories have come from a neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander, and a boy from Nebraska, Colton Burpo. Both of them claim that they experienced or met God in their NDEs (Alexander 9; The Today Show, March 21, 2011). Burpo even claims to have sat next to the Holy Spirit.

Eben Alexander's NDE

Much of Alexander's story is well-known. He is a neurosurgeon who was familiar with NDE stories from some of his patients at the time of his own NDE, but at that time he did not believe that NDEs reflected an external reality that a person could actually experience. He did not believe, prior to his experience, that consciousness could exist independently of the brain (Alexander 8). Yet, according to his account, he remained conscious even when his brain was clinically dead (9). Alexander even claims to know from his experience that God exists and is a loving being who cares about each and every person (9).

If it is reliable, Alexander's account provides anecdotal evidence for the existence of a loving personal spirit-being of some kind, but not the triune God of Biblical Christianity. But the "God" he describes, a being who actually loves and cares about people, is unequivocally not the God of either testament of the Bible. In fact, based on his descriptions, it seems that the God he experienced has much more in common with the God described by the Nirguna Brahman poets of India and Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, than with any other conception of God. (Alexander even refers to God as "Om" in his book because he claims he heard this sound when he experienced God during his NDE (47). Om is the Sanskrit syllable that many Indian mystics have identified with God or the creative power of God. The parallels between Alexander's experience of God and the experiences of these mystics, particularly those who have understood God to be a formless personal being, are uncanny.) In any case, Alexander's NDE does not provide any evidence for the specific truth-claims of Christianity.

Colton Burpo's NDE

Colton Burpo nearly died of appendicitis at the age of four. According to Burpo, when this happened, he was taken to heaven by angels and met the three persons of the Trinity (God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit), as well as John the Baptist, Mary, Peter, Paul, David, and Samson (Burpo and Vincent 102; The 700 Club, December 7, 2012; The Today Show, March 21, 2011). When Burpo describes his experience, he seems to affirm many of the Bible's teachings concerning God and the next life that I have previously discussed.

Although he was just a child when he had his NDE, his and his parents' claims must not be given a free pass just because of this, as the version of Christianity they advocate is far from harmless. Colton Burpo's claims are highly suspect. One cannot rule out the possibility that he was influenced by what he had heard at church or from his parents. After all, his father, Todd Burpo, was and is a pastor. While it is true that he was four years old and seems to have known greater details about the Bible than most four-year-olds, it is still possible for a child that age to know these things, especially if these things have been taught to him by adults he trusts. Furthermore, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Colton Burpo's father, who co-wrote the book Heaven Is for Real about his son's experiences, filled in some of the details, either while writing the book or discussing his son's experiences with him or other people (perhaps even inadvertently).

In addition, almost a decade passed between Colton Burpo's experience and the dissemination of his story to a wide audience. It seems highly likely that if there were unorthodox elements in his experience, they were probably interpreted in a more orthodox manner by him and/or his father. Many children want to please their parents and are willing to alter a story if they think it will put their parents' minds at ease. Although no evidence exists for this assertion either way, it is at least possible that Colton Burpo did this, which means his experience cannot justifiably be taken as credible evidence for the truth of Christianity or even the existence of heaven.

The Man Who Saw Hell

According to his account, Don Brubaker was clinically dead for forty-five minutes and experienced both heaven and hell ("Don Brubaker's NDE"). Brubaker stated that a voice he heard during his NDE told him he witnessed hell so God could show him that evil exists (though I would argue the existence of hell would only prove that God, if he exists, delights in or is willing to subject his creatures to torment, not that evil exists). Brubaker entered a "vast, flaming oven" where he saw hundreds of people roasting. However, he found that the fire felt cold to the touch, at which point he and the denizens of hell broke into laughter. Then God told him he needed to exercise love and compassion for others. He then went to heaven, where he met Jesus, and finally went to the hill of Golgotha and witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus firsthand. If it is reliable, Brubaker's experience seems to confirm some biblical teachings. The New Testament teaches that unrepentant sinners will be punished in eternal fire. God throws them in or allows them to be tormented there yet is still supposedly a loving being according to the New Testament. Neither Christian apologetic arguments nor NDEs have never negated, nor will they ever negate, the absolutely contradictory nature of this proposition. Furthermore, the Jesus that Brubaker experienced seems to have been full of love and compassion, with a much kinder demeanor and disposition than the Jesus of the New Testament.

It is not at all impossible that Brubaker's experience reflected some aspect of his upbringing. All the details of his experience, from the fire of hell, to the God who willingly allows people to suffer in hell and claims they deserve it, to the gentle Jesus, to the crucifixion experience, seem to reflect dominant notions about the divine and the afterlife in Christianity as it is practiced in twentieth and twenty-first century American culture. It is not possible to know either way from his account whether he actually experienced God, hell, or heaven, but what he experienced seems to reflect certain religion- and culture-specific biases and assumptions about God and the afterlife. This is true even if this man is/was an atheist or non-religious person, since these ideas have saturated Western culture for many centuries and are still pervasive today. Atheists and secularists in the contemporary West may ignore this deeply engrained religious heritage of their culture, but unfortunately they cannot completely escape it.

Before leaving Brubaker behind, it is worth noting that many Christians have had negative or hellish NDEs. In fact, according to the research of Kevin Williams and fellow NDE expert P.M.H. Atwater, Christians experience hell more often in NDEs than atheists, new agers, adherents of non-Christian religions, and the non-religious. (See the article "Common Elements are Found in NDEs" on near-death.com. According to the article, Christians who report having had NDEs claim to have experienced hell 38% of the time, atheists 25%, new agers 20%, adherents of non-Christian religions 13%, and the non-religious never.)

Some Non-Christian NDEs

Christians are, of course, not the only people who have positive NDEs. Wan I, a Malaysian Muslim, was enraptured by light in a NDE and had an overwhelmingly positive experience ("Wan I's NDE"). It is difficult to find accounts of NDEs from non-Christian traditions in the English-speaking world, but this is most likely because the majority of people who speak English as their first language are Christians or are from majority-Christian cultures (there are some reported from non-Christians, however, on near-death.com). As mentioned above, even atheists and secularists from majority English-speaking cultures are generally familiar with Christian motifs, at least more than they are with the motifs of other religions and philosophies. Thus, it is no surprise that the majority of NDEs from majority English-speaking cultures have very Christian overtones.

However, many Christian apologists use the negative NDEs (or rather, alleged negative NDEs) of non-Christians to attempt to scare people into embracing Christianity. Fear plays a prominent role in the New Testament and has played a prominent role historically in Christianity and other traditions. It is one of the most basic human emotions, so it is one of the easiest to exploit. (The same can be said of pleasure and love, which is probably why they have also frequently played a prominent role in Christian and other religious evangelization efforts.)

Take this example from a Burmese man named Athet Pyan Shinthaw Paulu, who claims to be a former Buddhist monk who experienced hell and became a Christian as a result of his experience. This man is supposed to have seen the following individuals burning in a lake of fire: a senior Buddhist monk who taught him when he was a novice monk; Aung San (father of Aung Sun Suu Kyi and revolutionary father of the modern nation of Burma); Goliath (the giant killed by David according to 1 Samuel 17); many rich and poor people eating a meal together; and the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (Paulu). Paulu stated he was shown the creation of Adam and Eve by the Apostle Peter, saw some angels, and was instructed by Peter to tell his fellow Burmese citizens to reject Buddhism and accept Jesus Christ as their savior when he regained consciousness. Apparently, he came back from this experience at his funeral, and his parents saw him physically rise from the dead. He then made a tape about his experiences and distributed it throughout Burma.

I would debunk this story myself, but the Christian missionary organization Concerned Christians Growth Ministries (CCGM) has already done so thoroughly ("Resurrected Burmese Monk Story Revisited"). The director of the CCGM interviewed the man who claimed to be the "resurrected monk" above. This man contradicted himself repeatedly throughout the interview. He claimed he was born in 1966 and had his NDE at the age of 19 in 1993, while his taped story stated that he had been born in 1958. At another time, he claimed to have had his NDE in 1998, yet he said he first captured his story on tape in 1996. When told that there were several versions of the tape he made about his NDE, Paulu initially denied there were multiple versions, but later said that he had made several videos. According to Paulu, the differences between the versions of the tape came into existence during the duplication process. Paulu then claimed he had converted 7,000 Buddhist monks, but when asked if the CCGM representatives could talk to even one of them, he stated he did not know any and could not contact any of them (this is reminiscent of Paul's claim in 1 Corinthians that 500 people saw Jesus after he was resurrected). Paulu insisted he had only given his testimony to a few churches and private homes, but then claimed he was unemployed and made enough money to live on by getting donations when he spoke about his experiences at peoples' homes. Also, when asked if any Christian church could confirm his story, he claimed not to know of any, but he admitted that most Burmese churches had rejected its validity. A Burmese Christian organization told the CCGM representatives that Paulu had to go into hiding after he went to prison, yet he moved to the outskirts of Yangon after getting out of prison and became well-known to his neighbors. All of the church leaders the CCGM representatives have spoken to after their 2000 interview have been unable to provide any authentication of Paulu's story. Paulu claims to have had witnesses to the events he describes, yet their testimony has not been forthcoming. On top of that, Paulu is not regarded as a faithful witness of Christ by Burmese Christians but rather a disturbed individual in need of medical attention and/or counselling.

According to a recent update to the story, Christians from one organization in Burma claimed that the monk interviewed by CCGM representatives was not the same former monk who originally reported the above NDE ("Resurrected Burmese Monk Story Revisited"). However, no Burmese church leaders or other Burmese Christians have yet confirmed any part of the original story. Church leaders in Burma have been unable to find any witnesses to any former monk's alleged resurrection from the dead. Furthermore, as the update points out, if 7,000 Buddhist monks had converted to Christianity as a result of the efforts of a former monk, news of the event would have spread rapidly, even with the tight grip the military government exercised over the media at the time.

Despite all this, contemporary Christian apologists frequently cite Paulu's NDE account as evidence that all Buddhists and other nonbelievers will go to hell and that Siddhartha Gautama himself is in hell as a result of his sins. They use it as an attempt to convince Buddhists to embrace Christianity out of fear. In doing so, they represent Christianity as a fearmongering religion, which is just the sort of religion that most Western Buddhist converts want to get away from (even though, as discussed above, more traditional forms of Buddhism in Asia do teach that one can be reborn in a realm of great agony or as a "hungry ghost" in future lifetimes).

In the end, NDEs do not provide much information about which religion or philosophy is true or more likely to be true than others, even though they might provide anecdotal evidence for the continuation of consciousness after death and even the existence of spirits of various kinds. Still, there is no way to demonstrate that some elements of NDEs are not products of upbringing or culturally-bound beliefs and assumptions. There is no way to know whether those who recount their NDEs are describing actual experiences of postmortem realities or mere hallucinations, or whether they are filling in the details after their experiences. There have been documented cases of people who were able to describe the minute details of events that happened to people they knew in the world during their experiences (such as Pam Reynolds and Joseph McMoneagle), which were later confirmed by the people who experienced those events in the world of the living. However, evidence for or against any particular religion's truth or falsehood has never been convincingly provided by NDEs. Nevertheless, NDEs do constitute at least anecdotal evidence for an afterlife or personal continuity after death. They may not be reliable, at least not in all cases, but NDEs at least represent evidence of some kind for such continuity.

Past-Life Remembrance

Ian Stevenson, a late psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, gathered stories of past-life remembrance by children around the world and found that there was a strong possibility of reincarnation in quite a few cases. Most of the case he reported were, not surprisingly, in Asian countries where religions that teach rebirth and/or reincarnation are most commonly found. He wrote about his findings in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Jim Tucker, also of the University of Virginia, picked up where Stevenson left off, but Tucker has mainly conducted his research in the United States. One account in Tucker's book Life Before Life is that of a boy named William who claimed to be the reincarnation of his dead grandfather (1-3). According to Tucker, William was able to describe the unique name his grandfather gave one of the family cats, knew that his grandfather died on a Thursday, and had birth defects similar to the wounds that killed his grandfather (1-3). Life Before Life recounts several similar stories of possible reincarnation.

Christian apologists are often eager to embrace NDEs, as they sometimes seem very consistent with Christian doctrine, but reincarnation is not consistent with Christian doctrine, so Christian apologists usually either ignore evidence for it or argue against its occurrence. Yet there is about as much (or little) reliable evidence for reincarnation as there is for the Christian and Islamic teachings of personal continuity after death in heaven or hell. Some of the children Stevenson and Tucker interviewed were apparently able to recall details they could not possibly have known on their own. William, for example, knew on which day of the week his grandfather had died (Tucker 1-3). It is, of course, possible that parental influence could have occurred in William's case (whether before or after William allegedly recalled the details about his grandfather), as in the case of Colton Burpo.

(Full disclosure: While I doubt that reincarnation occurs, I am not sure either way. However, I very much doubt that rebirth in one of multiple realms according to one's past deeds, as taught in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, occurs. In other words, I do not believe in samsara, or the supposed endless cycle of suffering that sentient beings experience before their liberation, as taught by these traditions, or in the mechanism that supposedly propels samsara, the law of karma. For while there is some anecdotal evidence for reincarnation, there is no evidence that supports the teachings of samsara and the law of karma found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Furthermore, judging from the descriptions of them in the available literature of these traditions, these teachings are just as cruel and sadistic, and have the potential to be just as psychologically harmful, as any major Western belief about the afterlife.)

Ultimately, there is great uncertainty in the reliability of both NDE and past-life remembrance claims, just as there is great uncertainty in the reliability of accounts of other paranormal phenomena, such as those concerning ghosts, angels, demons, aliens, and extrasensory perception. Still, while there is as yet no scientific basis for believing in the actual occurrence of any of these phenomena, it does not mean they do not in fact occur. All of them may well occur, but without evidence beyond personal anecdotes, it is difficult to say either way.
CHAPTER 24:

CHRISTIANITY, SCIENCE,   
AND MODERNITY

Many Christian apologists try to bolster the reputation of their religion by giving it credit for many of the scientific and technological advancements of the modern era or at least crediting it with providing the intellectual and cultural foundations for these advancements. They point to the preservation of Greco-Roman philosophy and science by Christian monasteries during the Middle Ages. They point to the theistic and specifically Christian beliefs of the intellectual founders of the Enlightenment (e.g., Rene Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant) and the early leaders of the scientific revolution (e.g., Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton). They deny that Galileo and other persecuted scientists were mistreated because their views contradicted official religious doctrine. They claim that positive assessments of the natural world and history by thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas led to the rise of applied mathematics and the modern scientific method while most ancient Greek and Roman thinkers shunned the natural world as the prison of the soul. Echoing sociologist Max Weber, they attribute the technological advancements made possible by capitalism to the influence of Calvinistic "this-worldly" asceticism. Finally, they claim that atheism, secularism, and materialism will derail scientific and technological advancements by making people lazy, selfish, and apathetic and that a "return" to (their particular version of) Christianity is necessary to preserve the West's status as the most developed and technologically innovative part of the world.

The practical benefits of a system of thought and practice have nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the beliefs of that system. Thus, even if all of the above claims were valid, it would still not prove that Christianity is true or any more likely to be true. The pragmatist principle that something can be regarded as true as long as it is useful is an attempt to circumvent the inconvenient fact that what people want to be true is not always the same as what the evidence suggests is actually true. Without actual evidence for a belief, there is no basis for adopting it. Religious beliefs are no exception. They must succeed or fail on their own merits, based on what the available evidence suggests.

A similar objection can be made against Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid's ideology of "Common Sense Realism," as Reid mistook the fact that rational human discourse requires certain assumptions about the existence of a real world and real people for the metaphysical truth that real people exist in a real world. In other words, the fact that people must make certain assumptions in order to communicate with each other does not prove that those assumptions are true. It proves only that human minds and human languages have certain underlying presuppositions, not that these presuppositions are correct. If anything, it provides a reason to be skeptical of all human truth-claims, to suspend one's judgment concerning things one cannot know either way.

Even so, it is worthwhile to challenge the belief that Christianity deserves credit for the scientific and technological advancements of the modern era. Even if the utility of an idea is not evidence of its truth, in practice an idea's perceived usefulness has a substantial impact on the degree to which people are willing to consider it on its merits.

On Antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Middle Ages

The standard view that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual and moral degeneration compared to what preceded and followed them is not entirely accurate. The Roman Republic and Empire seem to have been just as violent before the invasions of Germanic and other Eurasian peoples as they were after those groups began to invade. It is well-known that the Romans tortured and killed people as a form of entertainment and that they executed political dissidents in some of the most brutal ways imaginable, such as crucifixion and devouring by wild animals. The various Roman ways of killing people for sport in front of live audiences were at least as cruel as the practice of human sacrifice found among the Celtic and Germanic tribes and the Inquisition and witch hunts of late Medieval and Renaissance Christian Europe. The ancient Romans invaded and colonized lands around the Mediterranean and across large swaths of Europe, ruling these lands with an iron fist. In practice they allowed slave owners to beat, torture, and kill their slaves with impunity. For the most part, only citizens of Ancient Rome, not slaves or colonized subjects, actually benefited from the due process of law. Objectively speaking, the Celtic tribes, Germanic tribes, Huns, Carthaginians, and other enemies of Ancient Rome were no more cruel and violent than the Romans themselves. In many ways, the political realities of the Middle Ages were nothing more than a continuation of Roman brutality under the banner of Christianity. Instead of there being an infallible divine emperor, there was an infallible quasi-divine pope to go along with the still-dictatorial emperors and kings of Europe.

On top of that, the Renaissance was a time of great brutality just as much as, if not more than, it was a time of intellectual, artistic, and technological advancement. Many victims of the Inquisition died during the Renaissance (roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and even during the modern era (specifically, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). In the most backwards Catholic countries, some were even killed in the nineteenth century. Many of the worst wars of religion were fought during the Renaissance and early modern period. The witch craze of Northern Europe was at its zenith during the late Renaissance and early modern period, as well.

However, while it is possible to exaggerate the unpleasantness of the Middle Ages, this does not mean that rational and scientific thinking thrived during that time. On the contrary, if they existed at all, they were very rare. That did not change until the scholastic philosophers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, especially Thomas Aquinas, took an interest in the natural world based on the twelfth-century rediscovery of Aristotle's writings, or rather the transplantation of these writings from the Islamic world and their translation to Latin.

The Pagan Greek Origins of Science and Applied Mathematics

One of the contentions of some Christian apologists is that while the Ancient Greeks preferred to contemplate the realm of ideal forms rather than the natural world, Christian thinkers began to ponder the origins and purposes of nature because of their religion's positive assessment of both history and nature's creator. Now it is true that many Greek thinkers, such as Plato, preferred to contemplate the world of pure reason and not the world of daily experience. It is also true that some Greek thinkers who made advances in mathematics, such as Pythagoras, often preferred not to apply their axioms and theorems to the natural world.

However, it is equally true that some pagan Greek intellectuals sought to understand the natural world. Aristotle spent a considerable amount of time observing and pondering living organisms in order to understand their origins and their relationship to one another. Some of his theories turned out to be incorrect, but he used observation and experimentation to arrive at them, making his method one of the earliest examples of the scientific method. Archimedes is famous for both his engineering feats and mathematical discoveries. Eratosthenes accurately calculated the circumference of the earth with only a small margin of error by observing the angle of the sun in a well in his hometown of Alexandria, Egypt on the summer solstice. (He calculated the fraction of a total circle that the sun's angle formed, 1/50, and correctly concluded that the distance between Alexandria and Aswan, which is close to the Tropic of Cancer where the sun was directly overhead on that day, was 1/50 of the circumference of the earth.)

Clearly, at least some pagan Greek thinkers studied the natural world empirically and some used mathematics to understand it. Not all of them considered the natural world to be an imperfect prison of the soul or pure mathematics to be superior to applied mathematics. Even Plato discussed the natural world at length, though it would be a stretch to say that he studied it. He theorized about it, but he did not attempt to use mathematics or anything akin to the scientific method to understand it.

In any case, not all Ancient Greek luminaries shunned science and applied mathematics. It is entirely conceivable that, had a Greek philosophical tradition become the official or dominant tradition of the Roman Empire and Hellenistic World rather than Christianity, the same scientific advances ultimately would have been made. In fact, because of the more (but by no means completely) tolerant and eclectic views and practices of the Greek philosophical schools, it is probable that there would have been far greater intellectual development in a far shorter amount of time had a Greek tradition triumphed rather than Christianity in the Western world. It is likely that this intellectual development would have included the scientific advances that came about in the modern era at an earlier time than they ultimately occurred in the West. This is especially true in light of the fact that for its first twelve centuries, Institutional Christianity almost uniformly idealized asceticism and anti-worldliness, whereas not even the Pythagoreans, Platonists, or Neoplatonists idealized complete anti-worldliness in Ancient Greece.

The Islamic Contribution to Applied Science and Applied Mathematics

Another problem with the Christian apologetic argument that scientific and technological advancement would not have occurred if not for the influence of Christianity is that intellectuals in another religion sought to understand the natural world through observation long before the Christian scholastics. Muslim scholars studied Aristotle's works long before Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, and these Muslim thinkers almost uniformly regarded the world as the good creation of a good creator. Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi (801-873) was the first great Muslim philosopher, and he lived three centuries before Abelard. Al-Kindi wrote on medicine, chemistry, astronomy, optics, and many other subjects. The Persian scientist and philosopher Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi (780-850) wrote extensively on mathematics and geography. He popularized both algebra and algorithms (the former gets its name from a book he wrote, while the latter get their name from him), including their application to the natural world.

Islam does not deserve credit for the fact that individuals like Al-Kindi and Al-Khwarizmi were able to come up with scientific, mathematical, and philosophical innovations under the rule of the caliphs, at least not any more than Christianity deserves credit for Robert Boyle's discoveries in chemistry. Yet if Christian apologists insist on giving their religion credit for laying the foundations of modern scientific and technological development, it is only fair to give Islam even more credit. Without the original interest in understanding the natural world through observation, experiment, and mathematics that developed in the Medieval Islamic world at an earlier date than it did in Christendom, the level of scientific and technological development that has occurred in the West may never have come about. If not for the continuation of learning under the rule of the Islamic caliphs, including the preservation of many ancient Greek writings in their original language and in Arabic, it is highly probable that Europeans never would have embraced the desire to understand the natural world and that the foundations of the scientific revolution would never have been laid in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Another problem with the argument that Christianity laid the foundations for the great scientific and technological advances of Europe is that, as the Bible teaches it and the early Church lived it, Christianity is overtly hostile to the acquisition of wealth and material advancement in general. Early Christianity taught that the end of the world was imminent and, as a result, early Christians did not live for the things of this world at all. On top of that, as previously discussed, Jesus himself held up "otherworldly" asceticism as the ideal, encouraging his followers to renounce their family ties and become mendicants for the sake of the kingdom of God. Suffice it to say that the attitudes of Jesus and his apostles toward worldly pursuits cannot easily be read to provide intellectual support for scientific study or technological advancement. Any such support can only be read into the New Testament or gleaned from taking isolated passages out of context.

Isaac Newton

One common contention of many Christian apologists is that Isaac Newton, the father of classical physics and calculus, was a pious Christian who investigated the natural world and the rules of logic in order to better understand God's creation. Now, Newton was undoubtedly a theist and he wrote many works about religion and theology. However, his views of Christianity were very much heretical. He denied the existence of the Trinity, positing that only God the Father is actually God (Snobelen 385-86). Many of Newton's ideas on Christianity were similar to those of the heretic Arius and his followers, who believed that Christ pre-existed the world but was nevertheless created rather than begotten by God (Snobelen 387). Newton denied the immortality of the soul, the existence of Satan and demons, and the existence of hell (Snobelen 387). As Snobelen points out, denial of the existence of an immortal soul and of evil spirits would have been considered the equivalent of atheism during Newton's time, even if they were rooted in an interpretation the Bible (388). Denial of the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus, on the other hand, was punishable by death in England during Newton's time (Snobelen 393). Newton also predicted that the world would end sometime after 2060 based on his reading of Daniel and Revelation, refused to receive holy orders during his life, and refused to receive communion on his deathbed (Snobelen 391-92, 396, 408-09). Newton thought of himself as a biblical literalist, following the early Christian teachings rather than those invented by any established church, and thus can be seen as a fundamentalist of sorts. Yet his "fundamentalism" included views that would be considered heretical by most contemporary Christians, including most self-proclaimed fundamentalists.

Later Enlightenment thinkers interpreted Newton's theological writings through the lens of deism, making Newton appear deistic or proto-deistic to later readers. Before leaving Newton behind, it is worth noting that he also had a strong interest in alchemy, in discovering the Philosopher's Stone in order to turn base metals into gold (Bosveld). He has also been connected to numerous secret societies, especially the Rosicrucians, who seem to have profoundly influenced his thought on religious matters (White 116-18).

Galileo

Another common contention of Christian, particularly Roman Catholic, apologists is that Galileo's well-known conflict with the Roman Catholic Church was not a conflict between religion and science or between faith and reason. Rather, according to them, Galileo was put under house arrest because he behaved arrogantly towards Pope Urban VIII and other Church officials, who then pressured the pope to crack down on him.

This contention is, quite frankly, ludicrous. It holds that because the Church put Galileo under house arrest on account of its own pettiness and the pettiness of its leader at the time rather than any specific anti-intellectual motivation, the Church should not be accused of having been opposed to science and reason during Galileo's time. Even if the Church's persecution of Galileo was rooted in political considerations, the petty feelings of superiority of certain Church officials, and the extreme arrogance of Urban VIII, it does not lend support to the claim by contemporary Christians that the Church did not oppose intellectual freedom and scientific discovery. If political considerations and the fragile egos of Church officials had a substantial effect on the extent to and manner in which the Church supported scientific discovery and other intellectual pursuits in Galileo's time, then at the very least the Church did not make scientific discovery one of its priorities. In fact, this clearly shows that the Church's main priority at the time was the preservation of its own power and prestige.

In truth, the Roman Catholic Church, like most religious organizations, has always been very fickle in its support or nonsupport for scientific discovery and intellectual activity in general, and has only supported these when they have not been perceived as a threat to the power and prestige of the Church in general or its current leadership in particular. As such, the Church has never been the champion of science and reason that apologists frequently make it out to be. It is, however, fair to say that the Roman Catholic Church has had more rational and scientifically-minded people in its official hierarchy than any other branch of Christianity since Vatican II. Still, even for today's Roman Catholic leadership, power and prestige matter a lot.

Ultimately, Galileo was persecuted for holding heliocentric beliefs, since the pamphlet that got him in the most trouble, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was dedicated to defending heliocentrism against the official geocentric views of the Church. Even if Galileo also got in trouble for not showing the "proper" respect or decorum towards Urban VIII or the Church, this again shows that the Church was hostile to all those who threatened its power or prestige in any way and that the political ambitions of Church leaders did not make it easy for individuals like Galileo to advocate their views. Even Copernicus was almost targeted by the Church for advocating heliocentrism, and he never even wounded the fragile little ego of any pope or high-ranking church official in his writings.

Copernicus

Copernicus was, of course, the main developer of the heliocentric model, which was rooted in his direct observations of the motions of the planets. He was not the first to argue for heliocentrism: Aristarchus (third century BCE) did so before him in Greece and Aryabhata (sixth century CE) did so before him in India. However, heliocentrism became the dominant model of the solar system in the West after Copernicus, whereas it did not in Greece after Aristarchus or in India after Aryabhata. Copernicus' model was the result of naturalistic observation and reasoning. Yet while Copernicus deserves credit for developing this model, there is no reason to give his religion credit any more than there is a reason to give any Indian tradition credit for Aryabhata's heliocentrism or any Greek philosophical tradition credit for Aristarchus' heliocentrism.

Before leaving heliocentrism behind, I want to emphasize that it is a model, and more specifically, a coordinate system with the sun defined as its origin. It is more elegant and simple than the Ptolemaic geocentric model, which defines the earth as the origin, but the latter is not simply "wrong." It is possible to define the earth as the origin of one's coordinate system, and if one does this the other planets can be graphed as orbiting the earth. The heliocentric model, which defines the sun as the origin, just allows for a more elegant understanding of planetary orbits. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld explained this when proposing a way to formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all coordinate systems, that is, a physics with only relative rather than absolute motion (212).

Christianity and the Enlightenment

An argument that Christian apologists sometimes make is that had it not been for Christianity, the belief in fundamental human dignity, equality, and the political ideals of freedom and representative democracy so characteristic of the Enlightenment never would have arisen. (For present purposes, the fact that these beliefs and ideals have often been poorly or only very partially implemented by societies that have embraced them will be ignored, as societies that have embraced these beliefs and ideals have for the most part had far more humane governments than most other societies in world history. These ideals have gradually helped basic human liberty and opportunity to increase in the world, despite all the setbacks and inadequate or incomplete implementation of them that has occurred over the past few hundred years.)

The first objection to be made against this Christian apologetic claim is that the Bible does not teach that people are ends in themselves as Kant did. Nor does the Bible teach that human life is the standard of values. In the Bible, God's will is the standard of values. The Bible is theocentric, not anthropocentric. The ideal human by the Bible's standards is one who does not value his own freedom and sovereignty but submits to God's will, allowing God's will to be done rather than his or her own. A righteous person by the New Testament's standards is one who allows himself or herself to be used for God's ends alone, who has a "relationship" with God where God does all the work—it is really quite a one-sided relationship, akin far more to the master-slave or master-servant relationship than to human friendship or a human love affair. Humans who insist on their independence are among those condemned to eternal damnation, since the New Testament teaches that people are fundamentally inadequate on their own. In fact, the New Testament teaches that those who insist on their independence are the people who love the world rather than God and will not have eternal life (1 John 2:15-17).

Most Evangelicals and fundamentalists hold these views, yet they do not seem to recognize that these views are incompatible with a political, ethical, or moral system that values human achievement, human freedom, and basic human dignity. Their religion teaches that humans are unique, all right—unique in their sinfulness and rebellion against God, unique in their condemnation to eternal hellfire unless they accept Jesus as their savior, and almost unique in their immorality and disobedience towards their creator (some angels are disobedient too). Christianity is inherently hostile to humanity. Understood correctly, it literally blames human beings for all the problems of the world because, even though it also blames Satan for the fall of humankind and subsequent corruption of creation, this does not exonerate humans by its standards. Christianity teaches that humans deserve to be tormented for all of eternity for even one violation of the moral code established by God. In fact, the only real Christian moral principle is that one must accept Jesus as the Christ and as one's savior. Anything else leads to damnation, whether it is feeding starving children in an undeveloped country or exterminating millions of people in concentration camps.

Kant and the other Enlightenment humanists were life-affirming individuals. They valued reason and human achievement. They believed humans are entitled to fundamental respect merely by virtue of existing. The Bible does not teach this, even if it considers all people to have been created in God's image and to be the rulers of all creation (Genesis 1:26). In order to find this humanistic spirit in the Bible, it is necessary to quote a few passages out of context. The moral stance of humanism is simply not present in the Bible when it is read honestly and accurately. Nor is support for freedom and democracy. The Bible teaches that all human political leaders without exception are put in their positions by God and should be respected as receiving their authority to rule from God (Romans 13:1-7). In addition, the New Testament, while it is clearly not entirely apolitical, strongly discourages participation in conventional political and economic activities.

Finally, valuing the lives and well-being of other people, a key value of Enlightenment humanism (at least in principle), has little or no basis in the Bible. As discussed in a previous chapter, the biblical idea of love, especially as contained in the Gospel and First Letter of John, is nothing more than a cunning rhetorical device. There are few, if any, real examples of loving one's neighbor as oneself or loving one's enemies in the New Testament, outside a few hypothetical scenarios like the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. There are no examples of God behaving lovingly by ordinary human standards but only by the standards of Christianity's morbid internal logic.

Now it is true that, according to the Bible, Jesus taught his disciples to love their neighbors as themselves (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31), to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27), and to turn the other cheek when others hit them (Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29). However, Jesus also threatened those who disagreed with, rejected, or disbelieved in him with eternal condemnation (John 3:18 and 12:48) and accused such people of being from the devil (John 8:44). An accusation that somebody is from the devil cannot be out of love. Whether it is said angrily or passively, the only feeling that can cause a person to say such a thing is contempt. Thus, Jesus spoke out of contempt for various Pharisees and other perceived enemies on this and other occasions. While I think it is reasonable to have contempt for those who want to kill or torture oneself or those one loves, this does not justify such behavior by God, especially where it directly contradicts God's explicit teachings.
CHAPTER 25:

THE CLAIM THAT CHRISTIANITY   
IS NOT A RELIGION

Many Christian apologists claim that "Christianity is not a religion but a personal relationship with God." Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the first theologian and the first Christian in the modern era to speak of a "religionless Christianity," in a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge. Bonhoeffer's idea was influenced by theologian Karl Barth, who held that the "revelation of God [is] the abolition of religion" (Barth 280). The reason that Christians (as well as adherents and practitioners of other traditions) can claim that their tradition is not a religion is that the meaning and scope of the word "religion"   
are unclear.

Contemporary Christian apologists seem to make the claim that Christianity is not a religion in order to appeal to people who think of religions as rigid, stagnant systems of beliefs and practices that cause people to hate and kill each other for no reason, and in order to distance themselves from the institutions that advocate these beliefs and practices, as they are widely perceived as corrupt. These apologists also seem to be trying to appeal to contemporary people known as "seekers," who are generally synonymous with those who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." However, the same apologists making the argument that Christianity is not a religion usually belong to a church, participate in church rituals and gatherings, and teach that only one particular teaching and one particular God are true and lead to salvation. This, along with several other factors, makes their claim that Christianity is not a religion extremely dubious.

Dictionary Definitions of Religion

The modern English word "religion" derives from the Latin religio, which was defined differently by the first century BCE Roman statesman Cicero and the third to fourth century Christian apologist Lactantius. The former believed that religio referred to giving careful consideration to the gods, while the latter believed that religio referred to being bound or bound back to God through devotion.

According to the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, one contemporary definition of the English word religion is "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usu. involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code for the conduct of human affairs" ("Religion" Def. 1). Christianity is, or at least has, a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. Christianity teaches that God the Father created the universe through the Eternal Word, his Son Jesus Christ. According to this line of thinking, the universe was originally good, but, under the influence of the devil, the first humans sinned and caused the fall of creation. Later, God's relationship with humans was restored through the historical crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to Christianity, the purpose of existence is to fulfill God's plan, which began with the creation of the universe and will be concluded at the Last Judgment. In addition, Christianity teaches that a superhuman agency created the universe, as the Christian conception of God is that of a superhuman agency (who became human through Jesus Christ, but remained pure deity at the same time). Christianity in all its historical forms has involved devotional and ritual observances, including baptism, Communion/Mass/Eucharist, communal and private prayer, communal and private confession, marriage ceremonies, etc. Finally, Christianity in all its historical forms has contained various moral codes for the conduct of human affairs, whether based on the teachings of Jesus and his apostles, the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, canon law, or popular notions of right and wrong made to fit with scriptural or traditional church teachings. Thus, by the first definition from the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, Christianity is clearly a religion. It is also worth noting that a personal relationship with God, insofar as it is believed to be a relationship with the being who created the universe, insofar as it is believed to involve the ultimate purpose of human existence (whether this purpose is conceived as salvation or the relationship itself), and insofar as it involves devotional observances like prayer and hymns of praise, is clearly religious by this first definition.

A second definition of religion is "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects" ("Religion" Def. 2). Christianity has a fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by individual Christians and the doctrines of the various churches of Christianity. These beliefs include the triune nature of God (though there are a few exceptions, it is the normative belief of most extant Christian traditions); the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ (churches disagree about the precise nature of the relationship between the divine and human natures of Jesus, but all but a few fringe Christian groups recognize both the divinity and humanity of Jesus); and the belief that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus brought about a restored or reconciled relationship between God and humanity (though, again, churches and individual Christians disagree about what precisely the crucifixion and resurrection signify and how they accomplished this reconciliation). The fundamental practices that Christians agree upon include baptism (even though Christian individuals and traditions disagree about whether this rite should be performed in infancy or adulthood), Communion/Mass/Eucharist, petitionary prayer, and confession/repentance (though here again they disagree whether confession should be public, private, or one-on-one with a cleric). Thus, by the second definition of religion in the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, Christianity is a religion.

A third definition of religion is "the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices" ("Religion" Def. 3). Under this definition of religion, different branches and sects of Christianity are separate religions from one another, but insofar as they share a common belief in Jesus Christ, the triune God, and the sinfulness of human beings, and a common set of practices like baptism, communion, and prayer, they could be regarded as a family of related religions. Under this definition, Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Communion, the Oriental Orthodox Communion, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and all particular nondenominational churches that have their own doctrines and practices are religions. If this definition of religion held for all human traditions, then it would be improper to speak of any of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. as religions. It would be necessary to speak of the specific branches of these traditions that have a common set of beliefs and practices as religions. By this definition, Judaism would arguably not be a religion or include any religions, while the other four would include religions but would not themselves be religions.

It is clear that when most speakers of contemporary English use the word religion, they do so in order to refer to traditions or families of traditions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. This is problematic when people who speak of religion believe that the word "religion" implies something distinct from the "secular," that is, from the "non-spiritual" or "non-sacred" occurrences of daily life. This distinction does not exist in the lives of most of the adherents/practitioners of most traditions, including Christianity. However, the "family resemblance" theory of ideas developed by the preeminent philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein seems to lend support to the categorization of all of these traditions as religions. The outward similarities between these traditions are quite obvious to even casual observers today, and their similarities were obvious to Western and Arab explorers who first encountered them before and during the modern era.

All of these traditions or families of traditions feature various combinations of metaphysical, ethical, historical, soteriological, and eschatological beliefs, along with ritual observances and other practices. Some who speak of religion no doubt exclude one or more of these or other traditions from the ambit of the term on the grounds that they are philosophies or ways of life or even psychologies rather than religions, while others who speak of religion may sincerely believe that the term religion only refers to specific organizations with a common set of beliefs and practices. However, the first two definitions listed above cover the most common meaning of the word in contemporary English.

Christian Apologetic Definitions of Religion

While Christianity is undeniably a religion according to the first two dictionary definitions above, it is nevertheless possible to define (or redefine) the word "religion" in a manner that includes or excludes whatever one wants it to. Christian apologists frequently take advantage of this fact and redefine the meaning of the word in an inherently polemical way in order to claim that Christianity is not a religion. Basically, these apologists define religion as the unsuccessful human search for God, and they define Christianity (and pre-Christian Judaism), in contrast, as God reaching out to reveal himself to humans. In other words, these Christian apologists identify religion with seeking God or higher truth through merely human means, while they identify Christianity with knowing God as a result of divine revelation.

I will use Islam to illustrate why this Christian apologetic definition of religion is inherently polemical and does not work if applied objectively to the claims of other traditions. Muslims believe that God revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. They believe that Muhammad did not merely search for God but that God reached out to the human race by revealing the Qur'an. Thus, from the point-of-view of believing Muslims, Islam is no more a religion than Christianity under the Christian apologetic definition of religion given above. However, Christian apologists who use the definition of religion given above or a variation thereof would claim that Islam is a religion by their definition because they personally do not believe that God revealed the Qur'an. Rather, they (almost without exception) believe that Muhammad made it up in his longing for God or even to bolster his prestige and increase his political and economic power. That is why the Christian apologetic definition of religion cited above is inherently polemical: it denies that other religions, at least those that have a concept of a transcendent god or gods, are revealed by the true God, the triune deity that Christians believe in and worship.

Another problem with Christian apologists claiming that their tradition is not religion is that they are late to the party, so to speak. Most Christian apologists who have denied that Christianity is a religion only started doing so after religion became something of a "dirty word" in the second half of the twentieth century. Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents/practitioners of several other traditions denied that their traditions were religions long before that, and many adherents/practitioners of these and every other major tradition (and even some of their critics) deny that their traditions are religions to this day.

As an example, most Buddhists have denied that Buddhism is a religion since the nineteenth century, when this denial gained Buddhists more opposition than respect. Buddhists did not start claiming that Buddhism was not a religion as an opportunistic way to make their tradition appeal to an audience of seekers and individuals wary of corrupt human institutions. In practice, Buddhism in Asia is and has always been hierarchical, authoritarian, ritualistic, and obsessed with the observance of the rules of monastic behavior. This is still the case today, even though lay Buddhists in all countries where Buddhism is present have more of a voice than ever before. Theravada Buddhism remains a hierarchical tradition where monasticism is the ideal in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Likewise, East Asian Buddhist traditions remain hierarchical and ritualistic for the most part, though there are more exceptions to this in East Asia than there are in South and Central Asia. Tibetan Buddhism, the primary form of Buddhism found in Central Asia, is ultra-hierarchical and ultra-ritualistic, for it, like all other tantric traditions, teaches that the relationship between guru (or lama) and student is all-important. The main reason Buddhists, both Asian and Western, have long claimed that their tradition is a philosophy or even a form of organized psychology, not a religion, is that Buddhism does not acknowledge the existence of an all-powerful, transcendent creator. But despite this, there is a reasonable argument to be made that Buddhism is a religion, as it features belief in various unenlightened spirits (including the devas of the Hindu Vedas, various local deities, demigods, ghosts, and the inhabitants of the hells). It also features devotional rituals dedicated to beings such as the historical Buddha, other buddhas and bodhisattvas, the supposed relics of these buddhas and bodhisattvas, auspicious texts, and various famous Buddhists from history. It further features teachings concerning the nature of existence, which it characterizes as impermanent and full of suffering, and the ultimate goal or purpose of existence, nirvana or liberation from the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

Conclusion

According to the first two dictionary definitions above and the popular understanding of the word, Christianity is a religion. Even if it is possible to define religion in a manner that suits one's own polemical purposes, and even if many apologists for many traditions define it in such a manner, the first two definitions are the most common ones in contemporary English. They should not be rejected in favor of any particular apologetic definition just because the word now has negative connotations for many people.
CHAPTER 26:

THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

NOTE: This and the three chapters that follow concern general arguments for belief in a creator rather than arguments for Christianity specifically. However, Christian apologists frequently use these arguments in debates with non-Christians and frequently acts as though these arguments prove that the specific teachings of Christianity are true, even though the truth of Christianity depends on far more than the existence of a creator.)

The ontological argument for the existence of God starts with the premise that humans can conceptualize a "perfect being," that is, a being than which no greater being can be imagined or thought. According to the argument, existence or being is better than nonexistence or nonbeing. Thus, in order for a "perfect being" we imagine or think to actually be perfect, that entity must exist or have being in fact, not just in our minds. Otherwise it would not be a perfect being, since a perfect being cannot lack any good quality such as actual existence. Anselm of Canterbury and Rene Descartes were the most famous advocates of this argument.

The most basic problem with the ontological argument is that no proposition within a logical system can be proven to be empirically or experientially valid from within that logical system and can only be proven such on the basis of external evidence. So the proposition that the idea of a perfect being entails the actual existence of a perfect being, while it is true within a logical system in which the idea of perfection necessarily includes the predicate of existence, does not necessarily mean that such a perfect being exists in fact. In order to conclude that such a being exists as an empirical or experiential matter, it is necessary to point to actual empirical or experiential evidence that establishes this.

The second major problem with the ontological argument is that existence is not necessarily better than nonexistence. There is no convincing way to prove that existence is in fact better. Humans do, however, know that existence includes a lot of suffering and grief, even if it also includes happiness and pleasure at times. Thus it is quite possible to argue that existence, on balance, features more suffering than happiness. If this is true, then it is logical to conclude that nonexistence is better than existence. Even if one does not draw this conclusion, it is also possible, and probably more correct, to argue that living humans do not have a neutral ground on which to judge whether existence or nonexistence is better, since living humans are not aware of what nonexistence is like. (In fact, neither are dead humans if they no longer exist, since they are then obviously not aware of their current state.)

Even if one concludes that these two problems with the ontological argument do not disprove its validity, it is still far from established that the conception of God in Christianity or any other extant religion or philosophy is that of a perfect being. The Christian God damns people for all of eternity for even one small infraction against his will if they do not accept Jesus and his crucifixion as the atoning sacrifice for their sins and if they do not acknowledge that this is the only way to salvation. This makes God sound like a tyrannical psychopath on a power trip, not a perfect being, no matter what kind of rose-colored interpretations of this worldview Christian apologists invent to make it sound more appealing. If "that which is unholy cannot enter the presence of that which is holy" is an unalterable metaphysical truth, then God, as the creator of all things, is responsible for creating that metaphysical truth or allowing it to continue existing as a metaphysical truth. If God is omnipotent, God has the power to change this truth at any time. If God is all-loving, then God will change it if it is necessary to save his creatures from eternal torment. Even if this contradicts the notion of justice that God created, God (1) has the power to change what constitutes justice in his eyes any time he pleases, due to his omnipotence, and (2) a loving god would value mercy over justice where the two conflict (otherwise he would be a just god, not a loving god—these two are mutually exclusive).

As a point of comparison, the Islamic idea of God is also not an idea of a perfect being according to the way that most humans would define perfection. The basic Islamic idea of God is that of a being who functions like a capricious tyrant, damning people simply for believing the wrong thing about himself, and especially for this: shirk, or the unforgivable sin, is ultimately nothing more than believing the wrong thing about God, since associating things other than God with God (the literal meaning of shirk) is the same as holding incorrect beliefs about what or who God is.

Even if the ontological argument is valid, there is a strong case to be made that none of the conceptions of God popular in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism (whether the god in question is Vishnu, Shiva, the Goddess, Ganesh, or Brahman or Ishwara in the abstract), Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, etc. are that of a perfect being. Of course, if any of these conceptions of God were correct, then that conception of God would be of a being who is perfect by definition, regardless of what he or she does. He or she could commit the same sort of acts of violence against humans as the Nazis or the Khmer Rouge and still be perfect, by definition.
CHAPTER 27:

INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND THE "PRIME MOVER"

The Watchmaker Analogy

It is possible that an intelligent "higher power" designed and/or created the universe. The theologian and philosopher William Paley used the "watchmaker" analogy to argue for the existence of an intelligent designer. He believed that just as a watch demonstrates a level of complexity that suggests an intelligent being (i.e., a human) designed it, so the universe demonstrates the same degree of complexity. Based on this, Paley believed that it is possible to infer that the universe was designed by an intelligent power outside of it.

Paley's logic is sound. Even if it is not convincing, it at least provides reasonable grounds for believing in an intelligent designer. As a philosophical proposition, a compelling argument can be made for or against it. However, there is as yet no convincing empirical evidence that there is actually a creator or designer outside of the universe who gave rise to it, just a possibility that there is. The simple fact that there is something rather than nothing means it is at least possible that the universe was designed or created. It is a reasonable conjecture. Yet there is no way to disprove it, nor is there any way to disprove the alternative view that there is no designer and that natural laws are self-existent and self-sufficient. By the criteria of Karl Popper, according to which it must be possible to falsify a theory by empirical evidence in order for that theory to be scientific, both the claims of those who advocate intelligent design and the claims of those who advocate naturalism and hard atheism are outside the scope of science, though they are clearly not outside the scope of philosophy.

Even if the universe was intelligently designed, it would not provide any grounds for believing Christianity is true. There are two main reasons for this. First, the truth of Christianity depends on far more than the existence of an intelligent designer. Second, any of the following traditions could feature an accurate cosmogony and theology if intelligent design is true (this is not an exhaustive list): Judaism; Islam; Christianity; Baha'i; Hinduism (the idea of the Trimurti, or God as creator, sustainer, and destroyer, as well as the belief that Brahma or even Vishnu, Shiva, or the Goddess alone created or otherwise gave rise to the universe can be found in Hinduism); Philosophical Daoism (there are references to a creator-like figure in the central texts of Philosophical Daoism, in Chapter 4 of the Dao De Jing and Chapter 6 of the Zhuangzi); thousands of African traditional religions (for example, those of the Yoruba, Akan, and Kikuyu); Sikhism; Cao Dai; deism; Unitarianism; traditions that hold that the creator of the universe or the being who believes himself to be the creator is evil or ignorant (including Marcionism, Catharism, and Theravada Buddhism, the last of these based on the Patika Sutta); many Native American traditions (the traditional Cherokee view is explicitly monotheistic, and many other Native American peoples have an idea of a Great Spirit or Great Mystery, as some prefer to gloss it, with personal aspects that gives rise to or creates the world); or Platonism (see the Timaeus). Of course, in order for their cosmogonies and theologies to warrant serious consideration, every one of these traditions would need to demonstrate the truth or likely truth of its particular cosmogony and theology through persuasive evidence, as the same standard of intellectual honesty that applies to Christianity also applies to them. While none of them have as yet done so, all of them have cosmogonies and theologies whose truth is hypothetically possible if an intelligent designer exists. Of course, it is also possible that an intelligent designer exists and they are all incorrect.

The Prime Mover and First Cause

Aristotle's argument for a prime mover, which Thomas Aquinas repeated, does not even fare as well as the argument from design. Essentially, Aristotle and Aquinas claimed that because motion does not ever occur without a mover, at least in human experience, there must have been some original mover that set the universe in motion in the beginning. This original mover must have been unmoved. This unmoved or prime mover, having set the universe in motion and thus caused the universe to come into existence, is therefore also known as the first cause. The argument that the prime mover must have been unmoved is based on the belief that there cannot be an infinite chain of causality, that there must have been a first cause that began the whole chain of causality that humans observe and experience on a daily basis. It is true that infinite regress, or an infinite chain of prior causes, is no more likely (or unlikely) than the existence of a first cause. However, infinite regress and the idea of a prime mover are both problematic. The former posits an infinite chain of causes for a finite universe, which is illogical. The latter is problematic because, even if one arrives logically at what one thinks was the first cause, one cannot prove by any convincing evidence that the posited first cause was itself uncaused.

So while Aristotle's argument for the prime mover has little merit, so does its antithesis. However, even if Aristotle's argument were valid, it would point to a being that merely set the universe in motion, not one that sustains the universe now. Otherwise this being would not simply be the prime mover but something much more complex. The prime mover would not intervene in the universe and would certainly not suspend the laws of nature that it set in motion. Blaise Pascal realized that this "God" of Aristotle, and of the philosophers generally, is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, nor the Father of Jesus Christ. In fact, they are all three mutually exclusive ideas of God.
CHAPTER 28:

THE MORAL ARGUMENT

C.S. Lewis' Moral Argument

In his argument for the existence of God in the first book of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argued that there is a law of human nature that all people know exists and which can be proven by observing everyday interactions between people. If a person feels slighted or victimized by another, he or she will often refer to some standard that he or she expects the other person to know and live by (Mere Christianity 3-8). In Lewis' estimation, this proves that there is a universal moral law. He further claimed that most cultures basically agree about morality and that some versions of morality are better than others in most peoples' minds (Mere Christianity 12-13). According to Lewis, the law of human nature is a law that humans frequently violate, but because it is a real law, there must be a power behind that law that gives rise to it, which Lewis identified with a god (Mere Christianity 17-27). Humans have rebelled against this god by violating the moral code he has imposed upon us, yet the moral law is etched upon our minds, so we can know it simply by looking within, at our own consciences (Mere Christianity 28-32). In the second book of Mere Christianity, Lewis argued that because humans have rebelled against God, God has sent Jesus to atone for human sin or rebellion by dying on the cross.

In The Abolition of Man, Lewis cited numerous thinkers and texts from multiple cultures as alleged illustrations of the universal moral law that he believed to exist (83-101). He cited the Bible; the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, the Roman statesman Cicero, and the Stoic philosopher Epictetus; the Analects of Confucius; epic poems like Beowulf and the Iliad; Hindu texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Manusmriti; Old Norse sources; Ancient Egyptian sources; Ancient Babylonian sources; a few Native American sources; and a few Australian Aboriginal sources. Interestingly, Lewis failed to cite other sources from these cultures that contradict the moral notions of the sources cited, even though they were and are readily available. These contrary sources include the works of the Epicureans and Pyrrhonians of Ancient Greece; the works of the Daoist philosophers Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi; the works of thinkers of the Charvaka school of Ancient India; and the works of many modern Western philosophers. While Lewis acknowledged that the sources he cited could not prove the existence of a universal moral law, which he called the Tao (or Dao in Pinyin; Lewis' use of this term agrees with the use of that term in the Confucian tradition and in some forms of Religious Daoism, but not at all with its use by Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Liezi), his purpose in writing The Abolition of Man was to debunk all arguments against the existence of his version of the Tao (83).

Lewis was correct that he did not provide evidence for the existence of a universal moral law by citing the sources he did in The Abolition of Man, as he provided no reasonable argument for rejecting the moral consensus of hedonists or egoists or Philosophical Daoists, all of whom disagree fundamentally with most of the views expressed in the sources he cited. He also provided no reasonable grounds for believing that the conventions of social interaction in England during his lifetime were evidence for the existence of a universal moral law in Mere Christianity. In other words, he never proved the truth of the premise of his theological argument in Mere Christianity.

It is also worth noting that most of the thinkers and texts that Lewis referenced in The Abolition of Man came from cultures where slavery, rigid class stratification, ethnic prejudice, the use of torture, and even mass executions were commonplace. For the most part, the thinkers and texts cited were silent about these seemingly very important moral issues. Where they were not silent, they tended to condone or even advocate some or all of these immensely cruel practices and lend them legitimacy. Because of their usual silence concerning and occasional advocacy of such practices, it appears that these thinkers did not believe that such practices contradicted their moral notions. Thus, if there is a universal moral law based on notions of intrinsic human dignity and worth, fair play, honesty, benevolence, and respect, all of the thinkers and authors of the texts cited in The Abolition of Man, with the possible exception of Epictetus, failed to live by it to one degree or another. They failed to recognize their own behaviors and the behaviors of their contemporaries that violated even minimal standards of those notions in many cases. While this in itself does not prove that their notions of morality were false or baseless, it at least shows that all of these thinkers were strongly influenced by their own cultural backgrounds and the biases and assumptions that underlay them.

In any case, if moral standards can only be known subjectively, by examining one's own conscience, they are not reliable. Subjective tendencies are hardly ever a mere product of nature. It is through intense social conditioning from interacting with others that many, if not most, of them develop. A child does not feel guilt for stealing or demanding attention unless that child is trained to feel guilt for doing so. Adult approval or disapproval, or fear thereof, seems to be the main determining factor, not an intrinsic notion of right and wrong. This at least is, in part, the theory that Sigmund Freud propounded in The Ego and the Id and Civilization and Its Discontents, and seems to hold for all societies. Of course, this does not explain the ultimate source of peoples' moral notions, but it is not too hard to hazard a guess about what this source is. People are naturally intelligent. They are capable of theorizing about existence even without outside motivation. Thus, it is quite possible that certain people long ago invented various moral notions and that these notions then became ingrained into a large number of peoples' minds over time through social conditioning. It is possible that the majority of people later mistook these quite arbitrary ideals for binding universal truths.

In Civilization and Its Discontents and elsewhere, Freud contended that the natural instinct of humans towards death, or aggression and violence, must be suppressed for civilization to exist. The price of this suppression is feelings of guilt when aggressive impulses arise. Specifically, feelings of guilt arise in the self when, under the influence of the expectations imposed by authority-figures, this natural aggressive impulse is directed inward and becomes the super-ego (i.e., the originally external, now internalized collective expectations of one's community) or conscience, which in turn targets the thoughts and actions it perceives as immoral. In order for civilization to exist, individuals must accept these feelings of guilt that arise when they suppress their aggressive impulses.

Taken together, Freud's theories in The Ego and the Id and Civilization and Its Discontents provide a plausible account of the origins of most major moral systems (that is, if one does not narrowly focus on the Oedipal Complex and fear of castration). They could explain the ultimate origin of the "moral consensus" that Lewis reports at least as effectively as any theistic account. Furthermore, even if there are some moral standards that all humans agree are real and universal, this does not prove that these standards are in fact real and universal. (As discussed above, even C.S. Lewis acknowledged this in The Abolition of Man.) One cannot leap from the fact, supposing it exists, that because humans have certain intrinsic moral notions, they ought to follow them. One cannot jump to the conclusion that these inherent moral ideas reflect "the way things are." There is actually no reason to believe they do. And even if these standards exist, they may come not from a personal creator but from genetic proclivities, which may arise from the biosphere and nowhere else.

An example of a compelling argument for the evolutionary origins of altruism comes from the primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal. De Waal holds that altruism is rooted in "mammalian nurturance endowed with intrinsic rewards" (53). Mammals, unlike social insects, have the capacity for empathy, for connecting with others and experiencing their pain and pleasure (53-54). For this reason, altruism brings a sense of pleasure for humans and other mammals (54). Thus, it is entirely possible that the altruistic variety of morality that Lewis holds out as the supreme and universal moral law has terrestrial origins.

Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative

According to Kant, there is a universal basis of morality, the categorical imperative. According to him, all moral propositions that a person would will to become universal moral laws are binding on all people. Kant's precise formulation is, "[a]ct only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal moral law" ("Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals" 890). In simpler terms, people must not behave in a contradictory manner: if they would not will moral laws that violate their own status as rational beings with inherent value, they must not will moral laws that treat other rational beings, i.e. other people, as though they are not inherently valuable. For to violate their basic dignity is to remove the basis of one's own dignity as a rational being. All people are to be treated as ends in themselves, not merely as means to another person's ends. Kant's precise formulation is, "rational beings all stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others, never merely as means, but always at the same time as an end in himself" ("Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals" 897). Significantly, Kant also made the argument that it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God on the grounds that there must be a "highest original good" from which all good things in the world are derived ("Critique of Practical Reason" 345).

However, Kant did not prove that human beings are in fact free, rational agents or that there is a universal basis for regarding individual human beings as valuable in themselves. As a practical matter, it may be wise to do this for the sake of self-preservation, but there is no universal basis for believing in the moral goodness of self-preservation. There is only instinct, the drive to remain alive for as long as possible, behind the impulse toward self-preservation, and there is no evidence that this drive is good by any inherent standard of values. (This is also the fatal flaw in the ethical theory of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Following Aristotle, she set up life, specifically the life proper to a rational being, as the correct standard of values for humans, but she never demonstrated that life itself is a good thing, let alone the good. The belief that it is has no basis in any metaphysical facts. I will note that I have other objections to Rand's philosophy, but this is the only one that is relevant for my present purposes.)

Analysis

All of these moral theories would require some power that sets up the universal moral code and makes it binding on all human beings, even if that power is nothing more than the physical laws of the universe. Yet these physical laws or an intelligent designer would only determine what is the case, not what individual organisms ought to do. Perhaps it is better to try to rise above the laws of nature or the laws created by the intelligent designer, if one exists, not to simply accept them as given. Perhaps that is what humans ought to do.

In truth, there are no universally applicable moral facts or laws by which the acts of cruelty of even Nazis, Communists, imperialists, and other butchers can be condemned, even though it would certainly be more convenient if there were. (As an aside, it is difficult to overlook that the people who are most adamant and vociferous about claiming the existence of a universal basis for morality are often the most willing to justify and perpetrate acts of violence and cruelty against their fellow human beings in the name of morality or righteousness. Only a few individuals, such as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and George Fox come to mind as true exceptions to this—that is, as individuals who both taught the existence of universal morality and did not perpetrate acts of violence or advocate the perpetration of violence against others in its name.)

As discussed above, there is no evidence for any universal moral law binding on all people, even if all people agree about the existence of certain moral standards. There are in fact few, if any, such standards that are universally agreed upon. For instance, most cultures condemn certain forms of killing other humans in certain situations, but very few condemn killing in itself. Most cultures agree that some version of justice or fairness is a good thing, but they disagree widely about what actions are just and fair.

For the reasons discussed above, the argument for the existence of God based on universal morality is entirely without merit. It is possible to have moral beliefs and practices without believing there is a basis for them in nature. It is possible, in other words, to believe in and live by moral principles while recognizing that they are ultimately arbitrary and not binding on anybody by the operation of any natural law. This was the attitude toward morality embraced by the Pyrrhonian Skeptics of Ancient Greece: while they found no empirical basis for moral judgments—that is, they saw no empirical basis for considering some things inherently good and other things inherently evil—they adhered to the laws and customs of their society while recognizing that these customs were culture-specific and not universal. Thus, while the Pyrrhonians practiced "suspension of judgment" concerning all truth-claims, including moral truth-claims, to the extent they could, most of their day-to-day decisions were influenced by the moral notions to which they were accustomed.

Personal Reasons for Moral Skepticism

One reason I am deeply skeptical of all moral truth-claims is that my personal moral fabric still includes some Christian values, which still occasionally leads to pangs of guilt within me for thoughts and actions that are sinful by Christian standards, including even some thoughts and actions that I no longer believe are immoral. I would even say that I distrust "conscience" in general, whether in myself or others, since a person's conscience seems to usually reflect whatever values that person has learned by his or her own unique experiences in life. In some cases—in fact, probably in many, and certainly in mine very frequently in the past—a person's values are actually psychologically harmful to the person who holds them or to others with whom that person interacts.

If I have ever been put in a position where I have the desire to express moral judgment, it is in relation to Christianity and other religions and philosophies with difficult and unnecessary moral codes (i.e., most of them), as well as (of course) brutal ideologies like fascism and Bolshevism. In practice, most ideologies and religions are systems of artificial misery that compound the suffering that comes with life in the first place. Thus, I find them to be some of the most contemptible concoctions of human beings. Nature already subjugates us to its rather harsh laws before we even have systems of doing the good and shunning the bad. No person has ever chosen to be born and nobody chooses the fact that death will come one day. Nobody purposefully picks the condition that we must work and toil or steal to survive for any length of time or the fact that even then survival is always precarious. People can decide how they die through suicide if they wish, but people cannot opt not to die or to postpone death if their time has come. So, according to the available evidence and contrary to what Christianity teaches, we humans are all already subject to nature's tyranny through no fault of our own.

Why should we subject ourselves to further systems of tyranny in the form of rigid moral codes and the guilt and anxiety that come from violating them? Those who claim we should do so advocate incalculably cruel doctrines that have nonetheless been immensely influential in human history. Thus, if any ideas are worthy of negative moral judgment, it is these, along with (again) the ideas underlying the actions of the supreme butchers of humanity—authoritarians, fascists, communists, and imperialists from ancient times to the present. One might ask, by what standard are these ideas worthy of negative moral judgment? The answer is: by the same standard as every other moral judgment ever made—by some person's arbitrary estimation, in this case mine. This is actually unfortunate, not something to celebrate. Far from being liberating, the fact that there are no objective moral judgments makes even everyday evaluations of situations difficult to ultimately justify.
CHAPTER 29:

PASCAL'S WAGER

Pascal's Wager begins with the obvious facts that one can either disbelieve or believe in God's existence and God can either exist or not exist. There are thus four possible options: (1) one can believe in God and God can exist; (2) one can believe in God and God can not exist; (3) one can disbelieve in God and God can exist; or (4) one can disbelieve in God and God can not exist. According to Pascal, in option 1, a person goes to heaven, with his or her belief in God yielding infinite benefits; in option 2, a person simply ceases to exist at death, his or her belief in God turning out to be inconsequential; in option 3, a person goes to hell, with his or her disbelief in God yielding infinite costs; in option 4, a person simply ceases to exist at death, and his or her disbelief in God turns out to be correct but inconsequential. Thus, according to Pascal, if one does not know whether or not God exists, it is most sensible to wager on God existing, since this wager will get one into heaven in the next life if God exists but will be inconsequential if one ceases to exist at death. On the other hand, if one wagers on God not existing and God does in fact exist, one will face eternal torment.

This wager is often used as an argument by Christian apologists. There are two common objections to it. The first is the "wrong god" objection. According to this objection, one can wager on a god existing, but if one wagers on the wrong god or the wrong conception of God, one can still go to hell. If, for example, one wagers on the triune Christian God, but the unitarian God of Islam is the one that actually exists, one will be damned for believing in the Trinity. Or even within Christianity, if one wagers on a God who requires a personal conversion experience of being "born again" to be saved, but in fact God requires people to receive the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., baptism, confirmation, mass, penance, anointing of the sick, and either marriage or holy orders) to be saved, then one can still be damned for not receiving the sacraments. If this objection is taken seriously, the options become more numerous, so that, all things being equal, the odds of being correct on any particular wager diminish.

The second common objection is that that those who wager on God's existence just to avoid damnation may be regarded by God as equally contemptible to or more contemptible than honest nonbelievers and may be equally hell-bound. Either way, insincere belief in the form of a wager may not be enough to lead to salvation, since God can see what is truly in a person's heart and mind according to most   
theistic traditions.

Both of these objections are valid, but there are several other good reasons to reject Pascal's Wager. First, the wager implies that there is no consequence to believing in God or a particular conception of God other than heaven or cessation of existence at death, when in fact a belief in God or a particular idea of God often changes the entire way a person perceives the world and the entire way a person lives, and not always for the better. Such a belief generally requires a more scrupulous and disciplined lifestyle where one attempts to live righteously by the standards of one's theistic worldview. In Christianity, it means, for example, trying hard never to feel lust for a person other than one's spouse. It also often means, at least in many theologically conservative circles, avoiding drinking, smoking, and similar "vices." It requires giving up a lot in most cases, so it is not really without costs.

Another important objection to Pascal's Wager is that it does not take into account the fact that the Christian heaven sounds an awful lot like servitude to the great celestial tyrant who created the universe. In fact, Pascal's Wager should be reversed as follows: heaven in the Christian sense does not sound like unmitigated bliss but a form of absolute subservience and unwavering devotion to and admiration of the creator. This sounds more like a cult where the leader demands praise simply for saying how perfect or enlightened he or she is over and over again, even if his or her actions would lead a reasonable person to question this claim. This state of affairs only sounds desirable when compared to hell in the Christian sense, which is not mere separation from God, but actual torment of both the soul and the resurrected body. Both of these options sound unpleasant—obey and escape torment or rebel and be tormented. One sounds like cult-like slavery. The other sounds like a Nazi concentration camp, with the angels being comparable to camp guards and God being comparable to Hitler, with the difference that in this concentration camp, the oven never stops burning and those put inside it continue to suffer but are never relieved from their suffering by death. The former sounds like life for an obedient non-Jewish, non-Gypsy, non-homosexual, non-handicapped citizen of Nazi Germany, with the difference that the residents of heaven never under any circumstances seem to object or consider objecting to the treatment of the damned by their glorious leader. The latter sounds like life for Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals in Nazi Germany, with the difference that those damned by God do not get any respite from their misery by way of death. A reasonable person would neither want to be in the Christian heaven nor in its version of hell, just as a reasonable person would neither want to be a servile subject of the Nazi German state nor an inmate in one of its ghastly concentration camps. (Here again the analogy to Nazism illustrates the horrific nature of Christian eschatological claims better than any other analogy ever could, Leo Strauss' observations notwithstanding.)

The second part of this reversal of Pascal's Wager is as follows: the afterlife may or may not exist, but life in this world certainly does. Christianity very often diminishes a person's quality of life in this world by making one afraid of contravening God's will through doubt or immoral personal conduct and by causing one to always suspect the influence of the devil. It can lead to feelings of guilt, self-contempt or self-hatred, worries about the next life and even about one's future in this life, as well as many other kinds of anxiety. (In fact, if sin exists in the sense in which Christianity describes it, accepting the truth of Christianity should lead to these things, at least at first.) It can also lead to an attitude of extreme arrogance and self-righteousness in dealings with others. This is hard to avoid for a person who believes that he or she is saved and most other people are not. This attitude can also produce unhelpful, illusory feelings of compassion and empathy for the "poor souls" who one believes will be tormented for all of eternity. Arrogance or self-righteousness can, however, lead to the reverse of this: contempt for nonbelievers, the belief they deserve eternal torment for not accepting God's free gift of the sacrifice of his own son on the cross for the sins of humankind, and, in some cases, persecution of nonbelievers in   
this world.

Christianity is not merely a source of comfort. It is frequently a source of unease for oneself and/or others. The Bible is full of dire warnings, not just passages about God's love. In fact, there are not any genuinely loving passages in the Bible when all of the ones that Christian apologists claim to be expressions of loving ideas are read in context. These warnings can easily translate to feelings of extreme and even unconquerable anxiety in those who take them seriously.

In addition, because the Bible discourages doubt, many Christians (not all, but a large number) do not (or try not to) critically think about the Bible and discourage fellow Christians from doing the same by citing dire warnings concerning those who lack faith or lack the fear of God. This can, and often does, have the effect of scaring people into not asking questions when they feel disturbed or anxious about what Christianity teaches as truth. Much more alarming is the fact that Christianity can lead a person to resign himself or herself to major psychological problems by believing that they are temptations from God to test one's faith (and thus should not be questioned) and/or that they are temptations from Satan to lure one away from the faith, which one is powerless to resist without the help of God. In these ways and others, Christianity can and often does diminish the quality of life in this world for those who embrace it.

Because one runs the risk of living a far less fulfilling life if one embraces a philosophy or religion that can have such profoundly negative psychological effects, and because the existence or nonexistence of the afterlife is uncertain, if one concludes that it cannot be known whether or not Christianity is true based on all other factors, it is most sensible to wager against Christianity and against similar potentially harmful religions and philosophies.
CONCLUSION

I have had a few truly profound experiences as a result of reading the works of several great Christian mystics, particularly The Cloud of Unknowing and Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology. I have sometimes succeeded at doing hermeneutical gymnastics with the Bible to make it have a message of genuine love and kindness. I have even had pleasant experiences as a result of dabbling in my own personal version of Gnosticism. However, none of these positive experiences were the result of the Bible or any church's tradition. Still, I would like to salvage the little good that Christianity, in my experience, has to offer. As the popular saying goes, I do not wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In affirming the positive aspects of Christianity, I reject the Bible outright—every book, without exception. Put differently, I reject any literal interpretation of the Bible. However, because interpreting the Bible nonliterally ultimately consists of making it say only what one wants it to say, or at least ignoring or twisting those aspects of it which one does not like, interpreting the Bible nonliterally is in the end a rejection of the Bible's authority. Those who make the Bible say only what they want it to say tacitly acknowledge that they believe the Bible is unnecessary and that people only need their own experiences and reasoning skills to gain the understanding they need or want. Thus, it is just as well to throw the Bible out altogether once one starts picking and choosing which passages to take seriously and which ones to dismiss or interpret away.

Furthermore, even if I have had positive experiences as a result of internalizing the teachings of certain Christian thinkers, this does not prove or even provide evidence that the basic premises and core teachings of the Bible or any Christian tradition are true. Some of these premises and teachings, which I have attempted to outline in the first chapter, are falsifiable and have already been discredited. In the end, empirical and historical evidence are the key to determining the truth or falsehood of Christianity's basic premises and core teachings, not their emotional appeal or lack thereof or even their practical effects (whether positive or negative).

Nonetheless, if it can be shown (as I clearly believe it can) that Christianity lacks emotional appeal, then even if there is insufficient evidence for or against the truth of Christianity's basic premises and core teachings to form a strong conviction either way, Christianity is still worthy of rejection. Likewise, if it can be shown (as I, again, clearly believe it can) that Christianity has had few practical benefits, or fewer or no more practical benefits than comparable systems of ideas and practices, then, in the absence of sufficient empirical and historical evidence, Christianity is still worthy of rejection. Admittedly, some version of intelligent design and/or deism is a possible description of the origins of the universe, our world, and life in our world, but intelligent design and deism are a far cry from theism, which holds that God not only created the universe but intervenes and participates in it, and an even further cry from the specific theological, soteriological, eschatological, and historical teachings of Christianity or any other theistic religion.

I acknowledge that some people find great comfort in Christianity's teachings. Christianity apparently changes some peoples' lives for the better, and some people find the Christian message of love for God and one's neighbors to be a source of contentment, kindness, and unity with other believers. However, on closer inspection Christianity's doctrines of "love," especially those concerning the alleged love of God for humans and love of humans for God, but even the love of humans for other humans, are nothing more than cultish doublespeak. John, or whoever wrote the gospel and letters attributed to him, attempted to put a positive spin on the notion that all humans are evil, damned sinners by suggesting that there is a way out from our hopeless situation, though he also claimed that all teachings that disagree with his are evil. John used the concept of love to sugarcoat both of these teachings. In doing so, he glossed over the misanthropy, exclusivism, and hostility towards ideological rivals at their heart.

In reality, Christianity's basic premises and core teachings reveal a fundamentally hateful and intolerant religion premised on a triune personal God who is essentially cruel and vengeful. It idealizes celestial totalitarianism, even glorifying the extreme suffering that "sinners" will have to endure by the will of God. On top of the fundamental contradiction in the theology of Christian and other theistic traditions outlined so succinctly in the Epicurean Paradox, Christianity is fundamentally hostile to humanity, regarding humans as completely hopeless and inadequate in themselves. It should not change peoples' lives for the better, as its offer of salvation is really an offer of sheer subjugation to the will of the great cosmic dictator whose principal act of "love" was an act of human sacrifice to satisfy the standards of justice, holiness, and goodness that he, as the omnipotent creator of the universe, necessarily invented and necessarily sustains.

At its core, Christianity is psychologically dangerous as a result of its antihuman message. It counsels people to blame their own sinfulness and the sins of their fellow humans, past and present, for the existence of suffering and for all the problems of the world, rather than the real culprit: nature, or the physical world and biosphere collectively. The notion that humans are to blame for all suffering in this world and the next has disastrous psychological implications. If this notion were true, then self-hatred and hatred for humans in general would be virtues. Yet these "virtues" cause serious psychological harm to those who actually embrace them (as opposed to paying mere lip service to them).

As such, intellectual tolerance for Christianity is not a simple act of allowing people to do as they please without harming others. Christianity is inherently cruel and intolerant of both the independent use of reason and dissent by members of the Church (here meaning all Christians collectively), making intellectual tolerance for it acquiescence to a form of cruelty and mind-control, as well as acquiescence to the unhealthy idealization of eternal subjugation to a dictatorial being. Just because Christianity is relatively old and has many adherents does not make it any less psychologically harmful than modern organized religions that are popularly regarded as cults. Of course, this is not to deny that some forms of Christianity are far more benign than others. Churches in the mainline and liberal Protestant denominations are often nothing more than social clubs. However, even they claim to base their traditions on the Bible, which is the principal source of Christianity's psychologically harmful teachings. So even members of those churches, and especially children (who do not understand that even though their church teaches that the Bible is revealed or inspired by God, their church does not actually care very much about what is actually written therein), risk experiencing a lifetime of misery as a result of their religion.

Finally, I regard Christianity as directly responsible for much of my misery. I never went hungry as a child. I did not grow up on the rough streets of a dilapidated city. But Christianity more than made up for all of my luck and privilege. It crippled my mind and paralyzed me with fear. In my youth, it made me afraid of God and the devil every moment of every day for over a decade by filling my mind with terrifying images of hellfire and eternal torment. Ultimately, Christianity nearly made me lose my mind. All of this came as a direct result of reading the Bible, which cannot but engender such reactions when read honestly.

To some, my arguments concerning Christianity might sound harsh. But the truth is that I could never be harsh enough to do it justice. Others will regard my viewpoint with curiosity because they do not think of Christianity in the terms in which I have presented it. They may even think that the version of Christianity I have presented is a straw man. However, I am confident that all the beliefs I have presented as the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity constitute something like the worldview that a careful and literal interpretation of the Bible must entail. At the very least, I am confident that most latitudinarian versions of Christianity either sugarcoat or ignore all the nasty little passages in the Bible concerning damnation and the bloodshed occurring at God's behest (whether at the behest of Yahweh or Jesus). Because these passages are not at all infrequent in either testament of the Bible, sugarcoating or ignoring them constitutes a glaring falsification or omission, respectively. For this reason, and because I am confident that the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are false, I stand by what I have written.
MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES   
OF CHRISTIANITY

What follows is an account of my long and rocky relationship with Christianity. I rejected Christianity for many complex reasons, but I have always felt some attachment to it because of how deeply it was ingrained into me as a child. Thus, several times I have attempted to return to it, to be a Christian yet again. Every time I have done this, I have ended up being very unhappy in my life. My last rejection of Christianity was based on reason and is therefore probably final. But it has been a long journey to this point, and that journey is certainly not over.

I grew up a Lutheran, to a lesser degree in the Missouri Synod (in which I was baptized as an infant) and to a greater degree in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America or ELCA (in which I took first communion and was confirmed). The former denomination is conservative in its theology, while the latter is mainline to liberal. However, the denomination to which I belonged had little to no impact on my perceptions and understandings of Christianity. In my experience, the ELCA is not very adamant about hammering theology into the heads of the church youth. Thus, as a child, my understanding of Christianity was at first based primarily on my personal experiences and later on my reading of the Bible.

Before I was 12, I generally understood Christianity in wholly positive, even sugarcoated terms. I believed that God was in his heaven and pretty much everybody would join him up there after death. I did not believe in hell. However, I distinctly remember one experience when I was 5 or 6. I made a comment at the Missouri Synod church I attended in which I stated my belief that everyone would go to heaven, but an adult corrected me and told me that bad people go to hell. When I inquired about the nature of hell, another child said that hell is the place where the devil lives and that bad people are burned there with fire after they die. I have no idea where she learned this, whether at the church we attended or from another source, but all it did was confuse me. I believed God was loving and continued to believe that people do not have to worry about going to hell.

Several years later, I went through confirmation classes at the ELCA church I attended. I was 12 at this point. I still believed in a Universalist soteriology, but a statement I heard from the teacher of my confirmation class challenged this belief. I did not believe her that salvation was not easy, so I asked if I was right that one does not have to do anything but be a good person to get into heaven. Rather than being told that one must believe in Jesus, I was informed that salvation is difficult and is based primarily on one's works (which, incidentally, is an odd thing to hear in a church that claims to base its theology on the teachings of Martin Luther). This made a deep impression on me. I no longer felt comfortable with my simple child's faith. I thought I was in danger of not being saved because of how little I had done for other people. This concern would be present within my mind for the next several years, but I eventually adopted the belief that good works necessarily flow from one's faith. However, my concern about my perceived lack of good works had far less of an impact on my life than a development that was about to occur.

In the summer of 1997, just after I'd turned 13, I went to a Lutheran summer camp in the southern mountains of Colorado. It was intended to inculcate an attitude of love, gratitude, and mindfulness in relation to God. However, at my first Bible study I opened the Bible randomly to a book of the Bible I had never read or been told about before: Revelation. I opened it to Verse 20:7-15, where Satan is released from his tomb after a thousand years and thrown in the Lake of Fire, and the Last Judgment before God's throne occurs. In the Last Judgment, all people whose names are not written in the Book of Life are thrown in the Lake of Fire to be tortured day and night forever and ever after being judged based on their deeds. I flipped through the rest of Revelation and immediately developed a juvenile fear that the apocalypse would occur while I was at the summer camp. I was worried I would never see my family again.

The belief that the end times will occur in the near future is almost impossible to avoid for a person who believes that the Book of Revelation is infallible and inerrant, which I did without question until I was in high school. After I returned from summer camp and my childish fear of never seeing my family again subsided, I developed a more general fear that the world could end at any time based on my reading of Revelation and the canonical gospels. Based on this fear, I began to strive to be morally perfect so that I would not end up being eternally damned. I still believed I would get into heaven if I was morally perfect and a steadfast believer in God and Jesus Christ, but I thought the way to heaven was to live in fear, self-doubt, and discomfort here on earth. I thought that only those who have this cautious and fearful mentality, who "work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), could continuously be mindful of God and his moral expectations. I had become a Puritan of sorts, a fundamentalist, and a premillennialist who expected the events of the end times to begin at any moment.

In practice, these beliefs had a disastrous effect on my mental and social lives. They even made me afraid to resist bullies who physically assaulted and publicly humiliated me without provocation at school. I thought I was obligated to "turn the other cheek" even if I wanted to resist. This, accompanied by my biblically-based fear of damnation if I failed to put this moral principle into practice, made me afraid to act when persecuted by bullies, which in turn made me extremely miserable. (As an aside, the fear of adult disapproval from and punishment by teachers, administrators, and other authority figures at the school for fighting back certainly contributed. So, I admit, did my fear of getting hurt even more by resisting fellow students who were stronger than me. Nevertheless, the authority figures' message that victims of bullying should not fight back is very dangerous because kind, compassionate students will obey it while cruel, uncaring students will not. I should not have listened to them, but they should have thought more carefully about the possible consequences of their message.)

Yet no matter how hard I tried to adhere to what I understood to be Christianity's moral precepts, I feared I would be damned as one among billions of "sinners in the hands of an angry God" holding us over hell and waiting to drop us in (to use the imagery of Jonathan Edwards). I thought I was a worthless little piece of scum, as this is a self-image that is openly advocated by the Bible and many famous Christian theologians and apologists, including everyone's favorite twentieth century apologist, C.S. Lewis (who called all humans "little idiots," as previously discussed). By this point, I was depressed most of the time as a result of my constant fear of eternal torment and my belief that I was obligated to follow a very difficult and rigid moral code. But the worst was yet to come. What I experienced in my premillennialist phase was nothing compared to what I experienced in the summer of 1999 and the two years that followed.

In the summer of 1999, when I was 15, I traveled to the Nashville area. I carried my fundamentalist-Puritan-premillennialist beliefs with me, and they certainly contributed to what happened. While visiting a farm on the outskirts of Nashville, I felt what seemed like an invisible sentient entity enter me and start telling me what to do. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I felt like I had been possessed by the devil or another demon. While this happened, I heard a voice in my head that claimed to be God telling me that I was a very bad sinner, that he was tempting me in order to test my faith, and that I would burn in hell if I did not resist these temptations. This was the first time a being claiming to be God appeared as a voice in my head. I can only describe this situation as one of desperation and utter distress. I needed the comfort that Christianity teaches only God can provide like never before.

After this experience, I believed I had been possessed by the devil and that God was allowing it to test my faith and my righteousness, like God did to Job according to his eponymous book. Having read Job and other biblical texts that seemed on point several times, I believed that questioning the existence, goodness, or purposes of God was absolutely wrong, so I tried with all my might to not do so. My feeling of possession continued for nearly two years and included the same voices in my head that I experienced for the first time in Tennessee. I told a few people about my experiences at the time in very vague terms, as I knew that any specific description would likely lead to psychiatric therapy or even institutionalization. Fortunately, my feeling of possession went away as a result of rejecting Christianity's eschatological teachings and as a result of my attempts to understand my experiences with the language of psychology rather than the language of religion or spirituality. It has not come back since.

At the time of my "possession" experience, my theology was only minutely related to the teachings of Lutheranism and was already rooted in the teachings of Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, and dispensational premillennialism. I now wonder if I had shared my experiences with other Christians whether they would have thought these experiences were from God or from the devil. (My guess is that most Evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist Christians would have interpreted this experience the same way I did, as Satan tempting me and God allowing it to test my faith, although it is possible they would have told me I needed to be born again or baptized after making a conscious decision to follow Jesus in order to escape the influence of the devil.)

At this point, I began reading the gospels in earnest. I ignored the epistles and the Old Testament, as well as the Book of Revelation, focusing almost exclusively on what Jesus himself allegedly taught. I read all four canonical gospels, but I related most to the Gospel of Matthew. It had passages that brought me a trickle of hope, but it also had numerous harrowing passages that resonated with my belief that I was being tested by God and tempted by the devil and my modified belief that good works are a necessary outcome of faith. I believed that I must retain my faith and act righteously despite the tests and temptations I thought I was experiencing. Ultimately, I focused most of my attention on the more harrowing passages of the gospels because I was ultimately far more frightened of the possibility of going to hell for all of eternity than I was hopeful that I would go to heaven. Nevertheless, I still believed that as long as I was faithful and righteous through my ordeal, I would get into heaven. I concluded that both the devil and God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, were working in and through me, doing battle so to speak, and I tried to focus on being grateful for what I took as God's presence within me.

Among the passages in the Gospel of Matthew that I found disturbing were the following, some of which have already been discussed above:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

This passage is fairly self-explanatory. It explicitly states that most people will not gain eternal life but will suffer destruction. An annihilationist would probably interpret this passage to mean that most people will cease to exist at death, but a few faithful people will gain eternal life. This interpretation, which is advocated most famously by Jehovah's Witnesses, seems to fit this particular passage. However, if one factors in the teachings attributed to Jesus in Matthew 25, Luke 16, and John 3, the visions of John recorded in the Book of Revelation, and the warnings in the Epistle of Jude, it is safe to say that the New Testament ultimately teaches that nonbelievers will be condemned to eternal punishment, not merely annihilated at death, as discussed earlier in this book.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21)

I interpreted this passage as giving a moralistic twist to the exclusivist message of Matthew 7:13-14. I thought that the narrow gate was reserved for those who believed in the "good news" and diligently lived according to the very difficult moral code that Jesus preached. Based largely on this passage, I came to think the Bible taught that getting into heaven was extraordinarily difficult.

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell [Gehenna]." (Matthew 10:28)

I did not understand the nuances of the different words translated as hell in the New Testament when I first read this passage, but I later learned that Gehenna or Ge Hinnom literally refers to a valley outside Jerusalem where children were supposedly sacrificed to the gods Molech and Baal in ancient times. However, at the time I understood this passage to simply mean I would face eternal torment if I disobeyed God (and I once again believe that this is indeed the intended meaning of this passage), so I thought I was obligated to fear God. I became quite proficient at doing so in that period of my life as a result.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34)

As mentioned earlier, before I was 12 I thought Christianity taught that God loved everybody and that all people should love God and love each other. I thought all people would go to heaven. I did not realize how divisive and exclusive the message of the New Testament, particularly the gospels, really is. However, this passage more than any other made me believe that Jesus did not preach a simple message of love or kindness but emphasized the importance of being repentant and believing in him as the exclusive savior of the human race.

"Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." (Matthew 12:32)

This passage began to torment me at a slightly later date than many of the others. I had skimmed over this passage between the summer of 1999 and the first few months of 2000, but I did not think very hard about it until the spring of 2000, when one of my friends pointed out that the Bible teaches that there is an unforgivable sin. For the next year-and-a-half, this passage haunted me. I continuously worried I had committed this sin by questioning the goodness of God throughout my period of feeling I had been possessed by the devil. I also worried I would commit it, perhaps without even realizing it, in the future. As a consequence, I became even more worried that a literal state of perpetual agony awaited me after death.

Jesus' teaching concerning blasphemy against the Holy Spirit pertains at the very least to those who attributed Jesus' alleged miracles to Beelzebub or Satan. However, because Jesus stated that the unforgivable sin consisted of "speaking against" the Holy Spirit, it seems to consist of having a negative view of Christians and the Church (i.e., the body of believers in Christ) in general, if indeed the "Spirit of God lives in" those who "belong to Christ" (Romans 8:9).

Even if one interprets Matthew 12:32 in context, it does not make the teaching any less upsetting for those who believe in its truth. The passage immediately preceding it reads, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters" (Matthew 12:30). This and Jesus' similar teaching in Luke 11:23 are easily the most exclusive and divisive passages in the canonical gospels and are probably the most exclusive and divisive passages in either testament of the Bible.

"[I]f anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6)

"If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire." (Matthew 18:8)

These are two of the darkest passages in the Bible. Jesus clearly had no intention of simply making people feel warm and fuzzy inside, even though warm and fuzzy feelings are one of the main emphases of American Protestantism (and not just the mainline and liberal denominations). The way I interpreted this passage, Jesus held that even small actions that cause others to question their faith in him—and by extension, the teachings of Christianity as they are presented in the New Testament—were worse than death and would lead to everlasting torment in eternal fire. I interpreted this passage as discouraging any questioning of the Bible or any dissent from Jesus' teachings, and as requiring strict obedience to every word attributed to Jesus and every doctrine and practice the Bible teaches. As a result, this passage reinforced my attempt to accept all of my psychological turmoil as the will of God.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left . . . .

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life." (Matthew 25:31-33, 41-46)

Based on this passage, as well as Luke 16, John 3, Jude, and Revelation, I took the possibility I would be damned for my lack of faith and lack of righteousness very seriously. That is why I tried with all my might to remain faithful to God for the two years when I felt I was possessed by the devil.

The Bible, including the gospels, is full of dire warnings and black and white teachings that do not allow for much wiggle room in the way one lives one's life. The New Testament, including the gospels, is very exclusive of nonbelievers and very hostile to other religions and philosophies and their representatives. It does not favor tolerance or a live-and-let-live attitude. Its overall thrust is closer to the adage, "my way or the highway."

While I am happy that liberal Christians interpret passages such as those cited above, as well as the passages throughout the New Testament that refer to the imminent end of the world, nonliterally, these passages are still there and have to be dealt with somehow by those claiming to be Christians. Universalists believe that all people will be saved, at least in the end, and interpret these passages in that light (note that Universalism does not exclude the possibility of great torment for a period—even an unfathomably long period—of time). Annihilationists believe that sinners will cease to exist either at death or after the Last Judgment. While I have never agreed with Universalist or annihilationist interpretations of the Bible, the advocates of these interpretations have at least tried to come to terms with passages like the ones cited above by interpreting them in a more kind and humane manner than more traditional Christians. At least they have not simply ignored them.

However, the ELCA church I attended as a child just brushed such passages aside, barely ever engaging with them at all. And when it did engage with them, it was to relativize them so that the only part of them that remained in practice was nothing more than the message to "be good" and let God worry about the rest. I distinctly remember one sermon about the Judgment of the Nations, where our pastor claimed this passage was merely an effort to show the type of character that a follower of Jesus should have. Yet no matter what kind of dismissive or relativistic interpretations I heard, I know that when I first encountered these passages I interpreted them very literally because it seemed that was precisely how Jesus intended them to be interpreted. I believed I should avoid being critical of Christianity, the Bible, and the Christian idea of God so that I did not influence others to do the same. I believed I should serve other people and act "righteously" by New Testament standards much more than I had earlier in my life in order to avoid being one of the "goats" in the Judgment of the Nations. I constantly feared I was committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit simply by not accepting my horrible experiences as the will of God. Above all, I believed I must fear God at all times and never question his ways.

During my early teenage years, I felt almost continuous guilt for my perceived failure to live up to God's expectations. I was not wholly faithful or righteous, in my eyes, and not perfect as was expected of me by God (Matthew 5:48). In my experience, this feeling of near-continuous guilt for failing to live up to God's expectations is a common sentiment among Christians. In fact, if the New Testament is trustworthy, Christians should feel near-continuous guilt for failing to live up to God's expectations and should feel gratitude to God for forgiving their sins when he absolutely does not have to do so. This is one reason I am relieved there is no rational basis for believing the New Testament was revealed or inspired by God or for believing that most of the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity are true. The New Testament teaches that all people should expect perfection of themselves, believe they are sinners incapable of perfection, and feel repentant as a result. (The Greek word ordinarily translated as repentance, metanoia, literally means a "change of mind," but repentance has taken on the connotation of feeling guilt for one's sins and asking for forgiveness from God. However, I hold that this contemporary connotation of the term is not a mistranslation, as a sense of personal inadequacy is a fundamental component of the New Testament's description of the changed mentality of one who has been regenerated through the grace of God by faith in Jesus Christ.) All people are expected to believe they are imperfect because of sin and to remain constantly fearful of the one against whom they have sinned. Even those who feel love or gratitude to God for sacrificing his son to liberate them from sin are expected to feel personal guilt and sorrow for their sin and to repent any infraction against God's will as expressed in biblical or church organizational morality. Roman Catholics have a reputation for feeling greater guilt than the average Protestant, but I believe it is safe to say that almost all Christians are conscious of guilt for their perceived sins to one degree or another, even those in very liberal denominations.

Another minor influence on my understanding of Christianity as a teenager was the televangelists and prominent media figures on the religious right who I watched on television from time to time. The main ones I remember watching are Pat Robertson, Kenneth Copeland, Marcus and Joni Lamb, John Hagee, and Benny Hinn. I ignored the preposterous claims of some of these individuals that giving them money would help one get to heaven and I did not attribute earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural phenomena to the hand of God as readily as most of them (though their view that God is responsible for these is far more consistent with the Bible, Christianity, and theism in general than the opposite view). My theology still came mostly from my own readings and interpretations of the Bible, but I was influenced by their worldviews, the rigorous personal morality they preached (but often failed to live by themselves), their political positions, and their literalist views of the Bible to some extent. However, more than anything I was influenced by their style. I liked their exuberant presentation of Christian ideas and sought to emulate it in my life.

The first time I truly questioned my religious beliefs was during my junior year of high school. At the time, I was deathly afraid of doubting my Christian beliefs because I saw it as a form of unfaithfulness to God, but I had no choice: my beliefs were destroying my mind. Since my experience in Tennessee, I had felt possessed by the devil. In my junior year of high school, I finally realized that this was a direct result of my Christian worldview, and I was determined to make it stop. I began to hate Christianity. I felt terrible about it, but after two years of misery that directly resulted from my faith, I just couldn't take it anymore. I boldly claimed not to be a Christian to a fellow high school student who was part of an Evangelical Christian youth group in our hometown, and she told me she thought I would not be saved. I was upset that she responded this way, but I should not have been surprised: she was just repeating the claims of the Bible and the leaders of her youth group. I tried to talk to some Christian adults about my apostasy, as well, but I think I just sounded like a confused adolescent meekly questioning the claims of Christianity. I was afraid to tell them my true thoughts about the religion, so I phrased my concerns as innocuously as I could.

By the end of that year, my fundamentalist-Pentecostal-premillennialist approach to Christianity had subsided. I once again considered myself a Christian, but I was more latitudinarian in interpreting the Bible and slightly less serious about personal morality than I had been before. I had, however, become more serious about the social gospel as taught by Martin Luther King Jr. and others. I had begun to think that one is "saved" (in a nebulous, almost this-worldly sense) based on how much one loves and serves other people, and I had become a politically liberal believer in the social gospel as a result (before this, I identified with the religious right). These ideas had circulated in my head from time to time before my two years of "possession," but it was only at this time that they became the main focus of my worldview. I was what one would call a bleeding-heart liberal, basing my social democratic political views on purely emotional grounds.

During my senior year of high school, I began reading about other religions more and more, starting with Huston Smith's The World's Religions. This is a fantastic introduction to the underlying worldviews of the dominant forms of several major religions, even if it does not address popular forms of these religions as much. I was really impressed by his chapter on Hinduism, appreciating both the ecumenism (as he presented it based on the influence of the representatives of the Ramakrishna Mission in the West) and the fact that it had alternatives to devotion to a personal god, particularly jñāna yoga, or the path of realizing the identity of one's True Self with the Supra-Personal Divine through intuitive knowledge/gnosis. However, I continued to self-identify as a Christian, believing I could incorporate the insights of Hinduism into a liberal Christian framework in a way that promoted harmony between the world's religions. I combined this with my belief in social democracy, the social gospel, and a moral code that emphasized kindness and love towards others on a personal level.

My religious beliefs remained pretty much the same for my first semester of college. I dove further into my social democratic political beliefs, including becoming an antiwar activist in the events leading up to the Iraq War. During that time, I had my first positive mystical experience, which I felt affirmed my liberal Christian views. I felt utterly saturated with the love and light of an invisible being (which I interpreted as the triune God of Christianity) for three weeks. I still believe this was an authentic experience of something that truly exists, but I never would have had this amazing experience if I had clung to the beliefs that caused me to feel possessed by the devil. By this time, I believed in a God who was nothing but love. I had abandoned my prior beliefs entirely.

However, I still felt guilty for not doing enough to help the poor achieve greater prosperity and for not helping the marginalized members of society gain greater equality. I felt that capitalism, with its reliance on the pursuit of self-interest and the inequality to which it leads, was fundamentally un-Christian. I now think that capitalism (but also state-imposed socialism, fascism, and all other "top-down" political and economic systems), the act of accumulating wealth, political involvement, and keeping property for one's exclusive use are very much opposed to the plain teachings of Jesus in the four canonical gospels and those of the apostles in the Book of Acts. A Christian who leads a "normal" life in a capitalist society (or a socialist or corporatist society), and does not withdraw to live either as a homeless wanderer preaching the "good news" wherever he or she goes or communally with other Christians, is not following the teachings of Jesus or the apostles. Such a person is at best reinterpreting the teachings of Jesus to suit his or her lifestyle and is at worst an all-out hypocrite. (Most contemporary Christians in most countries are hypocrites in this respect, and the historical evidence suggests that most Christians in previous eras were as well.)

I retained my newfound liberal Christian beliefs for the rest of my first semester of college, but I began to feel guilty all the time for being a member of the middle class and living a prosperous life while so many people in the world lived in poverty. (This sense of guilt resulted from my social democratic beliefs just as much as from my Christian views.) With my guilt came a new development in my Christianity. I felt like I was incapable of living the kind of world-renouncing ascetic lifestyle unambiguously advocated by the Jesus of the gospels and I continued to think that modern Western capitalist existence stood in direct contradiction to the gospels. I began to rapidly lose my sense of self-esteem once again, as I felt utterly uncomfortable about my privileged lifestyle. Leftist politics and Christianity caused me to return to a state of complete dejection.

By February 2003 I had once again become a nonbeliever in Christianity. I drank about a beer or two a day, smoked marijuana on an almost weekly basis, and tried cigarettes for the first and last time. It was my juvenile way of rebelling against a moral code that I just could not take anymore. Yet I did become more of a socialist. In fact, I became something approaching a Marxist true believer at this point. I never embraced its historical materialism, as I began to explore Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and Wicca, but I did believe that a revolution by the working class was necessary to overcome the injustices that I attributed to capitalism.

My leftist philosophy was short-lived, both because it made me feel depressed and because I began to find it both highly irrational and excessively pessimistic. In the summer after my first semester of college, I had completely reversed course, abandoning it in favor of libertarian capitalism. I realized that communism in particular—and the kind of socialism I believed in generally—was anti-individualistic and that I simply wanted to be passionate and expressive in my own unique way. I also began to believe that capitalism, far from being a source of poverty, is a large part of the reason that poverty has been reduced so drastically in the West and other parts of the world from what it once was.

I was inspired to embrace individualism by Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand, who are two very different kinds of individualists. They were, however, both staunch atheists. I became a bigger atheist than I had ever been before, though I still felt guilty for violations of Christian morality. I still occasionally thought that the material world was illusory and that there was a more real world to which I could somehow wake up, but I had nothing resembling actual beliefs in any higher power. Thus, I was for all intents and purposes an individualistic atheist.

In the fall of 2003, I learned about Daoist (or Taoist) philosophy for the first time, reading the Dao De Jing (or Tao Te Ching), Zhuangzi (or Chuang Tzu), and Daoist poems and tales from many periods of Chinese history. I was still interested in Kabbalah and tried to equate Daoist ideas with the ten sefirot (or emanations from the transcendent, formless Absolute) as well as to the Gnostic Christian notions of aeons and pleroma. I briefly returned to a belief in social democracy yet again, but that was short-lived as I was no longer a social democrat at heart. I did not return to anything resembling any orthodox form of Christianity, however.

I had yet another mystical experience in May 2004. I had a vision of Jesus on the cross. He told me that I did not have to return to Christianity but that I should continue on the path I was on, though I did not know quite what that was at the time. I am now quite certain that I manufactured this experience to cope with both the loss of a loved one and my non-Christian, or at least unorthodox, beliefs. But whether I manufactured it or not, it gave me confidence in what I was doing in general, if not in my particular views, which seemed to change from week to week (as the reader will no doubt have noticed by now). I had many novel ideas about the world, but they were mostly based on whims rather than reason.

In the summer of 2004, I worked as a seasonal laborer in my hometown. I had a work partner with whom I had conversations about many things, including religion. He was an Evangelical Christian, so, not surprisingly, he and I butted heads. Even though he told me he thought I would go to hell, he encouraged me to embrace either New Age ideas or Buddhism because he thought they seemed like good fits based on the views I advocated. (In retrospect, Buddhism was only a good fit if popular Western notions of Buddhism as a tradition with "far out" mystical ideas and ways to expand the mind are accurate, which of course they generally are not.) Upon reflection I thought he was right, but I hated New Age spirituality even though I did not know quite what it was. So I embraced Theravada Buddhism, at least the version of it portrayed in The World's Religions (which in my current opinion is not a terribly accurate portrayal).

However, by December 2004 I had found that my version of Theravada Buddhism was just as bleak and depressing for me as Christianity had been. Theravada Buddhism teaches that existence is characterized by suffering and impermanence and that the only way to overcome suffering is to live according to a rigorous code of practice and belief called the Eightfold Path or "Middle Way." According to the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism, specifically the Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Dharma (or Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta), the Buddha taught a "Middle Way" between the extremes of self-torture (i.e., devotion to self-affliction, or in other words starving and otherwise causing great physical pain to oneself to gain moral and spiritual benefits) and devotion to sensory pleasure, by which, judging from the context of this discourse, was meant the ordinary life of a householder in BCE India (according to the Pali Canon, the Buddha addressed this particular discourse to fellow renouncers who practiced extreme forms of self-mortification, and the Buddha repeatedly idealized the renunciation of all worldly ties, even of one's whole worldly identity, according to many other discourses in the canon). Thus, the "Middle Way" or Eightfold Path is actually very austere and difficult for any modern Westerner, or any person anywhere in the modern world, to even attempt to put into practice. From a modern point-of-view, it is a very ascetic path. As a result of realizing this, I came to think that I had almost no chance of attaining awakening or even a preliminary state of insight called "stream-enterer," so I began to think I was making a very futile effort.

In December 2004 I noticed something while practicing Theravada mindfulness meditation. The way I had engaged with Theravada Buddhism up to that point was almost identical to the way I had previously engaged with Christianity, in that I frequently felt guilt for any infractions against the moral precepts of the Eightfold Path, my practice was purely individualistic, and my understanding of Theravada Buddhism came primarily from my own reading of texts in the Pali Canon. I thus had a very Western, Protestant approach to Buddhism. Upon realizing this, and under the influence of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud (whether I correctly understood them or not), I believed that my personal unconscious was still filled with Christian symbols, themes, and images and that I had never actually left Christianity in the deepest recesses of my psyche. Thus, I resolved to destroy all vestiges of Christianity within me once and for all. To that end, I decided to burn a piece of paper with the word "Christianity" written on it as a sort of desperate attempt to destroy any trace of the religion in any part of my mind. To my utter shock and surprise, this ritual worked, at least temporarily. I really did not expect that to happen. I felt free and self-confident for the first time I remembered. I loved myself and my life. I was a metaphysical materialist and an ethical hedonist, and I felt no guilt about it. I was a bigger individualist and libertarian than ever before. I was no longer even shy, which was yet another new experience for me. It was a foreign land, the land of pride and self-love, fully realized for the first time in my life. I had happily thrown the idea that pride was a vice out the window and with it the idea that humility is a virtue. It was a beautiful time for me. I hated Christianity without any sense of fear or shame and I criticized it without worrying that I was offending God.

In March 2005, I read yet another book that utterly changed my worldview, One Taste by Ken Wilber. One Taste convinced me that there is a healthy way to extract mystical ideas and practices from the world's religions and philosophies while leaving behind all of the pre-rational ideas and practices that make up the bulk of them. Shortly after reading it, I had a powerful experience of transcendence of all dualities, or the direct realization that, to quote the Mahayana Buddhist Heart Sutra, "form is emptiness and emptiness is form." It was by far the most enlightening experience I had had up to that point, and it lasted for three weeks. Wilber's book even convinced me that I could extract insightful ideas and practices from Christianity, from the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Origen, The Cloud of Unknowing, and many others. I had already been exposed to the notion of a "perennial philosophy" or common core of wisdom underlying all major world religions in Aldous Huxley's aptly-named The Perennial Philosophy, Huston Smith's Forgotten Truth, and Frithjof Schuon's The Transcendent Unity of Religions, but I did not fully adopt it as my own until I read One Taste. (At the time, I adopted Wilber's notion of human history as one of spiritual evolution rather than progressive spiritual degeneration as taught by Schuon and his fellow thinkers in the Traditionalist School.)

Prior to reading One Taste, I had thought of the world in positive terms for several years, and the evolutionary and emanationist-pantheistic philosophy I embraced as a result of reading the book reinforced my optimism. However, as a result of becoming more aware of the extent of the atrocities that human beings have committed against each other over the course of many millennia from my academic studies, I became more pessimistic and began to lean more and more towards a mystical monotheistic worldview that featured self-denial, humility, love for God, and contempt for my ego and this world. This worldview was inspired primarily by Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy, where self-contempt/self-mortification and disinterested love of God are repeatedly emphasized, despite its monistic-panentheistic metaphysic, and The Cloud of Unknowing. Basically, I united Protestant puritanical morality (including both its "this-worldly" asceticism and its acceptance of pleasure pursued in moderation in the "proper" social context) with Neoplatonist metaphysics in a manner reminiscent of the American theologian Jonathan Edwards. I called this worldview "Perennial Monotheism."

In regarding myself as a "Perennial Monotheist," I considered myself equally a Unitarian Christian (not a Unitarian Universalist), a Sikh, a Jew, a Muslim, a Baha'i, and a Brahmo Samaj Hindu, despite the fact that I never attended any services (except, sporadically, Lutheran services) or participated in any communal rituals. In fact, my theology was probably influenced at least as much by Sikhism (or at least my interpretation of an English translation of its holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib) and Islam as it was by Christianity, but my morality and ethical beliefs were very Christian. My self-denial featured a sense of guilt and self-hatred that are almost never found in Sikhism and Islam in practice. I believed that humans are hopeless sinners without the grace or help of God, a view which is fundamentally Christian. (Other traditions may teach that humans need the grace or blessing of God in order to fully know God, but the teaching that humans are hopeless sinners without God's assistance is uniquely Christian.) I believed that those who do not know God in life will be separated from him after death, at least those who behave cruelly towards others. However, the key belief was in my own worthlessness. This belief caused me to feel a general sense of gloom. I held to this worldview during the last two years of college. I questioned it several times and I had two unforgettable mystical experiences while I held it, as well as one by briefly departing from it, but this period of my life was mostly one of self-contempt and anti-worldliness.

I had my first mystical experience during this period after reading a section of The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century text by an unknown English writer based on Pseudo-Dionysius's Mystical Theology. I put all my thoughts beneath me in a metaphorical "cloud of forgetting" and reached out for God in the "darkness" beyond all knowing, or the "cloud of unknowing." As a result, I was utterly bathed in what I took to be divine light and love for two weeks in April 2006. After that, I came "back to earth" and returned to my dogmatic "Perennial Monotheist" beliefs.

In August 2006, I picked up my copy of the Zhuangzi and read it for the first time in three years, and I left literally all dualities behind me for several days: between truth and falsehood, love and hate, life and death, and everything else. I had no preferences. I was in the eternal present, and I realized I had always been there but had never recognized it before. This realization, too, came to an end, and I once again returned to my "Perennial Monotheist" beliefs when it did.

In the fall of 2006, I began earnestly reciting various mantras that I thought were consistent with my worldview. On one occasion I chanted one particular mantra hundreds of times and entered a trance in which I experienced God as the sole reality and myself and the external world as nonexistent. During this experience, there was only God and nothing outside of God, not even any sense of selfhood. The moth had merged with the flame, or rather the flame was the only reality all along and the moth finally realized it, to use a modified version of Fariduddin Attar and Jalal ad-Din Rumi's famous, if somewhat morbid, analogy.

I thought and still think that most of my mystical experiences, including those I had as a result of engaging in practices rooted in monotheistic traditions, were authentic experiences of, for lack of a better term, "higher realities." However, they were the few bright spots in what was now almost half a lifetime of unhappiness directly caused by my Christian and monotheistic beliefs. Self-hatred and negative thoughts had taken up a great deal of my mental energy whenever I had held to a Christian or general monotheistic worldview. Upon realizing this, I abandoned my "Perennial Monotheist" worldview.

Even after I rejected Christianity and "Perennial Monotheism," Christian morality had been so thoroughly ingrained into me as a child that, for a while, I still felt guilty whenever I violated Christian moral precepts, felt pride, or acted selfishly. This made me resent Christianity more than I ever had before. I felt hopelessly chained to it no matter what I did.

In my late twenties I started taking a new approach to questions of truth and value. For the first time in my life, I exclusively used reason based on my limited experience to search for the answers to such questions. I have approached questions of truth and value this way ever since. However, my newfound reliance on reason made me ask a question that I certainly did not want to ask: what if Christianity is true? I realized that all of my negative experiences of Christianity did not prove that it is not true. Thus, I set off rationally analyzing Christianity and the Bible's claims. The present book is the result of those efforts.

As a result of writing this book, I feel freer from the destructive teachings of Christianity than I have ever felt before. Some of its teachings still haunt me from time to time, but I now have the intellectual tools and the resolve to keep them from having a negative impact on my life. Most importantly, I have an abiding conviction in the falsehood of the basic premises and core teachings of Christianity. More than anything else, this abiding conviction has sustained me in my disbelief every time I have been tempted to reembrace the religion of my youth. 
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Index

Symbols

"Age of Decision", 65

"Ardi", 107

"Conversational Intolerance", 11-12

"Doubting Thomas", 117

"Flood Geology", 105, 112

"Immanuel Prophecy", 80

"Judgment of the Nations", 59, 279

"Lucy", 107

"Perennial Monotheism", 288, 290

"Perennial Monotheist", 289-290

"Perfect Being", 239

"Religion," Definition of, 233-236

"Rich Man and Lazarus," The, 171

"Sheep and the Goats", 59

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", 68, 272

"Spiritual but not religious", 231

"Suffering Servant," The, 90

"Turn the Other Cheek", 271

"You Shall Not Kill", 52

1 Corinthians, 20, 25, 38, 41, 61, 75, 118, 135, 139, 179, 187, 213

1 John, 16, 21, 35, 40,   
74-75, 158, 227

1 Kings, 28, 50, 94-95

1 Peter, 21, 40-41, 191

1 Thessalonians, 41

1 Timothy, 41, 176, 179, 190-191

2 Corinthians, 38, 41

2 Kings, 58, 138

2 Peter, 37-38, 40-41

2 Samuel, 94-95

2 Thessalonians, 41

2 Timothy, 37-38, 41

Abolition of Man, The,   
248-250, 298

A

Abraham, 17, 44, 51, 123, 171-172, 189, 246

Achaemenid, 28-29, 93

Acts of the Apostles, 39

Acts, Book of, 134-135, 171, 173, 175, 203,   
205, 283

Adam, 13-17, 63, 102-105, 212

Adultery, 53, 168, 178-179, 187

Agape, 34, 73, 75

Agnostic, 10

Ahaz, 80-81

Akbar, 198

Al-Khwarizmi, 222

Al-Kindi, 222

Albigensian Crusades, 199

Alexander III of Macedon, 28, 93

Alexander, Eben, 293

Alighieri, Dante, 293

All-Knowing, 15-16, 77

All-Loving, 15-16, 47-48, 241

All-Powerful, 48, 77, 237

Allegorical, 103

Allegory, 24, 57

Almah, 18, 121-122

Altruism, 155, 251

Altruistic, 140, 153-155, 251

American Christianity, 65

American Protestantism, 277

Amida, 205

Amish, 190

Ananias and Sapphira, 175

Ancient Rome, 35, 219, 299

Angel, 17, 116, 124, 236

Angel of the Lord, 17

Angels, 25, 51, 57-61, 98-99, 105, 171, 209, 212, 216, 228, 259, 277-278, 299

Annihilationist, 60-61, 69-70, 274, 279

Anselm of Canterbury, 239

Anti-Semitism, 187

Antichrist, 154

Antichrists, 75

Antiochus IV, 28, 93

Antipatheia, 164

Antiquities of the Jews, The, 30, 127-128,   
135, 296

Aparesko, 164

Aphiletos, 164

Apocalypse, 189, 271

Apocalyptic, 24, 27, 93

Apocalypticism, 27

Apologetic, 10, 71, 105, 151, 198, 201, 211, 222, 227, 235-237

Apologist, 40, 63, 86, 104, 128-129, 147, 151,   
232, 272

Apostles, 22-23, 38-39, 79, 117, 138, 149, 173-175, 180-181, 195, 203, 223, 233, 283

Aquinas, Thomas, 293

Aramaic, 33-34, 86

Archimedes, 220

Ardipithecus, 107, 296

Aristarchus, 226

Aristotle, 48, 220, 222, 245-246, 248, 252

Armageddon, 68

Armenian Genocide, 68

Arminius, Jacobus, 20

Aryabhata, 226

Asceticism, 217, 221,   
223, 288

Ashvaghosha, 140-141, 293

Astrology, 123-124

Athanasius, 22

Atheism, 204, 218,   
224, 244

Atheist, 47, 129, 211,   
284-285, 295

Atonement, 14, 20-21, 32, 63, 121, 152

Attar, Fariduddin, 290

Augustine, 15, 19, 57,   
190, 248

Aurangzeb, 193, 196-197

Australopithecus, 107

B

Baal, 50, 58, 275

Babylon, 28, 96, 175

Babylonian, 30, 51, 96, 248

Bacon, Francis, 217

Baha'i, 105, 244, 289

Baptism, 23, 32, 233-234, 258

Beatitudes, 170, 172

Bethlehem, 18, 83-84, 123-124

Bethulah, 122

Bhaktivedanta, A.C., 205

Bhutan, 192

Bible, 9-10, 13-18, 21,   
23-27, 30-35, 37-38, 40, 43-48, 50-52, 57, 61,  
65-71, 73, 76-77, 79, 83, 86, 91, 93, 97, 99, 101-106, 108, 111-112, 116-117, 121, 124, 131, 134-137, 139, 143, 148, 152, 159-161, 163, 165, 167, 172-173, 177-180, 183-187, 189-191, 193, 204-205, 209, 223-224, 227-229, 233, 248, 260, 263-264, 266-267, 269, 271-272, 275-279, 281-282, 291, 295, 297, 299

Big Bang Theory, 111

Blood Libel, 188

Bolshevism, 254

Book of Manu, 57

Born Again, 203-205, 258, 273

Boyle, Robert, 217, 222

Brahmo Samaj, 289

Buddha, 122, 132-133, 140-141, 205, 212, 237, 286

Buddhism, 57, 132, 140-142, 192, 195, 213-214, 216, 234, 236-237, 244, 285-287

Buddhist, 22, 57, 131-133, 141-142, 170, 198, 204-205, 212-214, 237, 287, 293, 299

Burpo, Colton, 208-210, 216

C

Caesar Augustus, 115, 124

Calvin, John, 294

Cambodia, 68

Cana, 137

Canaan, 48

Cao Dai, 244

Capitalism, 177, 217,   
283-284

Capitalist, 168, 283-284

Carthaginians, 219

Caste System, 192

Cathar, 130, 198

Catharism, 244

Catholic, 45, 184, 199, 219, 224-225, 258, 297

Celtic, 219

Central African Republic, 199

Charlemagne, 190

Charvaka, 248

Chesteron, G.K., 32, 151

China, 68, 106, 195-196

Christ, 15-18, 22-23, 37, 46, 57, 70, 73, 75, 97-98, 127-128, 142, 154, 203, 213-214, 223, 228, 232-234, 246, 271, 276, 280

Christian Morality, 133, 157-160, 284, 290

Christian tradition, 22, 25, 95, 104, 264

Christian traditions, 14, 17, 40, 105, 183, 195, 212, 233

Church, 21-24, 32, 37, 39, 45-46, 66, 76, 116, 128, 142, 154, 173, 175, 179, 184, 192, 198-199, 209, 213-214, 223-226, 232-234, 258, 263, 266, 269-270, 276, 279-280, 293, 296, 300

Church Tradition, 76

Cicero, 232, 248

Civilization and Its Discontents, 249-250, 296

Claim that Christianity is not a religion, 231-232, 235

Class Stratification, 249

Clement of Alexndria, 128

Cloud of Unknowing, The, 295

Collective, 20, 22, 32, 51, 91, 188, 250

Colonialism, 192-193, 199

Colossians, 41

Communion, 23, 32, 224, 233-234, 269

Communism, 173-174, 192, 284

Communist, 168

Confession, 233-234

Confucius, 248

Conservative, 10, 26, 33, 35, 37-39, 41, 45, 158-160, 165, 177, 179-180, 184, 258, 269

Constantine, 176

Copeland, Kenneth, 280

Copernicus, 217, 226

Covenant, 16, 18, 23-24, 44, 85

Covenants, 18, 24

Creator, 15-16, 22, 45, 48, 70, 107, 111, 113-114, 153, 220, 222, 228, 237, 239, 241, 243-244, 250, 259, 265

Cromwell, Oliver, 190

Crucifixion, 19-22, 44, 85, 88, 91, 102, 116-118, 129-131, 133-135, 152, 180, 210-211, 219, 232-233, 240

Cruel, 16, 35, 52, 55-56, 63, 65-66, 68-69, 153, 155, 191, 198, 216, 219, 249, 255, 265-266, 272

Cruelty, 47-48, 50, 52, 55-56, 66, 69-72, 183, 190-191, 197, 252-253, 266

Crusade, 188

Crusades, 188, 192, 198-199

Cyrus II, 28-29, 31

D

d'Arcis, Pierre, 148

Damnation, 15, 19, 25-26, 30, 48, 55, 61-64, 66, 68, 71, 152, 173, 227-228, 258, 267, 271, 296

Daniel, 17, 23-24, 27, 50-51, 84-86, 93, 98, 224

Dante, 70-71, 293

Dao, 244, 248, 285

Dao De Jing, 244, 285

Daoist, 248, 285

Darius, 86

Darwinian, 110

David, 17, 80-83, 88, 94-95, 115-116, 123-124, 143, 209, 212, 293-294, 296-298

Davidic, 83, 95

Dawkins, Richard, 295

De Waal, Frans, 295

Death, 14-15, 19-22, 28-29, 32, 50-51, 53, 58, 64, 67-68, 76, 82, 88, 90, 97, 113, 117, 128, 130, 132, 180, 184, 186-188, 203-204, 207-208, 212, 214-216, 224, 237, 250, 254, 257-259, 270, 274-277, 279, 289-290, 293, 297-299, 301

Deicide, 188

Deification, 22, 65

Deism, 10, 66, 224, 244, 264

Deistic, 224

Descartes, Rene, 217, 239

Deuteronomy, 52, 180, 185

Devil, 19, 60, 72, 74-75, 143, 185, 229, 232, 260, 266, 270, 272-274, 276, 278, 281, 283

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 225

Dickens, Charles, 103

Dispensational, 273

Dispensational Premillennialism, 273

Dispensationalism, 24

Divinity, 83, 119, 123, 128-129, 152-153, 156, 224, 233

Divorce, 38, 57, 177-179, 187

Dogmatic, 102, 207, 289

Dogmatism, 102

Doulos, 190

Dulles, John Foster, 200

E

East Asian Buddhist, 237

Easter, 22, 188

Eastern Orthodox, 199, 234

Eastern Orthodoxy, 21

Eckhart, Meister, 288

Eden, 14, 16-17, 102, 104-105

Edwards, Jonathan, 296

Ego and the Id, The, 250, 296

Egoism, 153, 155

Egoistic, 153, 155

Egypt, 17, 44, 51, 84, 95-96, 124, 221

Einstein, Albert, 296

Elijah, 50, 122, 138

Elohim, 104

Empirical, 9, 44, 84, 101-103, 110-113, 123, 135, 149, 205, 240, 243-244, 253, 264

England, 44, 224, 248

Enlightenment, 12, 14, 143, 192-193, 217, 224, 227-229

Ephesians, 41, 179, 190-191

Epictetus, 248-249

Epicurean, 47, 265

Epicurean Paradox, 47, 265

Epicurus, 47

Equatorial Guinea, 68

Eratosthenes, 220

Eschatological, 55-56, 82, 190, 235, 259, 264, 273

Eternal, 15, 19-20, 22-23, 25-26, 30-32, 35, 55, 57-65, 67-68, 70, 73-74, 76, 88, 152-153, 165, 168-169, 173, 187, 211, 227-229, 232, 241, 257, 260, 266, 272, 274-275, 277-278, 290

Eternal Life, 22-23, 25,   
30-32, 57, 59-60, 65, 73-74, 76, 152, 168-169, 173, 227, 274, 278

Eternal Punishment, 32, 57, 59-63, 76, 153, 275, 278

Eternal Suffering, 64-65

Eternal Torment, 25, 55, 57-58, 67-68, 153, 241, 257, 260, 266, 272, 275

Eternal Word, 22, 232

Eternity, 30, 35, 60, 65,  
68, 72, 153, 228, 240, 260, 274

Ethiopia, 107, 109, 299

Ethnic Prejudice, 249

Eucharist, 23, 32, 233-234

Europe, 23, 161, 165,   
184-185, 188, 195,   
219-220, 223, 293

European, 23, 188, 192, 196, 199

European Wars of Religion, 192

Eusebius, 40, 127-128, 296

Evangelical, 20, 63, 72, 164, 177, 203-204, 234, 269, 273, 281, 285

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), 269

Eve, 13-17, 63, 102-105, 212

Everlasting Life, 25

Evil, 14, 21, 24, 27-30, 57, 65-66, 69, 74-75, 82, 143, 151, 154-156, 171, 176, 210, 224, 244, 253, 265

Evolution, 106-108,   
110-112, 288, 294, 296, 300-301

Evolutionary Biology, 108

Ex Nihilo, 14

Exclusive, 72, 74-75, 118, 189, 241, 246, 275-278, 283

Exclusivism, 72, 183, 265

Exclusivist, 190, 275

Exodus, 17, 44, 50-52, 84, 184, 191

Ezekiel, 17, 24, 27, 96

Ezra, 28, 86

F

Faith, 9-10, 17, 20, 35-37, 51, 59, 65, 71, 81, 97, 109, 136, 138-139, 142, 158, 165, 167, 169, 176, 183, 197-198, 200, 203, 205-206, 224, 260-261, 270, 273-274, 277-278, 280-281, 297

Fall of Creation, 232

Fall of Humankind, 63, 228

Family Values, 162, 164, 177, 299

Fascism, 192, 254, 283

First Cause, 245

First Isaiah, 30, 81

First Temple (of Solomon), 28

Flavius Josephus, 127, 130, 296

Fornication, 175, 177, 179

Fox, George, 253

Free Will, 63-64, 70

Freedom, 12, 132, 192, 200, 225, 227-228

Freud, Sigmund, 296

Fundamentalism, 38, 224, 273

Fundamentalist, 24, 38, 72, 224, 271-273, 281

G

Gabriel, 116, 236

Galatians, 41

Galileo, 217, 224-226

Gandhi, Mohandas, 253

Ganesh, 141-145, 241

Ganesha, 141, 295

Gardren of Eden, 14, 16, 102, 105

Ge Hinnom, 58, 275

Gehenna, 58, 61, 172, 275

Genesis, 14, 16-17, 44,   
50-51, 65, 99, 102-107, 110, 112-113, 138, 187, 205, 228, 300

Genetics, 76, 108-109, 295, 298

Genocide, 68-69, 186,   
190, 199

Geocentric, 225-226

Geology, 105, 108, 112

German, 186, 259

Germanic, 23, 164, 219

Germany, 188, 259

Gilgamesh, 106

Glossolalia, 203

Gnostic, 130, 133, 285

Gnosticism, 263, 284

God, 13-24, 28-29, 31-32, 35, 37-40, 43, 45-48, 50-52, 55-58, 61-75, 77, 81-83, 85, 88-91, 95, 99, 102-106, 112-113, 117-118, 121-123, 129, 132, 135, 137-141, 144, 151-160, 162, 164-169, 173-175, 177-178, 181, 183-184, 186-187, 189, 191, 193, 203-206, 208-211, 223, 227-229, 231-236, 239-241, 244, 246-247, 251, 253, 257-261, 264-267, 270-283, 287-290, 293, 295-297, 301

God the Father, 21, 46, 174, 209, 223, 232

Goddess (Hinduism), 241, 244

Golgotha, 210

Good, 10-11, 14, 21-24, 29, 37, 62, 64, 70, 76, 99, 117, 142, 153, 155, 162, 166, 168-169, 171-172, 189, 204, 222, 229, 232, 239, 251-254, 258, 263, 270, 274-275, 279, 283, 285

Good News, 23, 76, 99, 117, 204, 275, 283

Good Samaritan, 229

Gospel, 23, 25, 39-41, 46, 56, 58, 72-74, 81, 83, 87, 97, 116-117, 123, 137, 149, 177-178, 187, 189, 191, 205, 229, 265, 274, 282

Gospel of John, 41, 46, 72-74, 117, 137, 149, 187, 205

Gospel of Luke, 39, 41

Gospel of Mark, 23, 40-41, 87, 178

Gospel of Matthew, 25, 41, 81, 83, 87, 123, 177, 187, 274

Gospels, 18, 24, 35, 39-40, 51, 56, 72, 74, 115-117, 121, 125, 130, 134, 137, 152-153, 155, 157, 165, 172-173, 176, 271, 274, 276-278, 283-284, 297

Great Divorce, The, 57

Great Flood, 16, 36, 44, 106, 205

Great Mystery, 244

Great Spirit, 244

Greek, 10, 30-34, 47, 55, 58, 60, 73, 121, 151-152, 163, 167, 176, 191, 217, 220-222, 226, 280, 297

Gregg, Steve, 297

Gregory IX, 190

Guilt, 32, 76-77, 90-91, 158-160, 188, 249-250, 254, 260, 279-280, 283, 287, 289, 295

Guru Granth Sahib, 76, 289

Gypsies, 186, 259

H

Hades, 58, 171-172

Hadith, 197

Hagee, John, 280

Haile-Selassie, Yohannes, 107-108

Hasidic, 76

Hate, 34, 71-72, 97, 163-164, 166, 172, 231, 281, 290

Hatred, 71-72, 132, 153, 161, 165, 188, 260, 265, 289-290

Heaven, 19, 22, 30-31, 61-62, 71, 99, 117, 135, 138, 158, 162, 166, 168-171, 209-211, 216, 257-259, 270-271, 274-275, 281, 293-294

Hebrew, 10, 14, 17-18, 27, 31-34, 39, 58, 68, 83-84, 86, 91, 104-106, 121-122, 124, 152, 156, 233

Hebrew Bible, 14, 18, 27, 31-33, 83, 86, 91, 104, 106, 121, 124, 152, 233

Heliocentric, 225-226

Heliocentrism, 225-226

Hell, 29-31, 35, 56-59, 61-62, 68-71, 158, 172, 210-212, 214, 216, 223, 257-259, 270, 272-275, 285, 297

Hellenic, 31-32, 152

Hellenism, 31

Herod, 83-84, 123-124

Hindu, 22, 29, 57, 76, 141, 143, 196-198, 237, 248, 289, 298

Hinduism, 57, 133, 141-142, 192, 197, 216, 234, 241, 244, 282, 295

Hinn, Benny, 280

Hitchens, Christopher,   
66-67, 118

Holiness, 35, 62-64, 265

Holy, 18-19, 22, 37-38, 57, 76, 84-85, 88, 98, 116, 121, 123, 149, 165, 174, 189, 203, 208-209, 224, 240, 258, 274, 276, 279, 289, 293

Holy Spirit, 18-19, 22, 37-38, 116, 121, 123, 165, 174, 189, 203, 208-209, 274, 276, 279

Homosexual, 53, 177,   
187, 259

Homosexuality, 35, 177, 179, 186-187

Host Desecration, 188

Human Sacrifice, 51, 219, 265

Humanism, 14, 228-229, 295

Humble, 165

Hume, David, 297

Humility, 159, 165, 287-288

Huns, 219

Huxley, Aldous, 297

Hypocrisy, 33, 56, 158, 160-161, 178-180

Hypocrite, 181, 283

Hypocritical, 56, 179-180

I

Imperfection, 77

Imperialism, 23, 192-193, 298

Incarnation, 16, 18, 46, 64, 152

India, 131-132, 141, 164, 192, 196-199, 209, 226, 248, 286

Inerrancy, 45, 93, 95

Inerrant (Bible), 38, 44-46, 116, 271

Infeld, Leopold, 226, 296

Inferno (Dante), 70

Infinite Regress, 245

Innocent III, 190

Inquisition, 184, 190, 192, 199, 219

Intelligent Design, 110, 243-244, 264

Intelligent Designer, 48, 243-245, 252

Intolerance, 11-12, 183, 187, 193, 197

Intolerant, 26, 74, 118, 186, 188-189, 198,   
265-266

Irenaeus, 128

Isaac, 17, 51, 217, 223, 246, 294, 300-301

Isaak, Mark, 297

Isaiah, 17, 19, 24, 27, 30-31, 80-82, 86-88, 90-91, 121-123, 300

Ishmael, 17

Islam, 56, 66-67, 69, 105, 133, 188-189, 192, 195-198, 222, 234-236, 241, 244, 258, 289

Islamic, 52, 66, 133, 155, 188-189, 197, 216, 220, 222, 241, 298

Israel, 17, 24, 27-28, 49-50, 56, 80, 83-84, 91, 94-95, 109, 131, 133, 169, 294

J

Jain, 180, 198

Jainism, 57, 216

Japan, 68, 192

Jefferson, Thomas, 297

Jehovah's Witnesses, 274

Jephthah, 51

Jeremiah, 17, 24, 27-28, 47, 58, 83-84, 124, 131

Jerome, 128

Jesus, 11, 13-26, 30, 32, 35-37, 39-40, 44-46, 55, 57-59, 61-63, 65-66, 68, 70, 72-77, 79, 81-88, 90-91, 95, 97, 99, 102, 115-119, 121-125, 127-139, 147-149, 151-159, 161-174, 176-181, 187-191, 193, 195, 203-204, 206, 208-211, 213, 223-224, 228-229, 232-234, 240, 246-247, 267, 270-271, 273-277, 279-280, 283-285, 294-297

Jesus Christ, 15-18, 46, 57, 70, 73, 154, 203, 213, 232-234, 246, 271, 280

Jewish, 15, 17-18, 20, 27, 30-31, 33, 91, 93, 95, 105, 117, 123-125, 127-128, 133, 149, 155, 187-188, 198-199, 259, 297

Jews, 17, 27-28, 30-31, 76, 79, 82, 91, 93, 119, 122-123, 127-129, 134-135, 149, 151, 186-189, 199, 259, 296

Jñāna Yoga, 282

Job, 16, 51-52, 65, 273

Joel, 24

John, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18-24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34-36, 38, 40-41, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72-76, 80, 82, 84, 86-88, 90, 94, 96, 98, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116-118, 122, 124, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136-138, 140, 142, 144, 148-149, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162-164, 166, 168, 170-172, 174-176, 178, 180, 184, 186-190, 192, 196, 198, 200, 203-206, 208-210, 212, 214, 216-218, 220, 222, 224, 226-229, 232, 234, 236, 240, 244, 246, 248, 250, 252, 254, 258, 260, 264-266, 270, 272, 274, 276, 278, 280, 282, 284, 286, 288, 290, 294, 296, 298, 300

John of the Cross, 288

John the Baptist, 19, 23, 189, 209

Jones, Franklin (Adi Da), 154

Joseph (Father of Jesus), 246

Joshua, 48-50, 68, 122

Judah, 80-81, 83, 131

Judaism, 28-32, 105, 151-152, 234-235, 244

Jude, 40-41, 56, 179, 187, 275, 278

Judea, 28-29, 31, 84, 98, 115, 117, 131-132, 134, 147, 161, 164, 169, 178

Judges, 50-51, 61

Julian of Norwich, 76

Jung, Carl, 287

Just, 11, 15, 17, 19, 22, 26, 30, 37, 44-45, 52, 56-57, 63, 71, 75, 89, 105, 110-111, 116, 132-134, 139, 141, 143, 152, 159-160, 167, 172, 179-180, 190-191, 196-197, 201, 209, 214, 216, 219, 226, 237, 239, 241, 243, 253, 258-260, 263, 266, 270, 277, 279, 281, 283-284, 286, 297

Justice, 20, 35, 52, 62-64, 70, 74-75, 82, 86, 135, 241, 253, 265-266, 296

Justin Martyr, 128

K

Kabbalah, 284-285

Kant, Immanuel, 297

Kashmir, 133-134

Ketuvim, 18, 86

Khmer Rouge, 68, 241

King Jr., Martin Luther, 253, 282

Kingdom of God, 132, 157, 162, 167-168, 177, 187, 223

Kingdom of Heaven, 61-62, 168-169, 171, 275

Knights Templar, 130

Kolasin Aionion, 60

Krishna, 122, 204-205

L

Lake of Fire, 58, 61, 212, 271

Lamb, Marcus and Joni, 280

Last Judgment, 23, 25, 27, 29-31, 57-59, 61, 82, 153, 232, 271, 279

Last Supper, 23

Latin America, 161

Latitudinarian, 10, 267, 281

Law of Non-Contradiction, 48

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 217

Lenin, 193

Leninism, 174

Leninist, 173

Leopold II, 193

Leviticus, 20, 53, 179, 184-187, 191

Lewis, C.S., 298

Liberal, 13-14, 28, 34-37, 73, 103, 121, 177, 184, 266, 269, 277-278, 280, 282-283

Life of Flavius Josephus, The, 130, 296

Limbo, 66

Lippard, Jim, 298

Literal, 23-26, 51, 56-57, 60, 65, 82, 87, 95, 103-106, 109, 111, 117, 164, 241, 263, 267, 276

Literalist, 13, 224, 281

Locke, John, 217

Logos, 72-73

Love, 19, 34-35, 48, 56, 65-66, 70-75, 94, 97, 140, 153-154, 160, 162-166, 168, 173, 176, 189-190, 208, 210-212, 227, 229, 260, 263-265, 271, 275-276, 280, 282-283, 287-290

Loving, 15-16, 39, 47-48, 63, 65, 73, 75, 139, 153, 158, 173, 208, 211, 229, 241, 260, 270

Lucifer, 16

Luke, 18, 20, 23, 39-41, 56, 74, 83, 115-117, 121-125, 132, 137-138, 162-165, 170-173, 176, 190-191, 229, 274, 276, 278

Luther, Martin, 298

Lutheran, 234, 269-270, 289

Lutheranism, 273

M

Maccabean, 86

Magi, 18, 83, 131-132

Mahabharata, 57

Mahayana, 57, 287

Mani, 195, 198

Manichaeism, 195-196, 198

Mao, 68, 193

Mara Bar-Serapion, 127, 129, 134

Marcionism, 244

Mark, 20, 23-24, 40-41, 57, 87, 112, 116, 137-138, 163, 178-179, 229, 294, 297

Martyrdom, Argument from, 195, 201

Marxism, 174

Marxist, 173, 196, 284

Mary Magdalene, 130-131

Mass, 32, 188, 233-234, 249, 258

Massacre of the Innocents, 83-84

Matthew, 18-20, 23-25, 34, 40-41, 56, 59-62, 74, 81, 83-84, 87, 97, 99, 115-116, 121-125, 132, 137, 157, 159, 162-163, 166-171, 177-179, 187, 189, 229, 274-279

McDowell, Josh, 86

Mere Christianity, 21, 152, 159, 185, 247-248, 298

Mesopotamia, 14, 105, 109

Messiah, 18, 27, 30-31, 79, 83, 85, 90, 95, 115, 123-125, 129, 131, 152, 298

Metanoia, 280

Micah, 83, 123-124

Middle Ages, 23, 148, 217, 219-220, 223

Middle East, 23, 199

Miracle, 50, 134-135, 141-144, 295, 298

Miracles, 19, 79, 86, 98, 117-118, 129, 135-137, 139-145, 152, 161, 276

Miranda, Jose Luis de Jesus, 154

Miseo, 163

Misogynistic, 180

Misogyny, 179-180

Mitzvot, 17

Money, 133, 166, 168, 171, 173-176, 213, 281

Mongol, 196

Moon, Sam Myung, 154

Moral Argument, 247

Moral Influence Theory, 20

Moral Judgment, 254-255

Moral Law, 247-249,   
251, 253

Morality, 19, 133, 157-160, 175, 181, 247, 249, 251-253, 280-282, 284, 288-290

Moses, 17, 44, 51, 64,   
73, 84, 105, 157-158, 172, 178

Mount Carmel, 109

Mughal, 196-198

Muhammad, 133, 222,   
236

Muslim, 196-199, 212,   
222, 289

Myanmar, 192, 299

Mystical Theology, 263, 289

N

Natural Selection, 108, 110

Naturalism, 244

Nazareth, 11, 115, 124, 129, 133, 152, 297

Nazi, 186, 259

Nazism, 69, 259

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), 207

Nebuchadnezzar II, 28

Nehemiah, 86

Neoplatonist, 288

Nero, 130, 163, 198

Nevi'im, 18, 86

New Covenant, 23

New Jerusalem, 25

New Testament, 14-16, 18, 22, 24-25, 35, 37, 39-41, 55-58, 60-61, 65, 68-70, 79, 82, 90, 95, 97, 116, 118, 121, 133, 135-136, 143, 152, 158-160, 163, 172, 175-177, 179, 181, 187-188, 190, 193, 203, 210-212, 223, 227-229, 275, 277-280, 294

Newton, Isaac, 217, 223, 294, 300-301

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 284

Nirguna Brahman, 76, 209

Noah, 16, 106

Nonbelief, 66

Nonbelievers, 25, 47, 56, 59, 68, 73-75, 137, 142, 153, 158, 180, 189, 214, 258, 260, 275, 278

North Korea, 67-68

O

Objectivism, 252

Old Testament, 15-16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 37, 39-40, 47-48, 50-51, 53, 56, 58, 65, 79, 83, 88, 125, 180, 233, 274

Omnipotence, 47, 241

Omnipotent, 45, 47, 52, 63, 139, 241, 265

Omniscient, 45, 47, 63,   
99, 139

Ontological Argument, 239-241

Optically Stimulated Luminescence Dating, 110

Oriental Orthodox, 234

Origen, 104, 128, 288, 300

Original Sin, 13-15, 66, 102

Orthodox Christian, 198

P

Pagan, 31, 46, 128, 164, 177, 196, 198, 220-221

Paine, Thomas, 299

Paleoanthropology, 108

Paley, William, 243

Pali Canon, 57, 140, 286-287

Parable of the Talents, 61-62

Parable of the Wedding Banquet, 61

Parthenos, 121

Pascal's Wager, 257-260

Pascal, Blaise, 245

Paulu, Athet Pyan Shinthaw, 299

Peace, 24, 27, 31, 82, 89, 123, 175, 275

Pelagian, 77

Pentateuch, 104, 294

Pentecostal, 20, 138, 203-204, 273

Pentecostalism, 273

Penzias, Arno, 111

Persia, 195-196

Personal Sin, 14, 66

Pharaoh, 51

Pharisaic, 31

Philemon, 41, 191

Philippians, 41, 271

Philosopher's Stone, 224

Philosophical Daoism, 244

Plato, 57, 130, 220-221, 248

Platonism, 151, 244

Pliny the Elder, 127

Pliny the Younger, 130

Pogroms, 188, 199

Poor, The, 168, 170, 173, 283

Popper, Karl, 244

Premillennialism, 24, 273

Pride, 159, 287, 290

Prime Mover, 243, 245

Prophecies, 23, 40, 79, 83-86, 93, 124, 298, 300

Prophecy, 28, 38, 80, 83-86, 88, 90-91, 93, 95-97, 99, 122-124

Prophet, 28, 30, 38, 81, 86, 98, 116, 195

Prophetic, 27, 88, 300

Proselytization, 23, 26

Prosperity, 27, 31, 165, 171, 283

Prostithemi, 167

Psalms, 88

Pseudo-Dionysius, 263, 288-289, 299

Psychology of Shame, The, 298

Puritan, 271-272

Puritanical, 288

Pyrrhonian, 253

Pyrrhonian Skeptic, 253

Pythagoras, 129-130, 220

Q

Q Source, 40-41

Qur'an, 67, 102-103, 105, 108, 133, 155, 197, 235-236, 299

R

Radiometric Dating, 110-111

Ramah, 83-84

Rand, Ayn, 155, 252, 284

Ransom Theory, 20

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 192

Reason, 9-12, 32, 35, 43-45, 65, 67, 72, 75-76, 79, 87, 102, 113-116, 118, 122, 124, 137-138, 142, 153-154, 160, 168, 171-172, 175-176, 178, 185-186, 197, 201, 218, 220, 224-226, 228, 231, 237, 250-251, 254, 266-267, 269, 280, 284-285, 291, 297, 299

Redeemer, 13, 15, 102

Reductio ad Hitlerum, 69

Reid, Thomas, 218

Religion, 10-13, 19, 22-23, 26, 29, 32, 36, 56, 70-71, 102, 133, 135, 180, 183, 188, 192, 195-198, 204, 207, 211, 214-215, 217, 220, 222-224, 226, 228, 231-237, 240, 261, 264-266, 273, 281, 285, 287, 291, 299

Renaissance, 219-220, 223

Repentance, 70, 77, 189, 234, 280

Representative Democracy, 227

Resurrect, 61

Resurrected, 25, 59, 130-131, 133-136, 139, 213-214, 259, 299

Resurrection, 19, 21-22, 24, 27, 29-30, 32, 44, 88, 102, 116-117, 128, 134-135, 139, 174, 180, 203-204, 214, 232-233

Revealed, 15, 17, 37-38, 40, 45, 48, 64, 85, 89, 103-105, 110, 112, 180, 191, 235-236, 266, 280

Revelation (Book of), 25, 56, 58, 175, 271, 274

Robertson, Pat, 280

Roman Catholic, 45, 184, 224-225, 258

Roman Catholicism, 21, 158, 234

Roman Empire, 23, 29,   
31-32, 131, 134, 151, 188, 196, 198, 221

Roman Pantheon, 119

Rome, 35, 175, 198,   
219, 299

Rosicrucians, 224

Rumi, Jalal-ad-Din, 76

Rutherford, Samuel, 190

Rwanda, 68

S

Sacraments, 21, 142, 258

Salvation, 13, 21, 37, 55, 61, 142, 158-159, 232-233, 240, 258, 265, 270-271

Samson, 209

Sarich, Vincent, 300

Satan, 14, 16, 20, 24, 51-52, 68, 105, 174, 223, 228, 261, 271, 273, 276

Save, 19-20, 74, 241

Savior, 13, 18, 30-31, 38, 57, 59, 66, 73-74, 77, 122, 152-153, 158-159, 203, 213, 228, 276

Schuon, Frithjof, 300

Schweitzer, Albert, 97

Science, 102, 108-110, 141, 207, 217, 220-222, 224-225, 244, 296,   
300-301

Scientific, 76, 101-102, 108, 141, 143, 147-148, 207, 216-218, 220-223, 225, 244, 296, 299

Scientism, 102, 207

Scripture, 37-38, 76, 293

Second Coming, 82-83,   
97, 154

Secular, 37, 184, 199, 234, 298, 300

Seleucid, 28, 93

Self-Esteem, 158, 165, 299

Self-Love, 165, 287

Selfish, 71, 218

Selfishness, 71

Septuagint, 121

Sermon on the Mount, 117, 158, 160

Sex, 35, 53, 66, 122, 177, 179, 187

Sex outside of Marriage, 35, 179

Sexism, 179-180

Shakespeare, William, 103

Shakyamuni, 140

Shame, 158, 287, 295, 298

Shirk, 155, 241

Shiva, 241, 244

Shroud of Turin, 147-149, 295-296, 299

Siddhartha Gautama, 11, 140, 212, 214

Siege of Constantinople, 199

Siege of Jerusalem, 199

Sikh, 197-198, 289

Sikhism, 76, 196, 198, 209, 241, 244, 289

Sin, 13-17, 19-21, 25, 32, 48, 59, 62-67, 70, 73, 84, 90-91, 95, 102, 104, 113, 152, 155, 158, 178, 241, 247, 260, 276-277, 280, 297

Sinful, 19, 77, 113, 153, 157, 254

Sinfulness, 159, 228, 234, 265

Sinner, 76-77, 203, 273

Skeptic, 85, 294

Skeptical, 141, 218, 254

Skepticism, 254

Slavery, 17, 28, 51, 67, 69, 190-191, 249, 259, 298

Smith, Huston, 300

Smith, Joseph, 116

Snake (Garden of Eden), 14, 16

Socialism, 283-284

Socialist, 168, 283-284

Socrates, 129-130

Solomon, 17, 28, 95, 167

Son of God, 18, 31, 83, 88, 90, 95, 99, 117-118, 121, 123, 152, 154

Son of Man, 59-60, 98-99, 162, 169, 276-277

South Asia, 23, 196, 198

Southern Baptist, 234

Southern Baptist Convention, 234

Soviet Union, 68

Speaking in Tongues, 138, 203-204

Spinoza, Baruch, 129

Sri Lanka, 192, 237

Stalin, 193

Stevenson, Ian, 300

Stirner, Max, 155

Stoic, 129, 248

Strauss, Leo, 69

Sub-Saharan Africa, 161

Suetonius, 130

Suffering, 30, 47-48, 52, 57-58, 61, 64-68, 70, 76-77, 88-91, 113, 170, 216, 237, 240, 254, 259, 265, 286

Sufi, 76, 204

Summa Theologica, 68, 293

Suspension of Judgment, 253

Synoptic Gospels, 116-117

T

Tacitus, 127, 130, 300

Tantric Buddhism, 132

Tao, 248, 285, 298

Ten Commandments, 17, 31, 45, 156, 164, 179

Teresa of Avila, 288

Tertullian, 68, 128

The Rich, 90, 169, 171-172, 176

The West, 98, 141, 218, 221-222, 226, 282, 284

The Word, 17-18, 23, 34, 37, 45-46, 60, 72-73, 85, 106, 121-122, 163, 172, 231, 234-235, 237, 287, 293-294

Theism, 10, 66-67, 264, 281

Theist, 160, 223

Theravada Buddhism, 140, 237, 244, 286-287

Tibetan Buddhism, 132, 237

Tibetan Buddhist, 131-132

Timaeus, 244

Timur, 193

Titus, 41, 190-191

To Us a Child Is Born, 82

Toleration, 11-12

Torah, 18, 27, 52-53, 104-105, 184

Torture, 52, 64, 72, 118, 219, 229, 249, 286

Totalitarian, 63, 67, 69-70, 153

Totalitarianism, 265

Trade, 175, 192

Trilemma, 151-152, 154-155

Trimurti, 244

Trinity, 105, 209, 223-224, 258

Tucker, Jim, 300

Tulku, 131-132

U

Uganda, 199

United States, 20, 52, 161, 165, 177, 200, 215

Universalism, 69, 279

Universalist, 21, 60, 70, 270, 279, 289

Urban II, 190

Urban VIII, 224-225

Ussher, James, 106

V

Vaishnava, 76

Vajrayana, 132

Vatican II, 225

Vedas, 108, 237

Vicarious Suffering, 91

Violence, 23, 76-77, 90, 180, 183, 190-193, 197, 200, 241, 250, 253, 299

Virgin Birth, 30, 36, 44, 80, 116, 121-122, 135

Vishnu, 241, 244

W

Wealth, 35, 96, 133, 165, 168-173, 175-177, 223, 283

Wealthy, 133, 165, 169, 171-173, 175, 177

Weber, Max, 217

Wells, H.G., 44

Western World, 10, 221

Wicca, 284

Wilber, Ken, 301

Wilson, Allan, 107-108, 300

Wilson, Robert, 111

Witch Craze, The, 184-185, 220

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 235

Word of God, 45-46, 293

Work, 10, 37, 86, 113, 121, 138, 143, 165, 167-168, 177, 197, 227, 235, 254, 271, 285

Works, 44, 59, 103, 127, 130, 135, 158, 222-223, 248, 263, 270, 274, 293, 299

Wrath, 28, 68, 71-72, 74, 189

Wu, Winston, 301

X

Xavier, Francis, 190

Y

Yahweh, 27, 45, 51, 95, 104, 156, 267, 294

Yahweh-Elohim, 104

Yom, 14, 106

Z

Zarathustra, 29-30, 122

Zechariah, 24

Zen Buddhist, 204

Zeus, 28, 93

Zhuangzi, 244, 248, 285, 290

Zoen Aionion, 60

Zoroastrian, 18, 29, 132, 195

Zoroastrianism, 28-31, 241

Zurvanism, 31

Zwingli, Huldrych, 190
