Tag: David Madison

The Gospel Grift: Always Be Closing, by Robert Conner

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 11/05/2023

A major challenge in this time of declining Christian belief is finding a

hot button issue that keeps gullible followers enraged and engaged and dropping their Social Security dollars here and there into collection plates. For decades, one reliable sales pitch for evangelicals and Catholics was the specter of the homosexual menace, but as recently noted, “When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right of same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift. The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage. “We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.” I’m sure Schilling really meant to say, “We threw everything at the wall after much prayer and deliberation.”

In any case, Schilling’s prayers were answered: the transexual panic “had driven in thousands of new donors to the American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.”[1]

No question about it: money in politics gets things done. While initiatives to expand healthcare and childcare falter, and measures to prevent gun violence are shot dead at the local, state and federal levels—despite wide public support—the movement to advance Christian theocracy has achieved some stunning victories. A case in point is the rise of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADL), launched in early 1994 by a coterie of evangelical leaders that included millionaire preachers D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, Don Wildmon and Bill Bright, founder of the Campus Crusade for Christ. The ADL, designated an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, enjoys 501(c) tax exemption; it’s treated like a church, or in evangelical speak, a “legal ministry” whose basic purpose is to obliterate the separation of church and state. In 2011, tax filings pegged the ADL’s worth at $35 million which rose to $48 million by fiscal year 2015. By 2021, the ADL reported $104.5 million according to filings with the IRS.[2]

The Real Christian™ fixation on things sexual — divorce, pornography, abortion, and all things LGBTQ — is a boondoggle for lawyers, lobbyists, and “expert” witnesses. Case in point, Dr. Daniel Weiss, an endocrinologist, “said in a deposition that Do No Harm paid him about $8,000, at $325 an hour, for submitting written testimony in states like Indiana, Utah, North Dakota and Wyoming in support of bans on gender-affirming care for minors…The Indiana Attorney General’s office paid Weisss $49,691 for four weeks of consulting, according to records obtained by HuffPost.” Before its fascination with anti-trans legislation, Do No Harm “initially concentrated on fighting diversity efforts in medicine, bringing lawsuits against a health journal for offering an unpaid mentorship to people of color and challenging California’s implicit bias training for physicians.”[3]

The new anti-trans gold rush has drawn prospectors from the far corners of Baptistland. “The president of Trinity International University this week sent out a fundraising letter complaining about cultural acceptance of transgender people and linking acceptance to the recent mass shooting that left six people dead in Nashville, Tenn.” In response to Nicholas Perrin’s fanciful claim, David Cramer, a Trinity alumnus and seminary professor, said, 

“This letter is flippant, calloused and dangerous. It reads like a fundraising letter for a right-wing political action group instead of a place of theological education.”[4]

Noting that outfits such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and the American Principles Project “are behind a multi-million-dollar effort targeting LGBTQ rights,” a recent report details their strategy: 

“The groups have provided templates and support for similarly worded [“parents’ rights”] bills that seek to ban minors from attending drag shows, prevent trans youth from receiving gender-affirming care, and restrict their participation in high school sports.” 

The push to interpret human sexuality theologically has paid off: “Many Republicans have embraced that agenda, touting a ‘protect the children’ platform for 2024 that targets school policies on gender identity and how racial issues are taught.”[5] “Several states have introduced [Alliance Defending Freedom] model legislation requiring schools to get parental consent for any lessons about gender identity; a lawyer affiliated with A.D.F. helped draft a Florida measure that L.G.B.T. advocates call the ‘Don’s Say Gay’ law…In an internal briefing, the head of its legislative effort said that A.D.F. had ‘authored’ at least a hundred and thirty bills in thirty-four states last year; more than thirty were passed into law.”[6]As of this writing, 85 anti-trans bills have passed out of 583 proposed in 49 states. Clearly business is booming.

With espousing segregation now off limits as a campaign and fundraising tactic and 70% of the public — including 55% of Republicans — in favor of civil rights for LGBTQ Americans, religious fundamentalists appeared to score a long-awaited victory when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, but 85% of the American public supports abortion, in at least some circumstances which puts the theocrats in the awkward position of the dog that caught the car. 

So far the Dobbs decision has the makings of a pyrrhic victory; the prayer warriors need to pivot, but do they have anywhere left to go? Robert P. Jones, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, summed up the problem this way: 

“As someone who writes social science, I can’t tell you how many sentences I’ve begun with the words, ‘with the lone exception of white evangelical Protestants.’ Whether it is on immigration, LGBTQ issues, abortion — white evangelical Christians are increasingly outliers to the middle of the country, not just to the left…They have shrunk by nearly a third just over the last decade. Today, they are 14.5 percent of the population. And as they have shrunk, they have been hemorrhaging young people…It’s that dynamic that is driving the fundraising. There’s a kind of last-stand desperation, an apocalyptic feeling that if we don’t do something now, we will lose the country. And if we don’t do something to win it back, there will never be another opportunity.”[7]

Evangelicals — particularly those of pale complexion — understandably fear Elvis has left the building. Tidings from Western Europe and large parts of North America would tend to confirm their fears.[8] True to form, their response has been apocalyptic: burn it to the ground. Society will be reordered to reflect their “christendomic” view that the right wing of the fundamentalist church is the state and to achieve this end various “legal ministries” are quietly positioning lawyers. “Our research indicates that many of these individuals have clerked for multiple state judges, federal judges, state attorneys general, and are in the midst of working their way upwards in the echelons of government. While there does appear to be a fair gender balance amongst known Blackstone alumni, of the ones we were able to identify, they were overwhelmingly white and, of course, exclusively Christian.”[9] Current polling shows that 31% of white evangelical Protestants believe “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”[10]

But even those who expect the unexpected didn’t see Mike Johnson coming. The new Speaker of the House — elected unanimously by his Republican colleagues — has an interesting history to say the least. “Few would especially remember the role he played within the larger story of Southern Baptist higher education in recent years.” Louisiana Christian University planned to open a law school “named after Judge Paul Pressler, one of the principal architects of the ‘conservative resurgence’ in the Southern Baptist Convention.” Johnson “was named dean of the forthcoming Pressler School of Law…clearly instituted to be a training ground of Christian lawyers who would unite constitutional originalism with social conservatism and the defense of religious privilege.” 

The Pressler School of Law never opened. The Southern Association of Colleges warned the school “for significant non-compliance with multiple standards of accreditation” and in 2012 “denied an ascent from Level III to Level V accreditation that would allow the proposed law school to confer degrees.”[11] Needless to say, Johnson’s appointment at the misbegotten not-a-law-school is unmentioned on his résumé.

Nevertheless, the newly elected speaker has quite the CV: “He defended Donald Trump at both of his impeachment hearings, helped plot the Jan. 6 attempted coup, and holds hardline positions on everything from abortion to LGBTQ rights. He worked for the [Alliance Defending Freedom] from 2002 until 2010, penning op-eds against marriage equality and endorsing briefs filed by the ADF meant to criminalize sexual activity between consenting adults.”[12]                                                                                                                                                                                                        No evangelical prayer warrior’s bona fides would be complete without a defense of “young Earth creationism” and Johnson can check that box as well. Johnson represented creationist Ken Ham, helping his Ark Encounter, which claims people and dinosaurs lived at the same time, “secure millions in state tourism subsidies.” Regarding Ham’s Ark exhibit, Johnson proclaimed it “is one way to bring people to this recognition…that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events” and praised the Creation Museum for “doing maybe the best work right now in our generation of pointing people to the truth.”[13]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “Hours before the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, Johnson posted on X, “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” Later that day, Johnson was among the 147 Republicans that voted to overturn the election…Over a year after January 6, 2021, Johnson ‘continued to argue that he and his colleagues had been right to object to the election results’ on his religious podcast Truth Be Told. When asked in a press conference on Tuesday about his involvement in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, Johnson did not answer. The Republicans surrounding him ‘drown[ed] out [the reporter’s] question with laughter and booing.’”[14]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Whatever the eventual fate of American democracy, we can take at least some consolation, knowing as we must, that the stage is now set for more rounds of  Christian “fundraising,” and that the careers of preachers and pols, as well as other shysters and shills are, at least for the moment, secure.

Robert Conner is the author of The Death of Christian Belief; The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days; Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story; The Secret Gospel of Mark; and Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics. 

[1] Adam Nagourney & Jeremcy W. Peters, “How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives,” The New York Times, April 16, 2023.

[2] Adam Gabbatt, “Revealed: Christian legal non-profit funds US anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion organizations,” The Guardian, June 30, 2023.

[3] Molly Redden, “This Billionaire Hedge Funder Is Quietly Financing Anti-Trans Advocacy Across the U.S.,” huffpost.com, October 26, 2023.

[4] Mark Wingfield, “Evangelical university president seeks to raise money by casting blame on transgender people,” baptistnews.com, April 18, 2023.

[5] Russell Contreras, “The forces behind anti-trans bills across the U.S,” axios.com, October 23, 2023.

[6] David D. Kirkpatrick, “The Next Targets for the Group That Overturned Roe,” newyorker.com, October 2, 2023.

[7] Stuart Richardson, “Groups opposed to gay rights rake in millions as states debate anti-LGBTQ bills, nbcnews.com, March 23, 2022.

[8] Robert Conner, The Death of Christian Belief, 2023.

[9] Sofia Resnick & Sharona Coutts, “Not the Illuminati: How Fundamentalist Christians Are Infiltrating State and Federal Government,” rewirenewsgroup.com, May 13, 2014.

[10] Fiona André, “Poll: More religious Americans support the use of political violence,” religionnews.com, October 25, 2023.

[11] Christopher Schelin, “New speaker of the House once led never-opened Paul Pressler School of Law, baptistnews.com, October 25, 2023.

[12] Spencer MacNaughton, “Inside the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Anti-LGBTQ Org Where Mike Johnson Spent Almost a Decade,” rollingstone.com, October 29, 2023.

[13] Liz Skalka & Paul Blumenthat, “New House Speaker Thinks Creationist Museum Is ‘Pointing People To The Truth,” huffpost.com, October 26, 2023.

[14] Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria & Rebecca Crosby, “What everyone should know about the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson,” popularinformation@substack.com, October 26, 2023.

Christianity’s Addiction to Magical Thinking

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 11/03/2023

Churchgoers don’t even notice or care 

A thousand years from now, will there be people—with as little grasp of history as contemporary Christians—who worship a goddess named Minerva, because they believe that Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter stories was real? What magical powers she had! She could change herself instantly into a cat, and multiply food supplies. Will there also be a goddess Hermione, based on Hermione Granger in Harry Potter, who created a magic potion that allows the person who drinks it to assume the physical appearance of another person? Will the Fairy God Mother in Cinderella be worshipped as well, because she used a magic spell to turn a pumpkin into a splendid coach?
 
 
The New Testament authors used exactly this kind of razzle-dazzle to bring converts to the Jesus cult. These authors borrowed freely from miracle folklore of the ancient world: they depicted Jesus healing a blind man by smearing mud on his eyes; a woman was healed by touching the hem of Jesus’ garment. He transferred demons from a man into pigs, fed thousands of people with just a few loaves and fish, turned water into wine, raised a man from the dead by voice command, recommended magic potions—drinking his blood and eating his flesh—to gain eternal life. He cured a paralytic by forgiving his sins. Jesus glowed on a mountaintop while chatting with Moses and Elijah—and the voice of Yahweh came from water vapor (a cloud). Jesus walked on water and controlled with weather. At the end of his story, he floated up and away, disappearing in the clouds. 
 
There’s magic as well in the letters of the apostle Paul. He taught that by believing in your heart—and saying with your lips—that Jesus was raised from the dead, “you will be saved.” That’s a magic spell. Paul also was sure your sexual desires are cancelled (or, as he put it, crucified) if you “belong to Jesus.” 
 
The New Testament is a handbook of magic. Any one of these Jesus stories told from the pulpit evokes a feeling of awe, “Wow, wasn’t Jesus wonderful!” But a responsible study/analysis of scripture means that even the most devout readers must consider probabilities, based on how we know the world works. Which is more likely—that Jesus did such awesome things, or that the gospel authors fashioned their stories from the fantasy folklore of the time? If your favorite priest or minister claims to have pulled off miracles similar to these Jesus-deeds in the gospels, only the most gullible would be convinced. In this era of cell-phones, many churchgoers would ask for evidence: “Let’s see the pictures.” But when they believe—and adore—the magic stories in the Bible, they waive the request for evidence. 
 
There is very little curiosity about what it was like to live at the time the New Testament was written, or a grasp of how little knowledge of the world and the universe most people at that time possessed, e.g., that we live on a planet whose crust consists of seven continents and vast oceans—with a molten core at its center; that we are in a solar system that orbits the galactic center, along with billions of other solar systems. The Bible authors didn’t even know what stars are. 
 
Nor is there much curiosity among the devout about the authors of the New Testament. Who were they, after all? But it is hard to satisfy this curiosity because the gospels were written anonymously, and so many of the epistles were forgeries. Because of the apostle Paul’s own seven authentic letters, we have an abundance of information about him—which, unfortunately, is not a good thing! But from what the New Testament authors wrote, we can figure out a lot about their mind-sets—which, also unfortunately, is not a good thing. The church has done a good cover-up job by positioning these authors as saints, and this has deflected attention from the superstitions and magical thinking that they embraced and promoted.  
 
Scholars have researched and debated these realities for a long time, with devout scholars trying to put the best possible spin on ancient beliefs that should be trashed. Religions have always thrived on the appeal to belief without evidence. That’s the whole point of the story of Doubting Thomas, found only in John’s gospel (20:24-29). When the other disciples told Thomas that the resurrected Jesus had appeared to them—Thomas wasn’t there when it happened—his skepticism kicked in. A week later, Thomas was present when Jesus showed up again. He invited Thomas to touch the sword wound in his side, and that convinced him: “My Lord and my God!” And then he got a scolding from Jesus: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” 

Religions rely on this gimmick: believe what the preachers claim to know about god(s).
 
For in depth study of this issue, I recommend an article published here last November by John Loftus, Paul’s Christianity: Belief in Belief Itself. This is actually the full version of the Foreword that Loftus wrote for Robert Conner’s excellent book, The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days.
 
What are we up against when we face belief-in-belief? Loftus reports this encounter: “I asked one woman whether she honestly wanted to know if her faith was false. She said she didn’t, that she was happy, and that was that. She knew the implications if she concluded it was false. It would involve some adverse social repercussions she didn’t want, so she chose not even to consider whether she was wrong.” 
 
Which means that most churchgoers would not want to deal with the issues that Loftus discusses in this article. He opens with a quote from the Conner book: “…the greatest threat is the core feature of the Christian cult: belief in belief, the conviction that the Christian narrative is literally its own proof.” (p. 2, The Jesus Cult)
 
Hence churchgoers today—like the woman Loftus mentions—couldn’t care less how Christian theology emerged in the ancient world; their simple answer is sufficient: “Jesus the son of God was born, did his magic tricks—proof for sure he had divine powers—was sacrificed to atone for our sins, rose from the dead. This is what we have to belief to live with Jesus forever.” The heavy magic component here isn’t noticed—or more correctly, it is embraced as willingly as Harry Potter fans cheer on their hero. Conner is blunt:
 
“Christianity was a cult as presently understood from its inception, a toxic brew of apocalyptic delusion, sexual phobias and fixations, and a hierarchy of control, control of women by men, of slaves by masters, and society by the church.” (p. 2, The Jesus Cult)
 
This toxic brew of apocalyptic delusion got a jump start in the writings/teachings of the apostle Paul. The devout don’t seem to notice how much their religion has been damaged by Paul’s bad theology. No surprise. If few Christians make a practice of reading the gospels with full curiosity and skepticism engaged, I suspect far fewer read Paul’s letters. The gospels at least have stories, but Paul wrote extensively about his theological certainties based on his visions. It is obvious he had little—if any—knowledge about Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
Why doesn’t this example of Paul’s bragging shock churchgoers: “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.” (Galatians 1:11-12)
 
So, Jesus spoke to Paul directly from the spiritual realm? Here we go again with magical thinking, similar to the commonly accepted notion that gods speak to humans via dreams. Loftus notes that this is detached from reality:
 
“Hearing and heeding imaginary voices in one’s head as if they came from someone else, a god, angel, or deity, is not the mark of a sane person. Period. This insanity should be acknowledged if the voices command things that are harmful and dangerous, deceptive and false, and control much of a person’s life. That’s what we see throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments.”
 
The Old Testament prophets claim that the word of Yahweh “came to them” and Joseph supposedly learned about Mary’s pregnancy in a dream. This is yet more magical thinking. 
 
There has been a lot written about Paul’s state of mind, and Loftus sums up the conclusions of many secular thinkers: “I can affirm with a great deal of confidence that Paul was functionally insane, if he were living among rational people. But in a rational society Paul wouldn’t function well at all. He would be that homeless guy on the city street corner who proselytized with bullhorns and signs to no one, calling on people to ‘REPENT! FOR THE END IS NEAR!’” 
 
Robert Conner also wrote an essay, “Paul’s Christianity,” for Loftus’ 2019 anthology, The Case Against Miracles. Conner’s conclusion, at the end of his 25-page essay: “A more mature modern psychology with superior investigative techniques and tools can now question whether Paul of Tarsus was functionally, if not clinically, insane—and whether the religion he championed is based on delusion.” (p. 545)

                                             Loftus draws attention to Gerd Ludemann’s book, Paul: The Founder of Christianity. This title might puzzle many of the devout, who don’t appreciate New Testament chronology. That is, Paul’s version of the faith was preached long before the gospels were written, and much of their content might, in fact, be derived from his thought. On this, see especially, Mark Dykstra’s book: Mark Canonizer of Paul.
 
I’ve just scratched the surface of Loftus’ essay. It is worth careful study, especially by Christians who are inclined to ignore the origins of their faith—to protect their beliefs. Their belief in belief. Loftus also references Richard Carrier’s article, Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels, in which he states:


“From all of this one thing should be apparent: the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by many people, who at the time had little in the way of education or critical thinking skills.”
 
Christianity’s addiction to magical thinking guarantees that its foundations are incredibly weak. 

 
 
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. 

Christianity Doesn’t Survive This Fatal Knockout Blow

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 10/27/2023

One of several, actually

Even a casual reading of the Ten Commandments (either Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5) should make anyone skeptical that a supposedly good, competent god had anything to do with it. Here was this god’s big opportunity—alone with Moses on the mountaintop—to let humanity know the best moral principles to follow. Many ethicists have noticed three crucial items that are missing: (1) Thou shalt not engage in warfare; (2) Thou shalt not enslave other human beings; (3) Thou shalt not mistreat or undervalue other human beings because of the color of their skin. These omissions are surely an indication of defective, indeed bad theology.  

Slavery and racism have brought so much pain and suffering to the world. But war has been, by far, the greatest destroyer, especially as weapons have become more and more advanced—very smart people have been hired by military leaders to create devastating killing machines. This prompts us to doubt, on another level entirely, that a good god was involved in the creation of humans.

Our brains are wired for aggression, territoriality, in-group loyalties—hence our endless willingness to go to war. Those who believe in a creator god have to admit that this has to be one of his biggest screwups. In Genesis 6:5-6 we read that god realized his failure:  

“Yahweh saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And Yahweh was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” 

How could the wickedness of humans not have been god’s own design flaw? The author of Genesis was unaware that he was writing bad theology—and it got much worse with the story of the flood: god decided to kill everyone and everything on earth—with the exception of one family, and animals on the ark: “Yahweh said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.’” (verse 8)

How in the world can an all-wise god have made such a huge mistake? More bad theology—and the author of Genesis had no idea he made this goof. His god was modeled on tribal chieftains.  

The biggest challenge theologians face is to uphold the goodness of god in the face of so much suffering. Of course, the flood genocide in Genesis is fiction, but wars, genocides, and plagues have been constants in human history. An early version of the chapter on suffering in my book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, I had titled, Easy Acceptance of the Very Terrible. I dropped it because a few of my critical readers didn’t like it. But I still think this title sums up pretty well the goal of Christian apologists: to persuade the faithful that belief in god is not damaged by very terrible events that have happened for millennia—and that happen every day. 

Author Franz Kiekeben has offered extensive comments on this in an article posted here on 19 October 2023 by John Loftus: The Reality of Senseless Suffering. In his opening paragraph he notes ways in which god may be excused for allowing suffering: “…the suffering serves some greater purpose…or it may be that certain types of suffering are the only way to bring about something of immense value.” Kiekeben goes into great detail analyzing these suggestions, offering this comment at one point:

“This section therefore surveys the main suggestions that have been advanced in defense of God-condoned senseless suffering. Perhaps the simplest among them is that based on God’s supposed inscrutability. As is often said, God works in mysterious ways. Some therefore appeal to our ignorance of his purposes and intentions in order to argue that we may simply be incapable of understanding why he permits senseless suffering. Who are we to say God could not allow such a thing? This suggestion, however, misses the point of the problem. One does not need to understand what God’s reasons might be in order to see the incompatibility of a perfect being with that of suffering that is not justified.”   


There is an endless list of suffering, or horrible catastrophes—very terrible indeed—that rule out a good god who has compassion for humanity. Last October I published an article here titled, World War I: Why Didn’t It Put an End to Belief in God? That orgy of killing went on for four years: “…on average, more than 11,000 people lost their lives every single day of the conflict,” reports Holger Afflerbach, in an article titled “Did They Really Have to Fight to the Finish?” in the September 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine (p. 36, Vol. 24, No. 9). 


Human pride got in the way of shortening the war: “…the enormity of human sacrifices rendered the proposal to end the war completely unattractive. Leaders on all sides were keenly aware that something positive had to come out of the war—and only military victory could provide it.” (p. 36) There was another calamity that followed: the war contributed to the Spanish Flu Pandemic (1918-1920) that killed 25 to 50 million people—some estimates put the death toll much higher. The treaty that ended World War I was a brutal one, and fueled the hatreds that brought on World War II, with even greater loss of life. 

How can we have any tolerance for the feeble excuse that god works in mysterious ways? Mysterious indeed for a loving, caring, competent, all-powerful deity. “This is my father’s world” has a very hollow ring. Indeed, Keikeben’s sums up his article: “…the most reasonable conclusion is that there is senseless suffering. If so, then God does not exist.”


The Christian god—from what we read in the New Testament—keeps a close eye on every human: nothing escapes his notice. He keeps tracks of our words and thoughts. 


So here’s a thought experiment: how do the devout account for these four horrible events that have happened during my lifetime (and this is a very short list)? 


(1)  On 10 July 1944, 462 women and children were murdered in a church in rural France. I described this event in an article here a few months ago: God’s Bad Habit of Oversleeping(here’s a 5-minute video I did about it as well). God was not able to somehow prevent this massacre in his church?
 
(2)  On 25 July 2000, 109 people were burned to death when the Concorde burst into flames on takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport. A strip of metal had fallen off another plane and remained on the runway. It was hit by the Concorde and punctured a fuel tank. A decent gust of wind arranged by the Almighty could have swept the metal strip out of the way.    
                                              
(3)  On 26 December 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed 225,000 people, many of them babies, toddlers, and children. How does it make sense that the powerful, miracle-working god described in the Bible—who parted the Red Sea—couldn’t have stopped the undersea earthquake?
 
(4)  On 12 December 2012, Adam Lanza killed 20 kids and 6 adult staff at the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut. Was it beyond god’s almighty power to arrange for Adam to have a flat tire and crash off the road on his way to the school? Cops could have discovered his weapons…off to jail for him. 


It’s very hard to argue that any of these events happened to bring about a higher good. Indeed the higher good argument is guesswork, speculation, wishful thinking, on the part of theologians who have no evidence whatever—reliable, verifiable, objective evidence—that their god works in this way. The excuse-making is tiring.   


Here’s the hard work for devout folks in this thought experiment: never forgetting for a moment the horror/terror that the victims faced, and without resorting to the excuse that god works in mysterious ways or has a bigger plan, explain why your god just watched these things happen. Maybe your faith in this god is unwarranted. One pious woman I know, ten days after the Sandy Hook School massacre, with a nervous smile said, “God must have wanted more angels.” What more alarming example of easy acceptance of the very terrible could there be? She was willing to make her god co-murderer with the gunman. 


Earlier this week, John Loftus posted here an excerpt titled, “The Parable of the Mysterious Witness,” from John C. Wathey’s book, The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological Origins of Religious Longing. It’s a quick read, so I won’t give away the punch line of the parable. But here’s the crucial conclusion: 


“…for the believer in the omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent personal god, every horrendous act of evil in the real world, every natural disaster, every injury, illness, and genetic defect that causes senseless suffering has just such a mysterious witness: God himself.” (p. 39)


Devout Christians: please face the implications of horrendous suffering for your cherished ideas about god. 


There are other knockout blows, which I indicated in my subtitle. I’ll mention two briefly.


(1)  The Bible is an embarrassment. Many people have abandoned the faith because of the awful things they find in the Bible, the Genesis flood genocide being just one. Most of the Bible is ignored by the laity, above all because it is boring/tedious. Ask any churchgoer how his/her understanding of god has been enhanced by the book of Ezekiel, or even by Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Don’t be surprised by the awkward silence that follows.                                                                 

Scholar Hector Avalos got it right:

“If we were to go verse by verse, I suspect that 99 percent of the Bible would not even be missed.” (The End of Christianity, edited by John Loftus, p. 109) That is: those laypeople who do put time into Bible reading must be puzzled that so much of it has so little relevance to their piety or their daily lives. Yet, somehow, this ancient book is still touted as the Word of God.
 
(2)  The scandal of Christianity splintering into thousands of different, conflicting brands—many of which hate the others—can be traced to the lack of reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for god(s). Revelations, scriptures, visions, prayers, meditations: theologians and clergy are disastrously split—they cannot agree—on the supposed “information” about their god derived from these sources. Because they aren’t sources at all: they are products of imagination. As is the case with hundreds of other gods whom humans have imagined, worshipped and adored, Yahweh—and the more polished versions that theologians have come up with over the centuries—will one day be considered a fossil, a relic from the past. 
 

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. 

Hey, Devout Christians: How Did You Get Your Bible?

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 10/20/2023

Most churchgoers seem to be clueless 


Other words come to mind as well: indifferent, complacent, gullible. Quite bluntly: There is a lack of curiosity. If the church says that the Bible was inspired by a god, isn’t that good enough? In fact, it is one of the great ironies in the ongoing debate between believers and atheists that the Bible is one of Christianity’s biggest embarrassments. Atheists—anyone outside the faith, for that matter—can point to countless passages in the Bible and ask, “Is that really the god you believe in? Why do you follow/adore/worship Jesus when so much of his advice in the gospels is so bad?” Professional Christian apologists work very hard to make the Bible look good—make it look like it came from a divine author. But the huge problem is that so much of the good book is just awful.

But then there’s the process that created the Bible—as it exists in gleaming splendor on church altars, or the plain copies the devout have in their homes. How did dozens of ancient documents, written in languages that most laypeople today don’t know, end up in a book so widely revered?    

The last stage of this process is translation—and that has produced substantial confusion. There are dozens of different English Bible translations, many of them turned out by different translators with their own faith-based agendas. In a posting here a few days ago, 16 October 2023, titled Dr. Hector Avalos on Mistranslating the Bible, John Loftus showed a few pages from Avalos’ book, The End of Biblical Studies. 

[For those who follow this blog, be sure to check it every Monday. Loftus has announced his intention of posting especially value material—drawing largely on the content from the past—on a weekly basis.]

Christian apologist Bible translators take on the task of disguising what the Bible actually says, and Avalos offers examples. 

It took a long time—as the Bible documents were being written over the centuries—for the concept of ONE powerful god to emerge as orthodox. But this wasn’t the case in Deuteronomy 32:8-9; Avalos quotes the Catholic New American Bible:

“When the Most High assigned the nations their heritage, when he parceled out the descendants of Adam, He set up the boundaries of the peoples after the number of the sons of God; while the LORD’s own portion was Jacob, his hereditary share was Israel.”         

Avalos comments: “Most readers will miss the fact that ‘the Most High’ and the ‘LORD’ are two different gods, among many different gods, here. The term translated as ‘the Most High’ is probably the name of a god, pronounced as Elyon, and the term translated as ‘LORD’ corresponds to the Hebrew name we pronounce as Yahweh, ancient Israel’s main god.” (p. 43, The End of Biblical Studies)

The same translator trick, Avalos notes, is used in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning when God created…” 

“The word ‘God’ is probably best translated as the name of the specific god named ‘Elohim.’ If one were to be even more literal, one might note that Elohim is actually a plural noun, which could be translated as ‘gods’.” (p. 45, TEBS)

Since humans began imagining gods thousands of years ago, deities were given names. And the god who eventually stood out as the primary god of the Hebrews was Yahweh. Christians pay homage to this practice with the common formula, “In Jesus’ name we pray”—and even in the opening of the Lord’s Prayer, “…hallowed be thy name…” I suspect, however, if we asked Christians what their god’s name is, most would draw a blank. Yahweh wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind—primarily because translators have disguised it. Whenever we see the word Lord—in the Old Testament—in all caps, i.e., LORD, this is their substitution for Yahweh. Perhaps pious translators suspect that their god having a name makes him look like other gods. 

Just beyond the pages Loftus included in the 16 October post, we find a section titled Sugarcoating Jesus—that also in a project of translators, as Avalos explains:

“Christianity often markets itself as more inclusive and loving than the religion of the Old Testament and Judaism. However, this has required using mistranslations to hide or suppress some of the darker discontinuities between what Jesus taught and what current versions of Christianity want their audiences to think Jesus taught.” (p. 50) 

He refers specifically to the infamous Luke 14:26, in which Jesus states that hated of family, and even life itself, is required of those who want to be his disciples. Avalos adds, “According to this text, Jesus acts more like a cult leader who actively attempts to transfer allegiance from the believer’s family to himself.” (p. 50)

And he shows the efforts of some translators to disguise the plain meaning of this text; they want to deflect attention from alarming cult flavor of this quote. For an exhaustive analysis of this verse, see the 39-page chapter, “The Hateful Jesus, Luke 14:26” in Avalos’ book, The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics. The pious scholars who oversee translations have a cherished, idealized Jesus firmly embedded at the center of their faith. They can’t let even the Bible get in the way.

Some translators/editors go so far as to print the words of Jesus in red—even Luke 14:26! —to assure readers that these are the real words of Jesus. More deception. There is no way whatever to verify that the Jesus-script in the gospels is based on words that Jesus actually spoke. Churchgoers are inclined to trust their Bibles; the use of red ink for Jesus-script is a violation of that trust. 

The beginning of the Bible-assembly process is also problematic, for those who are so sure that the Bible was divinely inspired. The blunt fact is that we don’t have any of the original Bible manuscripts. The traditional names of the gospel authors—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—were added later to these anonymously written documents. The very first manuscripts of these authors have been lost. So how do we know exactly what they wrote? The invention of the printing press didn’t happen until well more than a thousand years later, so the manuscripts were copied by hand—in an era before electric lighting and eyeglasses. If the author of what we call Mark’s gospel handed his freshly finished document to three copyists, it is inevitable that each copyist would have made different errors—and those errors were repeated in copies made from those copies. So what do we have? Hundreds or even thousands of gospel copies that contain countless errors. There are scholars who devote their careers to careful examination of the old manuscripts, trying to discover the wording of the original. 

Here’s another factor: copyists sometimes added words that reflected their own theologies—or if they felt something was missing. Hence we have the fake ending of Mark’s gospel, i.e., 16:9-20, which isn’t in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel. What a strange text is included here (vv. 17-18), Jesus-script promising believers: 

“…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.”

Many modern translations put 16:9-20 in a footnote, but in two old versions of the RSV that I own, even in the footnote, vv. 17-18 are printed in red. Why would modern Christians want to be assured by Jesus that they can pick up snakes and drink poison? The translators/editors use another trick as well. The footnoted material is credited to other authorities. How do manuscripts cluttered with errors and additions qualify as authorities? Isn’t this an attempt by these pious scholars to disguise the mess that exists in the ancient manuscripts? 

What are the implications of this state of affairs for the claim that the Bible was divinely inspired? Is it even remotely credible that the Christian god who took the trouble to guide the minds of New Testament authors—to write the truth—couldn’t be bothered to protect the manuscripts from error and corruption? How does that make sense? It is even more embarrassing that the first complete manuscript of the New Testament dates from the fourth century; how many errors/additions/corruptions does it contain? How far removed is it from the content of the original manuscripts? One of the things that scholars argue/speculate a lot about is the presence of interpolations, i.e., texts that may have been inserted by copyists. There are hints that a verse or two, here and there, look out of place. What a sloppy, haphazard process. Bible god seems to have been asleep on the job.

It’s hard to argue convincingly that the Bible is the Word of God. It’s not a stretch to say that the Bible you hold in your hand today in processed Word of God. Or more correctly, the Bible is processed word of men who were confident they were somehow in tune with the divine and wrote accordingly. So much in the Bible betrays its obvious human origins: the author of Luke’s gospel—whoever he was—included the hate-your-family verse. Who wants to argue that this was divinely inspired? There is so much in the Bible that falls far short of great moral teaching—there is so much that is frankly horrifying—and this is not hard to figure out, even for ordinary churchgoers who make the effort to read/study the Bible. Which most don’t bother to do, hence far too many of the laity appear to remain clueless.     

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. 

A Mighty Fortress Is Their Faith: Protecting Ancient Superstitions

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 10/13/2023

“…an utterly wrongheaded approach to their faith…”


About ten years ago, when was I writing drafts of chapters that would be part of my 2016 book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief, I asked a few Christian friends to read and critique what I’d written. They all refused, except for one Catholic woman—showing more courage than the others—who seems to have learned something from my chapter on the gospels: “I didn’t know Jesus was supposed to come back.” I was not surprised, since so many Catholics have told me they were never encouraged to read the gospels. Another Catholic woman who refused my request was honest about her reason: she embraced her faith passionately because she is eager to see her mother again in heaven—and she wanted nothing to jeopardize that. One Protestant admitted that he worked hard to keep his faith intact, and was reluctant to read anything that might fuel his doubts.

This experience came to mind when I read John Loftus’ post here a few days ago, 9 October 2023, Ten Reasons Why Most Believers Don’t Seriously Question Their Faith (a repost from 2012). This is the third reason he mentions:

“A very large percentage of believers do not seek out disconfirming evidence for their faith, which can be decisive. They are sure of their faith so they only look for confirming evidence. This can only make them more entrenched in whatever they were raised to believe in their particular culture. But it’s an utterly wrongheaded approach to their faith.”


An utterly wrongheaded approach: Very often our identities are anchored/locked to what we were taught as children by parents and clergy. How could these trusted figures have been wrong? It’s a thought so many people refuse to entertain, secure as they are in the version of reality that seems oh so right because it has defined who they are for years. In his fifth reason, Loftus states that “…believers fear to doubt. It’s the very nature of faith in an omniscient mind-reading God that he is displeased when they doubt his promises. So in order not to displease him they do not seriously question their faith.”

But this is the tragic irony: “an omniscient mind-reading God” is a component of ancient superstition—and the Christian faith is a bundle of quite a few of these components. In the Old Testament, animal sacrifice was a major part of piety, as a way to atone for sins committed. The theologians who wrote the New Testament substituted a human sacrifice, absorbing a common cult idea that believing in a dying-rising deity assured eternal life. As Richard Carrier has put it, “…Jesus is just a late comer to the party. Yet one more dying-and-rising personal savior god. Only this time, Jewish.” (Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It, 29 March 2018)


Of course, the ecclesiastical bureaucracy doesn’t want the laity to see this background—the blatant superstitions—and works hard with ritual and ceremony, preaching and religious education (= indoctrination) to keep people in awe of Jesus their lord and savior. Loftus’ list of Ten Reasons provides helpful insight into how the church keeps members loyal—and keeps going. And what we’re up against. Religions specialize in blunting curiosity. As an elderly Catholic women admitted to me recently, “We were told not to think about what we were taught in catechism.” 


But are there ways to breach the walls of the Mighty Fortress of Faith? Something must be working, since the church—at least in North American and Western Europe—is losing ground. For details on this, see Robert Conner’s recent article here, The Lingering Death of the American Church, and his book, The Death of Christian Belief. 


If we could just build little fires of curiosity, prodding the faithful to be suspicious about the plea of clergy to take their teaching “on faith”—to go ahead and think about what is taught in Sunday School and catechism. Three things come to mind when I wonder how to breach the fortress walls.

ONE


What a novel idea: let’s start with the Bible! How could people object to that? Well, it’s risky. Catholic clergy don’t urge their parishioners to read the Bible, and despite the central role of the Bible in Protestant belief, its preachers don’t make a habit of giving Bible reading assignments every Sunday, perhaps at the end of the sermon: “Please be sure to read Paul’s Letter to the Romans this week—and write reports to hand in next Sunday.” This doesn’t happen because it is risky. Any layperson who reads the Bible carefully can detect the problems, errors, contradictions, and too much silliness—and then go running for explanations to the clergy, who don’t want that burden. 

Here are a few examples: 


In Mark 4, Jesus tells his disciples that he teaches in parable to prevent people from repenting and being forgiven; his chapter 13 is a frightful depiction of the arrival of the kingdom of god. Matthew claims that, at the moment Jesus died, lots of dead people came live in their tombs, then walked around Jerusalem on Eastern morning. Luke includes the alarming Jesus-script in which he states that his followers must hate their families and even life itself (Luke 14:26), and that his mission is a destructive one: “I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!” (Luke 12:49) 

So much of Jesus-script in the gospels is risky—here’s a list of specifics.


In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (5:24) he teaches that “…those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” How many Christian couples, on their wedding day, have Galatians 5:24 in mind as they look forward to their honeymoons? In Romans 1, Paul includes gossips and rebellious children in his list of those who deserve to die. In fact, it would be remarkable for clergy to urge the folks in the pews to read the Letter to the Romans. It’s a dense, daunting patch of scripture. Conservative Christian scholar Ben Witherington III, in his massive commentary on Romans (Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary), states on page 1: “…the goal of understanding this formidable discourse is not reached for a considerable period of time.” Isn’t this a dangerous thing to admit? Isn’t the Bible supposed to be the accessible Word of God—perfect for placement in millions of hotel rooms? 

The Bible is a perfect tool for inciting devout believers to doubt their faith. 


TWO


The state of Christianity today should make the faithful wonder, “What the hell happened?” What does it mean (1) that this religion has splintered into thousands of different, quarreling brands, and (2) no one is working toward reconciliation? The ecclesiastical bureaucracy of each brand—enjoying prestige and power—doesn’t seem to mind. There are no serious negotiations under way for Southern Baptists and Catholics to work out their disagreements about god and worship—and merge. Every Christian should be wondering, asking: “How can I be sure that my denomination is the right one—a true representation of the religion of Jesus?” No, it won’t do to assume that your clergy have it right. What would be the basis for that assumption? 


The scandal of Christian division and disharmony should prompt deep skepticism, should be a tip-off that cherished beliefs might be dead wrong. Maybe this is another way to breach the walls of the Mighty Fortress. One tool to help with this coaching is John Loftus’ 2013 book, The Outsider Test of Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True.


THREE


Does the biblical god concept fit with our contemporary knowledge of the Cosmos? I suspect it will be hard to get people to think seriously about this. Of the eight billion humans now on this planet, how many of the adults know what Edwin Hubble discovered a hundred years ago? Are five percent aware? Ten percent? Using one of the most powerful telescopes of his time, Hubble collected the data demonstrating that the Andromeda galaxy is indeed another galaxy, far beyond the Milky Way. Many astronomers at the time argued that our galaxy was the universe. 

Our perspective was changed forever: there are indeed billions of other galaxies. In December 1995, the telescope named after Hubble photographed for ten days a tiny patch of sky (about the size of a tennis ball viewed from 100 meters). The result is known as the Hubble Deep Field, and revealed almost 3,000 galaxies. 


So this is a fair question to pose to our churchgoing friends: Do you know how humanity rates in the Cosmos? The Bible deity who keeps a close watch on every human, who enjoys the aroma of burning animal sacrifices—is this idea compatible with what we now know about the universe? Theologians have worked so hard at reinventing Bible-god, to make this deity less local, provincial, tribal, petty. But we come back to the question that all theologians must answer: where can we find the reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for the god you’re constantly updating?


It’s unlikely we can breach the Mighty Fortress of faith with this approach, but it might work with a few folks. 


ANOTHER REALITY


I suspect that faith takes a hit when people face horrors they don’t expect—which their faith is supposed to protect them from—and when they contemplate so much horrendous suffering in the world. It seems that the Sunday after 9/11, church attendance was high in the New York area. I’ve wondered why. Were people looking for comfort—or answers? Why would a good, powerful, caring god have let those planes fly into the buildings? Wasn’t this horror an indictment of religion itself? The hijackers were religious fanatics, as Christopher Hitchens has pointed out:


“The nineteen suicide murderers of New York and Washington and Pennsylvania were beyond any doubt the most sincere believers on those planes. Perhaps we can hear a little less about how ‘people of faith’ possess moral advantages that others can only envy.” (p. 32, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)


When an earthquake killed hundreds of people in central Italy, the pope said that Jesus and his mother were there to comfort the survivors. What feeble theology. Jesus and his mother were powerless to prevent the earthquake? And the 2004 tsunami that killed perhaps 80,000 toddlers and babies—how does that align with “this is my father’s world”? We commonly hear, “god works in mysterious ways”—but that is so anemic, painfully pathetic. Theology has a lot to answer for. 


An utterly wrongheaded approach to their faith has prevailed for such a long time. There are signs it faces a much tougher road ahead. 

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. 

The Lingering Death of the American Church, by Robert Conner

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 10/10/2023

In recent years a number of American states have passed legislation to open Lookback windows that extend the statute of limitations in cases of sexual assault. Vermont passed such a law in 2019, followed by Nevada and Louisiana in 2021, Colorado and Arkansas in 2022, and California, New York, and Maine in 2023. Lookback windows allow previously silent victims of sexual abuse to file civil claims that often result in substantial financial penalties for organizations that harbored sexual predators.

Faced with hundreds of claims for clergy sex abuse, in 2023 the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Dioceses of Oakland and Santa Rosa, California, filed for Chapter 11 protection. According to reports, the Diocese of San Diego also plans to file for bankruptcy protection. Extending the statute of limitations for sexual assault, which Catholic leaders have vigorously opposed, has resulted in a bankruptcy stampede across the U.S.; since 2019, 6 of the 8 New York dioceses have filed for Chapter 11 protection.[1] Despite paying north of $3 billion to settle sexual abuse claims and enduring tidal waves of bad press, the culture of obstruction within the Catholic Church doesn’t appear to have materially changed. Mary Pat Fox, president of Voice of the Faithful, a group working to promote “transparency and accountability” in the Church, recently observed, “Just when we think we might be making strides in recovering from the clergy abuse crisis, we are reminded that the Church has not yet moved off the dime where clerical culture trumps the protection of our children and vulnerable adults.”[2]

Although the Catholic Church has earned its well-deserved reputation as an international viper’s nest of serial pedophile predators protected by their bosses, Protestant denominations are running a strong second place. Rarely a week passes without reports of arrests, indictments, and prison sentences for child pornography, solicitation of minors, and sexual assault by preachers, youth ministers, and teachers in Christian schools. Indeed, the frequency of such reports risks reducing them to a commonplace of public life, a form of national background noise. 

An extensive survey of sexual offenders in Protestant churches points out that there are 314,000 Protestant churches in the U.S. with 60 million members versus 17,000 Catholic parishes with 51 million members. Lacking the national hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, “instances of sexual abuse within Protestant Christianity might appear isolated when they could be part of a larger overall pattern of offender and offending behaviors.” The author notes that “35 Southern Baptist ministers were hired at churches, despite being accused of sexual misconduct or abuse, demonstrating a pattern of institutional issues in responding to alleged sexual abuse.”[3] Given that there are 18 times as many Protestant churches as there are Catholic parishes, it would seem statistically likely, mutatis mutandis, that sexual abuse of children is more common in Protestant churches.

We do have to wonder why all this is happening—indeed, has been happening for a long time. Is it unrealistic to expect that those who become Christian clergy know Jesus in their hearts more perfectly than the rank-and-file of the congregations? But this Jesus-in-their-hearts fails to have the desired impact. The apostle Paul stated confidently that “…those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). But Christianity doesn’t seem to work this way, does it? Is this just one of many goofs in the New Testament? We also have to wonder how the churches manage to survive, with the many ongoing scandals. 

Speaking of which…

Equally stunning, although nearly unreported in the national media, are the recent trends in Christian academia, epitomized by the fates of the top three evangelical seminaries in the U.S., Fuller, Trinity Evangelical, and Gordon-Conwell. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary saw enrollment decline from 1230 students in 2012 to 633 in 2021. According to news reports, the seminary plans to downsize and sell off a portion of its campus in order to continue operating. Fuller Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School have been forced to consolidate their operations and cut faculty. “Since the 21st Century began, Gordon-Conwell’s FTE [full time equivalent] total is down 34%, Fuller’s by 48% and Trinity’s by 44%.”[4]

Seminaries have merged with other institutions in order to survive; McCormick Theological Seminary and the Lutheran School of Theology merged with the University of Chicago due to falling enrollment. After 66 years of operation, the Claremont School of Theology closed shop and moved to the campus of Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Naturally, school officials have tried to put a positive spin on empty classrooms and vacant properties, but the handwriting is on the wall even if it’s gone from the blackboards — the era of the sprawling divinity school campus is over; both the money and the enrollment are drying up.

Other schools, such as Andover Newton Theological School, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ, have closed completely. The roll call of the fallen now includes schools across the denominational spectrum: Iowa Wesleyan University, Cardinal Stritch University, Finlandia University, Holy Names University, Alliance University, Chatfield College, Alderson Broaddus University, Oregon’s Concordia College, Marymount California University, St. Louis Christian College, Ohio Valley University, and Holy Family College in Wisconsin. Other religious schools are planning to merge to save themselves, and failing that, to close.

Even prior to the pandemic, more churches closed annually than opened. The pandemic clearly accelerated that process, but the root cause is simple: “The biggest reason for church closings is a decline in church membership. A March poll from Gallup found that fewer than half (47%) of Americans say they belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from more than 70% in 2000.”[5] By current estimates, some 2.7 million people leave church each year in the U.S. and the problem for the American churches is compounded by another factor: “Of course the centre of gravity for global Christianity is shifting, with Asia, Latin America and Africa now the places where church growth is taking place.”[6]

The New Christendom is the global South, the area of the world widely considered to be the most vulnerable to the ravages of global warming, violent political movements, social instability, and the eruption of new epidemic disease, in the countries millions are desperately attempting to escape. Whatever the future holds for Christianity globally, its future in North America appears increasingly bleak.

For a broader discussion of these trends, see my book, The Death of Christian Belief.
 
Robert Conner is also the author of The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days; Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story; The Secret Gospel of Mark; and Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics.

[1] Jonah McKeown, Catholic News Agency, July 24, 2023.
[2] Voice of the Faithful Statement, March 30, 2023.
[3] Andrew S. Denny, “Child Sex Abusers in Protestant Christian Churches: An Offender Typology,” Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology, 12/1, January 2, 2023.
[4] Richard Ostling, Get Religion, May 26, 2022.
[5] Yonat Shimron, religionnews.com, May 26, 2021.
[6] Bill Muehlenberg, Culture Watch, May 18, 2022.

You’re Sure You Know Jesus in Your Heart? Can You Verify That?

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 10/06/2023

Imagination plays a major role in religious certainty

The huge ecclesiastical bureaucracy has been in charge of promoting an idealized Jesus, hence it’s no wonder Christians are confident that they know Jesus in their hearts. They fail to notice that Jesus is a product, one that is presented in the most positive ways. The church has always gotten away with this because, for the most part, the laity can’t be bothered to look at the so-called evidence; that is, to verify what they’re told about Jesus. 

The supposed sources of Jesus knowledge are simply not valid. They are the equivalent of smoke and mirrors. The fervent promoters of Jesus—theologians and clergy, but beginning with the gospel authors—remind us of the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz conjuring stories and fantasies. Let’s consider a few examples.

Visual Aids

For some reason, the faithful are okay with the idea that god is invisible. That’s just one step short of imaginary—but that’s another story for another time. Since Jesus was the part of god that became visible, it has been essential to depict Jesus in stained glass, statuary, paintings—in a wide range of art forms. But all of these depictions come out of the imaginations of artists, because in all of the New Testament—this is a puzzling deficiency of the gospels—Jesus is never described. Some Christians want to believe that the gospels are based on eyewitness reports, which makes it strange that descriptions of Jesus were not included. What did he look like? Was he tall or short, handsome or homely, thin or stout? 

So for centuries, the masters of visual aids have depicted Jesus as they imagined him. If you have a cherished image of the Jesus you know in your hearts, that is the result of artistic imagination. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Caravaggio portrayed Jesus quite differently; an especially idealized   Catholic rendering probably holds greater appeal. 

Miracles Are Impressive, Right?

Holy heroes the world over, and through the centuries, have attracted followers because of the wonders they perform. And the Jesus whom Christians know in their hearts is no exception. The power of Jesus flowed through his garments, so that a sick woman who touched his hem was healed. He restored sight to a blind man by mixing his saliva with mud, and smearing it on the fellow’s eyes. He transferred demons from a man into a herd of pigs, and glowed on a mountaintop while chatting with Moses and Elijah. Changing water into wine, walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead, feeding vast crowds with a few loaves and fishes—these were also in his repertoire of wonders. If you’re already supercharged with Jesus-belief, these stories stoke your enthusiasm. 

My challenge to believers is two-fold. 

(1)  Read all of these stories carefully, critically. Are they to be taken seriously? The problem, of course, is that the gospel writers failed to provide sufficient evidence (e.g., documentation) for those of us in the modern world to say, “Sure, these things happened as described.” A careful study of the Lazarus story provokes suspicion. It is found only in John’s gospel (chapter 11)—how were the other writers unaware of it? Jesus says he was glad he didn’t get there in time to save Lazarus, because he seemed eager to score points: this miracle illustrates that he is the resurrection and the life. It looks contrived—no surprise whatever in John’s gospel.                                                                                                                                 

   The Jesus enthusiasts should be aware that such gospel stories reflect the miracle folklore that existed in the ancient world. These were the things holy heroes did, so the gospel authors included them in their accounts. What is more probable: these were bona fide miracles—or borrowings from common folklore? In Jesus: Mything in Action, Volume 1, David Fitzgerald states to issue clearly:

“Like the pagan miracle workers, Jesus cast out demons and healed the blind, deaf, and mute with mud and spit, using the same spells, incantations and techniques taught in many popular Greek magic handbooks of the time.” (p.105)

(2)  Boasting about miracles to prove a god’s power is risky business; such claims present too many problems. For insights into this, I recommend Matt McCormick’s essay, “God Would Not Perform Miracles,” in John Loftus’ 2019 anthology, The Case Against Miracles. Why does an all-powerful, loving, caring god, who knows when even a sparrow falls to the group, put up with such massive suffering in the world? If it was god’s miracle that Jesus fed 5,000 people, why are there hungry people in the world today? If Jesus healed a blind man, why are there blind people anywhere today? McCormick states the theological dilemma precisely:

“…millions of people suffer horribly from disease, famine, cruelty, torture, genocide, and death. The occurrence of a finite miracle, in the midst of so many instances of unabated suffering, suggests that the being who is responsible doesn’t know about, doesn’t care about, or doesn’t have the power to address the others.”  (p. 67)

Jesus Is Cherished in Christian Hearts Because of What He Taught

This is where we hit the hardest brick wall. The clergy make a practice of reading nice, inspiring Jesus quotes from the pulpit. They’re not hard to find. Just do a Google search for good Jesus quotes. But the clergy in hard-nosed brands of Christianity—who hope to see god’s wrath visited on sinners—are far more inclined to rely on the dreadful Jesus quotes. Devout folks who don’t bother to read/study the gospels commonly fail to notice the dreadful quotes. 

I found myself wondering how Christians can be Jesus-followers when there is so much Jesus-script in the gospels that is so very bad. Because it is unnoticed! —churchgoers don’t make a habit of reading/studying the gospels. This reality prompted me to reread the gospels to find the Jesus quotes that most of the devout—I suspect—would disagree with and flatly reject. The result of this project was my 2021 book, Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught. On the book’s website, BadThingsJesusTaught.com you’ll find a list of 292 Jesus quotes that so many Christians wouldn’t be thrilled with. There I have sorted them into four categories: Preaching About the End Time, Scary Extremism, Bad Advice & Bad Theology, and The Unreal Jesus of John’s Gospel. In the book, they’re sorted differently, into ten categories. 

Preaching About the End Time. In Mark’s gospel especially, the kingdom of god will arrive on earth soon, and there will be grim destruction, as depicted so graphically in Mark 13. 

Scary Extremism. In Matthew 10, we read that Jesus sent his disciples out to preach in villages, and he assured them: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” (vv.14-15). That’s extreme, as is the requirement that hatred of family is required for those who want to be followers of Jesus (Luke 14:26).

Bad Advice & Bad Theology. What a shame that the famous Sermon on the Mount includes a fair share of bad advice: don’t worry about what to wear or what to eat, and don’t store up treasures on earth. For so many modern Christians, this advice has no bearing on their lives. And a champion example of bad theology is found in John 6, where Jesus recommends ghoulish magic potions, i.e., eat his flesh and drink his blood, to gain eternal life. 

The Unreal Jesus of John’s Gospel. This Jesus with a colossal ego—so full of himself—is so unlike the Jesus we find in Mark, the first gospel. 

Chances are, the folks who know Jesus in their hearts haven’t paid much attention to these very negative aspects of the gospels, in fact, they’ve been guided away from such texts. Or have been convinced by clever apologists that the bad Jesus quotes aren’t that bad after all. So much energy of the clergy and theologians has to be devoted to making Jesus look good, when the gospels tell such a different story. Always bear in mind that the gospel authors were promoting the early Jesus cult, and ancient cult beliefs/fanaticisms are not shared by so many modern believers.   

Now for the second part of the brick wall that devout Christians face when they are so sure they know Jesus in their hearts. And this is even more problematic. We have no way—none whatever—of knowing what Jesus said. Every single scrap of Jesus-script in the gospels was created by the gospel authors. We are forced to this conclusion because the authors, writing decades later, don’t identify their sources: how did they find out what Jesus said? Devout scholars want to believe that “reliable oral tradition” did the trick, but this is speculation, guesswork; they have no way of verifying this claim. It doesn’t help that the author of John’s gospel (21:24)—the last to be written—mentions a disciple who “testifies to these things and has written them.” We need to see the documentation—not an anonymous author’s boast—and any novelist can create such characters.

The very devout who are sure that they know Jesus in their hearts can claim that this knowledge is guaranteed by the holy spirit—nothing else is necessary. This is a form of blind obedience to their imaginations: dammit, they just know it! And they might claim that “inspired scripture” is the source of their confidence. But oh dear, there is so much in the inspired gospels that works against this claim. Maybe it’s time for these folks to learn how critical thinking can be derailed by confirmation bias. Remember: what you feel in your heart is evidence for what you’re feeling. To back up any claim that you’re tuned in to cosmic realities, please show us where we can find reliable, verifiable, objective evidence.

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. 

Things the Clergy Won’t Tell You

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 9/29/2023

To protect thousands of different, conflicting Christian brands 

Let’s look at four forbidden topics.

ONE

Each Christian denomination—there are so many divisions, sects, cults—screens and vets those who rise to the rank of clergy. These are the champions of the faith, as it is preached across such a wide spectrum of conflicting versions. No individual congregation would tolerate any clergy who strays far from the orthodoxy cherished by that congregation. Thus we won’t find Catholic priests stepping into their pulpits on Sunday morning to explain that Mormonism or Methodism happens to be the right brand of Christianity after all. Of course not, because all clergy are paid propagandists for their own brand of the faith. That’s how they earn their living.

But that’s not something any member of the clergy will declare out loud. That is, it’s a forbidden topic. Nor will they ever challenge the folks in the pews: “How do you know that what I’m telling you is the truth? That is, ours is the true version of the Christian faith.” In general, there is a failure to urge parishioners to be curious. Here are a couple of things that could be said from the pulpit:

“Please get on your cellphones right away, do a Google search—or whatever—to find out if what I’ve said in this sermon is correct. Can my claims, my theology be verified? It’s not a good idea to just take my word for it. Be relentlessly curious.”

“Please do some homework this coming week. I’d like each one of you to read the gospel of Mark, all sixteen chapters, from start to finish. Read it carefully, critically, and come back next Sunday with a list of problems you spotted. That is, theological problems, as well as items you find hard to believe. Be relentlessly curious.” 

Chances are very slim, of course, that the paid propagandists will make such suggestions. And it is truly baffling that laypeople don’t seem to grasp that the leader of their flock has a vested interest in diverting attention from incriminating questions and embarrassing realities.     

TWO 

The scandal of Christian division and disagreement about fundamental beliefs can be traced to the very beginning, as the apostle Paul’s complaint makes clear:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!” (Galatians 1:6-8)

And it only got worse, as Philip Jenkins has pointed out: “By the year 500 or so, the churches were in absolute doctrinal disarray, a state of chaos that might seem routine to a modern American denomination, but which in the context of the time seemed like satanic anarchy.” (Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years, p.242)

Yes, it is routine. We are entitled to ask why Christians today aren’t horrified by this “state of chaos.”  “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one great followship of love throughout the whole wide earth.” What a joke. Such lyrics are part of more diversion, to keep devout folks from seeing the Christian chaos. How can their faith be the “one true faith” when it’s in such a mess? How does this possibly make sense? So this is also a forbidden topic. 

Here’s a reality: the bigger the town or city, the more different churches—i.e., denominations—there will be. This is another case where be relentlessly curious is good advice. But the clergy are not about to recommend sampling other denominations. The clergy could say to their parishioners: “For the next month, we want you all to visit other denominations on Sunday morning. Do some comparison shopping. Find out what their churches look like, what their preachers have to say, how their rituals differ from ours. Carefully compare their beliefs about Jesus with our beliefs.” In other words, be relentlessly curious why this Christian mess prevails, and shows no sign of coming to an end. Why is it that Christians cannot agree? Something is seriously wrong—which, in fact, falsifies this supposedly great religion. But the clergy won’t tell you to look critically, skeptically at this state of affairs. 

THREE

Some of the laity who show up the church every week are perhaps vaguely aware that scholarly study of the Bible is a major industry. That is, thousands of devout scholars—for several generations now—have studied the gospels and epistles intensively. Not a single word of the New Testament has escaped careful analysis. For a long time this passion was driven by the assumption—the certainty—that the Bible deserved such close attention because it had been divinely inspired. But that idea has become harder and harder to defend. The more the Bible has been studied, the more its errors, contradictions, and flaws have become so obvious. Hence there are devout scholars and apologists who make it their business to account/make excuses for the many mistakes in what was supposed to be a perfect book. 

Most of this scholarly energy and activity has gone on beyond the horizon of awareness of the folks who attend church. And the clergy have no interest in telling their parishioners, “Hey, you should be paying attention to what scholars have discovered.” Bible study at that level is dangerous. For example, for a long time now Jesus-studies have been in turmoil. Many different profiles of Jesus— “This is who he was”—have been proposed by scholars who can’t agree on which gospel texts authentically represent what Jesus said and did. Laypeople can sense this is the case: if they read Mark’s gospel, then John’s, it is so obvious that each of these authors imagined Jesus very differently. 

Why would the clergy want their followers to be thinking about these issues? Here especially, be relentlessly curious can be hazardous to the health of the church. Jesus-lord-and-savior is the primary product sold, and business would suffer if that is undermined in any way. Hence it’s unlikely that clergy, at the beginning of Advent, will say from the pulpit: “Please study carefully the Jesus birth story in Matthew 2, then do the same with Luke’s version (Luke 2:1-40). How can they we reconciled?” Nor will the clergy, at the beginning of Lent, recommend careful study of the four accounts of Easter morning in the four gospels. There is no way these accounts can be reconciled, nor is there any way they qualify as history. Back in June I published an article here, The Bible Can Be a Believer’s Worst Nightmare, offering examples of why relentless curiosity about the Bible is not encouraged. Some clergy do offer carefully crafted Bible study classes for their parishioners—that is, crafted to make excuses for/divert attention from the glaring contradictions and bad theology. 

FOUR

Any Christian layperson who might adopt relentless curiosity in studying the Bible will sooner or later come across the many books by John Loftus (e.g., Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails and The End of Christianity) and Dan Barker (e.g. God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction)—and will perceive that the Bible itself doesn’t do the faith any favors. 

But there is yet another area of study that falsifies the faith decisively; namely, the cultural and religious context in which Christianity arose. In fact this is extraordinarily complex, and requires as lot of relentless curiosity and discipline. Certainly the clergy will not point their followers in this direction: the information and insights are truly alarming. 

A very handy resource for this endeavor is a book-sized chunk, namely pages 56-234, in Richard Carrier’s 696-page On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. In pages 56-234 Carrier describes 48 cultural and religion elements that must be grasped to understand Christianity’s origins. In two earlier articles I commented on a few of these elements (here and here). 

Two very important elements are 47 & 48 (pp. 225-234). Carrier draws attention to the fact that the Jesus story conforms to the stories of so many other holy heroes worshipped in other ancient cults. The early Christian authors specialized in borrowing; they wanted their Jesus to share equal status with other cult heroes.  

“…the most ubiquitous model ‘hero’ narrative, which pagans also revered and to which the Gospel Jesus also conforms, is the fable of the ‘divine king’, what I call the Rank–Raglan hero-type, based on the two scholars who discovered and described it, Otto Rank and Lord Raglan. 188 This is a hero-type found repeated across at least fifteen known mythic heroes (including Jesus) …” (OHJ, p. 229)

“The idea of the ‘translation to heaven’ of the body of a divine king was therefore adaptable and flexible, every myth being in various ways different but in certain core respects the same. But the Gospels conform to the Romulus model most specifically.” (OHJ, p. 226)

“Romulus, of course, was also unjustly killed by the authorities (and came from a humble background, beginning his career as an orphan and a shepherd, a nobody from the hill country), and thus also overlaps the Aesop–Socratic type (see Element 46), and it’s easy to see that by combining the two, we end up with pretty much the Christian Gospel in outline…” (OHJ, p. 227)

Some clergy may offer Bible study classes, but, No, they won’t tell you that the story of Jesus was created following other common models. Ancient superstitions celebrated a variety of savior heroes: the early authors of the Jesus cult made sure he got into the club. 

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. 

GUESSINGS ABOUT GOD: Robert Conner’s review of new book by David Madison, PhD Biblical Studies

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 9/24/2023

Books that question the validity of Christian belief and the historicity of New Testament stories appear regularly these days and they raise quite a few uncomfortable questions. Did Jesus really say the things attributed to him? Was Jesus even a real person? Did the gospel writers simply make up accounts of miracles like the virgin birth? Can we harmonize the contradictory resurrection stories? Do the gospels, written decades after the life of Jesus, record any eyewitness evidence? Who actually wrote the gospels? The gospel authors never identify themselves in their texts or speak in the first person—did they even meet Jesus? Over a century of critical study of the New Testament has raised many such thorny problems.

In the newly-released Guessing About God, David Madison and Tim Sledge take a common-sense approach to a discussion of Christian belief. Although many counter-apologetic works assume some familiarity with psychology, biblical criticism, church history or philosophy, Madison asks little more of the reader than a degree of open-mindedness, access to a Bible, some familiarity with the Christian liturgy, and a willingness to argue in good faith. Like Madison, I spent part of my childhood in Indiana: “Christianity was in the drinking water where I grew up…God was just there, a given.” Questioning what is taken for granted is often painful and occurs in stages, a process tacitly acknowledged by Madison’s thoughtful and empathetic approach.

For the people of the Bible, Yahweh was never far away—an animal ritually slaughtered and burned produced “an aroma pleasing to the Lord.” (Leviticus 3:5, 16) God was close enough to Earth to smell the smoke of sacrifice, to hear the prayers, receive the praise, and observe the actions of his worshippers. The biblical God “makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.” (Psalm 104:3) Yahweh even accompanies his followers into battle: “God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory.” (Deuteronomy 20:4) However, as Madison points out, these days the God of the Bible is nowhere to be found. Modern theologians are forced to claim that God is “outside space and time,” an assertion that would have been quite incomprehensible to the Bible authors who clearly write about a God that has both location and history.

“If, say, the Space Shuttle were sent speeding toward Alpha Centauri at about 18,000 miles per hour, the journey would take about 80,000 years. And that’s to the nearest star!” Humanity no longer inhabits the biblical microcosm where “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” can be viewed from the top of “a very high mountain.” (Matthew 4:8) Indeed, the incomprehensible vastness of the universe threatens to reduce the biblical world and its gods to an invisible, irrelevant speck.

In “Problem 2 — The Bible Disproves Itself,” Madison discusses what I regard as the most fundamental problem of religious belief: sacred books as self-authenticating documents. Philosophy, history, or probability aside, “proving the Bible’s authenticity by quoting from the Bible is closed-loop reasoning…no document on the planet can be self-authenticating.” Truth claims made for a sacred book cannot be substantiated simply by quoting from that book. “This irony is not lost on atheists. The theists, in fact, are among those who deny that the Word of God comes in book form—when it’s the other guy’s book. They are like kids in a playground taunting others, ‘My book is holier than yours!’”

As Madison notes, “Without question, the Bible is the most researched and minutely studied book ever written. There are countless books, articles, scholarly journals, doctoral dissertations, and sermons about the Bible.” Bible study is an industry: “Most lay people, the average individuals in the pews, are unaware that thousands of scholars make their living studying and writing about the Bible.” Likely few believers have reflected on the economic implications of seminaries and departments of religion in secular universities, the Christian broadcasting and publishing empires, or multi-millionaire celebrity preachers with private jets. Religious conviction aside, churches are big business, motivation enough to keep theologizing, philosophizing, preaching, broadcasting and publishing. For many thousands, religious belief is a matter of employment.

The third section of Guessing About God addresses the vexed question of vetting the bona fides of sinless Jesus: “Let’s suppose that in the course of your research, you found that no information was available on this man’s life between the ages of 13 and 29. Wouldn’t this give you pause?” In point of fact, it is well known among scholars that apart from the New Testament, no contemporary evidence confirms the life and career of Jesus of Nazareth. Which raises some additional questions: “Are the Gospels accurate in their portrayal of Jesus? Is their content reliable? Are they history, or something else?”

Until relatively recently, even skeptics thought the gospel accounts retained some historical core of information based on oral traditions about Jesus. It is now known with near certainty that Mark was the first gospel written and that it is a literary construct “that has nothing to do with contemporaneous documentation.” In short, we are back to self-authenticating stories again, a claim that simply won’t bear examination. “It’s no surprise that many church leaders have about as much use for Bible scholars as laypeople do. The task of such leaders is to keep the Jesus brand alive.” 

The third section confronts the reader with the present state of the Jesus Studies debate: “Enter stage left The Mythicists. The people-of-faith New Testament scholars, those who cling to Jesus, even if only by a thread, now face a phalanx of scholars who argue that the whole story of Jesus could be fiction.” At this point, Madison focuses on the best internal support for the mythicist position generally: “In the earliest of the New Testament documents, penned long before the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth isn’t there. That is, the epistles of Paul and others don’t speak at all about Jesus of Nazareth. Their focus is a divine Christ. There seems to be no awareness of Jesus’s preaching and parables, his miracles, his disputes with religious authorities, or even the Passion narratives. It’s almost as if the real Jesus hadn’t been invented yet, which would not happen until the Gospels had been created.” 

Paul is perfectly clear about the source of his gospel: “For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:12) This statement is not a confession; it’s self-satisfied boasting. Paul and his house churches had little use for a historical Jesus: “Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.” (2 Corinthians 5:16) If this represented the attitude of the primitive church, there is even less reason to expect that believers treasured and transmitted details of Jesus’ life or that those details would eventually be enshrined in the text of the gospels. 

I’m in complete agreement with Madison’s conclusion: “The managers of the Christian brand have to hold onto the Gospels for dear life and to believe there must be shreds of evidence in Gospels to underwrite the reality of Jesus. If the Jesus-was-real folks want to paint themselves into this corner, that’s fine with me. I’m delighted with the Gospels as the playing field. I want to stick with the Gospels. They are the best tool for showing that the case for a credible Jesus is weak.”

In his final section, “How I Came to Write this Book,” Madison describes his personal transition from young Bible geek to the emergence of doubts based on deeper knowledge and reflection, to the rejection of his former belief entirely. There are several similarities between my story and the story of David Madison. Although I didn’t pursue an advanced degree in Biblical Studies, I deconverted after two years of university study, convinced that religious belief is without any factual basis. As the number of believers continues to plunge and enrollment in seminaries drops, it appears many more former adherents will be making the trek from conviction to unbelief. For such travelers, Guessing About God will prove a welcome guidebook.

Robert Conner is the author of The Death of Christian Belief; The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days; Apparitions of Jesus: The Resurrection as Ghost Story; The Secret Gospel of Mark; and Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics.

God Is Okay with Abortion—Devout Christians Tell Us So

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 9/22/2023

Without intending to!

A member of the congregation is hospitalized with cancer. So fellow parishioners organize prayer marathons to plead with their god to intervene—and it works! So they claim when their friend’s cancer has been defeated, after considerable intervention by medical professionals. What a relief that god granted their wish. 

But what are the implications of this belief? It’s a good idea to think it through.

In fact, this is an example of belief that sabotages the concept of a good god—for three reasons: (1) the guy in the next bed also had cancer, but there were no prayer marathons for him and he died. Didn’t god notice or care? An omnipotent god is influenced by prayer marathons? (2) In fact, if god is capable of curing cancer, why does he allow any cancers in the world? Why not get rid of the disease altogether—kick it off the planet? Stephen Fry was once asked what he would say to god when he dies, if god is, after all, real. His response: “Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you.” 

(3) The god-cures-cancer claim is based on the assumption that the all-knowing deity is aware of what’s happening inside our bodies. If we look at diseased cells or tissues (extracted during a biopsy) under a microscope, we can see the activity of the pathogens. Surgeons do this in their efforts to save the patient. The all-knowing deity sees it all without a microscope—and thus knows what has to be done to effect a cure. The prayer marathoners have no doubt that their god has these amazing powers of perception, this detailed knowledge of our biological mechanics. 

This is a logical extension of the certainty that their god is aware of everything that every human on the planet does or thinks. The hairs on our heads are numbered; not even a sparrow falls to earth without god being aware (Matthew 10:26-31); on the day of judgement, we’ll be held accountable for every careless word we utter (Matthew 12:36); if we don’t believe in Jesus we will suffer god’s wrath (John 3:36).  

But this confidence that god has detailed knowledge of what’s happening in our bodies at microscopic levels has major implications/complications. How can this god not know that a high percentage of fertilized human eggs never make it to maturity? That is, they abort naturally, either at the zygote or embryonic stage. In this 2012 DCB article by Jonathan MS Pearce, God Loves Abortion!, you’ll find statistics, as well as in this 2023 article on the March of Dimes website.    

What are the implications for theology? Pearce states the following:

“God is supposedly omnipotent, all-powerful; and omnibenevolent, all-loving. We also hear very often how terrible clinical abortions are. Now I don’t want to investigate clinical abortions per se but I do want to look at the standards that Christians adopt when approaching abortion, and then when they evaluate their perfect God. The general approach, rightly or wrongly, is that abortion is the murder of human beings. If this is the case, then the death, at the hands of other humans, of any and every embryo from blastocyst onwards, is bad, abhorrent and so on.
 
“The reason for talking about this is twofold. Firstly, for people who critique abortion on religious grounds, it makes somewhat of a mockery of their arguments. Secondly, again from a religious perspective, it does make God look a little callous. Nay, brutal and unloving.”
 
How can a caring, loving god heal one cancer patient, while ignoring thousands of others? How can a caring, loving god—who knows the intricate details of human anatomy—fail to fix the problems that cause so much loss of life at the zygote and embryonic levels? 

The outrage against abortion is yet another symptom of horribly derailed theology. 

The Christian crusaders against abortion seem to be under the spell of an idealized concept of god that is far removed from the wrathful god portrayed in the Bible. In one episode of Call the Midwife, about mid-wife nuns in post-war London, we find the story of a pregnant woman who has been diagnosed with cancer. She is in anguish, certain that god is judging/punishing her for something she’s done. But the nun who is caring for her is confident that is not so: “I do not believe in a God who judges.” Clearly, this benevolent sister had not read her Bible.  

We find the violent arrival of the kingdom of god described in Mark 13, which includes the warning, “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days!” (v. 17) They will be among the casualties. In I Samuel 15, Yahweh orders Saul to commit genocide: “Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (v. 3)

The Genesis flood story—Noah’s Ark—is genocide on a massive scale, carried out by god himself. The story is commonly sanitized for children by showing animals entering the ark, and featuring the rainbow at the end. Yet it is a horrifying story. If understood as an actual event—which so many Christians seem to do—the god who carried it out was not the least bit concerned with the toddlers and pregnant women who perished. Can we imagine anything more grotesque than an entertainment theme park designed to celebrate this genocide, namely Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter? Truly, derailed theology. Let’s bring the idea home: even the most devout people I know were deeply stressed in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami—a minor disaster compared to the Genesis flood. There was catastrophic loss of life, more than 200,000 killed. James A. Haught stated the obvious: 

“Horrible occurrences such as the Indian Ocean tsunami that drowned 100,000 children prove clearly that the universe isn’t administered by an all-loving invisible father. No compassionate creator would devise killer earthquake and hurricanes—or breast cancer for women and leukemia for children.”  (Religion Is Dying: Soaring Secularism in America and the West)

How can it be that the Christian god is outraged about abortions, when he tolerates massive deaths from natural disasters (on a planet he is credited with designing), and millions of abortions caused by bodily malfunctions? 

Devout conservatives are so sure that this the case, but then we run into the next major problem: how can their theology be verified? In fact, there are many Christians who are not so sure that abortion violates the will of god; who are far more sure that their god is concerned for women who, for a variety of reasons, are not ready for pregnancy and motherhood. But the fact is that no theologies can be verified. We ask believers—and we ask it repeatedly—to show us where we can find reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for the god(s) they worship, and for what these gods supposedly require of humans. 

We don’t ask this just out of idle curiosity. Devout folks, who are so sure of their theology, are determined to make it the basis for public policy. Even to the extent, in some cases we’ve heard recently, of making getting an abortion punishable by death. Christians should look around at the many different brands of their faith, and at other monotheisms. If Catholics held power and could set public policy, would Protestants welcome a ban on all contraceptives? If Muslims were suddenly in charge, would Christian women welcome mandatory hijab laws?   

Because of strident, unverifiable theologies, pushed with such fervor by their advocates, it’s been an uphill battle to achieve and preserve equal rights for people of different races, for women (for control over their own bodies) and for gay/lesbian/transgender citizens. Diversity should be welcomed, cheered, appreciated. We come up short in trying to find widely embraced theologies that support such diversity.

There is yet another factor that is rarely considered—and underappreciated: the last thing our endangered planet needs is more babies. Individual countries may fret about declining populations, but the bigger picture is a warning that more people is not a solution. We have been exploiting the planet’s resources for a long time, and there can be no doubt that climate change can be traced in large part to increased human demands and expectations. If there are genuine, credible reasons for women to seek abortions, then so be it. To help ease the burden on earth’s resources.

There has been a lot written about abortion on the Debunking Christianity Blog—check it out for a better understanding of the bad theology that drives the anti-abortion advocates.  

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.