Monthly Archives: February 2023

Damning Bible contradictions: faith and works, the End, and more

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What are your favorite Bible contradictions? These can be two sets of verses that are contradictory, or the clash can be the Bible vs. reality. And these aren’t just trivial contradictions where “It’s a typo—big deal” would be an answer. These strike at foundational Christian claims.

I’m hoping to find 20 contradictions, and this is part 2 (part 1 is here).

6. Faith saves (or do works save?)

Protestant Christianity often emphasizes that faith alone (sola fide) justifies God’s forgiveness. Many verses support this.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8–9).

We maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law (Romans 3:28).

That seems clear enough until we find the opposite claim elsewhere in the Bible. The clearest example to me is the Parable of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25, but there’s more.

Will [God] not repay everyone according to what they have done? (Proverbs 24:12)

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? (James 2:14).

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done (Matthew 16:27).

The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works (Revelation 20:12).

For something so important as getting into heaven and avoiding hell, the New Testament is surprisingly unclear.

Addendum: Or maybe it’s repentance that saves … or maybe baptism?

What if it’s repentance?

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord (Acts 3:19).

Repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (Luke 24:47).

Or baptism? It was so essential a ritual that Jesus was baptized.

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:4).

7. The different genealogies of Jesus

The Messiah had to be of the line of David (Jeremiah 33:15–17; Isaiah 9:7), so two gospels provide genealogies of Jesus to validate this requirement. The problem is that we only need to go back one generation, to Joseph’s father, to find a problem.

Jacob [was] the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah (Matthew 1:16).

Jesus … was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli (Luke 3:23).

There is just one unique male biological line that would terminate in Joseph, so at least one of these genealogies is wrong. And it’s hard to imagine that an ordinary Joe like Joseph would have a reliable record of his genealogy going back generations. Worse, Joseph wasn’t the biological father of Jesus, so he made no genetic contribution to Jesus, and his genealogy is irrelevant. If being in the line of David is a requirement, then having a god for a father makes you ineligible.

The most common rebuttal is to say that the Luke genealogy is for Mary, but the text makes clear that it’s for Joseph. Anyway, why would you provide the genealogy of the parent from whom descent from David wouldn’t count? We’re seeing the incompatible clash of two ideas: (1) Jesus inherits David’s throne and (2) Jesus was the son of God and so not in any human’s male lineage.

8. Does God prevent harm to good Christians?

In response to a 2017 church shooting, where good Christians were doubtless praying to God but still got shot, Christian apologist Greg Koukl pushed back against the idea that anyone should be surprised (I responded here). In fact, he assures us, Jesus promised persecution.

Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12–13)

Koukl said, “There is … no rationale, no line of thinking that if God does exist that only good things happen to people, particularly people who believe in God, especially Christians.”

In fact, the Good Book says precisely that:

No harm overtakes the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble (Proverbs 12:21).

If you make the Most High your dwelling—even the LORD, who is my refuge—then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. (Psalm 91:5–10)

When Christians desperately praying for their lives in a church are gunned down, atheists are right to point out that this makes one question God’s existence.

9. When is the End?

A 2013 poll found that 41 percent of U.S. adults think that we’re now living in the end times. But ask for the precise date, and the standard response is to point to this verse:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Mark 13:32; see also Matthew 24:36).

Harold Camping was hilariously wrong about his prediction of the Rapture® on May 21, 2011 (see here and here), and fellow Christians pointed to that “only the Father” verse. But Brother Camping had a comeback with this passage:

You know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief.  You are all children of the light and children of the day. (1 Thessalonians 5:1–5)

Some people won’t know, the children of darkness. But the enlightened ones will know.

(Or so Camping assumed.)

10. Jesus finds a new home for Mary. But why?

While on the cross, Jesus was concerned about his mother and made provisions for her to be taken care of after he was gone.

When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Woman, he is your son.” And he said to this disciple, “She is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:26–7)

That’s a nice gesture, but why was it necessary? Mary had other sons. Tradition holds that James, the leader of the church and supposed author of the epistle of James, was the brother of Jesus. And then we have this:

Isn’t [Jesus] the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? (Matthew 13:55)

Mary had lots of sons who could support her.

Continue in part 3

If horses had gods, they’d look like horses.
— Xenophanes

Top 20 most damning Bible contradictions

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Here are my favorite Bible contradictions. Play along at home and see which of these are on your list, too.

The focus here is just on contradictions in the Bible. These are mostly clashes between two sets of verses in the Bible, but some are the Bible clashing with reality. (I’ve written about the Bible clashing with science here.)

There are lots of contradictions that I find fairly trivial. For example, that Ahaziah was 22 (or 42) years old when he became king (2 Kings 8:26 vs. 2 Chronicles 22:2). Or that Solomon had made a basin that was ten cubits in diameter and thirty in circumference (1 Kings 7:23). The contradictions on this list are much more fundamental attacks on the Christian message.

1. Christians sin, just like everyone else (or do they?)

Everyone knows that no human except Jesus lived a sinless life. The Bible says:

Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

This is standard Christian dogma, but things get confusing when you read the opening verse of Job, which says of Job, “This man was blameless and upright.” Even as his life was going to hell because of the little experiment of Satan and God (see Job 1), Job was vindicated in his belief that he had nothing to apologize for.

We see another example in Noah, who was also “blameless” (Genesis 6:9).

But the sinless net goes a lot wider than that, because (plot twist!) ordinary Christians don’t sin.

No one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him (1 John 5:18; see also 1 John 3:6, 3:9).

So which is it—are all people sinners, or are Christians the exception?

Addendum: But why worry about sin? Every one of us is already saved.

Paul draws a parallel between the man who got us into this mess (Adam, who ate the forbidden fruit and gave mankind Original Sin) and the one who got us out (Jesus, whose perfect sacrifice saved us all).

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19).

We didn’t opt in to get the sin of Adam, and we needn’t opt in to get the salvation of Jesus. No belief is necessary. Paul assures us we’re good.

2. The women spread the word of the empty tomb (or did they?)

Women discovered the empty tomb of Jesus and returned to tell the others.

The women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples (Matthew 28:8).

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others (Luke 24:9).

Or did they? Mark has a different ending.

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. (Mark 16:8)

And that’s how the original version of the gospel of Mark ended.

3. All Christians are united in what they believe about Jesus (right?) 

[Jesus said,] I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one…. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. (John 17:20–23)

I appeal to you … that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. (1 Corinthians 1:10)

That’s a nice thought, but has any prayer failed more spectacularly? Christianity is more than just Roman Catholics and Baptists and Methodists and maybe a few more—there are now 45,000 denominations, and Christianity is fragmenting at a rate of two new denominations per day. (h/t commenter Greg G.)

4. No one can see God (or can they?) 

No one has ever seen God (1 John 4:12).

No man has seen or can see [God] (1 Timothy 6:16).

But Adam and Eve saw God. So did Abraham and Moses:

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day (Genesis 18:1).

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11).

5. God’s rules keep changing

God made an “everlasting covenant” with Abraham, but then he tore that one up and made another one with Moses.

The New Testament continues the confusion. It can’t decide whether to look backwards and honor existing law or to tear it up yet again, because it says both. First, Jesus commits to existing law:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17–18)

But then the book of Hebrews weaves a legal case that argues that Jesus is a priest in the line of Melchizedek, an older lineage which must take priority over the existing priesthood in the line of Aaron. Here it quotes an Old Testament declaration of God to justify a new covenant.

The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. (see Hebrews 8:6–13)

Jesus is a dramatic change to Judaism, and there must be some logic to justify Christians changing their worship day, dropping the sacrifices, worshiping a new guy in addition to Yahweh, and so on. That rationalizes away one problem, but the overall problem—the various substories don’t fit together in the overall plot—remains.

See also: “The Bible Story Reboots. Have You Noticed?”

See also: “The most fantastically failed prayer in history”

Continue to part 2

I always refer to the Bible as 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

Antivax idiocy asks: ‘How many more kids have to die?’

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Here’s a case study on how to deliberately misunderstand statistics. And science. And probably lots of other things.

A few months ago, The Stream published, “Billboards Near CDC Campus Ask: ‘How Many More Kids Have to Die’?” The Stream is my favorite source of right-wing insanity.

The billboard ads were paid for by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. Who’s going to argue with a group that wants vaccine safety? Hopefully all of you, after we finish exploring the story behind the arresting demand, “How many more kids have to die before the CDC stops the Covid shot?”

The first red flag is that covid vaccination “science” is being done here by billboard and discredited researchers, not scientific conferences and journals. But set that aside, and let’s look at the argument defending that question. This is from The Stream’s article:

VSRF recently released a compelling video titled, Are the Kids OK? citing data that approximately 4,650 children in the U.S. have died following COVID-19 vaccination.

That’s U.S. children who died from covid vaccinations. (That’s the claim, anyway. Hold your judgment until we review everything.) Compare that with deaths from covid itself. The CDC reports 1,658 children aged 0–18 years have died from covid. (The CDC is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US’s national public health agency.) That means almost three times more kids were killed by covid vaccinations than covid disease.

At least, that’s the claim. Here’s how they justify that:

This death calculation is derived from the 150 child deaths following COVID shots that have been reported as of Sept. 23, 2022, on the CDC’s own vaccine injury tracking system, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), multiplied by the VAERS underreporting factor of 31 established in a peer-reviewed study by scientist Jessica Rose, Ph.D.

We need to take that apart. There’s a lot of shallow thinking there.

What is VAERS?

The CDC established the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), an online database for reports of adverse events due to vaccines. These events can be as mundane as a sore arm or as severe as death. It’s an early-warning system, and the CDC monitors it to look for patterns that might identify, say, a bad batch of vaccine or a subset of the population that is showing more side effects than expected.

Healthcare professionals who administer the vaccinations are obliged to use VAERS to report severe events they observe. But it’s for more than that: “Anyone can submit a report to VAERS, including parents and patients.… Please report clinically important adverse events that occur after vaccination of adults and children, even if you are not sure whether the vaccine caused the adverse event.”

This means that the data isn’t necessarily relevant. Perhaps a 90-year-old died of cancer six months after getting vaxxed. That’s certainly a severe adverse event (SAE) that occurred after a vaccination, but there’s no reason to think that the vaccination caused the event. And, though it’s illegal, during these politically charged times there must be some report that are fraudulent.

VAERS cautions users [bolding in original], “While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness.… VAERS reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Reports to VAERS can also be biased. As a result, there are limitations on how the data can be used scientifically.”

Only when they can say, with evidence, “Covid vaccine caused these deaths” will they add to the conversation.

Child deaths due to vaccine

Now on to “150 child deaths following COVID shots.” This data comes from the VAERS database. I checked the VAERS data for 2021 and found 76 children under 18 years old who died, so I can believe that 150 number. But remember, this is just reports of 150 children who got the covid shot and then, days or months later, died. This gives us no good reason to think that any children died because of the vaccination.

The VAERS database is only meant to record adverse events after a vaccination. The Stream article flirts with the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: just because a death happened after a covid shot doesn’t mean it was a death because of the shot.

Consider the claim made in the Stream article, “approximately 4,650 children in the U.S. have died following COVID-19 vaccination.” Technically, that’s correct, but death followed lots of things in these children’s lives. Did a child who died get a vaccine beforehand? Maybe they rode a skateboard beforehand as well—could that have been the cause? But of course, if the article made clear that they weren’t saying that the vaccine was a cause, there would be no purpose to the article.

And the billboard was unambiguous: “How many more kids have to die before the CDC stops the Covid shot?” They are plainly declaring that the covid vaccination caused deaths.

VAERS underreporting factor of 31

Next, the article wants to increase the number of children who died: 150 children x 31 = 4,650 children total.

What is this underreporting factor? The Stream article refers to “the VAERS underreporting factor of 31 established in a peer-reviewed study by scientist Jessica Rose, Ph.D.” That study is “Critical Appraisal of VAERS Pharmacovigilance: Is the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) a Functioning Pharmacovigilance System?” (I’ll call this “the Rose article”). I question whether this journal is objective, but let’s set that aside and give the article the benefit of the doubt. How does it justify this underreporting factor?

The Rose article ignores the question of whether the 150 deaths of children in the VAERS database were due to the vaccine and wonders how many adverse events happened that didn’t get reported. It sensibly notes,

Under-reporting of mild AEs [Adverse Events] such as rashes or low-grade fever would most likely be far greater than for SAEs [Severe Adverse Events], such as death.

But it immediately ignores this bit of common sense and calculates a single under-reporting factor for all events, from mild fevers to death.

Computing the expected number of SAEs

The under-reporting factor is the ratio of the expected number of SAEs (Severe Adverse Events) to the observed number.

The expected number of SAEs comes from the data from the vaccine trials conducted by the manufacturers. Only the results of the Pfizer trial were considered. A summary of their results is Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting. In a section titled “Overview of Adverse Events” is this table.

Source: Table 14 in § 5.2.6 here

The important category is near the bottom, “From Dose 1 through cutoff date (safety population).” The safety population tests the safety of the vaccine and is every participant in the trial who received a real vaccine rather than a placebo. Note “SAE … 124/18801 (0.7).” This says that out of 18,801 vaccine recipients, 124 (or 0.7%) had an SAE, a severe adverse event.

Unlike the adverse events recorded in the VAERS database, every one of these SAEs was recorded by a medical professional. We can have confidence that the number is complete and reliable, but, as with VAERS, we still don’t know cause and effect.

Skip to the bottom of Table 14 to the “Deaths” line. Out of the entire population of vaccine recipients were two deaths. That might initially sound shocking until you consider that a group of 21,621 people over the course of a months-long trial might be expected to have a couple of deaths. Skip further to the right and see “4/21631,” which is the deaths for the placebo group. In other words, the group that got an inert injection had twice the number of deaths. The Pfizer document makes no special mention of these deaths, so they apparently were unremarkable to the Pfizer and FDA statisticians.

Who’s going to argue with a group that wants vaccine safety? Hopefully all of you, after we finish exploring the story behind the arresting demand, “How many more kids have to die?”

The study was double blinded (neither the participants nor the administrators knew who got a vaccine and who got a placebo), and the placebo group was as large as the vaccine group. They each had similar numbers of SAEs, 101 for the placebo group and 124 for the vaccine group. As with the deaths, when you monitor two groups of almost 20,000 people for months, you will notice occasional severe medical problems.

This shows one important benefit from the placebo group. Without it, the SAEs from the vaccine group would be ungrounded. Is 124 SAEs a lot? Is it a little? But the placebo group’s SAEs help identify a baseline.

We now have our scaling factor: 124/18801 = 0.007 = 0.7%. This is the fraction (or percentage) of vaccine recipients who should be expected to have an SAE. As with the deaths, 0.7% of recipients getting a “severe adverse event” sounds pretty bad, but similar numbers in the placebo group show that it’s expected.

Here’s how the Rose study uses the scaling factor.

As of August 10th, 2021, 197,399,471 million [sic] Pfizer/ BioNTech COVID-19 product doses had been administered in the U.S. and therefore the number of expected SAE occurrences in the U.S. volunteer recipients of the Pfizer/BioNTech products should be ~1.4 million SAEs.

That is, with 197 million doses administered, we should expect 197 million x 0.7% = roughly 1.4 million SAEs.

But that’s not enough to satisfy what looks like an agenda behind this article. SAEs are bad, but they’re vague. Child deaths are much more captivating. And the Pfizer document doesn’t itemize SAEs besides the deaths, and there were no children in the vaccine trials. The value to them of VAERS is that it has children’s deaths.

Computing the observed number of SAEs

We’re finally ready to compute that underreporting factor.

The observed number of SAEs is the SAEs in the VAERS database. This was given without explanation as 43,948 (so I have no confirmation). The underreporting factor is the expected number of SAEs (1.4 million, which uses the fraction from the Pfizer study document) divided by the observed number of SAEs (43,948, apparently the number of SAEs in VAERS). Find the ratio, and there’s your underreporting factor: 1.4 million / 43,948 = 31. Therefore, any VAERS statistic needs to be scaled up by 31.

Now we can finally understand that first line quoted from the Stream article:

VSRF recently released a compelling video titled, Are the Kids OK? citing data that approximately 4,650 children in the U.S. have died following COVID-19 vaccination.

The VAERS database claims 150 deaths of children. Multiply by the VAERS underreporting factor, and you get 150 x 31 = 4,650.

Critique

After that long and cumbersome analysis, we can finally see where the claims came from. The argument has lots of problems.

  • Causal link. While the Stream article tries to avoid stating plainly that covid vaccinations are killing people, that is obviously their point. There would be no article otherwise. Still, they can point to nothing causative. Only when they can say, with evidence, “Covid vaccine caused these deaths” will they add to the conversation.
  • VAERS database can’t show cause. The CDC’s VAERS database is key to the Rose argument, and, as the CDC makes clear, “VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness.” Therefore, the argument can’t make any claims of covid vaccination causing death.
  • Scientific consensus. The CDC is convinced that covid vaccines provide much, much more benefit than any side effects create harm. This is the scientific consensus.
  • Vaccine is a net good. The Rose article multiplies deaths found in VAERS by the under-reporting factor to conclude there are 205,000 deaths due to vaccination. Even if we ignore that VAERS can’t prove a single death, there is no admission that vaccines have saved 3.2 million American lives. Even with their unsupported assumption, vaccines would save 16 times more lives than they caused.
  • One-size-fits-all scaling factor. The Rose article correctly observes that VAERS will under-report mild adverse events much more than serious adverse events. Nevertheless, it then uses VAERS data to compute a single under-reporting factor that it uses for serious adverse events like death.

The Stream article and the supporting Rose document may not be deliberately playing games with the facts to support a political agenda, but that’s certainly how it looks. Whether willful fraud or clumsy errors, its conclusions don’t hold up.

Priests of the different religious sects
… dread the advance of science
as witches do the approach of daylight,
and scowl on the fatal harbinger
announcing the subdivision of the duperies
on which they live.
— Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

Guest article: The improbable vs. the impossible, or Will the real Jesus please rise up?

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This guest article is from frequent commenter BensNewLogin. 

CS Lewis is famously quoted as saying that the Gospels must be true, because the only alternatives for understanding them are that Jesus is “liar, madman, or king.” That was CS Lewis for you, and why my extensive reading of him as a young man very nearly prompted me to become a Christian. He was a compelling rhetorician, but his rhetoric rested on a bedrock of poor argumentation, logical fallacies, and willful blindness. At least three other options present themselves: 1) legend, like all of the other gods of men; 2) an amalgamation of several real and legendary characters, like all of the rest of the solar myths; or 3) as Barbara Thiering posited, a business model. 

This last possibility I will explore in greater depth later. But for now: functionally, from the point of view of sociology, religion is a business, whatever its spiritual claims might be. Money comes in, money goes out, a product is sold. There’s no reason to think that religion wasn’t as much a business 2000 years ago as it is now. In fact, we have evidence for that: the Roman snake god, Glycon, was manufactured out of whole cloth, none of it spiritual. And there is no reason to think that business model was not the reason for Paul’s conflict with the early Christian leaders in Jerusalem. Who needs competition?

There was a time when I was intensely interested in these questions of who Jesus was and what actually happened 2000 years ago. I read a lot of books then, but I’m not so interested in it anymore. I would never describe myself as a biblical scholar, though I would say I am a sociologist and psychologist—of a sort. And that is my take on this: sociologist, psychologist, and a bit of a historian. Jesus allegedly said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” I suspect this is a later interpolation. It’s possible, though unlikely, that he did intend to start a new religion. But probably not, because he was a Jew. Paul was also a Jew, but apparently a Hellenized Jew. And there is no doubt that Paul did intend to start a new religion—more on that later.

Was Jesus a Real, Historical Personage?

I suspect that Jesus actually existed, though it is also as likely that he was an amalgamation of several characters running around at the time. (cf: Judas the Galilean). Outside of Christian documents, there is no other evidence, especially contemporary evidence, that he existed. I also think that the whole story is right there in the Gospels, the truth hiding out in plain sight of everyone, requiring just a little perspicacity to separate the historical wheat from the theological chaff.

Christianity was a first century Jewish heresy. That issue is independent of whether Jesus was real. The heresy was that Yahweh/Adonai, who is one, could have a literal son. Well, that’s where the heresy started. In the power struggle between the heretics (Christians) and the true believers and possessors of the truth (Jews), the Jews lost, and thus began the 1900 years of church-sanctioned antisemitism, beginning in the Gospel of John and the Book of Acts, and right down to the present era. Jesus was in conflict with the religious authorities of his time, just like Paul was with the religious authorities in Jerusalem. 

Was he real? I think probably likely, but ironically enough, for historical reasons despite the lack of actual history. Were the stories about him true? Very unlikely, not only because magic is highly unlikely, but because that would mean all of the rest of the magical stories about the various gods of men might also be true. His story was constructed along the same lines as all of the other god stories, because that is how people constructed their gods in those days. There are a lot of stories about a lot of magical, god-like people from a lot of religions over the ages. You’d be surprised how many man-gods died, often through a form of crucifixion, and were resurrected, and will come again to redeem mankind. Odin sacrificed himself to himself by hanging himself on a tree. If you are familiar with medieval Christmas carols, the cross is often referred to as a tree. The solar myth, the Dying God, the resurrected God, the crucified God are oft-repeated motifs in the worlds of the gods of men. You have Jesus, Lono, Odin, Adonis, Quetzalcoatl, Inanna, and Persephone. There are a bunch of them.

My issues with the gospels, especially the birth narratives, go in a different direction. I suppose you could summarize them in the immortal words of eminent scientist and evangelical Christian Francis Collins, who referred to the gospel narratives as “near eyewitness accounts.” That is a loophole that you could drive a very large body of scholarship through, with enough room left over to accommodate St. Peter’s Basilica. 

Was he the son of God? As an atheist, I would have to say not. Who was he? Just what the Bible said he was until the magic mumbo-jumbo men got hold of it, added a bunch of magic, myths, and miracles, and grew wealthy. 

From everything I have read, there is sufficient internal evidence in the gospels themselves to date them after the letters of Paul, even though they are placed in the New Testament before Paul’s letters, and for an obvious polemical reason. “Here’s the story, and this is what Paul did with it.” That is how people think of history: linear in time. And the assumption of Christians is that the New Testament is in fact history, not fable. The history had to come before the faith or the message on which it was built.

Paul’s letters especially warn in several places, both explicitly and implicitly, of forgeries in Paul’s name. That proves that at least one letter of Paul’s was a forgery. So why not more, if not all of them? I’m not the first to note that Paul seemed completely unaware of the miraculous birth, the Virgin Mary, and the choirs of angels, which is another reason to place the composition of the Gospels after the letters of Paul—40 to 70 years after the events they described. Nor would it be unreasonable to assume that the gospels had the same problems. Who among those who wrote them were actual, not “near,” eyewitnesses? Also, If the writers of the Gospels were eyewitnesses to the events recorded, they would have had to have been nearly adults when they occurred. To say that they were writing about these events 60 or 70 years later also strains credibility, since life expectancy was half what it is now. So, more and more, it is not impossible, just all very unlikely.

Moreover, one could choose to place the gospels’ composition before the destruction of the Temple by claiming they are “prophecies,” to more than 150 years after the events that they describe, because most prophecies work that way. They very accurately predict the past. It’s just simpler and less open to contradiction by putting the gospels before the letters of Paul.

I doubt that these issues will ever be resolved, unless there are new source documents that can be accurately dated, which seems highly unlikely to me. The P52 fragment, cited as “proof” of the eye-witnessing of the gospels, for example, really doesn’t say very much about anything. Even saying that is a fragment of the gospel of John is highly questionable, given that it could merely be quoting a small portion of that gospel, rather than being a fragment of the actual gospel itself. We simply don’t know, and we may never know. That’s why weighing improbabilities is important.

Sherlock Holmes vs. The Historical Jesus: It’s Elementary!

My questions about the gospels as historical documents go in a much different direction. Sherlock Holmes actually delineated the real questions to me: he said he could believe the impossible, because there are things we don’t know, but the improbable was much harder to account for, because of all the things we do know. He also said (I’m paraphrasing) that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, is most likely the truth. These are not necessarily contradictions, because a third proposition can be derived from them: once you begin to admit that the improbable is true, you open the door for the impossible to be commonplace. And vice versa. And this is why the Gospels so often impugn themselves. 

The improbability of what the birth narratives imply is what creates the biggest questions for me, far more than the likely impossibility of the events they describe: that is to say, not the miracles themselves, but the unlikelihood of the aftermath of the unfolding events. We are told that an angel appeared to shepherds in the fields to announce the birth of Jesus. Why to shepherds, and not king Herod or governor Quirinius? That would have gotten God’s message out. Why in a backwater like Nazareth, when Rome, or even Jerusalem, wasn’t all that far away? The same questions arise about the miracle of Fatima in 1917: why did the Virgin Mary appear to ignorant peasant children, when Lisbon with its universities and learning wasn’t a great distance. Shepherds are nobodies, but using them does play into the apocalyptic climate of the time: the last shall be first, the mighty shall be laid low, the hungry shall be fed and the rich sent away, and so on. This is from the text of the Magnificat, Mary’s poetical thanks-be-to-God. It does exactly the same thing, and probably for the same reasons. The lowly shall be made great, just like Jesus was born in a manger and is the king of heaven. Follow us, and you’ll get both your reward and your revenge. 

The choirs of angels announced the birth of Emanuel, “God with us.” Choirs of angels, visiting Wisemen from the east, who saw “his star in the east.” His star. This is a clear astrological reference, as astrology passed for science frequently in those days. This in itself indicates magic being a part of all of this. “We have seen his star in the East.” So why did they travel West? Magic! And why are they paying homage to Jesus? They don’t appear to be Jews, and they certainly can’t be Christians.

But here is where Sherlock Holmes comes in. Jesus is born with choirs of angels declaring that he is “God with us.” And then, apart from a mention of Jesus preaching in the temple, Jesus disappears for 30 years. This is what I find improbable. How could such a great miracle, complete with angels and heavenly choirs, be suddenly forgotten, and never mentioned again? Not one person is quoted as saying, “Isn’t that Joseph and Mary’s son, the one that was announced by choirs of angels claiming that he was God with us?” To me, it absolutely strains credibility, that in a time like this one it would be completely forgotten. And outside of the various gospels, the whole miraculous event went completely unnoticed by anyone, including Jewish historians. 

But again, the gospels once again give us the clue that it’s all made up. In Mark, we learn that Jesus’s family thought that he was crazy and wanted to put him away. And on what planet does that make sense, given that Mary was told that she would be bearing the son of God, and Joseph, who “was minded to put her away privily,” was told not to do that because this was a miracle of a birth. It’s highly improbable that his entire family, and everyone who knew any of them, forgot all about the choirs of angels and everything else associated with him. Why this would even be included in the gospels makes no sense, as it undermines the whole story. 

It makes sense only if the Gospels, like the theology of Paul, are actually two stories being told simultaneously. The Dead Sea Scrolls imply that this was common practice: one story for the masses, and the pesher, or secret meaning, for the elect. I contend the family reaction to Jesus is most likely a part of the actual historical narrative, and not part of the magic and myths and miracles that were added on later. 

Even assuming the truth of the Christian story, that Jesus was the son of God, none of this was ever mentioned again, and if I am remembering properly, Matthew’s Gospel didn’t mention it at all. And of course, neither did Paul. In Romans, he seems to be saying that God and Jesus are separate people. It seems likely to me that these were all later embellishments, added in a time when belief in magic and miracles were commonplace. And it was intended to add credibility for the uneducated. The Orange Messiah loves his uneducated people, ya know. Why not the original Messiah?

So who was the historical Jesus?

Stripping the magic and miracles from the story of Jesus, without necessarily touching the religious aspects of it—though they may well be exactly the same thing—I think that the actual story of Jesus can be found in the Gospel narratives. Jesus was born of Mary and Joseph, both of whom were descended from David. On his mother’s side, he was a priest. On his father’s side, he was a king. Mary, actually Maryam, the priestess-sister of Moses, was a generic name for a priestess in those days. That’s why there are so many of them in the NT story. Mary of Magdala was another priestess, always portrayed in red, whence we get the term Scarlet Woman. And as for Joseph: “thou son of David,” “Where is the new born king of Israel,” INRI (“Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum”—Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews) posted over the cross, and so on? Just more of the same idea.

Another clue to that idea is where Jesus seeks out his cousin, John the Baptist. All of these people were related or knew each other, and more importantly, knew who each other were. The priestly part of his lineage interested Jesus greatly, possibly because he was far more connected to his mother than to his father, who essentially disappears from the story. This also explains the mixup in his genealogy, with different lines cited in different Gospels. It was all about David the King. His status was priest-king, much like Prester John and later Christian stories, something that CS Lewis referred to when he named the hero in his space trilogy Mr. Fisher-King, although his given name was Ransom, which was no accident, of course. 

Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one, the royal one, who would lead Israel against the hated Romans. This explains also why he was never heard from again for 30 years, except right before his Bar Mitzvah, where he amazed everyone with his knowledge. It also explains why he made his entry into Jerusalem, why he “fulfilled” the prophecies, and why it all came crashing down shortly afterwards. He was a priest, not a politician, and a nobody, not a general. It explains why Judas was first attracted to him, but later “betrayed” him when he realized that Jesus wasn’t interested in the king part, or the political side, at all. Shades of Jesus Christ Superstar! Jesus himself was quite clear on the subject: My kingdom is not of this world. All that is required is a slight shift of perspective to see that he meant that literally. Unfortunately, because he just didn’t turn out to be the one promised to relieve the Hebrews of those annoying Romans, they turned on him. That was pretty much that, and it’s what the Bible clearly says. 

But Pilate didn’t know any of that. He didn’t care about the religion, which is why he said he found no fault in Jesus. What he saw was a possible threat to Rome’s political power, and therefore his own, of course. But to keep the peace, he crucified Jesus, because that was what was done with political insurrectionists. Rome was happy and Pilate was happy. Also, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were happy, because their power was threatened by Jesus the priest as well.

Paul and Jesus: the rest of the story 

It was well after the death of Jesus that the Gospels were written, after the letters of Paul, after Paul had started his religion. But he had already started with the magic, myths and miracles by talking about the resurrected Jesus. He opened the door to the impossible and the improbable because he was starting a new religion, and as with Glycon, that’s how they did it in those days. Thus, it is no surprise that he seemed completely unaware of the virgin birth and the choirs of angels and the miracles. 

At the beginning of this essay, I offered six possible options for the reality of Jesus. The only one I have not discussed so far is the one that sociologically, I think is most likely. Christianity, like all religions, like the cult of Glycon in particular, was a business. In her book, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Barbara Thiering goes on at length about precisely that. Given all of Paul’s scurrying around the empire, and the money, and the influence, Paul was interested in starting a business/religion. Whether he actually believed any of it is another story. His warning in Galatians that no one should believe or buy any gospel but his, as well as his conflicts with the early Christian leaders who actually knew Jesus, are a good indication of what he was about. There was no Spirit Airlines in those days. It cost money to travel, and it took a long time to do it. It was a way to earn a living.

So I think that is the real story of Jesus, and it’s right there in the gospels, but overlaid with magic, myths, and miracles. And then to me there is always this question, one that is never answered except by a wave of the hands: who was bar Abbas, the Son of the Father, also known as Jesus bar Abbas (see Matthew 27:15–18)? That is a very familiar phrase in the Gospels: “He shall be called the Son of the Father, Emmanuel, God with us.” 

And what about the mentions of “other” Jesuses in the NT? It was a common enough name, but all of these were people that seem to have some kind of status. They made it into the story for some reason. Were at least some of them, if not all, the same Jesus, the one that survived? And if this Jesus bar Abbas, who escaped the crucifixion, survived, is this why the tomb was empty? This would also explain why Jesus was able to make appearances after he was “dead,” because no one survives crucifixion. He didn’t die and/or he wasn’t resurrected. And maybe what those other mentions of Jesus were referring to were just the one that survived. Barbara Thiering’s book says precisely that. Jesus was traveling around with Paul, and quite possibly showing off his scars and wounds to “prove” that he had been resurrected. Paul very tellingly spoke in the present tense: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” 

Paul was making his money. 

I realize that Barbara Thiering is not considered the best Jesus scholar around, and there are reasons to be highly critical of her work. But that doesn’t mean her take on the story isn’t a correct one, especially given the improbabilities and the impossibilities that are presented as absolute facts in the gospels, despite all of the contradictions. 

And because it makes much more sense than all of the magic, myths, and miracles. When you eliminate the improbable and the impossible, whatever remains, if not fabricated from whole cloth, must be the truth.

I have one last question. Who was the “evil priest” discussed in the Dead Sea Scrolls? If those scrolls have anything at all to do with the events surrounding the life and times of Jesus, an answer to that question could be very important. That person was not named, only referred to. Thiering—I think, because it’s been quite a few years since I read her book, and it might have been someone else—thinks that it was Paul. I think that it was Karen Armstrong—again, it’s been a few years since I read her books—who believes it was Jesus himself. If Jesus survived the crucifixion and was wandering around telling people that he had been resurrected, that might make perfect sense. It explains the conflicts that Paul had with the people who knew Jesus in Jerusalem.

We may never get definitive answers to these questions. But once the magic, myths, and miracles are removed from the New Testament, which they must be by rational people—and by rational, I mean non-religious—what are we left with, but a possible historical record that has been thoroughly contaminated by both the improbable and the impossible.

Defending the Bible with undesigned coincidences

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Searching for undesigned coincidences is an exciting new pastime within Christian apologetics. Well, maybe not new—it’s an exciting revived pastime. Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings Both of the Old and New Testament was published in 1854, and other books preceded it.

So what is an undesigned coincidence?

Example 1: “Prophesy!”

Here’s an example. In Matthew 26:67–8, we read about Jesus being arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council. After the high priest concludes that Jesus has spoken blasphemy,

Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?”

Huh? Why is prophecy mentioned here? And why demand that Jesus identify who hit him when they were all standing right there?

But turn to Luke 22:63–4, and we get more details.

The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?”

Aha! Jesus was blindfolded—that’s why prophecy is mentioned. They were mocking Jesus’s inability to identify who hit him. Surely a “Son of God” could see even if blindfolded. Now the incident in Matthew makes sense.

But note that the surprise vanishes if you just read them in the opposite order. Luke reports the blindfold, and the reader will then correct the omission when reading Matthew.

More important, these two gospels don’t tell the same story. In Matthew, the beating comes from members of the Sanhedrin, at the end of the trial. But in Luke, it’s guards who beat Jesus, and then he’s taken to the Sanhedrin.

Perhaps apologists should avoid drawing attention to incompatibilities between two versions of a story, because that often just makes the Bible look more flawed.

So what is an undesigned coincidence? Tim McGrew defines it this way:

Sometimes two works written by different authors incidentally touch on the same point in a manner that cannot be written off as copying or having a copy made from some third source.… The two records interlock like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Let’s look at another couple of examples.

Example 2: Feeding the five thousand

In the story of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus was teaching a large crowd. It was late in the day, and Jesus wanted to give them food (one Christian source explores this here). In Mark 6:39, we read:

Then Jesus directed [the disciples] to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass.

Green grass—that’s an interesting detail. Isn’t this the desert? Should we expect green grass?

But this is explained in John’s version of the story when he adds this detail:

The Jewish Passover Festival was near (John 6:4).

The Passover is always shortly after the March (spring) equinox, spring is when it rains in Palestine, and rain makes the grass turns green. Like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece neatly added, the mystery is solved.

Okay, but grass must be green sometime, even if there’s a dry season. The Bible frequently mentions livestock, so it’s no surprise that the grass must periodically be green to feed them. Is this much of an aha?

Example 3: Philip of Bethsaida

Early in the gospel of John, we read that Philip was from Bethsaida (John 1:44). A few chapters later is John’s version of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Jesus asks Philip where to buy bread for the crowd (John 6:5–7). But why Philip? He seems a random choice—he’s not a prominent disciple, and he wasn’t in charge of the money.

But read the parallel story in Luke, and we find that the gathering takes place at Bethsaida (Luke 9:10–17). So that’s why Jesus asked Philip—being from that town, he might know the best place for bread (source).

What’s the big deal?

Let’s accept that one story might be incomplete but that a clue far from that context (in another chapter or even in another book) plausibly explains some small puzzle. So what? Sure, let’s say that the books of the New Testament have omissions. That makes them look like ordinary books written with no supernatural oversight. How does this help the apologist?

Here’s one apologist’s answer:

Once you have considered the massive weight of the evidence from untold numbers of undesigned coincidences, can you really maintain your skepticism of the historicity of the Bible?

Huh? Where is this massive weight of evidence?? You seem to imagine that only the supernatural explains this. But how?

One final source makes a popular argument for the value of undesigned coincidences.

Much like a puzzle, it fits like a hand into a glove. This is not at all the type of pattern that one would expect to see in the event of some kind of conspiratorial manufacturing of the story. When taken as a cumulative argument—many instances considered collectively—one has a powerful argument for the overall general reliability and integrity of the gospel narratives.

In other words, this is just the tired “Why would anyone invent the Jesus story?!” thesis.

My answer: I dunno why anyone would invent the Jesus story. I never claimed they did.

And this is a powerful new argument in the apologists’ arsenal? From the stew of oral history, the basic story will be written in different ways in different places in the Christian world, and this confusion is cited as reason to believe the Bible more strongly? Why is this even a thing? Perhaps apologists should avoid drawing attention to incompatibilities between two versions of a story, because that often just makes the Bible look more flawed.

This is like the Argument from Accurate Place Names, which praises the Bible for recording the names for many places that are later confirmed by history or archaeology. Big deal.

Now it’s the skeptics’ turn

Let’s invert this idea of illuminating a story told in one place with a clue from another. Take Mark 3:21, where the family of Jesus came to take him away because, “he is out of his mind.” But after the death of Jesus, his brother James became a leader in the Jerusalem church (Acts 1:18). That is, first James (and the rest of his family) thought Jesus was crazy, and then James changed his mind to become a leader in the church. But Mark was written after both of these. Why did Mark only include the first part, leaving out the conversion of James? Mark ends with us having a completely wrong understanding of James’ relationship to the church. How about that for an undesigned coincidence?

Or see this from another angle. Take the same “Jesus is crazy” incident in Mark and pair it with the nativity stories from Matthew and Luke. Mary saw the magi with their gifts and was visited by an angel. How could she or anyone in her family later think Jesus was crazy?

Or, how could John the Baptist baptize Jesus and see the Holy Spirit and hear God’s voice (Matthew 3:16–17) but then months later ask Jesus if he was the One (Matt. 11:2–3)? (More on this incident here.)

Or, how can Jesus explain to his disciples how the end game was going to play out, including his crucifixion and resurrection, three times in each synoptic gospel and yet the disciples are despondent at the crucifixion? A little forgetfulness doesn’t explain this. (More on this here.)

Christian apologists encourage students of the Bible to pull together facts from throughout the Bible, hoping to strengthen one story with another. But they must remember the embarrassing contradictions that will also emerge.

Birds born in a cage
think flying is an illness.
— Alejandro Jodorowsky

The atheist has the moral foundation, not the Christian

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God allows suffering, Christians tell us, but it would be morally wrong for that suffering to be justified in any way except that it benefits the sufferer. The common excuse made for God is that suffering can be for the greater good, but that kind of suffering is exploitative and immoral. That means that suffering is a good thing, and we would be immoral if we tried to stop it.

Said another way, conventional morality is possible only with atheism.

That is the surprising conclusion from the argument in “Atheism and the Basis of Morality” by Stephen Maitzen. Let me summarize the argument. To see how the conclusions are supported, I want to make the argument as transparent as possible, so I’ve added a bit of formality and labeled the steps.

The argument

Here are some axioms (statements taken to be true without proof) to help us start on the same page.

Axiom 1: For simplicity and to avoid disagreement, “ordinary morality” has been simplified to “we have the moral obligation to prevent easily preventable extreme suffering by a child.” That’s it.

Now, some basic assumptions about God’s properties.

Axiom 2: God
(a) is aware of all human suffering,
(b) knows how to prevent that suffering,
(c) has the ability to prevent the suffering,
(d) can do anything logically possible (indeed, is unlimited in knowledge and power),
(e) knows if suffering is necessary for the well-being of the sufferer, and
(f) won’t do anything morally imperfect.

And here’s the moral problem we need to wrestle with. How we should respond is the focus of the argument.

Axiom 3: There is, right now, a child experiencing terrible suffering.

God knows about the suffering child (Axiom 2a); nevertheless, he’s allowing the suffering to continue. Let’s understand God’s attitude toward that suffering by considering the following supposition.

Supposition 1: God allows the suffering to continue because it will ultimately benefit the child.

If supposition S1 is false, then it’s not the case that the suffering will ultimately benefit the child—maybe it will benefit others or maybe there’s no reason at all. I will show that S1 must be true.

Axiom 4: A morally perfect being can’t act immorally.

Corollary 4: From Axiom 4, a morally perfect being can’t have the excuse, “My action was immoral, but that’s okay because it was the lesser of two evils.” Said another way, a morally perfect being can’t face a moral dilemma.

Since God never has moral dilemmas (corollary 4), he never says, “Gee, I hate to see that kid in pain, but it’s for the greater good.”

Therefore, God can’t exploit people (that is, use them primarily for some purpose other than to help them).

Therefore, S1 must be true, and any suffering allowed by God must be for that person’s benefit (like the pain from a vaccination) and not justified because it’s for someone else’s benefit (for the greater good).

Objections

Let’s pause for a moment and consider a couple of objections. The first objection says that exploiting people can’t be a problem because we do it ourselves. An example would be quarantining someone with a contagious illness, where we’re making one innocent person suffer for the benefit of others.

Response: Yes, we do exploit people that way, but that’s only because we’re not omnipotent. However, God is omnipotent (Axiom 2b). We have an excuse for exploiting people, but God doesn’t.

Here’s another objection: maybe God could compensate sufferers materially even if the suffering wasn’t required for their benefit. How many years of life in Paradise would it take to overshadow a poor life on earth, no matter how miserable?

Response: No, compensation is not justification. If I punch you but then immediately apologize and give you a million dollars, my action was still morally wrong. You’ve been well compensated, but that doesn’t justify my action (thinking otherwise is stupid Christian argument #25a.) Remember, the kind of non-exploitative harm we’re talking about is unavoidable suffering for that person’s own benefit, like jabbing a kid with a needle (suffering) to deliver a vaccine (the justifiable good).

Conclusion

From that groundwork, we can reap a few startling conclusions.

Given that there are suffering children (A3), how do we respond? “We have the moral obligation to prevent easily preventable extreme suffering by a child” (A1). But God ensures that any suffering is neither gratuitous nor exploitative but is for that person’s benefit (S1).

Therefore, it’s bad to stop suffering (from S1).

Therefore, A1 is false since it contradicts S1.

Therefore, our moral duty to help suffering children (A1) vanishes. In fact, it’s more than that: getting in the way of someone’s suffering is getting in the way of their moral medicine. Mother Teresa’s crazy medieval zealotry actually fits in fairly well with this thinking. She said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”

We’ve seen this before. Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod was criticized for messing with the natural order. If God decided that a building needed to be struck with lightning, who was Franklin to say otherwise (more)?

Seen another way, our moral instincts are backwards: the worse the suffering, the more obvious that it’s for that person’s benefit and not just a trivial bump in the road of life, and we should leave it alone to avoid messing with God’s plan. (One wonders how it could be so easy for us to overturn God’s plan, but that’s a tangent.)

So where does this leave morality? If our most fundamental moral axiom—that we should prevent the suffering of children if easily done—is gone because suffering must be a good thing, what’s left? What sense is a prohibition against lying or theft when an intuitively more fundamental axiom is gone? Can this morality be salvaged despite its gaping hole?

But drop the theistic assumptions, and Axiom A1 is back in force, and ordinary morality works just like everyone intuitively thinks it should. Atheism, not theism, is compatible with morality.

Religion does itself no favors
by declaring itself immune from rational scrutiny.
— Dan Brown