Kippur, thus telling us, with his own parable, to reject the sins of the Jews
(especially violence and rebellion) and embrace instead the eternal salvation of
atonement offered in Christ. Had this story appeared in any other book, we
would readily identify it as myth and not historical fact. As fact, it's hopelessly
implausible. As myth, it makes perfect sense.
Matthew did the same thing, radically refictionalizing the resurrection
narrative, for example, to echo the story of Daniel in the lion's den, thus again
communicating the "true meaning" of the Gospel without any evident interest in
historical fact.1' And Luke appears to have fabricated his Emmaus narrative (in
Luke 24:13-34) to emulate the epiphany of Romulus, the mythical founder of
Rome who-just like Jesus-was the Son of God incarnate, was born of a virgin,
was killed by the corrupt leaders of the city, was subsequently resurrected from
the dead, appeared to the living on a road to the city, and ascended to heaven to
rule from on high.16 Even John added stories never before heard (like John 2)
that seem more symbolic than true. Scholars have documented countless other
examples of mythmaking in the Gospels. 17
For all these reasons, we can't trust the Gospels as historical accounts of what
really happened because we wouldn't trust documents like this from any other
religious tradition. Acts is similarly untrustworthy, proven by the fact that it gets
completely wrong fundamental events in the church, as we know from the letters
of Paul (who was an eyewitness to them).18 That leaves us with no trustworthy
evidence that Jesus ever really rose from the grave. We have nothing better than
we have from Herodotus. And since we don't believe Herodotus's claims of the
miraculous, we shouldn't believe the New Testament's.
How CHRISTIANITY BEGAN
We don't really know how Christianity began. We can't trust our sources, and we
have no idea who their sources were or how faithful they were to them. We have
no eyewitness accounts, and the only author we can definitely place near the
faith's origin tells us almost nothing about how or why it began. So we can only
talk about what is most likely, given everything we know about the way the
world really works. If any unextraordinary series of natural events can explain
all the evidence we have, and if we don't have any of the extraordinary evidence
we would need to confirm an extraordinary explanation instead, then we can't
believe the extraordinary, for then the ordinary is more probable. Yet many
unextraordinary explanations are possible, so we have no sound reason to prefer
an extraordinary one.
There are really only two facts that need explaining: why the first Christians
claimed to see Jesus "risen from the dead," and what happened to the body. To
take the second first, we don't really know whether the body went missing, or
even that the first Christians believed it did. The Epistles never mention a
missing body. In Acts no one ever investigates his grave or says it was empty.
And the Gospels freely invent stories, so their stories about a missing body could
be invented, too. It's quite possible the first Christians believed Jesus rose in an
entirely new body, leaving the old one in the grave.19 For as Paul tells us, the
body that dies is not the body that rises (1 Corinthians 15:37-38). So they
wouldn't even need to believe the body had gone missing. And even if they did
believe the body had gone missing, they could believe that even if the body
wasn't missing. For any evidence to the contrary they could simply dismiss as a
trick, just as the Heaven's Gate cult dismissed all evidence against their claim
that an alien spaceship was photographed behind comet Hale-Bopp.20 In fact,
contrary to the Gospel tales, Jesus might actually have been buried in the
ground, in which case it wouldn't even have been possible to check.21 But even
if the body did go missing, when other bodies go missing we never assume they
rose from the dead-because we know it's far more likely they were misplaced or
stolen. And for all we know, either could have happened to the body of Jesus.22
Since none of these possibilities can be ruled out on the evidence we have, since
all are compatible with that evidence, and none require anything as extraordinary
as a corpse coming back to life, we have no sound reason to believe the latter.
We might not know what happened. But we can know it wasn't that.
That leaves only one thing to explain: why the first Christians claimed to see
Jesus "risen from the dead." The Gospels can't be trusted on this, and we already
saw what the Epistles say: the only reason they ever give is that the scriptures
told them Jesus would rise, and then they had revelations of the risen Jesus. As
the Epistles reveal, these people regularly hallucinated and `channeled spirits.'
So for them the risen Jesus was just another hallucinated encounter with the
divine. If we trust Paul's list of appearances (1 Corinthians 15:5-8), Jesus clearly
wasn't around anymore, because Paul says he only `appeared' on isolated
occasions, to highly select people, which certainly suggests revelatory
experiences, not Jesus the house guest' hanging around until he flew away. Paul
even implies there was only one occasion when such a revelation was
experienced by many believers "at the same time," but he doesn't tell us what
they saw (1 Corinthians 15:6). We know masses of people hallucinating together
can believe they saw the same thing, and such hallucinations can be stirred by
ecstatic trance-inducing behaviors, especially in religious cults populated by
regular hallucinators and trancers-as the Christians demonstrably were,
prophesying and speaking in tongues en masse (as shown in 2 Corinthians 12
and 1 Corinthians 14:26-30). In fact, functional schizotypes are prone to
congregating into cults like this and just as prone to this kind of hallucinatory
behavior. Such phenomena is well-documented in people and cults generally,
and requires no extraordinary explanation.23
Paul even tells us what inspired these hallucinations: he says the scriptures
told them that Christ would rise from the dead. So, inspired by scripture, he and
others hallucinated ajesus telling them exactly that.24 The well-studied
phenomenon of cognitive dissonance reduction could have played a powerful
role in setting all this in motion, if the followers of Jesus were desperate enough
to rationalize his death.25 But just their apocalyptic expectation that the world
was about to soon end could have been enough. Many Jews believed the final
sign of the end would be the arrival of the Messiah and the resurrection of the
dead, and Christians from the very beginning believed the resurrection of Jesus
was that sign, the "firstfruits" of that expected apocalyptic resurrection (1
Corinthians 15:20). Some Jews even expected the end would shortly follow the
death of the Messiah (Daniel 9:25-27). Christians believed Jesus was the
Messiah, and he had died. The end was nigh. Desperately needing confirmation
they were right, they imagined proof: the beginning of the resurrection in
Jesus.26
It's also possible the first Christians cl
aimed to have had these visions even
when they didn't. They could have done so simply to join, lead, or support a
movement whose moral goals they approved and believed should be
implemented and preached to society for the good of their fellow man (or his
salvation from immanent doom). We know this would have been a successful
strategy of social mobility. As long as you stuck by your story even unto death,
you would be successful in maintaining your honor and status within the group,
as well as your surviving family's. And since this would serve to inspire others to
adopt your message of moral and social reform, if you sincerely believed those
reforms would make the world a better place (or save many from God's wrath),
and you were willing to sacrifice anything, even your life, for this greater good,
then pious lies about visions and revelations would be an effective tool to
accomplish these altruistic goals.27 I've met enough `liars for Christ' to believe
this quite possible. But those same motives could also inspire genuine
hallucinations confirming what the apostles most wanted to hear, especially if
they were naturally prone to such altered states of consciousness, as some people
are and the early Christians appear to have been.
Any combination of these possibilities would explain the claim that Jesus was
raised from the dead and later seen risen. Yet everything above rests on
established knowledge, nothing very extraordinary, certainly nothing as
extraordinary as a miracle.28
Even martyrs lend no credence. Later converts were not eyewitnesses, and
from eyewitnesses we have no testimony. In fact, that socalled 'eyewitnesses'
were willing to die rather than recant their testimony to some extraordinary fact
is neither reliably attested nor inherently improbable, and thus is not
extraordinary evidence. For most of them we have no reliable record of their
deaths at all, and for the rest we have no such record that any could have avoided
death by recanting, or that their resolve rested on anything more tangible than
hallucinations or moral defiance. Christianity had many elements typical of other
martyr cults, which facts are alone sufficient to explain a willingness to die.29
Ultimately, the fact that so many other religions have willing martyrs
demonstrates that such willingness is no more likely for a true religion than a
false one.
WHERE'S THE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE?
None of the evidence is extraordinary enough to justify believing an
extraordinary explanation. All the evidence we have is ordinary and has ordinary
explanations. In fact, those ordinary explanations actually explain the evidence
better. Consider the conversion of Paul. Though we sometimes hear that James
was a skeptic until his dead brother Jesus appeared to him, in fact only the
Gospels suggest James had ever doubted, and only early in his brother's
ministry-there is no evidence he was not already a loyal believer by the time
Jesus died. Which makes Paul unique: as far as we know, he is the only skeptic
in the entire world who got to see the risen Jesus. Since Paul's turnabout is
unique, we must expect the causes of his conversion to be unique.
We may never know. We don't have much to go on, and we have little to trust.
But it would not be unlikely for just one of the hundreds opposing the church to
have come to admire the moral convictions and ideals of the Christians, then to
have become overwhelmed by guilt at having done them (or even God's plan) so
much harm, and then to have found a way out of the resulting cognitive
dissonance by hallucinating a vision of Christ, joining their movement, and, in
penance, actually helping them further their social and moral reforms. Paul
might even have feared the Christians' predictions of the coming divine
judgment were true and thus decided he had better get on board and spread the
word. The fact that his conversion elevated Paul from a relative nobody taking
orders from a Jewish elite he had come to despise to a respected and powerful
authority taking orders from no one might also have played a part. But the
hardships involved suggest he had a genuine passion for the moral and social
mission of the early Christians or even its apocalyptic convictions. And whether
he fabricated his way into a mission for the greater good, or his natural tendency
to hallucinate constructed the experience he needed to persuade him to find such
a way out of his torment, entirely natural causes of his conversion can be
imagined without proposing anything extraordinary. Though such a conjunction
of causes would be uncommon, Paul's conversion was uncommon, thus
confirming an ordinary explanation. Had the extraordinary been at work, Paul
would not have been alone.
Only an ordinary explanation can easily explain why Jesus only appeared to
die-hard believers, and then, much later, to only one of millions of outsiders
across the entire planet. If God himself were really appearing to people, and
really was on a compassionate mission to reform and save the world, there is
hardly any credible reason he would appear to only one persecutor rather than to
all of them. But if Paul's experience was entirely natural and not at all divine,
then we should expect such an event to be rare, possibly even unique-and, lo and
behold, that appears to be the case. Paul's conversion thus supports the
conclusion that Christianity originated from natural phenomena, and not from
any encounter with a walking corpse. A walking corpse-indeed a flying corpse
(Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9-11) or a teleporting corpse (Luke 24:31-37 and John
20:19-26)- could have visited Pilate, Herod, the Sanhedrin, the masses of
Jerusalem, the Roman legions, even the emperor and senate of Rome. He could
even have flown to America (as the Mormons actually believe he did), and even
China, preaching in all the temples and courts of Asia. In fact, being God, he
could have appeared to everyone on earth. He could visit me right now. Or you!
And yet, instead, besides his already fanatical followers, just one odd fellow ever
saw him.
If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world, he would have
appeared and delivered his Gospel personally to the whole world. He would not
appear only to one small group of believers and one lone outsider, in one tiny
place, just one time, two thousand years ago, and then give up. But if
Christianity originated as a natural movement inspired by ordinary
hallucinations (real or pretended), then we would expect it to arise in only one
small group, in one small place, at just one time, and especially where, as in
antiquity, regular hallucinators were often respected as holy and their
hallucinations believed to be divine communications. And that's exactly when
and where it began. The ordinary explanation thus predicts all we see, whereas
the extraordinary explanation predicts things we don't see at all.
The unreliability of the Christian documents now offered in support of the
resurrection is also just what we should expect if Christianity had an entirely
natural origin, whereas if God himself inspired its founding and wanted it to
flourish,
he would have made it impossible for forgeries and fictions to get into
His Book. Instead, all Bibles that contained the true word of God could have
been miraculously indestructible and unalterable by any human effort. No
meddler could then change what it said, or add or take anything away, and its
imperviousness to all earthly harm would confirm God's approval of what it said.
If I were God, I would appear to everyone and prevent any meddling with my
book, and since I can't be cleverer or more concerned for the salvation of the
world than God, this must be what he would do, too.30 So once again, an
ordinary explanation predicts what we see, the extraordinary explanation doesn't.
That Christianity was just a natural product of its time and culture also
predicts a great deal more. It explains why Christianity shares so many things in
common with the religions of its day (from various Jewish sects to pagan
mystery cults), including notions that would seem strange in any other cultural
context yet were common at the time, like incarnation, resurrection, blood
sacrifice, and vicarious atonement. Even the idea of a god having a son makes no
sense, except then, under the Roman Empire, when many gods were believed to
have sons.31 Christianity thus looks like an ordinary product of its time, not a
supernatural miracle from a universal God.32
CONCLUSION
That Jesus rose from the dead is an extraordinary claim, which requires
extraordinary evidence. We have none. Christianity thus fails the OTE We have
no more reason to believe Jesus rose from the dead than that a pot of fish did.
Christianity is also a theory, and as such, it makes predictions. Those predictions
didn't come true. Any ordinary explanation of all the same evidence also makes
predictions. But those predictions did come true. Christianity is therefore
disconfirmed.
This conclusion still follows even if God exists and miracles and the
supernatural are real. But it follows even more if they aren't. And I see no reason
to believe they are. I find no adequate evidence for believing any of the
metaphysical agencies the resurrection of Jesus requires. The evidence strongly
supports the conclusion that there are no angels, transmutations, flying or
teleporting holy men, or gods of any kind, much less a god routinely engaged in
producing miraculous wonders of the sort the Bible depicts throughout. Hence
it's perfectly reasonable to conclude that people simply don't rise from the dead
because we can plainly see no god is doing anything like that. The world just
doesn't work that way, as we all well know.33 In the absence of any adequate
evidence to the contrary, Jesus rising from the dead is simply no more plausible
than a mass resurrection of cooked fish or a horse birthing a rabbit. And until I'm
provided with enough evidence to warrant believing otherwise, there is no
reason I should.
NOTES
1. See Richard Carrier, "The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the
Empty Tomb," in The Empty Tomb: 7esus beyond the Grave, eds. Robert Price
and Jeffery Lowder (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), pp. 168-82.
Herodotus records the cited miracles in Histories 8.37-38, 8.55, 8.129, 7.57, and
9.120; and discusses methods and sources in Histories 1.20-21, 2.29, 2.123, 4.14,
4.29, 5.86-87, 6.53-54, 8.55, 8.65, and so on. Herodotus is just an example.
Ancient and medieval literature was filled with incredible stories no one believes
anymore. For examples, see Richard Carrier, Sense and Goodness without God
(Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2005), pp. 211-52.
2. On the priests attending the veil: Mishnah, Sheqalim, Yoma 5:1, and
Middot 1:1 h.
3. This scholarly consensus on the NT is well surveyed in Bart Ehrman, Jesus
Interrupted (New York: HarperOne, 2009), The New Testament (New York:
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 40
