Tag: David Madison

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By David Madison at 1/12/2024

A mighty stream of pompous theobabble

Insight into Christian origins is provided by three texts, written by a man who never met Jesus. (1) The apostle Paul states in Galatians 1:11-12: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin,for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” A revelation as he imagined it, unless you’re willing to credit visions claimed by hundreds of other religions. (2) He also imagined that Jesus was a dying-rising savior god; that is, those who believe in this hero are entitled to eternal life, as he states in Romans 10:9: “…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (3) In I Thessalonians 4:17, Paul assured his followers that their dead Christian relatives and friends would be the first to rise to meet Jesus when he arrives on the clouds: “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Yes, this toxic mix of fantasy, nonsense, and magical thinking was bouncing around in Paul’s imagination, fueled by what he had absorbed from other cults. For full details on this, see Richard Carrier’s essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It.

Paul seems to have had no clue about the real Jesus (if, indeed, there was one). All of the abundant detail about the ministry and miracles of Jesus that we find in the gospels is missing from Paul’s letters. That wasn’t what mattered to him. He was attached to the dying-rising hero, and that’s what he proclaimed so enthusiastically.

The author of Mark’s gospel (no one knows who he actually was) wrote his tale of Jesus a couple of decades later. Everything he relates could have happened in a few weeks, and we lack any information at all as to where and how he came by the stories he relates. Devout scholars argue that this author had access to reliable oral tradition and eyewitness accounts, but there is no evidence for this. We suspect he relied on his imagination, as much as Paul did. Matthew and Luke copied most of Mark’s gospel (but neglected to admit doing so) and added material from their imaginations. Again, it’s hard to avoid this conclusion since they don’t name their sources. 

But the first prize as Champion at Imagining must go to the author of John’s gospel. Anyone who has carefully studied Mark, Matthew, and Luke has to wonder where and how John came up with all the stuff he tells. He offers a baffling opening: Jesus, the Galilean peasant preacher, had been present at creation. The other gospel authors knew nothing about this—or at least they failed to mention it. If anyone had challenged John: how do you know that Jesus was present at creation, he would have no doubt claimed that his god told him. And, of course, that has been the claim of theologians—who don’t agree—for thousands of years. They can’t provide reliable, verifiable evidence, but no matter, they (somehow) know the mind of god. 

Be suspicious, very suspicious. 

In this article, I will focus on a few verses in John 14-17, a huge Jesus monologue found nowhere else. How did the other gospel authors miss it—if they used reliable oral tradition and eyewitness testimonies? How did they miss it if they were inspired by god to tell the truth about Jesus? All of the gospel authors were motivated to advance the early Jesus cult, but John 14-17 stresses the benefits of being a member of the cult: it is an example of massive overpromotion.  

John was obsessed with the certainty that knowing Jesus, belonging to Jesus, was the only way to connect with god at the most profound level—and be guaranteed eternal life. He was sure that his god—his god alone—could make sure this happened. 

Cult comfort

How well I recall, from my childhood, the opening of John 14:1-2, in the wonderful language of the King James Version: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

Verse 3 offers the ultimate assurance to the cult members: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” And here’s the whole purpose of the cult, vv. 6-7: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Near the end of this long monologue, at the start of chapter 17, Jesus “looked up to heaven” to address the Father. This reflects the cozy view of the cosmos then accepted: the Father is above, as is his dwelling with “many mansions” that the cult members will settle into, after their escape from death, thanks to the dying-rising hero Jesus. These folks are assured they are the most privileged, 14:13-14: “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”  

Because the members of the cult adore the dying-rising hero, his departure will not be a source of alarm, vv. 18-20: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” And verse 26: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.” 

Thus the author of this gospel offers his assurance that the cult will be continually guided by this Holy Spirit. The irony, of course, from our perspective many centuries later, is that the Christian cult has fought and splintered endlessly because there is so little agreement on exactly what the Holy Spirit has taught. John’s imagination was not up to the task of seeing the history of the church that was to come. 

Cult threats

Chapter 15 begins with another of the “I am” claims made by Jesus—according to this author: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.” But then comes the warning, the cult has high expectations, v. 6: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Lack of full commitment, full loyalty are not permitted. This reminds us of the brutal verse that we find in Luke’s gospel, 14:26: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Hatred against the cult

What was it like to have a conversation with the author of John’s gospel? In chapters 14-17 especially, his religious arrogance is on full display: “Ours is the only right religion, we’re privileged to be uniquely loved and favored by god.” Did he behave this way in his every-day interaction with other people? If so, it’s not hard to imagine that people didn’t like him, wanted to keep their distance: “What a pompous ass!” He must not have been too bothered by this shunning, and he created Jesus-script to explain it:

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (15:18-19)

It would seem that being hated is part of the divine plan. Maybe John just failed to notice that being arrogant and pompous produced hateful responses. 

The seeds of the most destructive hatred

One of the great sins of the New Testament is its fueling of anti-Semitism. The Jesus cult was a breakaway Jewish sect: the vast majority of Jews rejected the idea that Jesus qualified as the Messiah. The author of John’s gospel responded by lashing out. He devised this Jesus-script at chapter 8:44, addressing the Jews: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” As Hector Avalos has pointed out, “That verse later shows up on Nazi street signs.” (The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, ed. by John Loftus, p. 378) This theme is repeated in a different way in chapter 16:1-4: 

“I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me.But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.”

They have not known the Father. This blunt accusation—along with the suggestion that the Jews have the devil for their father—has caused so much damage. No doubt Martin Luther’s virulent anti-Semitic rantings derive from such texts. 

Promises to the cult 

Later in chapter 16, verses 23-24, the benefits of belonging to the cult are defined precisely: “Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” Countless devout Christians have discovered that this is simply not true.

And devotees of the cult will be protected, verse 16:33: ^“I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”  

More fluff—first rate theobabble—that emerged from this author’s imagination.

The Jesus-script prayer to the Father in chapter 17 includes this promise as well, verses 21-23: 

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” 

That they may become completely one. A bigger failed promise can hardly be imagined. 

My constant appeal to the devout is please read the gospels. Dr. Jaco Gericke has stated the harsh truth: “If you read the scriptures and are not shocked out of all your religious beliefs, you have not understood them.” (The End of Christianity, ed. by John Loftus, p. 137) This actually requires more than reading: put curiosity and critical thinking into high gear—which is so hard to do for those who have been indoctrinated, who have been persuaded from their earliest years that the Bible is a reliable source of god-information. Break out of the Sunday School mentality. Study John 14-17. It’s not hard to see that the ancient theologian who wrote these chapters did a lot of damage to the religion he was supposedly championing. Your religious beliefs are in for a major shock.  

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here. 

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By David Madison at 1/05/2024

Theology is written this way, not history

Devout scholars have been pondering—and arguing about—the four gospel endings for a long time now. Is there any way that these different endings qualify as history? So much has been written about this, so I’m going to mention here just a few of the issues that come to mind. For those who want to insist that the story of Jesus is supremely important, the end of his story—well, the end of his supposed earthly existence—should be of the best possible quality. But that’s not what we find. Let’s look at each of the four endings.

Mark: the first gospel written, and the least said 
 
Until the invention of the printing press in the fifteen century, New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand, and as old manuscripts came to light, it was obvious that a lot of errors and intentional changes had been made: we are at the mercy of scribes who worked without benefit of electric lighting and eyeglasses, and who modified texts according to their theological views. 

The ending of Mark’s gospel—in the oldest manuscripts—is a puzzle. In these documents Mark ends at 16:8. Three women had gone to the tomb, were alarmed to find a young man sitting there. He told them Jesus had been raised and would see them in Galilee. Then the abrupt ending, verse 8: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  

There has been disagreement among scholars: did the gospel really end this way? Nothing at all about the activities of the risen Jesus? There can be little doubt that this ending failed to satisfy some early readers, hence an unknown person—just an unknown as the author of the gospel itself—created additional text, verses 9-20, which shows up in later manuscripts. 

This author, no surprise, was committed to the superstitions of the Jesus cult. At the opening of Mark 16, we read that three women had gone to the tomb: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Now in verse 16 it is claimed that Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene, “from whom he had cast out seven demons.” She then told his disciples that Jesus had appeared alive to her—and they didn’t believe it. What happened next? “After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them.” (vv. 12-13)

It is a major violation of cult rules not to believe what the cult teaches. So the author of this supplement reports next that Jesus appeared to the eleven and scolded them for their doubts. There are consequences for not believing: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” (v. 16) The primary reason for belonging to the cult of a dying-rising god is to be saved. The primary purpose of this text is to promote that agenda. 

Then we find one of the most bizarre texts in the gospels: 

“And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;they will pick up snakes, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (vv. 17-18)

The use of Jesus’ name works like a magical spell. It can be used to cast out demons and heal people by touch. And why not throw into the bargain speaking in tongues, picking up snakes, and drinking poison?
We can be confident that not too many clergy these days base sermons on this text—aside from those in snake-handling Jesus-cults in Appalachia.

As soon as Jesus finished saying these goofy things (yes, goofy: believers would agree if no one told them that this is Jesus-script), he ascended to heaven: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” (v. 19) There is no hint here that forty days had gone by. This author was unaware of the ascension story that would end up in the first chapter of Acts (the forty-day reference in Acts 1:3). 

One final comment on Mark 16:9-20. Modern Bible translators/editors have been honest enough to put this text in a footnote. But their honesty has its limits. They commonly attribute variant readings to “other ancient authorities.” But they have no idea at all who wrote Mark 16:9-20, for example. How does it make sense to call him an authority? This is an attempt to cover up the scandal of so many errors having been made in the copying process. The biggest piece of dishonesty, however, is printing Jesus-script in red, as is the case with Mark 16:15-18—which includes the goofy quote. The translators/editors know very well there is no way whatever to verify that these are authentic words of Jesus. In fact, none of the Jesus-script in the gospels can be verified. 

Matthew, with a touch of Comic Book fantasy 

In the last chapter of Matthew (28) we read that two women (Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary”) went to the tomb. Now we’re told about a dazzling hero flying from the sky:

“And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow.For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.” (Matthew 28:2-4)
 
It is this angel (not a man sitting in the tomb) who tells them that Jesus has risen, and advises them to alert the disciples. But on their way, suddenly they ran into Jesus himself: “And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him.” (v. 28:9) His message for the disciples is to go on to Galilee. There indeed they met him: “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” (v. 28:17) Then we find more cult fanaticism: our holy hero has it right:
 
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spiritand teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  (28:18-20)
 
Make disciples of all nations, baptize them, teach them to obey. So much damage has been caused by scripture: The Christian colonial powers many centuries later took this as their mandate to invade, conquer, and impose their religion.  
 
Luke, and the Jesus ghost who is not a ghost
 
We read in Luke 24 that Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James—and other women as well—went to the tomb, and were surprised that the body of Jesus wasn’t there.

“… suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.’” (Luke 24:4-7)
 
The women reported what had happened to the eleven disciples and others, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” (v. 11) The next verse is missing from some manuscripts—another example of tampering. It reports that Peter rushed to the tomb, saw that it was empty, and went home amazed. 
 
What is truly amazing is that there was disbelief, that the disciples themselves hadn’t camped out at the tomb to see Jesus come alive again, as he had predicted he would do three times. 
 
Next this author displays his skill as a propagandist for the Jesus cult, i.e., the story of the risen Jesus appearing to two followers on their way to Emmaus (which is not reported in the other gospels). They don’t recognize him, and he draws them into conversation. They explain to this stranger what had happened to Jesus, and how puzzled and disappointed they are—and they get a scolding: 

“‘Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:25-27)
 
It was one of the certain beliefs of the cult that Moses himself and “all the prophets” had predicted Jesus’ role in history. 
 
The two fellows persuade Jesus to stop with them to dine at Emmaus. At the very moment when Jesus blessed the bread, “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.” (v. 31) Isn’t that what ghosts do? 
 
The two fellows rushed back to Jerusalem: “Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (v. 35) Then, suddenly, Jesus was right there among them. 
 
“They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.  He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’” (vv. 37-39)
 
To drive home the point, Jesus asked for something to eat—and they watched as he ate a piece of boiled fish. Once again, he emphasized what Moses and the prophets had taught about him, and promises what the cult members wanted to hear: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (v. 49)
 
Then they headed out to Bethany. “While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” More tampering here: “and was carried up into heaven” is missing from some manuscripts. This ascension—quite soon after the resurrection—would contradict the story in Acts 1 that Jesus ascended after forty days. 
 
Robert Conner, in his book, Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story, has demonstrated that the gospel resurrection tales were based on ghost folklore. Luke reports that Jesus ate a piece of fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost, yet he vanished from the dinner table at Emmaus the instant he broke bread. Luke seems not to have grasped his own plot flaws. 
 
John, more piling on of resurrection events
 
The author of John’s gospel was a master at exaggeration. He was obsessed with promotion of the Jesus-cult, centered on its version of a dying-rising savior (an idea absorbed from other such cults). Anyone who has carefully studied Mark, Matthew, and Luke cannot help being puzzled by John’s eccentric, inflated, and sometimes crude theology. He excelled at inflated theology: he claimed that the Galilean peasant preacher had been present at creation. How could he possibly know such a thing? 
 
His story of the raising of Lazarus (missing from the other gospels) is contrived—and crude: Jesus said he was glad he wasn’t there to save Lazarus from dying. The climax of this magical tale (the resurrection is voice activated), is Jesus’ claim that he is the resurrection and the life. Likewise his story of Doubting Thomas (also missing from the other gospels) seems designed to make the point—crucial to the cult: don’t look for evidence on what to believe: just take it on faith. 
 
John’s account of the resurrection differs substantially from the others. It is Mary Magdalene alone who goes to the tomb. She reported to Peter, and the disciple “whom Jesus loved” that Jesus was nowhere to be found. They ran to the tomb, found it empty and returned home. Mary looked in the tomb again, saw two angels dressed in white, then, turning around, saw Jesus, whom she mistook for the gardener. When she realized who it was, she went back to the disciples to report what she’d seen.

Then, in verses 19-29, we find the famous Doubting Thomas story, followed by two verses that feel very much like the end of the gospel. But then we get chapter 21, in which Jesus shows up—unrecognized—at the Sea of Tiberias, where Peter and other disciples had gone fishing. They’ve had bad luck, until Jesus tells then what to do—and they have a massive catch of fish. And that’s breakfast! 

Then Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him—to the annoyance of Peter. And readers too must wonder: What was the point? The chapter concludes with reference again to “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” with the final claim that it was this disciple who wrote down all these things about Jesus: “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” We know that his testimony is true. This is cult bragging, but it is not the way authentic history is written. The supposed events presented in John 20-21 escaped the notice of the other gospel authors. 
 
A crucial factor needs to be stressed repeatedly: there is no contemporaneous documentation (diaries, letters, transcripts, and other archival materials) by which to verify any of the events and teachings reported in the gospels. Inventing a beloved disciple (unknown to the other gospel authors) who recorded everything doesn’t alter that reality. The four different gospel endings were the inventions of four different advocates for the Jesus-cult. 
 
               
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here. 

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 12/29/2023

Embrace curiosity, question everything!

It’s probably a safe bet that Christian bookstores don’t have shelves marked, “Books by Our Atheist Critics.” There would be few sales—perhaps zero sales, because there is zero curiosity about critiques of Christianity written by serious thinkers. Thus I won’t encourage curiosity in this direction. I suspect most of the devout remain unaware of the boom in atheist publishing during the last couple of decades. This boom was stimulated by the best-selling atheist books written by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris; these seemed to open the floodgates. By my count, there are now well over 500 books—most published since 1999—that explain the falsification of theism, Christianity especially. The owner of this blog, John W. Loftus, has made a major contribution to this growing body of literature (see the books pictured at the right). Even if some churchgoers are vaguely aware of this, they look the other way.

But there are other avenues for their curiosities to take, although curiosity is not considered a virtue—at least since the time of St. Augustine (born 354), who considered curiosity a disease:  
 
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”
 
Augustine had no way of knowing that 1,500 years later humans would be in hot pursuit to figure out the secrets of nature, thereby enriching our understanding of the cosmos. But far too many Christians today are stuck in the Augustine-mode. Mike Pence doesn’t “believe” in evolution, and says he’ll ask God about it after he dies. If Pence had anything above zero-level of curiosity, he’d read a few books on biology, on the enormous impact of Darwin’s discoveries on our understanding of the world. How evolution works is not that hard to grasp. 
 
But, moving on: as a New Year Resolution for Christians, 2024, I would recommend 
 
·     Above all, curiosity about the Bible
·     Curiosity about Christianity itself, including the origins of the faith
 
It must be a great relief to the clergy that most of their parishioners are not obsessed with reading the Bible: there are 1,001 verses that are embarrassing, hard to explain, that work against their idealized versions of god and Jesus. Any careful reading of the gospels can provoke troubling doubt, as I discussed in my article here last week, Rampant Gospel Confusion. If the gospels aren’t eagerly read, the letters of the apostle Paul get even less traffic. Yet, Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a gigantic element in Christian theology. Martin Luther suggested that Christians should memorize it. No surprise there, since he was obsessed with theology, which cannot be said of contemporary believers. 
 
Many other theologians as well have been obsessed with the Letter to the Romans. C. S. Dodd began his 1932 commentary on Romans with this claim:
 
“The Epistle to the Romans is the first great work of Christian theology…For us men of Western Christendom there is probably no other single writing so deeply embedded in our heritage of thought.” (p. 9)
 
Ben Witherington III opened his 2004 commentary on Romans with this statement:
 
“Embarking on a study of Romans is rather like beginning a long journey—it requires a certain amount of preparation, patience, and faith, as the goal of understanding this formidable discourse is not reached for a considerable time.” (p. 1)
 
Shouldn’t Christian curiosity kick in if Dodd and Witherington are right? “How is our faith sustained and strengthened by what we read in Romans? Does this epistle capture our faith perfectly?” 
 
So, put curiosity into full gear and plunge into study of Romans.
 
Even in the first chapter, however, we see Paul in a bad, vindictive mood. God abandons those who refuse to acknowledge him. Somehow, “love is patient, love is kind” (I Corinthians 13:4) doesn’t apply to his god:
 
“…God gave them over to an unfit mind and to do things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die…”   (Romans 1:28-32)
 
Is this part of your faith, that gossips and rebellious children deserve to die? This is severe theology, and in the next chapter, Paul stresses the horrible punishments that his god has in store:
 
“But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life, while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but injustice, there will be wrath and fury.” (Romans 2:5-8, emphasis added)
 
A far more cherished idea among the devout is that God-Is-Love, and perhaps they do worry what will happen to them if they commit too many sins—and they can probably identify with Paul’s confusion about his own behavior, as he confesses in chapter 7 of the letter:
 
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-20, emphasis added)
 
So it can be an uphill battle to be a good person; it would seem, based on this text, that Paul knew this very well. Yet he managed to be so nasty, so vicious at the opening of the letter: those who deserve to die include gossips, rebellious children, people who are “foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” Why couldn’t Paul have cut them some slack? Good Christian folks who can identify with Paul’s self-evaluation—sin dwells within them—are probably more patient with other sinners they see around them: no, they don’t deserve to die. Paul’s theology here is extreme. 
 
Is this part of the faith of devout believers?
 
Paul’s disinterest in sex comes across in his letters as well. In Romans 13:14 he wrote, “…put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” He is even more emphatic in his letter to the Galatians: “And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Galatians 5:24) 
 
Is this also part of the faith of devout believers? 
 
The opening paragraph of Romans 13 is one of Paul’s most bizarre statements. He claims that all government authorities have been put in place by God. 
 
“Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” (v. 2) 
 
“But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.”  (v. 2)
 
It would appear that Paul was not aware that Jesus had been executed by Roman authorities. We know the story because of the gospels, but they hadn’t been written yet when Paul was active. 
 
Peter J. Brancazio has noted correctly that Paul’s teaching here “…is incredibly naïve, and the idea that governments are inherently just and God-ordained is no longer taken seriously. It is a sad fact that on too many occasions Paul’s words were cited by Christians to justify their cooperation with totalitarian regimes.” (page 458, The Bible from Cover to Cover)
 
Believers who undertake this adventure in curiosity regarding Paul’s Letter to the Romans are likely to make many other unpleasant discoveries. Theologians often live in their bubbles of delusion: how else to explain C. H. Dodd’s boast that Romans is “the first great work of Christian theology.” It is anything but. Paul was a mediocre thinker, obsessed with mediocre theology, based on—he admits it, brags about it—his hallucinations. 
 
Christian curiosity will probably bring the most stress when the origins of the faith are examined carefully. This will require a lot of courage, and willingness to look below the surface, by which I mean studying other cults that influenced early Christian beliefs. 
 
It can be a shocking discovery that there were other dying-and-rising savior cults that promised eternal life. For a thorough examination of this issue, see Richard Carrier’s 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. Carrier has pointed out that “Jesus was late to the party.” 
 
It’s also appropriate to be curious about verification that Jesus was a real person. How would a devout Christian go about citing the evidence for that? This requires a certain level of awareness about what has been going on in world of scholarly Jesus studies in recent decades. Quite a few scholars now have serious doubts that there was a historical Jesus. Vital homework here is Richard Carrier’s 600-page 2014 volume, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. In his conclusion, Carrier states:
 
“Right from the start Jesus simply looks a lot more like a mythical man than a historical one. And were he not the figure of a major world religion—if we were studying the Attis or Zalmoxis or Romulus cult instead—we would have treated Jesus that way from the start, knowing full well we need more than normal evidence to take him back out of the class of mythical persons and back into that of historical ones.”  (p. 602)

A crucial part of this book is pp. 65-234, in which Carrier describes, in detail, 48 elements that form the backdrop of Christian belief. In 2020 Carrier published Jesus From Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed About Christ, intended as a summary—aimed at the lay reader—of his primary points in On the Historicity of Jesus.

It doesn’t take too much digging—but true curiosity is a prerequisite—to discover the New Testament roadblocks to proving the historicity of Jesus. So a very good resolution for Christians for 2024 is rise to the challenge of doing serious homework about where your faith came from. 
 
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here. 

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 12/22/2023

The gospels could have been so much better

Here’s a story I’ve told before, but deeper research has revealed more details. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had submitted their gospels to the New Testament Approval Committee. They had been instructed to go to a nearby bar to await the decision on whose gospel would be chosen. So they sat there at the same table, sipping cheap booze, and there was a lot of tension: these guys didn’t like each other at all. Mark was furious that both Matthew and Luke had copied most of his gospel, without mentioning they’d done so, without giving him any credit. Mark was wondering how long it would take for plagiarism to be considered a sin. He was also annoyed they’d changed his wording whenever they saw fit.

Mark had presented Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, who would soon descend through the clouds to bring his kingdom to earth, hence he neglected to include much ethical teaching. Matthew wanted to correct this error, so he added the clumsy patchwork of Jesus-script that we now know as the Sermon on the Mount. This includes instructions that many Christians today find impossible, and simply ignore. Matthew was annoyed with Luke, who shortened the sermon, changed the wording, and said that it took place on a plain—not on a mount. Luke had added a Jesus birth story that contradicted Matthew’s birth story. Matthew said that Jesus followers had to love Jesus more than their families, but Luke thought that was too mild. He said that Jesus followers had to hate their families, and even life itself. 

John thought that Mark had messed up the story from the get-go. Mark had claimed that Jesus taught only in parables (and did so to prevent people from repenting and being forgiven), but John portrayed a Jesus who didn’t use parables at all. John included long, quite tiresome Jesus monologues that the other authors knew nothing about. John told about miracles the others had never heard of, e.g., changing water into wine, raising Lazarus from the dead. John had no use for the Eucharist at the Last Supper—instead, in his version, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. All of the events described in Mark could have happened in a matter of weeks, John stretched everything out to three years. 

The other gospel writers were turned off by John’s theological bombast. He seemed to have been drunk on theology—or was he on drugs? He added layers of theobabble unknown to the other gospel writers, even claiming that the Galilean preacher had been present at creation. Hence he was horrified that Mark reported that Jesus’ last words on the cross were, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” What blasphemy! Jesus and God were one, hence Jesus’ last words—according to John—were “It is finished.”

So these four authors sat there, glaring at each other. Then their cell phone all pinged at the same moment—and it was the same text: “Congratulations, all four of the submitted gospels have been chosen, and they will be published side by side at the opening of the New Testament.” 

A round of cursing breaks out. What a disaster. How dare they do that! “Only one of us got the story right!” How is it that no one on the selection committee could see what would happen? If these gospels are published together, there will be so much confusion. Readers will be able to see the contradictions and disagreements. Belief in Jesus will be ridiculed. 

But, not to worry. It would be many centuries before laypeople had access to the Bible, and in the meantime theologians could work out plenty of excuses. And even when laypeople did get access to the Bible, most of them wouldn’t bother to read it. Well, they wouldn’t bother to read it carefully, critically.

Serious Bible study never caught on as a favorite pastime: “We’ll trust that our clergy will tell us what we need to know/believe about the Bible.”   

Nonetheless, the four gospels published together remain an embarrassment. They are Exhibit A for anyone looking for hard evidence that the Bible could not have been divinely inspired. We have to wonder why the gospels couldn’t have been so much better. We can see the high quality of modern biographies, based on thorough research and the use of contemporaneous documentation. Is it really possible that an all-knowing god wouldn’t have foreseen this development? And that professionally trained historians would figure out that the gospels do not qualify as reliable sources of information about Jesus? 

Let’s look at a few ways in which the gospels could have been so much better.

Could Have Been So Much Better, One

So much is missing from the gospels! Why doesn’t Mark include an account of Jesus’ birth? And why would John omit one? And credibility is missing from the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, which fully qualify as fantasy literature. What about the life of Jesus before he began his ministry? Luke reports that when Jesus was twelve years old, on his family’s trip to Jerusalem, he headed to the Temple to converse with the religious leaders—and remained there for days. Mary and Joseph were well on their way home when they realized he wasn’t “among their relatives and friends.” They headed back to Jerusalem, eventually found him, and gave him a scolding. Historians don’t take this episode seriously: how would Luke know any of this? What were his sources? Who was there taking notes? Out of his imagination, Luke was portraying a holy hero at age twelve. 

Tim Sledge has identified the central issue here: 

“The temple visit at age 12 marks the start of 18 years of silence about the life of the only person who—according to Christianity—ever managed to avoid committing even one sinful thought or act. Why do we know absolutely nothing about the world’s only perfect life between the ages of 13 and 29?…I see the Bible’s silence on these years of Jesus’s life as a glaring and troubling omission.” (p. 55, Four Disturbing Questions with One Simple Answer: Breaking the Spell of Christian Belief)

“If only we had more stories of Jesus’s early years that clearly portrayed real-life examples of what doing the right thing looks like—in as many situations as possible…And what if we had the details of Jesus’s life in his twenties? How did he transition from adolescence to adulthood? How did he build strong, meaningful friendships? How did he deal with sexual temptations? …Wouldn’t you wonder why the God empowering this perfect life failed to ensure that someone wrote about events from its every year?” (pp. 55, 56 & 57, Four Disturbing Questions with One Simple Answer)

We’ve got the gospels as they are because the authors weren’t historians. Their primary agenda was promoting the theology/mythology of the Jesus cult. 

Could Have Been So Much Better, Two

And speaking of mythology, resurrection of a dead hero fully qualifies. What an embarrassment that a major world religion remains committed to this idea. Dying/rising savior cults were a feature of the religious landscape of the time, as Richard Carrier has demonstrated so well in his 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. Somehow the idea caught on that Jesus belonged to this elite group, but the gospel writers did a poor job incorporating it in their Jesus stories. Mark wrote that Jesus predicted his resurrection to his disciples three times (8:31-33, 9:30-32, 10:32-34)—but, no surprise, “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” (9:32) Even so, when Jesus was killed, how could they forget this thrice-repeated prediction? Yet they didn’t camp out near the tomb to witness the miracle, and have a welcome-back-Jesus celebration! As Robert Conner has pointed out, “Remember, in the canonical gospels nobody actually witnesses the risen Jesus leave the tomb.” (Kindle, loc 2568, Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story)

The gospels could have been so much better if the four gospel accounts of Easter morning had been consistent. The confusion becomes obvious to anyone who reads them, one after the other. Theologians, clergy, and various apologists have put considerable effort into making them look compatible, but that’s a real stretch. It’s so hard to take these accounts seriously when Matthew added the story that people who had come alive in their tombs at the moment Jesus died, walked out and toured Jerusalem on Eastern morning. Luke didn’t help either with his story of Jesus appearing, unrecognized, to disciples “on the road to Emmaus”—then poof! —vanished the moment they realized who he was. It’s very helpful to read Conner’s book referenced above: the gospel authors were influenced by ghost folklore.  

Could Have Been So Much Better, Three 

Why not be honest about what actually happened to Jesus in the end? In the first chapter of Acts we find the story of Jesus ascending above the clouds to join Yahweh in the sky. That story works only if the ancient view of the cosmos is correct. We now know a few miles overhead there is the cold and lethal radiation of space—and how to get there. 

As A. N. Wilson put it:                                                                                                          “For a modern observer, of whatever

religious beliefs, it is impossible not to know that a man ascending vertically from the Mount of Olives, by whatever means of miraculous propulsion, would pass into orbit.” (Jesus: A Life, p. 3)

Theologians now may wish to read the story symbolically—for example, “Jesus now lives and reigns with god” —but no matter, it never happened. Jesus never left planet earth, and—even if you believe that he resurrected—he died again. But the resurrection is fantasy as well, unless you’re willing to concede that the other dying/rising savior gods truly did the same thing. 

We’re stuck wondering what actually happened to Jesus. The gospels could have been so much better if they had told the truth, an accurate story, based on history, not theology.  

Could Have Been So Much Better, Four

In Mark’s gospel, 14:62, Jesus tells those attending his trial that they will see him “seated at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” Mark was perhaps influenced by the apostle Paul’s assurance in I Thessalonians 4 that dead Christians will rise from their graves to join with living believers—himself included—to meet Jesus in the air, to be with him forever. I suspect that a high percentage of Christians today pay little attention to these bits of scripture, although many believers still keep an eye on the sky, hoping desperately that Jesus will arrive to rescue the world.

This is an ancient version of the Superman comic book hero, who will come flying through the air to perform good deeds. In the Christian version, based on the gospels and Paul, Jesus will do so much more: he’ll kick out the hated Roman tyrants, he’ll save the world. There is nothing whatever to disprove that this is simply more ancient superstition, a level of nonsense that deserves no respect whatever. The gospels could have been so much better had they depicted Jesus as a great moral teacher. But the gospel authors were not satisfied with that; they were promoting a cult that glorified a hero, belief in whom guaranteed eternal life. This religious gimmick has been a constant for millennia. 

A healthy embrace of reality can break the spell of this gimmick, and a healthy embrace of skepticism and critical thinking can dimmish the hold the sloppy gospels have on Christian belief. 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten ToughProblems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.