Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

by John W. Loftus

having examined all their many papers and books. Then they pontificate proudly

  that because we didn't give their bizarre claims a fair shake, clearly we're just

  biased, and we deserve the worst of all eternal tortures as punishment for our

  lazy audacity, and thank goodness superman will kill us from outer space soon.

  (Did I mention scary?) To put an end to this pompous rhetoric, I've given them

  far more than they're due, extensively researching their claims to the very core,

  learning the ancient languages, studying the relevant histories and cultures and

  documents, and examining their best arguments. Which is all generally more

  than they ever do in return. Now, with all that, and a PhD in ancient history to

  boot, they can't say I don't know what I'm talking about.

  THE EVIDENCE

  Apart from just "feeling" that it's true, or being told so in a dream, or seeing

  ghosts or hearing voices, and other equally dubious grounds for belief today

  (you wouldn't believe such things from any other religion), there are really only

  two kinds of evidence that Jesus rose from the grave, and neither provides

  enough evidence to believe it. These are early Christian writings and the fact that

  Christianity began with a belief that Jesus rose from the dead. All other evidence

  simply repeats the claims of the New Testament (NT), or fabricates claims no

  one believes anymore (like that wild tale from the Gospel of Peter).

  Of course, many beliefs have arisen in history despite being untrue, so the fact

  that Christianity began with a weird belief is not enough reason to believe it, any

  more than we should believe the angel Moroni gave Joseph Smith some magical

  gold tablets or that Haile Sellassie is Jesus Christ. That leaves the NT, which is

  recognized by biblical scholars the world over as an arbitrary hodgepodge of

  dubious literature of uncertain origins and reliability.3 Curiously absent from the

  record are any actual eyewitness accounts of what Jesus said or did, either in life

  or at his resurrection, any records of events by historians or authorities or

  correspondents from the same time and place, any inscriptions erected or

  documents composed by the earliest churches, any neutral or hostile accounts

  from outsiders observing the originating events of the Christian religion, any

  court documents from the many early trials reported in Acts, or anything written

  by Jesus himself-or in fact any of his disciples, since hardly any scholar today

  believes Peter's Epistles are authentic (and none believe his Gospel is authentic),

  and no other document in the NT claims its author was a disciple-not even the

  Gospels, contrary to common assumption. Though the authors of the Gospel of

  John (and they alone) claim to have used something written by a disciple as their

  source, since they don't even confess to know his name, we can doubt that. In

  any event, we don't have that alleged source-document, any more than we have

  Joseph Smith's heavenly gold tablets.

  Already, just from what's missing, we can tell the evidence is poor. But let's

  still look at the little that managed to survive. For Christianity to pass the OTF,

  we must treat all this evidence the same way we treat Herodotus or any ancient

  writer-all the more, since we have no reason to believe the authors of the NT

  documents were any more honest or critical or infal lible than any other men of

  their time, and there's plenty of evidence to suspect they were less so. Yet that

  means, just as with the stories in Herodotus, since a man rising from the dead is

  an extraordinary claim, we can only believe it if we have extraordinary evidence.

  Do we?

  WHY WE NEED EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE

  Denying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is among the

  rhetoric now resorted to by those who genuinely expect superman to fly down

  from outer space and kill me. So I have to say something about this first. If I tell

  you I own a car, I usually won't have to present very much evidence to prove it

  because you've already observed mountains of evidence that people like me own

  cars. But if I say I own a nuclear missile, you have just as much evidence that

  "people like him own nuclear missiles" is not true. So I would need much more

  evidence to prove I owned one, to make up for all the evidence I don't have from

  any supporting generalization. Just think to yourself what it would take for me to

  convince you I owned a nuclear missile, and you'll see what I mean. In contrast,

  the odds of winning a lottery are very low, so you might think it would be an

  extraordinary claim for me to assert "I won a lottery." But lotteries are routinely

  won. We've observed countless lotteries being won and have tons of evidence

  that people win lotteries. Therefore, the general claim "people like him win

  lotteries" is already confirmed, and so I wouldn't need very much evidence to

  convince you that I won. So "I won a lottery" is not an extraordinary claim. But

  "I own a nuclear missile" clearly is.

  Now suppose I told you "I own an interstellar spacecraft." That would be an

  even more extraordinary claim-because there is no generalization supporting it at

  all. Not only do you have tons of very good evidence that "people like him own

  interstellar spacecraft" is not true, you also have no evidence this has ever been

  true for anyone-unlike nuclear missiles, which you know at least exist.

  Therefore, the burden of evidence I would have to bear here is truly enormous.

  Just think of what it would take for you to believe I really did have an interstellar

  spacecraft, and again you'll see what I mean.

  Once you realize the common sense of this, it's obvious that extraordinary

  claims require extraordinary evidence. To deny that's true is simply irrational.4

  But there is no more evidence supporting the generalization that "people like

  Jesus get resurrected from the dead" than there is for people owning starships.

  Therefore the claim that Jesus arose from the dead is an extraordinary claim, and

  thus requires extraordinary evidence -more evidence, even, than I would need to

  convince you I own an interstellar spacecraft.' For you actually have evidence

  confirming the generalization that "there can be an interstellar spacecraft." We

  could build one today with present technology. But we have no comparable

  evidence at all confirming the generalization that "there can be miraculous

  resurrections from the dead." That doesn't mean miracles must be impossible. It

  only means we have less evidence that miracles are possible than we have that

  interstellar spacecraft are possible. And that means the claim that Jesus rose

  from the dead is even more extraordinary than the claim that I own an interstellar

  spacecraft. Think again of the kind of evidence I would need to convince you I

  had such a vehicle. I should need more evidence than that to convince you Jesus

  rose from the dead.6 Just as would be required to convince you a whole village

  witnessed a pot of cooked fish rise from the dead, or anything else as incredible.

  THE EPISTLES

  So is the evidence that extraordinary? Let's start with the letters. There are

  twenty-one Epistles in the NT. None are dated, so we can only guess at when

  they were wr
itten. Of these, thirteen claim to be written by Paul. But scholars

  now agree that in fact only seven of these letters are likely authentic. The

  remaining six are forgeries. That means someone else forged them in his name,

  pretending to be Paul, probably after his death. The authorship of the remaining

  letters is also questioned. Most scholars agree 1 and 2 Peter are forgeries, too,

  while the authorship (actual or intended) of the remaining letters is uncertain,

  since no one really knows for sure who any of these people are.7

  But the fact that so many forgeries got into the Bible already confirms how

  little we can trust anything in the NTs Just their presence there, indeed their very

  creation, proves a pervasive dishonesty among early Christians, as well as the

  gullibility of their peers. And neither fact warrants much confidence in the

  remainder of what Christians said or believed. Indeed, besides readily producing

  and believing many forgeries and lies (and all the personal claims made in the

  forged letters, such as in 2 Peter, are indeed outright lies), the earliest Christians

  seem to have guided themselves by very fallacious methodologies when it came

  to deciding who or what to believe, trusting the mere appearance of sincerity

  over any real inquiry or interrogation, assuming someone who seemed to

  perform miracles must be telling the truth, being too easily persuaded by `secret

  messages' in scripture, `communications' in dreams, and the merely intuitive

  `feeling' of being instructed directly by God.9

  In fact, Paul reveals the earliest Christians were hallucinating on a regular

  basis, entering ecstatic trances, prophesying, relaying the communications of

  spirits, and speaking in tongues-so much, in fact, that outsiders thought they

  were lunatics (e.g., 1 Corinthians 14). The whole book of Revelation, for

  example, is a veritable acid trip, and yet it got into the Bible as an authoritative

  document. That's how respectable even the craziest of hallucinations were. Not

  only were they constantly channeling spirits and speaking in tongues and having

  visions of angels and strange objects in the sky, they were also putting on faith-

  healing acts and exorcising demons by laying on hands and shouting words of

  power.10 In other words, the first Christians behaved a lot more like crazy

  cultists than you'd ever be comfortable with. These aren't the sort of people

  whose testimony you would ever trust if you met them today. And if you

  wouldn't trust what they said now, you shouldn't trust anything they said then.

  But what do the Epistles even say? As far as evidence Jesus actually rose from

  the dead, almost nothing. As Paul says:

  I make known to you, brethren, that the Gospel I preached is not according

  to [any] man. For neither did I receive it from [any] man, nor was I taught

  it, except through a revelation of Jesus Christ.... when it was the good

  pleasure of God... to reveal his Son in me, so I could preach him among the

  Gentiles. I did not confer with flesh and blood right away. Nor did I go to

  Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me, but I went off into

  Arabia, and then back to Damascus. Then only after three years did I go to

  Jerusalem to visit Cephas ... and [even then] I remained unknown by face to

  [any of] the churches in Judaea. (Galatians 1:11-18)

  So Paul tells us he received the Gospel by revelation alone. No one taught it to

  him. He learned it only in a vision. What Gospel did he learn this way? He tells

  us:

  For I make known to you, brethren, the Gospel I preached to you, which

  you also accepted and in which you now stand.... For I delivered to you first

  of all what I also received: that according to the scriptures `Christ died for

  our sins,' and that he was buried, and that according to the scriptures `he

  was raised on the third day,' and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the

  twelve, then he appeared to over five hundred brethren at once (of whom

  most remain until now, but some have fallen asleep), then he appeared to

  James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me, too. (1

  Corinthians 15:1-8)

  Note that Paul begins both reports with the exact same phrase: "I make known to

  you, brethren, that this is the Gospel I preached." So Paul says the Gospel he

  preached was not handed down to him through any human testimony. He learned

  it directly from God through a revelation, and he says this is the same Gospel he

  taught his Christian churches. He even went on preaching it for three whole

  years before he spoke to any eyewitnesses about it, and in all that time he was

  personally unknown to anyone in the whole of Judea (so he can't have spoken

  with them earlier, and he clearly implies he didn't).

  Paul never mentions having any other evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

  He never mentions anyone finding an empty tomb, for example, or the testimony

  of a Doubting Thomas, or anything else. He learned it from scripture and

  revelation, and that's it (e.g., Romans 16:2 5-2 7). Paul was thus convinced by

  evidence we would never accept from a cult leader in any other religion. So his

  evidence does not pass the OTE Yet Paul never mentions anyone else having any

  other evidence, either. All those before him, he says, only saw the risen Jesus

  just like he did, and he tells us he saw the risen Jesus only in a vision. There is

  no other evidence mentioned in any of the Epistles.

  THE GOSPELS

  Even before we look at their stories, the Gospels don't pass the OTE. We don't

  know the actual source of any of the information in them. We don't know who

  really wrote them, or when, or where. We don't know who got to read them

  before the second century or if anyone investigated their claims in any useful

  way. We can't even establish that the four Gospels are independent, since Luke

  and Matthew clearly copied extensively from Mark (often verbatim), and what

  they changed or added often doesn't agree between them or is outright

  contradictory. Even when they agree on some additional things Jesus said (which

  Mark seems not to have known), they have Jesus saying these things in

  completely different times and places, as if their sources really didn't know when

  or where Jesus said them, so they each had to make something up. John,

  meanwhile, contradicts the other three, more even than they contradict each

  other, and in the most fundamental ways. And since scholars agree his Gospel

  was written last, and has been meddled with by other unknown authors, and it

  appears to have reworked stories from Luke, we can't trust his authors had any

  real sources of their own either.11

  That's what we don't know. What we do know is that the Gospels were written

  with an agenda, a deliberate aim to persuade, to turn people toward belief in

  Christ and the embrace of Christian morals. And we know they were written

  long after Paul's Epistles, by members of a fanatical cult who believed their

  dreams were communications from God, that their intuition was guided by the

  Holy Spirit, and that they could find information about Jesus secretly hidden in

  the Bibleand whose leaders regularly hallu
cinated, occasionally lied, and often

  fabricated documents. They also doctored them. We know Mark did not write

  verses 16:9-20, for example. Those were "snuck in" later by dishonest

  Christians. John's Gospel appears to have ended originally at 20:30-31. But

  someone seems to have tacked on a whole extra ending (John 21) that

  egregiously reworks a completely different story Luke had already placed long

  before Jesus died (Luke 5). Then this person invented a fake, yet nameless,

  witness for it. (Or the reverse is the case, and John 20:18-31 was interpolated

  before the original ending of John 21). You might even know the famous story of

  the adulteress saved by Jesus' famous quip, "Let he who is without sin cast the

  first stone" (John 7:53-8:11). That's now known to be a forgery, too; it was

  deceitfully inserted after the fact. There was even a copy of Acts circulating in

  the second century that's over 10 percent longer than the one now in the Bible,

  demonstrating that Christians had no qualms about adding all kinds of material

  to their books.12 Which means we have no way of knowing what got added to

  the version we now have in the Bible, or indeed any of the other Gospels or

  Epistles (or what was changed or taken away, for that matter). There were

  actually whole basketfuls of fake books written by Christians, too, including

  over a dozen more Gospels, a few additional Acts, various bogus letters and

  correspondences, even wild fantasies about the deeds of Jesus in his childhood.

  With so much meddling and forgery indisputably coming from early Christians,

  why should we trust the "canonical" Gospels any more than the rest? We already

  know they were meddled with, and we know many of the canonical Epistles

  were outright forged.13

  Combine what we don't know with what we do know, and there is no sound

  basis for trusting what the Gospels tell us about anything we can't corroborate

  elsewhere or don't already have reason enough to believe. The existence of

  improbabilities, contradictions, propaganda, evident fictions, forgeries and

  interpolations, and legendary embellishments in them has been exhaustively

  discussed in the modern literature, and most scholars agree the Gospels contain a

  goodly amount of these things. In fact, I think it's pretty clear the earliest of

  them-the Gospel according to Mark, the original story later embellished by all

  the others-was not even written as history, but as a deliberate myth. The author

  of Mark never says he is writing anything else. And we can clearly see the

  difference. Consider just one example.

  When Mark says the Roman governor Pontius Pilate had a custom of releasing

  a prisoner on the annual holiday, and the Jews cried for Barabbas, and to crucify

  Jesus in his place (Mark 15:6-15), what we surely have is myth, not fact.14 No

  Roman magistrate (least of all the infamously ruthless Pilate), would let a

  murderous rebel go free, and no such Roman ceremony is attested as ever having

  existed. But the ceremony so obviously emulates the Jewish ritual of the

  scapegoat and atonement, in a story that is actually about atonement, that its

  status as myth is hard to deny. Barabbas means "Son of the Father" in Aramaic,

  yet we know Jesus was deliberately styled the "Son of the Father" himself.

  Hence we have two sons of the father, one is released into the wild mob bearing

  the sins of Israel (murder and insurrection), while the other is sacrificed so his

  blood may atone for the sins of Israel. This is an obvious imitation of the Yom

  Kippur ceremony of Leviticus 16, when two goats were chosen each year, and

  one was released into the wild bearing the sins of Israel, while the other's blood

  was shed to atone for the sins of Israel. Conclusion? Mark crafted a mythical

  narrative to convey what Hebrews 9-10 says about Jesus as the final Yom