when the time passed away…

by Trevor Burrus ·
October 30th, 2006 ·

10.
It is Absurd:
This may seem like I am re-stating what this list sets out to show. However,
this is misleading. When someone comes to us with an extravagant claim the most
common reason we may discount the claim is because, to put it curtly, we find
it absurd. The reason why the majority of people don’t believe in Scientology,
reincarnation, Mormonism, Greek Gods, etc. is not because they have extensively
researched the historicity and veracity of the claims, it is because they don’t
believe such things happen in the world. In other words, common sense tells us
that when someone claims the absurd almost anything is more likely to be the
case (i.e. they are lying, they are delusional, they are relying on
misinformation) then for the absurdity to be real. Men do not miraculously heal
the sick, raise the dead, cure the blind, and rise from the grave. The claims
of Christianity are prima facie absurd. The burden of proof is on them.

9.
Jesus Has Not Returned: This, also, may seem a soft point. However,
for 2000 years – 80 generations – a substantial number of every single
generation of Christians has whole-heartedly believed that Jesus’ return was
imminent. This often included exact dates that, when they came to pass, did not
cause the believers to toss their erroneous ideologies aside. And this
perennial incorrectness goes back to the beginning. One can only understand the
earliest Christians – the generation immediately following Jesus’ death – as a
group who were expecting Jesus to return at any moment (I
Thess 4:15-17). Why did they believe this? Because, on more than one occasion,
Jesus unequivocally said so (Mark
9:1, Matthew
26:64, Mark
13:30). Christians have proven to be resolutely imperturbable and
incorrigible to their continued failures.

8.
God Doesn’t Care: Most people believe in God. And, when asked why they
believe in God, the most common answer is taken from the argument from design:
the universe is too ordered and beautiful to have arisen without an
intelligence behind it. Whether or not this is true, this claim has little to
do with Christianity. Christianity claims that God not only created the world
but also takes an active part in its management, in our moral choices, and in
our fates. In other words; He cares. It is this conception of God that bends
credulity to the breaking point. God as essence – that is a “first
cause” God or a “higher power” God – is a far less difficult concept than God
as being. First of all, according to centuries old Christian dogma, God
is immutable. In other words He is a static, non-changing “being” that cannot
create new beliefs, make inferences, or adjust desires. Secondly the idea of an
omniscient, omnipotent “being” having desires borders on the nonsensical. If
all things are known – all that ever was, is, or will be – what would be the
point of desiring anything? This is not just a simple word game. Christians
consistently claim that God “wants” us to believe in him and follow his
commandments. However, they also claim that he knows whether we will do so or
not. So, what is the point of Him wanting anything? A God as essence is palatable.
A God as being is not only ridiculous but likely impossible. (P.S. This one is
for the non-predestinarians. If you are a pre-destinarian there are other
reasons you are wrong: see below. However, most Christians are not
predestinarians; although, if they care about consistency [not high on the
list], they should be.)

7.
Other Religions: For most of Christian history the problems caused by
other religions were not pressing, if they were considered at all. In the
enclosed world of medieval times – when most people would never travel more
than 10 miles from their place of birth – people of non-Christian faiths seemed
almost phantasms. However, in the modern world the pots have been poured
together and the faiths now intermingle on a daily basis. This, of course,
brings religious problems to the forefront. But it also should force Christians
(and other faiths) to make a few realizations: first, that faiths are conveyed
primarily genealogically – from parents to children – as opposed to through
dialectical, later-life conversion. We can never reasonably expect everyone to
become Christian. This is not because Christianity is right or wrong, but
because faiths carry their own momentum that is not derived from the truth or
falsity of the beliefs. Secondly, that people of other faiths can live saintly
lives of intense moral rectitude that rivals any Christian saint. And third,
that people are exceptionally good at perpetuating, believing in, and dying for
faiths that are manifestly false (as Christians believe). In other words, as
Christians must unhesitatingly accept, people are very good at making up
fantastic stories about events and figures in the past and then believing in
them with fervor. If Christianity was the only belief system in the world that
made extravagant claims, and if its claims resembled none others in the world,
then we would have more reason to believe it to be true. However, this is
obviously not so. In fact, often the claims of Christianity are hopelessly
derivative. Healing and resurrecting god-men have been the objects of stories
for millennia (these god-men were particularly common in the Hellenized world
of post-Maccabean Palestine. i.e.Apollonius of Tyana).
Also, in addition to sharing many strong features with Mithraism and
Zoroastrianism, many early Christians found much distaste with the idea of the
virgin birth, finding it too pagan. Plutarch writes in Convivial
Disputations, “The fact of the intercourse of a male god with a mortal
woman is conceded by all.”

6.
There is No Soul: The inexcusable flippancy of the term “soul” abounds.
And, although most people believe in it and freely use the term, they have no
idea what it means. The evidence for physicalism – that the mind is the brain –
has become nothing less than overwhelming. This evidence exists not only in the
highest levels of research – where scientists can now point to, and manipulate,
the exact location in our grey matter where essential characteristics lie – but
it exists in the everyday lives of millions of people who take psychotropic
drugs on a daily basis. These users will tell you drugs such as Prozac,
lithium, Paxil and Ritalin don’t just give them a slight pick-me-up, they make
them an entirely different person. Some of them must wonder if their “soul” is
depressed or happy, anxiety filled or laid-back. Only by ignoring 200 years of
medical progress can we believe that we simply inhabit our bodies – dropping by
on the way to something better. It isn’t “I have a brain,” it’s “I am a brain.”

5.
Evil:
The tried and true returns. If you are a Christian you are probably rolling
your eyes because you’ve heard it time and again. Why don’t we atheists
understand that: [A] God works in mysterious ways, [B] God gave us free will
which allows us to commit evil and good, [C] the world is in a fallen
state, and [D] Satan represents a real presence in the world? No, we don’t
understand because: [A] clearly God doesn’t work in ways that are too
mysterious for you to be unhesitant in calling something “He” did “good” and
asking him to do “good” things in the world on your behalf. You can either use
moral qualifiers to describe God’s actions or you cannot; you can’t have it
both ways. [B] Not only does this point not jibe with argument “A” (if God
works in mysterious ways we couldn’t claim that free will is a “good”) it is
difficult to see how, if free will is good, the using of free will to take away
another’s free will (i.e. murder) is not intensely problematic in God’s eyes.
Hitler used his free will to take away the free will of 10 million others.
Thus, if, in 1919, God flipped the “become an artist” switch in Hitler’s mind,
the result would have greatly added to the net amount of freedom in the world.
[C] This is a non-starter if the Old Testament is not accurate but, even if it
is, a God who holds great-great-great….grandchildren responsible for their
ancester’s actions does not pass even the bare minimum test of human morality.
Without a defined concept of desert, morality is a completely empty concept. It
seems God is playing fast and loose on this count. [D] If this objection is
forwarded seriously, then it is little more than ditheism (dual theism).
Otherwise, in the Christian universe the only power Satan has is that which God
lets him have. If you believe in the traditional Christian conception of God
you must believe that, ultimately, everything is His fault. Everything.
This in a world where rocks fall out of the sky onto innocent people and babies
are eaten by dingoes.

4.
The Bible is Not Consistent: Many, if not most, Christians would say that
the Bible is inerrant. Well, they are wrong. Saying so doesn’t require an
appeal to history, science, and/or archaeology; it only requires a
demonstration that the Bible is incoherent – that is, it contains claims that cannot
be true simultaneously. In such instances either one claim is false or they are
both false – there is no other possibility. If you wish to throw rationality
out the window and claim that a contradiction is possible, then you can just
take your ball and go home; you are now playing a game that you can ask no one
else to play with you. One example of many: Matthew (1:1-16)
claims that there are 27 generations between David and Jesus, Luke (3:23-38)
claims 41 generations. These cannot be reconciled. The Bible is not inerrant.
QED

3.
Christianity Cannot be the Religion that Jesus Preached: The story of
Christianity is the story of the beliefs that Jesus professed developing into
the religion that professes Jesus. In other words; dogma. It is pure folly to
believe that Simon Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene et.al followed Jesus because,
when he died, they would be able to absolve their sins by believing in him.
This later theological construction was created by believers who were searching
for a meaning to the seemingly pointless execution of their leader and teacher.
Those who originally followed Jesus did so because of his life – because he was
an exemplary teacher who radically reinterpreted the Law in favor of inclusion
rather than exclusion. Those who now follow Jesus do so because of his death.
They turn a man’s poignant teachings – his life’s work – into a secondary and
near meaningless preface to the panacea of his death. We primarily have Paul
and John the evangelist (two people who did not know Jesus in his life) to
thank for this inexcusable dumbing-down of Jesus’ life. Look at the Nicene Creed. Dogmatic
fiat has expurgated everything the man stood for.

2.
The Gospels are not Historically Reliable: We need not
demonstrate Biblical errors solely through appeals to internal consistency.
Doing so only tells us that something in the “word of God” is awry – but not
necessarily which word is wrong. In order to perform Biblical analysis that
actually broadens our view of what is true and false in the “good” book we need
to bring in external sources. From these external sources we learn that the
Bible makes claims that cannot stand up to even the most cursory historical
examination. In the Gospel of Luke the story is told of a census enacted by the
governor Quirinius (Luke
2:1-7). The census, according to Luke, required everyone to return to their
ancestral homes to be counted. Thus Joseph, being in the line of David, travels
from

Nazareth

to

Bethlehem

where - after unadvisedly traveling
ninety miles with a woman in the final days of pregnancy - Mary gives birth.
The Romans, being meticulous record keepers, did take censuses. However,
because of this meticulous record keeping, we know that the only census
conducted during Quirinius’s governorship took place in A.D. 6-7 – a time over
ten years after Herod was king of Judea (Luke claims they are contemporaries).
However, aside from this fact we can use common sense to realize that the story
is totally unbelievable. Luke invents an empire-wide migration for a simple tax
registration: millions of people traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to go
to their ancestral home of a millennium past (David predates Joseph by approx.
1000 years) in order to sign a simple form. Imagine this happening today.
Imagine the cataclysmic disruption of societies resulting from the masses of
people crossing boarders and oceans in order to sign a form. This, of course,
supposes you could even find your ancestral home of a millennium past. No,
something is wrong here and it isn’t that the Romans liked to periodically
enact sadistically cumbersome legislation. No, I think our evangelist needs to
go back to history class. But wait…

1.
The Gospels are not History: This may seem like a paltry excuse for the
number one spot on a list that makes such a grandiose claim. This reason,
however, is the lynch pin. The historicity of the Gospels represents the most
crucial element of Christianity – for either its truth or falsity. Christianity
claims a specific historical relationship between God and man. If that
relationship is historically inaccurate then Christianity is wrong. Or, as Paul
memorably put it, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and
so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 15:14).

As
we’ve seen the Bible is often contradictory and the Gospels are not
historically accurate. However, the Christian mistake is compounded by
believing that the Gospels are even history – that is that they were
written or designed to accurately portray historical truths. The evangelists
did not intend their writings to be taken as historical truths. If they could
see modern Christianity they would be shocked at the millions of Christians
interpreting their writings as historically authoritative. Please don’t
misinterpret what I am saying. I am not saying the Gospels were entirely made
up. I am saying that they were primarily written as myths that forego
historical truths (but use many of them) in favor of conveying larger,
theological truths that the evangelists believed about Jesus of Nazareth.

The
evangelists poured through the Old Testament and found “prophecies” that
predicted Jesus’ life. After all, there had to be grander reasons why their great
teacher had been executed like a common criminal. In the pages of Jewish
scripture they found those reasons. They then consciously wrote their
gospels in order to retroactively fulfill prophecy. That this happens at
all is beyond dispute. Sometimes, while stumbling over themselves to “fulfill”
prophecy, they get it horribly wrong: Mark (1:1-3),
using shoddy sources, begins his gospel with “prophecy” that mistakenly conflates
two Old Testament versus; Isaiah
40:3 and Malachi
3:1. Matthew (1:20-23)
uses a mistranslated Old Testament, in which the Hebrew almah, (meaning
“young woman”) was changed to the Greek parthenos (meaning a physical
virgin), as a justification for the immaculate conception. Matthew (21:1-7)
so wants to fulfill a “prophecy” from another shoddy source that has combined Isaiah
62:11 and Zachariah
9:9, that he misinterprets the passage – which only speaks of one animal
(with subsequent qualifiers) – and has Jesus ride into Jerusalem, in some
bizarre act of balance, on two animals. (The other gospel writers are quick to
correct this grievous error.) Thus, we begin to see that not only is it a
manifest absurdity to believe the Gospels are history, it becomes tenuous to
believe they are even accurate.

Each
evangelist had his own interpretation. The theology of the evangelists – and
specifically their Christology (the nature of Christ) – developed into more
grandiose claims as Jesus’ life moved further into the past. If you wish to
discover this for yourself, I advise you to successively read the Gospel of
Mark (almost universally agreed to be the earliest Gospel written between A.D.
65-70) and the Gospel of John (agreed to be the latest Gospel written between
A.D. 90-100) in a single sitting. Ask yourself this question; are they telling
the same story? In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus largely speaks in parables and evasive
third-person proclamations about someone called “the Son of Man.” In John’s
Gospel, Jesus tells no parables and spends most of the time talking
about himself, his godly status, and what the future will bring.

So,
here is a brief object lesson in the development of the concept of Jesus as
God. We will only look at the beginning and the end; Jesus’ birth and death.
First the birth narratives. In Mark there are none. Jesus is chosen at his
baptism. Matthew and Luke (written c. 80-90) go back to his birth and tell
incompatible stories of Jesus’ miraculous birth to a virgin. They further cement
and establish the status of Jesus. John, feeling the others weren’t good
enough, decides to go back to the beginning of time (John 1:1 “In the beginning
was the word…”) to establish the nature of Jesus. The later gospels create
theological concepts that were not present in the earliest sources.

Likewise,
the death of Jesus changes dramatically throughout the Gospels. The changes (of
which there are many more than these) can be summed up in the three different
accounts of the last words of Jesus: Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46 “My god, my
god, why have you forsaken me.” Luke 23:46 “Father, into your hands I commit my
spirit.” John 19:30 “It is finished.” The development of Christianity is
encapsulated in the move from the utterance of pain, ignorance, nonacceptance,
and suffering seen in Mark and Matthew to the statement of acceptance,
foreknowledge, and peace that is seen in John. These are incompatible
interpretations of Jesus. The character in the gospels may have the same name
but it is not the same man hanging on the cross.

The
Gospels are guides to belief written by believers. This is a horribly
unreliable way to learn accurate information. When you already believe “The
Truth,” distortions that you consciously engage in - that you see as promoting
“The Truth” - are not seen as lies, but rather, as efficacious ways of getting
“The Truth” to the hearts of readers. We don’t know why the evangelists
believed as they did, but in the gospels they don’t give us the reasons they
believe, they give us reasons to believe; an entirely different matter.
But we do KNOW they invented things. We KNOW that the theological
conception of Jesus changed as the believers grew more distant from his life.
What Christians believe most fervently (i.e. Jesus being God, appearing after
he died, dying for the sins of the world) are concepts that were developed
later. They are concepts that did not exist in the earliest generations of
Christian belief. They certainly did not exist when Jesus was alive.

Early
Christians invented myths to overcome the “stumbling-block” (1 Cor. 1:23) of
the cross. Paul knew that, for the Jews and Gentile Greeks, the execution of
Jesus represented a major problem. The “king of the jews” was not supposed to
be an executed lowly peasant. The “savior of mankind” was not a common
criminal. Over time, theological concepts developed that explained this
hang-up. Thus, an executed traitor was turned into a victorious Messiah.

Conclusion: These are some of
the reasons that people like me don’t believe. Faith, or lack of it, has
nothing to do with it. While none of these reasons is entirely convincing by
itself, when taken together they create a strong case for the falsity of
Christianity – if not an open-and-shut case. If you are a Christian and you are
reading this (which I highly doubt) and if you cannot respond to each of these
objections with evidence and coherent argumentation – as opposed to with faith
and shouting – then you need to start shopping for a new religion.