Monthly Archives: May 2020

Christians Reveal! How to Defeat Christianity (2 of 2)

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This is the conclusion of a response to the intriguingly titled article from Christian apologist Greg Koukl, “This One Thing Could Destroy Christianity Completely….” Part 1 of my critique is here.

The argument comes from a verse in 1 Corinthians, which bases the entirety of the Christian message on the historical truth of the Resurrection. No Resurrection means no saving message of Jesus.

Koukl helpfully lays out Christianity’s vulnerability with three facts. He says that they’re strong enough to support the hard-to-believe claim of Resurrection. I say that each one is unreliable and so are not actually facts. In addition, no set of natural claims can support a supernatural conclusion.

“Fact” 1 was that Jesus was dead and buried. (Yes, he was, but only in the story.) Let’s wrap up with the remaining two.

2. The tomb was empty on Sunday morning

Here’s Koukl’s summary.

Nearly three-quarters of all scholars agree here, since the empty tomb was never disputed by anyone at the time, even the Jews and Romans. Why was Jesus’ body never produced to quell the rumor of resurrection? Present the corpse, end the controversy. Pretty simple.

Wow—so few words with so much wrong.

The “three-quarters of all scholars” (I think he meant New Testament scholars) comes from Gary Habermas. It’s a statistic from his personal database of articles, which he hasn’t made it public, so we’re stuck taking his word for it. And who’s in the database—historians? Christian professors? Pastors and street preachers? I’d find historians whose expertise was in non-religious areas of history to be far less biased than New Testament scholars, for example.

My guess is that those motivated to write articles about the empty tomb are Christians, and almost all historians of pre-Columbian America, medieval France, or any other non-New Testament area couldn’t be bothered. (More on this statistic here and here.)

How do we know whether the empty tomb was disputed by anyone at the time? We have poor records of anything from 2000 years ago. Who would’ve gone to the expense of denying an odd claim in writing if it didn’t affect them or challenge anything dear to them? Even more so, who would bother copying that rebuttal through the generations to preserve it for us to read today?

More important, there was no “anyone at the time” to dispute the story! When Jesus was supposed to have died, the empty tomb was in a book that wouldn’t be written for decades. Seeing it from the other end of the timeline, in the 70s or 80s when the gospels were written, those authors weren’t constrained by history. They could write whatever they wanted to.

Said another way, the empty tomb didn’t exist until the author of Mark wrote “He is not here; see the place where they laid him” roughly forty years after Jesus supposedly died. Was Mark documenting history? That must be demonstrated. Until then, it’s just a story.

Koukl’s “Present the corpse, end the controversy” isn’t realistic. Who’d be motivated to head off any rumor that Jesus was risen? Even if Christians caused trouble in later decades or centuries, in the two or three days after the crucifixion, any Jewish or Roman authority would assume that this fringe Jewish sect was finished. Its troublesome leader was now dead; problem solved. As for the worry about the rumor of resurrection, that, too, was in a gospel that wouldn’t exist for decades.

Skeptics give a dozen reasons why Christianity’s claims are nonsense, and that doesn’t destroy Christianity today. Why imagine it any different 2000 years ago? Even if you imagine naysayers poised to contradict the gospels (and why would you?), contrary facts have little impact on a religion.

3. The disciples were transformed

Koukl now argues that the disciples took the difficult route, proving the depth of their motivation.

Even the most critical scholars acknowledge that the disciples proclaimed the resurrection at their peril because they thought they’d encountered the risen Christ. Many paid the ultimate price—including the skeptic James and the former executioner of Christians, Paul—choosing death rather than retraction.

Let me make a quick aside about Christian scholarship. Many Christian professors must sign a doctrinal statement (statement of faith) before they can work at a Christian college. Their job then depends on their abiding by each point in the doctrinal statement. If the statement says that Jesus’s disciples chose death over denying the divinity of Jesus (say), what does it mean when they write a paper or give a lecture with that conclusion? They were obliged to reach that conclusion, so their objectivity is suspect.

A doctrinal statement is a commitment to a conclusion before any research is done, and researchers can’t honestly follow the facts when some conclusions are off limits. In other fields, practitioners recuse themselves when they can’t be objective, and Christian scholars should do the same. I talk about the problem in depth here and here.

Let’s move on to “paying the ultimate price” as a martyr. This is the “Who would die for a lie?” argument, which asks why a disciple would go to his death knowing that Jesus didn’t resurrect as the story says.

Our first question: why do we think any disciples died as martyrs? Only the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee is given in the Bible. The oldest source with claims about all twelve disciples, “On the Twelve Apostles,” was written roughly 150 years after the last supposed martyrdom. This is too old to be reliable, but the story gets muddier still when you toss in contradicting accounts written even later. These give us tradition, not history.

Second, on what charges were these disciples convicted? To support the argument, the crime must merit a death penalty (something like treason or sedition) and be such that denying Jesus’s resurrection would get you released. “On the Twelve Apostles” doesn’t tell us what any disciple was charged with, if anything. It only claims to document how they died. That means we have no evidence, not even poor evidence, that they would’ve been released by saying the magic words, “Okay, I’ll admit it—Jesus didn’t rise from the dead!”

And with that, the “Who would die for a lie?” argument fails. (More here.)

Punch line

Every fact is false and even the grounds for his argument are gone, but Koukl still springs his nonexistent trap.

Which brings us to our final, most important question: What single explanation makes sense of all of the historical details that virtually every academic in the field agrees on—the death of Jesus, the empty tomb, and the transformation of the disciples and the skeptics? What single interpretation accounts for all the facts?

That it’s a story.

Jesus was buried in the story. The tomb was empty in the story. The disciples became bold proclaimers of the divinity of Jesus in the story. Don’t take us to a certain point in the story and then demand to know, given the constraints of the story to that point, what alternative we could have to a supernatural explanation.

This is Robert M. Price’s yellow brick road problem: “Of course there’s an Emerald City. Where else would the yellow brick road go to?” Or, in this case, “Of course Jesus rose from the dead. What else explains the empty tomb?” Step outside of it and see the story, and you’ll discover that nothing about it constrains you to accept a supernatural conclusion.

In the beginning of part 1, I pointed to C.S. Lewis’s “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument and noted that a fourth possibility, Legend, was the obvious explanation. How could Lewis or any apologist today make the argument without that omission being apparent? And with Koukl’s “The one thing that could destroy Christianity” argument, we have a similar mystery. How can anyone make this argument without “It’s just a story!” springing to mind?

Koukl wraps up:

Here it is, the answer Peter gives—the only answer that fits all the evidence: “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Those who disagree must solve this problem: “What is a better explanation of the facts?”

 That it’s a story.

[Want to share the summary below? Click to tweet.]

Show the Resurrection false to defeat Christianity 1. Natural claims won’t support a supernatural conclusion. 2. The gospels say Jesus resurrected (but then “Goldilocks” says she ran from 3 bears). 3. Regular historians expunge the supernatural. 4. When Jesus died, “the empty tomb” was in a book that wouldn’t be written for decades. 5. Mandatory faith statements shackle Christians’ scholarship. 6. We don’t know that the disciples died as martyrs. 7. The best explanation of the gospels’ resurrection story: it’s a story!

For further reading: 8 Lessons Learned from the Minimal Facts Argument

They say [swearing’s] not necessary,
as if that should stop one from doing it.
It’s not necessary to have colored socks! . . .
Things not being necessary are what makes life interesting.
— Stephen Fry (Joys of Swearing video @1:50)

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Image from Tom Edgington, CC license
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Christians Reveal! How to Defeat Christianity

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Christian apologist Greg Koukl recently wrote an article with a provocative title: “This One Thing Could Destroy Christianity Completely…” (4/1/2020). Who doesn’t want to know what he’s thinking about?

I’ll get to the argument in a moment. First let’s recall another argument that has an interesting similarity, C.S. Lewis’s “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord.” In brief, Lewis takes the gospel story and demands to know what could explain Jesus’s claims of divinity. Jesus could be a liar (he’s wrong and he knows it), or he could be a lunatic (he’s wrong but doesn’t know it). Lewis rejects those two and so, by process of elimination, Jesus must be right, so he’s the Lord! (I respond here and here.)

Someone hearing Lewis’s argument for the first time who’s even just a bit skeptical will probably think of a fourth possibility, that Jesus in the gospels is legend. This very reasonable, natural option screams out as the best explanation, and yet apologists will carefully run through the standard three options, concluding with Lord with what I can only imagine are crossed arms and a smile, and ignoring the elephantine Legend in the room. Do they never think of it? Do they know this option but hope their audience is too unsophisticated to raise it? We’ll be left with a similar puzzle at the end of Koukl’s example.

Let’s return to Koukl’s article. This Achilles’ heel of Christianity is spelled out in the verse from Paul that says that if Jesus was not raised, “we [Christians] are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19).

So if we overturn the idea of the Resurrection as a real historical event, Christianity falls. Koukl says,

If Jesus rose from the dead, then everything critical to Christianity is true. If Jesus stayed dead, everything uniquely important about Christianity is false. It’s all or nothing.

Let’s accept that challenge and attack the Resurrection. Helpfully, Koukl gives three “facts” that argue for the Resurrection as a historical event. Let’s see how factual they actually are.

0. What evidence would prove a resurrection?

Koukl wants to establish the ground rules first. To prove a resurrection, he says, you’d need to show that (1) someone was dead and then (2) later alive. With that, you could claim a resurrection.

But read the gospels carefully, and you don’t find that! Matthew and Mark make clear that no men witnessed the death, so they don’t satisfy the first requirement. It’s true that women disciples saw Jesus dead, but conservative scholars like Koukl emphasize that women at that time were unreliable witnesses. (They do this to defend their argument that women finding the empty tomb was surprising and therefore historically accurate. I respond to that here.)

Apologists can clumsily salvage their argument by pointing out that Luke and John don’t have this problem. With these gospels, the male disciples stay to witness the death. But by pointing this out, they’ve created a new problem, that the Bible is contradictory and therefore unreliable.

The three facts that establish the Resurrection as historical

Here are the three claimed facts: Jesus was dead and buried, the tomb was empty, and the disciples were transformed. To emphasize how unremarkable these claims are, Koukl says:

Each piece of evidence is about something completely earthly. Nothing supernatural, only natural—a corpse, an empty tomb, and apparent personal encounters of some sort changing doubters into believers.

That’s true, these are all natural claims. But he will try to use three natural claims to conclude that Jesus rose from the dead, an incredible supernatural event. Something doesn’t seem right about that.

The general worldview-changing document

Let’s take a step back and abstract Koukl’s argument. The gospel account is compelling enough that he thinks nonbelievers should use it to conclude that the supernatural exists. But that’s a lot to expect of mere words on paper, that it would force on the reader a complete worldview change.

To show that he’s being fair and not privileging the gospel story, I want Koukl to give another example of words on paper that would convince open-minded people to change their worldview. Call it Story X. If Koukl thinks that the gospel story should convince us, he must first show us that Story X is so compelling that it convinces him. That’s right—Koukl needs to show us that it’s possible for an all-natural set of words on paper to convince a thoughtful person by first being sufficiently convinced himself to radically change his own worldview away from Christianity.

This challenge is impossible for him to meet because he begins with the assumption that the gospels are unique. He won’t grant that any other document has the worldview-changing power of the gospels, but with this he reveals his bias: you should believe his document (and only his document) just because. Sorry, that’s not an honest discussion.

With that his entire project fails, but let’s continue and examine the three supposed facts.

1. Jesus was dead and buried

As I noted above, half the gospels don’t meet the resurrection-witness requirement Koukl himself defined: first seeing Jesus dead and then seeing him alive. According to Matthew, at Jesus’s arrest, “all the disciples deserted him and fled” (Matthew 26:56b).

But Koukl ignores this. To argue the first part of the miracle, that Jesus was dead, he steps through the torture, crucifixion, and burial. He wraps up:

So, based on the record, is it reasonable to conclude Jesus survived that ordeal?

Based on what record? The record that says that Jesus didn’t survive that ordeal??

Yes, based on the record of the gospels, Jesus died. And based on the record of “Goldilocks,” the little girl ran away when woken by the three bears. That doesn’t mean it actually happened.

There’s another problem. In his description of the burial, Koukl mentioned the application of spices by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and the wrapping of the body with strips of linen. This comes from John. But both points conflict with claims that the famous fourteenth-century Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus in that (1) the image on that shroud doesn’t show the enormous quantity of spices, and (2) the Shroud is a single large rectangle rather than strips (which was the Jewish custom  according to John 19:40b). This argument contradicts Koukl’s belief that the Shroud is authentic (podcast @22:00).

Conclude with a response to the final two arguments, the tomb was empty and the disciples were transformed: Part 2.

If prayer worked,
911 would connect you to a church.
— seen on the internet

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Image from darkday, CC license
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Six Christian Principles Used to Give the Bible a Pass (3 of 3)

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Here are the final two Christian principles for interpreting the Bible. Part 1 of this series is here.

Principle #5: Begin with the assumption that the Bible is infallible and inerrant.

Here are two excerpts from the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a joint project of more than 200 evangelical leaders:

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant.

We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

There is no interest here in following evidence. You don’t need to make a reasoned argument if you’re simply going to declare this as a faith position. “The Bible is manmade” has been ruled out, not because the evidence points elsewhere but simply as fiat.

What’s the point of scholarship in this environment? This is intellectual in the same way that discussing comic book superheroes is intellectual. Sure, much mental energy can be spent on the project and interesting ideas can come from it, but in the end it’s just pretend. Neither is built on reality. Neither is guided by evidence. A Christian conclusion becomes just one stake in the field of Dogma. Without any empirical evidence to ground this view, other Christians will simply put their stakes where they please.

Principle 6: Avoid claims built on uncertain grounds

From HIB:

Don’t build a doctrine upon a single verse or an uncertain textual reading. We should not erect an entire teaching or system of doctrine upon a verse in isolation from its context, or which has dubious textual support. Christian doctrine should be built upon passages which exist in the original manuscripts and can be confirmed through the science of textual criticism.

I agree that the manuscript tradition should be reliable, but keep in mind how difficult it is to know what the originals said. Scholars do a good job deciding which of two variant traditions is the older one. What they don’t do well is deciding between two traditions when they only have copies of one (more). We have a centuries-long dark ages before the earliest codices of the fourth century—who knows how many hundreds or thousands of changes were made that we don’t know of?

The principle argues that we not build anything substantial on a verse that is an outlier. That sounds sensible until we consider that this conflict—the general consensus versus the outlier—means that there’s a contradiction in the Bible. Principle #4 declares that contradictions don’t exist, but of course that’s a declaration built on nothing.

The second problem is that one of the most important Christian doctrines, the Trinity, violates this principle. There are a few verses that speak of the three persons separately in one sentence (for example, “Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” from Matthew 28:19), but this is a long way from the elaborate Trinitarian handwaving in the Athanasian Creed of around 500 CE. This final principle is the only one that makes sense, and it tells us that there’s scant evidence for Paul or Jesus having a Trinitarian concept of God.

I wonder why Christians don’t apply these generous principles to other religions’ holy books.

The Bible is the world’s oldest, longest-running, most widespread,
and least deservedly respected Rorschach Test.
You can look at it and see whatever you want.
And everybody does.
— Richard S. Russell

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/17/16.)

Image from Photo Editing Services Tucia, CC license

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Six Christian Principles Used to Give the Bible a Pass (2 of 3)

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Starting with the popular Christian principle, “Let the easy Bible passages interpret the hard ones,” we’ve been examining six principles for biblical interpretation (beginning with this post). Here are two more.

Principle #3: “Description is different than approval”

What do you do when you read in the Old Testament about God’s support for slavery, demand for genocide, or some other bad action? Source 10P (see part 1 for sources) says:

Sometimes critics of the Bible (or critics of Christianity in general) point to an evil or corrupt situation described in the Bible to argue God (or Christianity) approves of the situation (or is the source of the evil). Remember, just because a Biblical author writes about something, this does not mean God condones it or supports it.

This principle attempts to tap dance away from God’s approval of things we find horrifying today.

Here’s an exercise that will explore what God does and doesn’t approval of. Consider the following lists, each containing three items mentioned in the Bible. For each list, think about what connects the items in that list and how it is different from the other lists:

  1. Murder, lying, and stealing
  2. Slavery, genocide, and polygamy
  3. Weights and measures for commerce, sheep herding, and eating meat

The items in List 1 (murder, lying, and stealing) are all prohibited in Exodus 20. They’re typically numbered 6, 8, and 9 in the Ten Commandments. (As an aside, it’s interesting that they’re not on the second version of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 34, the one that found its way into the Ark of the Covenant.)

The items in List 2 (slavery, genocide, and polygamy) are never prohibited. They can be restricted, however (for example, elders are to have just one wife according to 1 Timothy 3:2), and rules can apply (for example, slaves can be beaten, but not so much that they die according to Exodus 21:20).

The items in List 3 (weights and measures, herding, and meat) are also never prohibited. Rules can apply to them as well (“The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him”).

Lists 2 and 3 are distinguishable only in how we judge them—we prohibit List 2 but accept List 3—but that’s not in the Bible. This leaves us with the biblical view of prohibited things in List 1 versus acceptable things (though possibly regulated by God-given rules) in Lists 2 and 3.

Only modern sensibilities tell us that slavery, genocide, and polygamy are bad. Not only did God regulate slavery and polygamy just like he did accurate weights and measures, Jesus had nothing bad to say about them either.

This principle, “Description is different than approval,” is a transparent attempt to give God a pass when he goes off his meds. It fails.

Principle #4: Begin with the assumption that the Bible has no contradictions

I must admit that this one sounds much like principle #1. Perhaps this repetition is my excuse to shine more light on it. Here’s the principle stated in “How to Interpret the Bible” (HIB):

The “analogy of faith” is a reformed hermeneutical principle which states that, since all scriptures are harmoniously united with no essential contradictions, therefore, every proposed interpretation of any passage must be compared with what the other parts of the Bible teach. In other words, the body of doctrine, which the scriptures as a whole proclaim will not be contradicted in any way by any passage. Therefore, if two or three different interpretations of a verse are equally possible, any interpretation that contradicts the clear teaching of any other scriptures must be ruled out from the beginning.

So before you say, “Aha—there’s a contradiction here in the Bible,” go back and rethink that, because there are no contradictions. (The first rule of Look for Contradictions in the Bible Club is that there are no contradictions in the Bible.)

You can see the problem. “There are no contradictions” would be a conclusion, not a starting assumption, and there is a huge mountain to climb before this principle can be validated.

As an aside, this principle, where Christians simply declare that the Bible has no contradictions, has a parallel in Islam. The Principle of Abrogation states that if there’s a contradiction in the Quran, the later passage (that is, the one written at a later date) wins out over the earlier. Problem solved—no more contradiction.

As damning as the Muslim principle is (how could the Prophet have gotten it wrong the first time?), at least it’s a rule. Principle 4 simply makes a groundless assertion.

Let’s let the Bible itself speak on this.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).

You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh which I command you (Deuteronomy 4:2).

The verse from 2 Timothy tells us that any passage, even the ones that make Christians squirm, should be read and followed, and the one from Deuteronomy says that the Bible must be allowed to speak for itself and not be treated like a marionette. So don’t pick the more pleasing verse and pretend the “difficult” verse doesn’t exist because the Bible makes clear there are no difficult verses!

Christians, if you must step in to sanitize your holy book, think about what that means.

Concluded in part 3.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says.
He is always convinced that it says what he means.
— George Bernard Shaw

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/15/16.)

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Six Christian Principles Used to Give the Bible a Pass

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In Christians’ Damning Refuge in “Difficult Verses,” we looked at a Christian response to the well-known Dawkins Quote (“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction . . .”). This response tried to distinguish between “clear” and “hard” passages in the Bible. But is the problem that some verses are unclear or that they’re actually unpleasant, with clear/hard simply a misdirection to justify ignoring verses where God’s barbaric behavior is on display?

Christians will tell me to look without bias at what the Bible says and I’ll do my best, but I have no patience for when they don’t follow their own rules. Or when their own rules demand that they be biased.

Principle #1: The Bible is always right

(So principle #2 must be: if the Bible is ever wrong, see principle #1.)

This is from the New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (at least they admit that it takes an entire encyclopedia to document all the Bible difficulties).

Be fully persuaded in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it.

Nope. If you want respect for your holy book, you can earn it. I won’t just give it to you.

This one is too stupid to respond to, and “What is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence” (Hitchens’ Razor).

I’ll critique five additional Christian recommendations for how to interpret the Bible that are arguably more reasonable. We’ll start with an elaboration of the one we’ve just seen, “take the clearer passages to interpret the harder passages.”

Two of my sources are “How to Interpret the Bible” and “Ten principles when considering alleged Bible contradictions.” From this point forward, I’ll abbreviate these as HIB and 10P. (I’ve responded to 10P in depth here.)

Principle #2: Let the Bible clarify the Bible

Or, as HIB puts it, “The Clear Must Interpret the Unclear”:

Murky passages can often be clarified by other scriptures which address the particular topic in a more straightforward way. For example, a very specific interpretation of the highly symbolic visions of John’s apocalypse [that is, the book of Revelation], may never “trump” the clear teachings of Paul’s epistles, which are more didactic and less symbolic, and hence clearer.

Here’s another way to see that clear/unclear simply means pleasing/displeasing. When someone says that verse A is clear and B unclear (so we should focus on verse A, ignore verse B, and pretend we didn’t notice any contradiction), ask why that’s the order. Why isn’t B the clear one? For example, Paul says, “[All I’ve been saying is] that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23). But this is contradicted by (1) the zombies that came out of their graves on the death of Jesus (Matthew 27:52), who were actually the first to rise from the dead, and (2) the gospels themselves, which say that Jesus had a long ministry before his resurrection, not after as Paul says it. Why do the gospels trump Paul?

Or take the duration of Jesus’s time on earth after the resurrection. Why is it popularly seen as forty days (Acts 1:3)? Why not one day (Luke 24:51)?

Here’s another example. Harold Camping famously made a fool of himself when he predicted the Rapture on May 21, 2011. The first lesson from the Camping fiasco is that testability is not the prophet’s friend. If you’re going to predict something, make it vague to give you plausible deniability after your inevitable failure. (John Hagee didn’t get the message when he said in 2013, “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.” Whoops—wrong again.)

But the second lesson is that the Bible is a sock puppet that can say almost anything you want. For example, Christian apologists, embarrassed by Camping’s date for the Last Days®, quoted Paul speaking about the end: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. . . . Destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman” (1 Thessalonians 5:2–3). That is, the end must be a surprise, and Camping couldn’t have correctly calculated the date of the Rapture.

Camping trumped that by quoting the very next verse: “But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.” That is, the chosen won’t be surprised by the end.

The lack of biblical clarity and the inadequacy of Principle #2 are made particularly clear by Christianity’s 45,000 denominations (and counting). If the Bible were the clear message from an omniscient Creator, there would be just one message. Christians should stop granting themselves license to harmonize conflicting passages and realize that the Bible is simply a collection of manmade books that, being written by different people at different times, align imperfectly.

Continue with part 2.

You give me the awful impression,
I hate to have to say it,
of someone who hasn’t read
any of the arguments against your position ever.
— Christopher Hitchens

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/15/16.)

Image from Forsaken Fotos, CC license
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BSR 14: A Loving God Wouldn’t Send People to Hell

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Most teachers pass a higher fraction of students than God allows into heaven. For those people who don’t deserve heaven, don’t blame them—blame their Maker.

Summary of reply: Christians need to rethink the entrance requirements for heaven, since Jesus made clear that most of us won’t make it in. And why should someone be punished for failing to seek the Christian god instead of any other?

(These Bite-Size Replies are responses to “Quick Shots,” brief Christian responses to atheist challenges. The introduction to this series is here.)

Challenge to the Christian: A loving God would not send people to hell.

Christian response #1: You can’t expect everyone, good and bad, to get the same treatment in the afterlife. “A loving God must also be just or His love is little more than an empty expression.”

Does that apply to Grandma as well? Is her unconditional love an “empty expression” since it’s not tied to justice? Uh, no—this lockstep connection between love and justice is imaginary.

The apologist wants to explore different entry requirements for the afterlife. How fair would it be if the same afterlife were given to Jeffrey Dahmer (sentenced to 16 life sentences for many murders) and Anne Frank (died at age 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just weeks before liberation by the Allies)?

But if you think that’s unfair, consider the Christian view: Dahmer, who became a born-again Christian in prison, is now in heaven, while Anne Frank, a Jew who never accepted Jesus as her savior, is in hell. How fair is that?

And the Bible is inconsistent about how one gets into heaven. If God is offended by our sin, he could just forgive, like we do. In fact, he does forgive. In one instance, God says about Israel, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The parable of the sheep and the goats says that good works get you in. And anyway, everyone already has a ticket to heaven. Paul in Romans 5:18–19 says that no one had to opt in to get Adam’s sin, so no one needs to opt in to get Jesus’s salvation.

You get into heaven if you’ve accepted Jesus, not if you’re a good person? Christians need to work on that story. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #2: God doesn’t send people to hell, and he won’t force people to live with him in heaven.

Jesus said about the afterlife, “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” This is God’s perfect plan? Most teachers pass a higher fraction of students than God allows into heaven. God made hell knowing that most people would end up there, and yet somehow he gets no blame for creating this catastrophe. Nope—if people are imperfect, blame their Maker.

A popular Christian rationalization is that God wants us in heaven, but he’s not going to force us there. And yet in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man is sent to hell after death, it’s clear that he really doesn’t want to be there. No, you wouldn’t have to drag him to the Good Place.

Sending people to hell isn’t the loving thing to do. This “God is a gentleman and won’t force himself on anyone” argument is ridiculous. God should know how relationships work, and this isn’t it. If God wants people to love him, he can be worthy of love. Being indistinguishable from nonexistent isn’t the way to get there.

Most teachers pass a higher fraction of students than God allows into heaven. For those people who don’t deserve heaven, don’t blame them—blame their Maker. [Click to tweet]

Christian response #3: People in hell aren’t tortured, though they will be tormented. Denying God’s offer of heaven becomes your choice to go to hell.

Tortured, tormented—whatever. Either one is bad, and God is to blame.

If heaven or hell is our choice, not God’s (charging God with sending us to hell is against the rules, apparently), why the secrecy? Why doesn’t God lay his cards on the table to let us make an informed decision?

“Just read the Bible” is no answer, because the Bible is unclear. God should make himself known, convince everyone that heaven and hell exist, and explain the entrance requirements. No one should be expected to believe the unbelievable.

Why elevate the Christian claim of heaven over the afterlife claims of any other religion? Alternatively, why should someone be punished for failing to seek God rather than failing to seek Allah, Xenu, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, or any other god? See the questions as merely cultural—in the West, most believers are Christian—and Christianity dissolves into just a local custom.

Why the secrecy surrounding hell? God should make himself known, convince everyone that heaven and hell exist, and explain the entrance requirements. No one should believe the unbelievable. [Click to tweet]

(The Quick Shot I’m replying to is here.)

Continue to BSR 15: Jesus Didn’t Even Think He Was God

For further reading:

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.
— Woody Allen

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Image from Jaroslav Devia, CC license
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