Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

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by John W. Loftus

Oxford University Press, 1997), and in The New Interpreter:r Bible: New

  Testament Survey (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005).

  4. Literally: rejecting this principle constitutes rejecting logic. Formally,

  Bayes' theorem entails P(h I e.b) _ [P(h I b) x P(e I h.b)] / [[P(h I b) x P(e I h.b)]

  + [P(-h I b) x P(e I -h.b)] ], in which extraordinary claims are defined by P(h I b)

  -* 0, and believability by P(h I e.b) > 0.5, and a strong explanation of the

  evidence by P(e I h.b) ---> 1, which entails for an extraordinary claim to achieve

  believability (even when that claim is a strong explanation of the evidence), P(e I

  -h.b) 0. In other words, even in the best possible case, in order for an

  extraordinary explanation to be believable, the evidence (as a whole) must be

  extraordinarily improbable on any other explanation but the extraordinary one

  and in direct proportion (i.e., the more extraordinary the claim, the more

  extraordinarily improbable the evidence must otherwise be). On Bayes' theorem

  and its application to history see Richard Carrier, "Bayes' Theorem for

  Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method," in Caesar.-A

  journal forthe Critical Study of Religion and Human Values 3, no. 1 (2009): 26-

  35.

  5. The idea of "more" evidence need not mean only quantity but can include

  quality and any other measures of evidentiary strength. Formally, "more

  evidence" for any explanation h, when h is already a strong explanation and

  extraordinary, is defined according to Bayes' theorem as any evidence that

  reduces P(e I -h.b); that is, the less probable the evidence would be on any other

  explanation, the "more" it supports the extraordinary explanation. There are two

  other ways to have "more" evidence, but neither pertains here: (1) evidence that

  increases P(e I h.b) is also "more" but can never make a difference in

  believability in the case just defined; and (2) con-trafactually, if miracles like the

  resurrection were commonplace (as common as people winning lotteries, for

  example), then "resurrection" would not be an extraordinary claim, and thus

  would not require extraordinary evidence, so if God started behaving today like

  the incredible miracle worker the Bible depicts he was, that could also provide

  "more" evidence for the resurrection.

  6. For more examples and discussion see Richard Carrier, "Why I Am Not a

  Christian," The Secular Web, 2006, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/

  richard_carrier/whynotchristian.html and the epistemological analyses of Matt

  McCormick, The Case against Christ: Why Believing Is No Longer Reasonable

  (forthcoming), and Chris Hallquist, UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God-Debunking

  the Resurrection of 7esus (Reasonable Press: 2009).

  7. On these facts, see references in note 3.

  8. On the ubiquity and significance of forgeries in early Judaism and

  Christianity, see John Loftus, Why l Became an Atheist (Amherst, NY:

  Prometheus Books, 2008), pp. 167-76.

  9. See Richard Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith. Why Christianity Didn't

  Need a Miracle to Succeed (Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2009), pp. 161-218, 281-85,

  329-68, 385-405; and chapter five, "Christian Rejection of the Natural

  Philosopher" in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire (forthcoming).

  10. See, for example, 1 Corinthians 12-14; 2 Corinthians 12; Hebrews 2;

  Galatians 1:12, 2:2; Ephesians 1:17, 3:3; 1 John 4:1; Mark 16:17-18; Acts 2:16-

  18; and Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 30. For discussion of these

  phenomena in the early church, see Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the

  Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 590-99, 652-713. The

  book of Acts also claims regular hallucinations and dream communications,

  which were believed by the earliest Christians without hesitation: 2:1-4, 2:17-18,

  7:55-57, 9:3-7, 10:9-17, 16:9-10, 22:6-11, 26:12-19, 27:21-25.

  11. Again, on these facts, see references in note 3. But on what is claimed

  regarding the Gospel of John specifically, see Herman Waetjen, The Gospel of

  the Beloved Disciple-A Work in Two Editions (New York: T & T Clark, 2005);

  C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 2d ed. (Philadelphia:

  Westminster Press, 1978): pp. 15-26; C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the

  Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); see also,

  Carrier, "Spiritual Body," pp. 155-56, 191-93; Loftus, Why I Became an Atheist,

  pp. 329-32; Robert Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament (Salt Lake City:

  Signature Books, 2006), pp. 665-718; and Andrew Gregory, "The Third Gospel?

  The Relationship of John and Luke Reconsidered" in Challenging Perspectives

  on the Gospel of John, ed. John Lierman (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), pp.

  109-34 (although Gregory argues the reverse thesis, he nevertheless summarizes

  the scholarship arguing the authors of John knew the Gospel of Luke).

  12. Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 186-87.

  13. On how rampant Christian forging and meddling with documents was, see

  Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), Lost

  Christianities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), Lost Scriptures (New

  York: Oxford University Press, 2003), and Orthodox Corruption of Scripture

  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also note 8.

  14. Jennifer Maclean, "Barabbas, the Scapegoat Ritual, and the Development

  of the Passion Narrative," Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 3 (July 2007):

  pp. 309-34. That even Mark's idea of placing women at the empty tomb has a

  mythical basis, see Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 297-321.

  15. Demonstrated in Carrier, "The Plausibility of Theft," in Empty Tomb, pp.

  360-64.

  16. Arnold Ehrhardt, "Emmaus, Romulus and Apollonius," in Mullus:

  Festschrift Theodor Klauser, eds. Alfred Stuiber and Alfred Hermann (Munster,

  Westfalen: Aschendorff, 1964), pp. 93-99; and Carrier, "Spiritual Body," pp.

  180-81, 191; and Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, p. 33.

  17. See, for example, Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions (Amherst, NY:

  Prometheus Books, 1988) and Thomas Brodie, The Birthing of the New

  Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004).

  18. Contrast the chronology and depiction of events in Galatians 1-2 with that

  of Acts 9, 10, and 15, or just Galatians 1:22 with Acts 7:58-8:4. On the mixed

  reliability of Acts in general, see Richard Pervo, The Mystery of Acts (Santa

  Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2008), Richard Pervo, Acts: A Commentary

  (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), and Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith,

  pp. 173-87.

  19. See: Carrier, "Spiritual Body," with "Spiritual Body FAQ," http://www

  .richardcarrier.info/SpiritualFAQhtml. Many other scholars have argued this:

  Bruce Chilton, Rabbi Paul (New York: Doubleday, 2005), pp. 57-58; Peter

  Lampe, "Paul's Concept of a Spiritual Body," in Resurrection: Theological and

  Scientific Assessments, eds. Ted Peters et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,

  2002), pp. 103-14; Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered (Minneapolis,

  MN: Fortress Press, 1995); Dale Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT:

  Yale University Press, 1995); Adela Collins, "The Empty Tomb in the Gospel

  according to Mark," in Hermes and Athena
, eds. Eleonore Stump and Thomas

  Flint (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 107-40; C. F.

  Moule, "St. Paul and Dualism: The Pauline Conception of the Resurrection,"

  New Testament Studies 12 (1966): 106-23; and James Tabor, "Leaving the

  Bones Behind: A Resurrected Jesus Tradition with an Intact Tomb," in Sources

  of the.7esus Tradition, ed. R.J. Hoffmann (forthcoming).

  20. For this and other examples of beliefs impervious to evidence see Carrier,

  "Plausibility of Theft," pp. 355-57; and Kris Komarnitsky, Doubting Jesus'

  Resurrection (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2009), pp. 48-76, whose whole book is a must

  read.

  21. Jesus may indeed have been buried in the ground and not in a tomb:

  Komarnitsky, Doubting, pp. 10-47; Peter Kirby, "The Case against the Empty

  Tomb," in Empty Tomb, pp. 233-60.

  22. Evidence the body could have been misplaced: Richard Carrier, "The

  Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law," in Empty Tomb, pp. 369-92, with

  "Burial of Jesus FAQ," http://www.richardcarrier.info/BurialFAQhtml; and

  Jeffery Jay Lowder, "Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story," in Empty

  Tomb, pp. 261-306. Evidence it could have been stolen: Carrier, "Plausibility of

  Theft," with "Plausibility of Theft FAQ,"

  http://www.richardcarrier.info/TheftFAQhtinl.

  23. See S. Day and E. Peters, "The Incidence of Schizotypy in New Religious

  Movements," Personality and Individual Differences 27, no. 1 (July 1999): 55-

  67; C. Claridge and G. McCreery, "A Study of Hallucination in Normal

  Subjects," Personality and Individual Differences 2, no. 5 (November 1996):

  739-47.

  For an excellent discussion of this fact (and references to further scholarship),

  see Komarnitsky, Doubting, pp. 77-97, with extensive support in Carrier,

  "Spiritual Body," pp. 151-54, 182-97; "Burial of Jesus," pp. 387-88; and "Isn't

  the Idea of `Visions' Implausible?" in Carrier, "Spiritual Body FAQ,"

  http://www.richard carrier.info/SpiritualFAQhtml#vsions; Keith Parsons, "Peter

  Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli on the Hallucination Theory," in Empty Tomb, pp.

  433-51; and James Crossley, "Against the Historical Plausibility of the Empty

  Tomb Story and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus," Journal for the Study of the

  Historical Jesus 3, no. 2 (June 2005): 171-86.

  The internal and comparative evidence is even more thoroughly discussed in

  Michael Goulder, "The Baseless Fabric of a Vision," in Resurrection

  Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D'Costa (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1996), pp.

  48-61; "The Explana tory Power of Conversion Visions," in Jesus' Resurrection.-

  Fact or Figment: A Debate between William Lane Craig & Gerd Ludemann, eds.

  Paul Copan and Ronald Tacelli (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000),

  pp. 86-103; Gerd Ludemann, The Resurrection of Jesus (Minneapolis, MN:

  Fortress Press, 1994), What Really Happened to Jesus (Louisville, KY:

  Westminster John Knox, 1995), and The Resurrection of Christ(Amherst, NY:

  Prometheus Books, 2004).

  Modern examples are numerous: Roland Littlewood, "From Elsewhere:

  Prophetic Visions and Dreams among the People of the Earth," Dreaming 14,

  nos. 2-3 (June-September 2004): 94-106; Felicitas Goodman et al., Trance,

  Healing, and Hallucination (New York: Wiley, 1974); Edward Rice, John Frum

  He Come-Cargo Cults & Cargo Messiahs in the South Pacific (Garden City, NY:

  Doubleday, 1974); I. C. Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology (London:

  Routledge, 1964); Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound A Study of "Cargo"

  Cults in Melanesia, 2nd ed. (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968).

  24. On how this could have happened, see comparative evidence in

  Komarnitsky, Doubting, pp. 98-129, with additional discussion in Carrier,

  "Spiritual Body," pp. 151-52, 158-61, and "Burial of Jesus," pp. 387-88; and a

  more recent find that might have been involved: Israel Knohl, "`By Three Days,

  Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel," The

  Journal of Religion 88, no. 2 (April 2008): 147-58.

  25. Most persuasively argued in Koinarnitsky, Doubting, pp. 48-76, supported

  by Carrier, "Burial of Jesus," p. 392 n. 55.

  26. Jesus might even have enhanced his followers' apocalyptic belief by

  making it a centerpiece of his ministry. See Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic

  Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); and

  John Loftus's chapter "At Best Jesus Was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet" in the

  present volume.

  27. For why this would make sense within the culture of the time, see Carrier,

  Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 281-85; and Carrier, "Whence Christianity? A

  Meta-Theory for the Origins of Christianity," Journal of Higher Criticism 11, no.

  1 (Spring 2005): 22-34 (though "Passover" is there conflated with "Yom

  Kippur"; Jesus was figured as fulfilling both). On the powerful role of public

  honor and shame in motivating even suicidal behavior in antiquity, see Carrier,

  Not the Impos sible Faith, pp. 219-45, 2 59-96.

  28. That no miracle was needed for Christianity to succeed is extensively

  argued in Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith.

  29. See Carrier, Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 219-45, with: Alan Segal,

  "Apocalypticism and Millenarianism: The Social Backgrounds to the

  Martyrdoms in Daniel and Qumran," in Life After Death: A History of the

  Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), pp. 285-321; W. H.

  C. Frend, "Martyrdom and Political Oppression," in The Early Christian World,

  ed. Philip Esler (London: Rout ledge, 2000), 2: 815-39; Arthur Droge and James

  Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in

  Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper, 1992); Robin Lane Fox, "Persecution and

  Martyrdom," Pagans & Christians (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), pp. 419-

  92.

  30. Against the bizarre rebuttal that God wouldn't give us any good evidence

  lest he coerce us into belief, see Carrier, Senseand Goodness without God, pp.

  285-86, and "Why I Am Not a Christian" (particularly section 1, "God Is

  Silent"),

  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/whynotchristian.html#

  silentgod. That the "official" visions of Jesus ended with Paul also makes more

  sense if Jesus never really rose from the dead: Carrier, "Spiritual Body," p. 195.

  31. For yet other examples of how the evidence could have been better yet in

  fact supports the contrary, see Loftus, Why I Became an Atheist, pp. 192-96.

  That many key (yet weird) elements of the Jesus story were not unique but in

  fact typical of religions of that era, see Carrier, NottheImpossibleFaith, pp. 17-20

  and "Spiritual Body," pp. 180-82; Tryggve Mettinger, The Riddle of

  Resurrection.- "Dying and Rising Gods" in theAncientNearEast (Stockholm:

  Almgvist & Wiksell International, 2001); Alan Dundes et al., In Quest of the

  Hero (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); and Charles Talbert,

  What Is a Gospel? (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1977).

  32. Formally, on Bayes' theorem, since an extraordinary explanation entails

  P(h I b) -* 0, but the evidence (as just demonstrated) is actually more probable

 
on -h than h, entailing P(e I -h.b) > P(e I h.b), it follows that P(h I e.b) must

  necessarily be < 0.5, which means such an extraordinary explanation isn't

  believable even if P(e I -h.b) -* 0 (which still follows even if P(h I b) is merely <

  0.5, and miracles are certainly far less common than that).

  33. See Carrier, Sense and Goodness without God and "Why I Am Not a

  Christian."

  n their chapters for this part of the book, Price and Carrier have surveyed

  ample reasons not to believe the extraordinary claims of the New Testament

  (NT). But even if you believe the NT is reliable, Christianity still remains

  untenable. I'll argue that even if the NT is somewhat reliable, then Jesus was an

  apocalyptic prophet in the tradition of other Jewish apocalyptists beginning in

  the Old Testament (OT) and stretching down through John the Baptist to Paul the

  Apostle. These apocalyptists all predicted an impending apocalypse, or ending of

  the world. I'll argue that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet because the "Son

  of Man" did not come in his generation as predicted, nor did the consummation

  of the ages, also known as the eschaton, from which we get the word

  eschatology.

  This presents Christians with a serious and even fatal problem for their faith,

  which is largely unrelated to any skeptical doubts about the possibility of

  miracles. We can derive this conclusion from the relevant texts themselves.

  Either Jesus was a failed prophet or the NT isn't even somewhat reliable. Either

  way, this falsifies Christianity. If we cannot trust the NT, then the basis for

  Christian beliefs fail. But if Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, then surely he

  wouldn't get something so important so dead wrong.I

  Jewish/ Christian apocalyptic writings are encoded revelations using cryptic

  signs that predict an impending apocalypse. The authors describe horrible events

  to fall on pagans who are not among God's chosen ones. They express a sort of

  verbal eschatological revenge upon their oppressors for their wicked deeds.

  After the apocalypse is to take place, they also predicted the establishment of

  God's new kingdom on a new, refashioned earth with God's people reigning over

  the nations.2

  To see a history of these types of apocalyptic movements since the days of

  Jesus, I recommend Jonathon Kirsch's readable and illuminating book, The

  History of the End of the World.3 From the Montanists in the early second

  century CE to modern writers like Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet

  Earth, and in almost every generation in between, there have been millenarian

  predictions of the consummation of the ages. In our day, Tim LaHaye and Jerry

  B. Jenkins have vividly described the supposed impending doom of the world

  and the coming again of Jesus in their Left Behind book series.

  Various millenarian doomsday prophets have set dates for the apocalyptic end

  of the world in the great and final battle of Armageddon. They have also played

  what Jonathon Kirsch calls "pin the tail on the antiChrist" 4 by naming people

  from the Pope to Mohammed, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Henry Kissinger,

  Saddam Hussein and even Barack Obama as the antiChrist. Some of these cult

  movements have been violent and dangerous, like those initiated by Charles

  Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Marshall Applewhite.

  Given the propensity of human beings to be fascinated with the end of the

  world, and given the many doomsday prophets throughout history, it should not

  surprise us if the Jesus cult movement was just another one of them. These

  predictions and movements are a dime a dozen, so to speak, and to this date they

  have all been wrong. At best, the Jesus cult fits this same profile. And its

 

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