Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

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by John W. Loftus

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:

 

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