Category Archives: Deep Dive>The Secular

Alister McGrath’s Journey from Atheism to Christianity: a Critique

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Anglican priest and professor of theology Alister McGrath recently contrasted atheism and Christianity in an interview, “An Atheist’s Reasonable Journey to Faith: An Interview With Alister McGrath.” You may know him from his The Dawkins Delusion, which I read shortly after it came out in 2007.
Let’s see how reasonable the journey was and how well supported the adopted Christian position is.
1. Science has limitations, and other avenues may be more attractive. McGrath says that “science did not demand atheism” and that the other options “seemed to be more interesting.” Another limitation of science was that it didn’t answer life’s big questions such as the meaning of life. “I began to realize that human beings need existential answers about meaning, purpose and value, not just an understanding about how the universe works.”
Yes, science is limited. Scientists themselves are quick to make these limitations clear. It’s too bad we don’t see the same thing within Christianity. I wish Christianity was also self-critical and both admitted and made clear its limitations. As an example of Christianity’s hydra-headed blundering in many directions at once, consider John Hagee’s “four blood moons” humiliation. It’s been six months, and (while your mileage may vary) the feeling of schadenfreude is still strong for me.
McGrath next wonders about other options that are more interesting than science while doing nothing to convince us that they’re correct. Without this fundamental first step, who really cares whether they’re interesting?
I’ll grant that Christianity can tell you what the meaning of life is. So can Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. So can David Koresh, Jim Jones, or Sathya Sai Baba. So can Pastafarianism, Jediism, or Zuism. So can the drunk stranger at a party. But are any of these sources worth listening to?
2. We have Christianity to thank for nurturing science. “There has always been a strong religious motivation for the scientific study of nature. Religious writers like Thomas Aquinas have always insisted that the regularity and beauty of nature point to the wisdom and beauty of God.”
There have been Christian scientists for centuries, though that’s not saying much since pretty much everyone in Europe was Christian until recently. To give Christianity credit for the last 500 years of European science is to call attention to how little Europe progressed while Christianity was in charge (see also here).
McGrath admits that Christianity hasn’t always been science-positive: “Of course, there have been episodes when religious ideas or politics have got in the way of scientific advance.” To add to that, I’ve written about how apologists falsely claim the Bible anticipated modern science and how the Bible got science wrong. Also, about how apologists’ claims about Christianity building universities and hospitals are overblown.
3. Christianity makes sense of the world. Many think that religion is irrational, but don’t let that stop you. Consider how seemingly irrational are areas of science such as quantum physics.
C. S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” McGrath added, “A theory is judged by how much sense it makes of our world.”
If Christianity untangles reality where no other worldview does, McGrath does nothing to argue for this claim. The most charitable interpretation of this is that McGrath has support for these claims but the interview simply didn’t allow him to express them. A less-charitable interpretation is that McGrath’s arguments are aimed only at his own community, and he doesn’t have much that would convince an atheist, despite his frequent contrasting of the two worldviews.
4. Science is “provisional and limited.” Science is provisional because it changes its mind. It’s limited because it can’t address the important areas of meaning, value, and beauty.
Yes, science is limited. Do you have an alternative? Surely you’re not thinking of Christianity. With 45,000 denominations and counting, it can’t even sort out its own beliefs.
Every year there is a “Top 10” list of scientific discoveries. Show me a similar list of things Christianity has given the world. If Christianity doesn’t dirty its hands with evidence and doesn’t care to make such advancements, then what good is it? If instead Christianity’s contributions to the world are in the past, then I wonder what he has in mind.
McGrath has good things to say about science and points out limitations that anyone would grant. But his vague praise about the Christian worldview make me want to set some ground rules. Can we at least agree that groundless certainty is bad? And that evidence is mandatory to support a belief? And that faith (that is, belief despite insufficient evidence) has no place in this conversation? If so, I wonder where Christianity is in all of this.
5. Science can’t prove whether God exists or not. “Science has been hijacked by ideological atheists, who have weaponized science in their battle against religion…. The epistemic dilemma of humanity is that we cannot prove the things that matter most to us. We can only prove shallow truths. It’s not a comfortable situation, but we have to get used to it, and not seek refuge in the illusory utopian world of the New Atheism, which holds that we can prove all our valid core beliefs.”
(I’ll remember Weaponized Science if I need a name for another blog. Or a band.)
McGrath frets about science’s “shallow truths,” but I wonder what truths these are. Perhaps truths like, “The earth orbits an ordinary star in an unimportant corner of a vast galaxy, just one of 200 billion”? Or, “This technique will increase crop yields so that billions can be fed”? Or, “This vaccine will immunize your child against smallpox”? Those sound like pretty important truths to me. Here’s another one: you don’t need to have someone give you the answers to life’s Big Questions®. You decide what the purpose of your life is. I appreciate that this is can be an intimidating challenge, but it’s also a thrilling opportunity.
As for science being unable to prove or disprove God, that’s true. All we can do is follow the evidence (and it’s not looking good for Christianity). I have no idea what he means by an “illusory utopian world of the New Atheism” in which we can prove all core beliefs. That certainly doesn’t describe my views.
6. Christianity helps science in two ways. First, it provides “a reassurance of the coherence of reality.” Our view of the world is imperfect, but we see a bigger picture that gives meaning to a world that would otherwise be “incoherent and pointless.”
Second, Christianity provides answers where science can’t to the big questions such as “the meaning of life, and our place in a greater scheme of things.” Science alone can’t be “the foundation of meaning and value.”
These are interesting claims, but I need evidence to back them up. Show me where Christianity has helped science. Yes, all the clues from science tell us that the universe is ultimately pointless, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t find meaning in life and provide a purpose for your existence. It doesn’t bother me that the universe has no ultimate purpose, but if it troubles you, remember that your wishing reality were different counts for nothing.
McGrath says that there is more to a full life than science. If he’s thinking of enjoying family and friends, finding satisfaction in a job well done, or helping the less fortunate, that falls outside of both science and Christianity.
McGrath’s approach can be adapted to justify lots of worldviews, but many of these are incompatible with Christianity. He has done nothing to make clear why Christianity is the only correct worldview or even why we should believe the supernatural of any sort exists.

Mystical explanations are considered deep.
The truth is that they are not even superficial.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Image credit: Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington, flickr, CC

Attack of the Angry Atheists! (2 of 2)

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Rabbi Marc Gellman wrote an article describing his efforts to understand “angry atheists.”

There is something I am missing about atheists: what I simply do not understand is why they are often so angry.

My last post addressed the question of what one atheist (me) has to be angry about, but let’s see what he thinks the reasons are.
Why are atheists angry? Gellman offers some possible reasons for why atheists are angry. I’ll take him at his word that this is his best shot at explaining what he sees, but they’re so far off as to be insulting. He says, for example,

I am tempted to believe that behind atheist anger there are oftentimes uncomfortable personal histories. Perhaps their atheism was the result of the tragic death of a loved one, or an angry degrading sermon, or an insensitive eulogy, or an unfeeling castigation of lifestyle choices or perhaps something even worse.

Sure, lots of atheists have been harmed or let down by religion, but this sidesteps the issue. Whether or not someone was harmed by religion says nothing about its truth claims, which is the focus of atheism after all. Whether religion is true or false is the issue, not whether it’s nice or not. No thoughtful atheist would be confused in this way.
Rabbi Gellman again:

Religion must remain an audacious, daring and, yes, uncomfortable assault on our desires to do what we want when we want to do it.

This is the Hedonist Hypothesis: you atheists just do what you want and don’t want to answer to anyone else. This seems to imagine that atheists actually realize that god(s) exist but that they suppress this knowledge because that would ruin their fun. I’m pretty sure that such a god-believing atheist wouldn’t be an atheist.
For me, the reason to be angry is the imposition of religion on me: religion influencing government funding of medical research, threats of prayer and Creationism in schools, threats of the Ten Commandments on courtroom walls or in other public places, “In God We Trust” as the motto for my country, the fact that atheists are so despised that they can’t hold any major public office, and so on.
The article makes a final point:

I can humbly ask whether my atheist brothers and sisters really believe that their lives are better, richer and more hopeful by clinging to Camus’s existential despair: “The purpose of life is that it ends.”

In other words:
Isn’t the atheist idea that there’s no afterlife really depressing? In the first place, I hope all of us are primarily looking for the truth and following the facts where they lead. I know I am. Whether I can invent (or someone else has invented) a worldview that’s more cheerful than the world that I see in front of me is irrelevant. I have no use for that make-believe world.
I want the facts, not a placebo. Though Gellman seems to be worried about me, I’m a big boy and I can handle reality. If I have cancer, for example, I want to know. A visit to a doctor to figure out the next steps for cancer treatment, though difficult, is a lot more satisfying in the long run than the short-term bliss that would come from a pat on the head and the pleasing lie that my symptoms will soon disappear.
In the second place, rabbi, I’m not sure death is any more depressing for me than it is for you. Are you looking forward to your own death? Do Christians and Jews not grieve the death of a friend or family member? I think the answers are the same for all of us, despite the allure of heaven in the Christian worldview. I’m sure I won’t be pleased to die, though it’d be nice to imagine that I would be satisfied that I’d lived a full life, but after death, I won’t care. Before my birth I wasn’t unhappy, and after my death I won’t be unhappy either—I simply won’t be. As Mark Twain observed, “I had been dead for billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
And finally, this life is the one thing we know we have. I’ve got one shot, and I try to live it to its fullest. I won’t be able to visit new places after I die; I won’t be able to learn another language, or comfort a friend, or apologize, or forgive, or simply stop and smell the roses. If it’s important to me, I’d better do it in the one life I know I have. Life is sweeter when that’s all you’ve got.
This is one of the problems with Pascal’s Wager. Pascal argues that there’s no downside to being a believer, so what the heck—why not believe so you bet correctly just in case the Christian story is true? But of course, there is a downside to being deceived. Participating in a religion that is bogus means that I spend time, money, and energy on that religion instead of on something productive. And some people (Mother Teresa, for instance) bear a huge burden of anxiety and frustration when they see themselves failing to measuring up. Guilt is another burden that some believers endure.
Knowing that life is finite means that each day is more special, each sunset is more beautiful, and each friendship is more precious than if I imagine that an infinity of them lies stretched out in front of me.
Maybe atheists aren’t so angry after all.

A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus for this award.
I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. 
He didn’t help me a bit.
— Kathy Griffin, 2007 Emmy Awards

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/15/13.)
Image credit: Niklas Hellerstedt, flickr, CC

Stalin Was a Mass Murderer, And I’m Not Too Sure About Myself (2 of 2)

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Stalin genocide atheists anti-theistsYou must’ve heard the popular Christian argument that the atrocities committed by atheists like Stalin during the twentieth century eclipse Christian overexuberance throughout history. That includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burning, and pogroms. A recent blog post takes this idea and projects it forward: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time” by fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds.

But Dr. Reynolds isn’t tiptoeing to avoid triggering the atheist avalanche. No, he’s publicly calling atheists to account.

In part 1, we saw that the problem is apparently only with “anti-theist” atheists, those who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That includes me, so I’m part of the problem. We also explored his argument connecting genocide with these atheists. (Spoiler: I wasn’t convinced.) Let’s continue.

Case study: not-so-Christian Western Europe

Reynolds acknowledges that Western Europe is socially healthy despite being more atheistic than America, but he handwaves that that’s just because it still benefits from the imprint of Christianity.

I’ve got news for you: Christianity already had the chance to rule Europe, and we call that period the Dark Ages. (I’m imagining a filthy, emaciated peasant in France around 1200 wearing a ragged t-shirt. On the front it says, “When Christianity was in charge, all I got was this lousy t-shirt” and on the back, “… and the plague, smallpox, famine, Pardoners, and a life of indentured servitude as a serf.”)

Western Europe is largely atheistic, but it wasn’t always that way. The hold of Christianity was much higher a century ago. As social conditions improved over the decades, secularism increased. Some scholars have suggested that as the causal relationship, with Christianity the symptom of a sick society.

Social metrics like homicide, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on have been used to compare countries. Atheistic and gay-friendly Western Europe does well in this comparison, and the good old U. S. of A. looks embarrassingly bad.

Yeah, but look at all Christianity gave you!

Reynolds is pretty happy with Western society, but he’s deluded about Christianity’s contribution. He imagines that Western society has as its foundation “a borrowed Christian culture.”

Atheists have such a poor track record in his mind that he suggests that, to polish their image, “Western atheists of the anti-theist sort [should] take over a nation or an area and run it for a decade or two. They should create new social norms, new art, and new constitutions.” As if these all came from Christianity!?

Consider just our legal rights. Consider fundamental principles that did not come from the Bible: democracy, secular government, separation of powers, and a limited executive; freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly; protection from self-incrimination and double jeopardy; speedy and public trial, trial by jury, and the right to confront witnesses; no cruel and unusual punishment; and no slavery (more here and here). For creating a livable society, I’ll take the U.S. Constitution over the Ten Commandments, thank you. And I think that in a thoughtful moment, you would, too. Note also that the 100% secular U.S. Constitution protects you against religious excesses just like it does me.

A Christian dictatorship that followed biblical principles is easy to imagine. It would look similar to today’s Muslim theocracies where atheism and apostasy are punished by death.

And now let’s poison the well

Reynolds is judge, jury, and all but executioner.

Until anti-theism shows it can stop killing people, Christians are right to worry about “anti-theist” atheists dominating the levers of power.

None of this proves that if your local Internet atheist troll took over, people would lose civil rights, freedom of religion, their children, their right to religious education, and eventually their lives in “re-education camps”, but the track record is very bad and their present tone not promising.

Christians are not paranoid to worry and would be foolish not to do so. A rising tide of anti-theism (or even anti-clericalism) has oft been a prelude to death.

When this Chicken Little attitude gets an enthusiastic hearing in some quarters, who can wonder why atheists are the least electable? Americans are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who has never held public office than one who is an atheist. Reynolds is doing a fine job strengthening this prejudice.

But let’s review the holes that sink his argument. Dictatorships are the problem, and there is no call within the Western atheist community for an anti-theistic dictatorship. Indeed, there have been zero people killed in the name of atheism because atheism takes no stand on issues like morality.

The U.S. has had a secular government since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. Preserving this is the goal of every atheist I know, and this is quite different from a Stalinist dictatorship. It’s the Christians who I see rocking the boat, not atheists eager for a dictatorship.

Western Europe is substantially less Christian and more healthy than the United States. Atheism or secularism haven’t led to bad conditions there, let alone genocide. In fact, the present religious friction in the United States is Christians asking for special privileges (such as the right to discriminate as they please) and demanding to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country by law (same-sex marriage or abortion, for example). Christian excesses are the driving force behind the anti-theism.

Reynolds concludes:

The twentieth and twenty-first century victims of state atheism cannot read “angry atheism” without a shudder and this is reasonable. Let’s start any dialog with this in mind.

So you expect me to come to the discussion with head hung in appropriate humility, burdened down with Stalin’s sins? Forget it. And if dialogue is your goal—it certainly is mine—poisoning the well like this isn’t helpful.

Dr. Reynolds replied in another post, and I responded here.

If religion were the key to morality
then mega-churches would look more like charities
and less like million-dollar businesses.
— seen on a t-shirt 

Image credit: Wikimedia

Stalin Was a Mass Murderer, And I’m Not Too Sure About Myself

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Stalin is a popular marionette for many Christian apologists. “Don’t tell me about Christian atrocities during the Crusades or the Inquisition,” they’ll say. “The atheist regimes in the twentieth century of Stalin, Mao, and others killed far more people!”

Fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds from the Evangelical channel recently put forth a new angle on that: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time.” Apparently, you’ve got to keep an eye on those out-of-control atheists to make sure they don’t kill us all.

Stalin genocide atheists anti-theistsThe connection between atheism and genocide

Reynolds makes clear that he’s not fearful of all atheists. It’s only the anti-theists, which he defines as atheists who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That’s me. If you’re in the same boat (or know someone who is), come along as we find out why “these are the atheists that have proven dangerous in power and are worrisome to civil society.”

Reynolds gives three reasons for connecting anti-theists with genocide.

1. “The atheists of Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, [and] Albania came to their atheism and then picked a social and economic system compatible with their general worldview.”

Nope. These were dictatorships, and religion was a problem. You can’t have a proper dictatorship with the church as an alternate authority. Solution: eliminate religion. Atheism was merely a tool.

The only nations that have been officially atheistic have been uniformly horrible.

And they’ve all been dictatorships. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. This mistake is like pointing to Stalin and Hitler and saying, “It’s the mustaches! Men with mustaches have killed millions!”

2. “Atheism was used as a reason for persecution in all of these nations.”

Control was the reason for persecution in dictatorships. Atheism was just a tool, like a scalpel used to murder.

Reynolds next goes on a poorly thought out rant about morality.

  • There is no check against genocide in atheism. And there is no check against genocide in chemistry, either. Neither has a moral rulebook. Atheism is the simple lack of god belief, not a worldview, and it neither advocates nor rejects genocide. Christianity, by contrast, does have a moral rulebook, and it sucks. Next, Reynolds claims that Christianity has a “built-in check on genocide,” which is completely false. God luvs him some genocide and demanded it often in the Old Testament.
  • “Christians are told to love their enemies.” If you go into the Bible looking for this, you can indeed find it, but Reynolds imagines that this is an unambiguous, unadulterated message in the Bible. It’s not. Did you hear about the American pastor who demanded that we be consistent with the Bible and stone gays a few weeks ago? Not so loving.
  • “An anti-theist creates his own values.” And Christians don’t? There is nothing in the Bible about transgender people, euthanasia, or chemically induced abortions, and Christians must improvise in response to new situations just like the rest of us.
  • Not all atheists are selfish, though they aren’t acting decently because of atheism. Atheists are decent for the same reason you are—how you are programmed as a Homo sapiens and the influence of your environment and society.

3. “There is a nearly perfect track record of officially atheist states killing large numbers of innocent people to this day. When atheists gain power and can impose an anti-theism, they have always started killing people.”

You’ve convinced me: dictatorships are a problem. But you have yet to show atheism as a cause of anything.

Reynolds imagines the powerless atheists saying that they would rule more sensibly than the Christians if given the chance, but “large mass movements dedicated to selfishness or to ideology ([Ayn] Rand or Communism) have [no] external authority to allow the common member of society to rebuke the leaders.” But you do? Christians imagine an objective morality that isn’t there.

A bad bishop can be rebuked based on professed Christian beliefs.

A bad bishop’s actions can also be supported by Christian beliefs. “Love your neighbor” and rules for slavery are both in the Bible.

A bad atheist cannot [be rebuked] since atheism has no creed or necessary beliefs beyond not believing in God, a life force, or a higher power.

Bingo! And your argument is now in a heap at your feet. Atheism is a lack of god belief; that’s it. No one has ever been killed in the name of atheism.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Christianity.

My analysis of Reynolds’ argument is concluded in part 2.

God used floods and plagues to kill people.
Why command the Israelites to do the dirty work?
That’s not a god, it’s a Godfather.
— commenter Greg G.

Image credit: Wikimedia

Witch Hunts, Sex Scandals, and the Atheist Community

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Elevatorgate. Charges of sexual harassment at secular/atheist conferences. Charges of sexual assault or misogyny or just cluelessness leveled at high-profile atheists. It’s gotten so extreme that the title of a recent BuzzFeed article didn’t seem too farfetched: “Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement?”

I’m amazed at the byzantine turns this topic has taken and the hold it has on some atheist bloggers. It would take me weeks to read all that has been written, and let me make clear that, not having done that, I don’t pretend to be well informed about the issue. But let me summarize an event that happened in my part of the country close to 20 years ago that, while much more extreme, may have parallels to today’s anxiety.

This being Halloween, it seems appropriate to bring up the Wenatchee Witch Hunt, what has been called history’s most extensive child sex abuse investigation.

Details of the case

It began in 1992, when, after much questioning, the 7-year-old daughter of poor and uneducated parents accused a family acquaintance of molesting her. After repeated encouragement by the Wenatchee police lieutenant who was acting as foster parent to the girl and her sister, the girls eventually named over a hundred abusers and many child victims.

Local Pentecostal pastor Robert Robertson tried to talk sense to the investigators. For his troubles, he and his family were sucked in as suspects, and the story was rewoven to include his church as a center for orgies with the children. Others who also tried to rein in the crazy were also charged or fired. (What explains a defense of the accused but that that person is similarly guilty?)

Child witnesses, mostly from 9 to 13 years old, were often taken from their families and placed in foster care. Many said later that they were subjected to hours of frightening grilling and if they didn’t believe they had been sexually abused, they were told they were “in denial” or had suppressed the memory of the abuse. They were also told that siblings and other children had witnessed their abuse, or that that their parents had already confessed.

Interrogators called some children who denied abuse liars. Children were told that if they agreed to accusations they wouldn’t be separated from parents or siblings. Many of them later recanted. [The police lieutenant] neither recorded nor kept notes of his interrogations.

Recantations were ignored. “It’s well known that children are telling the truth when they say they’ve been abused,” [the] Wenatchee Child Protective Services [supervisor said.] “But (they) are usually lying when they deny it.”

Aftermath

In all, “43 adults were arrested and accused of 29,726 counts of sexually abusing 60 children…. Eighteen pleaded guilty, mostly on the basis of signed confessions. Ten were convicted at trial. Three were acquitted. Eighteen went to prison.” All confessions were later recanted, all convictions related to the sex ring have been overturned, a third of the children claimed to have been abused were at one point taken from their parents and put up for adoption, and the city of Wenatchee paid lawsuits claiming millions of dollars in damages.

It was a modern-day replay of the 1692 Salem witch trial in which several girls’ accusations resulted in 19 people being hanged and one more pressed to death.

No, just because there’s smoke doesn’t mean there’s fire, and someone encouraging restraint isn’t necessarily part of the problem. As an outsider to the stories behind the accusations of misogyny and rape, I make no claim that I understand who’s right or wrong. I simply offer this Wenatchee case as an example of how well-meaning thinking can go off the rails.

In this blog, I’ve commented on social issues such as homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights. Christianity creates problems in these areas, and I think I have something to contribute to the conversation. Atheists are pretty much of one mind on these issues.

I might have something to contribute to the conversation on feminism and misogyny as well, but unfortunately this has become a contentious, us-vs.-them issue within the atheist community, and I avoid it. I wish it weren’t so.

Once your forefathers and foremothers realized that
[the scientific method] generated results,
in a few generations your species went
from burning witches and drinking mercury
to mapping the human genome and playing golf on the moon.
— David McRaney

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/2/12.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The Truth of the Bible (Fiction)

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This is an excerpt from my book, Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey. A bit of background: Jim is a 50-something, wealthy, housebound, and somewhat obnoxious atheist, and Paul is the young acolyte of a famous pastor, doing his best to evangelize. It’s 1906 in Los Angeles, and they’re in Jim’s study.

♠  ♠  ♠

Christian apologetics book“Let’s discuss the accuracy of the Bible.” Paul looked for approval from Jim, saw nothing, and continued. “Many say that the Bible contains the world’s greatest literature. It’s certainly the world’s most influential book—a book that has inspired mankind for thousands of years.”

“I won’t disagree.” Jim picked up what looked like a clumsily wrapped cigar laying on the sofa and put the soggy end in his mouth. It left a small dark stain on the seat cushion.

Paul wanted to continue but was distracted as the end of the thing bobbed up and down under Jim’s shaggy mustache while he chewed, making gentle crunching sounds. “Is that a cigar?” Paul asked finally.

“Cinnamomum zeylanicum—cinnamon bark,” Jim said, his words garbled as he spoke while holding the cinnamon stick with his lips. “It promotes sweating.”

Paul had never considered sweating worth promoting. He tried to ignore the noise, deliberately looking down at his note card to avoid the distraction. “So what I’m saying is that the Bible is very accurate. Researchers have found thousands of copies, enough to convince them that errors introduced from copy to copy have been insignificant. And old, too—less than 400 years after the New Testament originals.* In other words, today’s English translations started with a copy that differed minimally from the original text. Aside from the different language, we read almost the same words as were originally written two to three thousand years ago.”

Jim shook his head. “That’s a foolish argument.”

Paul’s jaw went slack.

“I can say the same of Homer’s Iliad,” Jim said. “It’s quite long and very old—older than much of the Old Testament. We have many old copies of the Iliad, and today’s version may also be a decent copy of the original. Using your logic, must we conclude that the Iliad is correct? Must we say that Achilles really was invulnerable, that Cassandra really could see the future, that Ajax really was trained by a centaur?”

“But that’s not a good comparison,” Paul said. “No one believes the Iliad. Biblical fact is quite different from Greek mythology.”

“Don’t change the subject. You introduced the question of the accuracy of manuscript copies. Does your logic help us judge the accuracy of ancient books or not?”

“I don’t think the Bible and the Iliad can be compared is all.”

Jim sighed. “To your point, no one believes the Iliad now, but they once did. Achilles, Hector, Helen, Aphrodite, the Trojan War—the Iliad tells much of the history of the Greeks just like the Bible is a history of the Jews. And, of course, many of the places and people in the Iliad actually existed. Archeologists have found Troy, for example.”

Jim held up a hand as Paul opened his mouth to speak. “Of course I see the difference. While the Iliad and the Bible were the histories of their people, only the Bible is believed today. Here’s my point. Let’s assume that the Bible and the Iliad are both faithful copies. That doesn’t make them true.”

Paul said, “It’s not just the Bible—other sources confirm Bible stories. Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, for example, writes about Jesus.” He glanced at a note card in his hand. “Also, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and other writers from that time.”

Jim jerked a hand as if dismissing a gnat, and his face showed an exasperated disgust. “I’ve read these sources, and they strengthen your case not a bit. They basically say, ‘There are people who follow a man named Jesus’ or ‘Jesus is said to have performed miracles.’ I already agree with that! I’d be interested if an eyewitness from the Jerusalem Times newspaper wrote a report the day after a miraculous event, but that didn’t happen. You’re left with four—not thousands, but four—written accounts that summarize the Jesus story after it had been passed around orally for decades, and they’re not even completely independent accounts. I need a lot more evidence than that.”

Paul thought for an instant how satisfying it would be to take their argument to the street, even though it would be an unfair fight. He rubbed his right fist against his left palm and strained the muscles of his upper body to drain away some rage. In five seconds he might remind this atheist of his manners. But he had to take the high ground and he pushed on, using a response that Samuel had given him. “Why do you need more evidence? You never saw George Washington, but you accept the historical account of his life. The Bible has the historical account of Jesus’s life—why not accept that?”

Again Jim shook his head. “We have articles from newspapers of Washington’s time published within days of events, and there are hundreds of accounts by people who met him. We even have Washington’s own journals and letters. By contrast, Jesus left no personal writings, we have just a few Gospels as sources of his life story, and those are accounts of unknown authorship handed down orally for decades before finally being written. They were even written from the perspective of a foreign culture—Jesus and his disciples would have spoken Aramaic, and the New Testament was written completely in Greek.”

“You’re overstating the problem. If you don’t like Washington, take Caesar Augustus—you accept the story of Caesar’s life even though he’s from the time period of Jesus.”

“How can you make this argument? Are you stupid?” Jim leapt to his feet. “The biographies of historical figures like Washington and Caesar make no supernatural claims!”

Paul opened his mouth to protest but retreated as Jim waved his arms as he stalked back and forth in front of the sofa like some hysterical prosecuting attorney.

“They were great men, but they were just men. Suppose you read that Washington was impervious to British bullets during the Revolutionary War or Caesar was born of a virgin—these claims were actually made, by the way. You would immediately dismiss them. Or what about Mormonism: Joseph Smith invented it just fifty miles from my hometown of Syracuse, shortly before I was born. We have far more information about the early days of his religion—letters, diaries, and even newspaper accounts, all in modern English—and yet I presume you dismiss Smith as a crackpot or a charlatan. In the case of Jesus, the most extravagant supernatural claims are made—why not dismiss those stories as well? The Bible has tales you wouldn’t believe if you read them in today’s newspaper, and yet you see them as truthful ancient journalism.”

Paul struggled to keep his hand steady as he glanced at his note card. He had no response but was not about to admit it. He decided to try a new line of attack and took a deep breath. “Okay, answer this one. The Bible has stories of fulfilled prophecy. Early books documented the prophecy, and later books record that prophecy coming true. There are hundreds about Jesus’s life alone. For example, the book of Isaiah details facts about the Messiah’s life, and then the New Testament records the fulfillment of that prophecy.”

“Show me.”

“Okay, let’s look at Isaiah 53.”

Jim walked to his bookshelf and pulled off a large leather-bound Bible.

Paul turned to his own copy. “Isaiah says, ‘He is despised and rejected of men’—Jesus should have been the king, but He was rejected by his own people. ‘He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth’—He could have proven that He was God with a word, but He chose to keep silent. ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities’—this describes the beatings He endured before crucifixion. ‘With His stripes we are healed’ and ‘He bore the sin of many’—Jesus was whipped and took the burden of our sins when He died. All this was written hundreds of years before the crucifixion.”

“Unconvincing,” Jim said. “‘He is despised’ doesn’t sound like the charismatic rabbi who preached to thousands of attentive listeners and had a triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And I notice that you’ve ignored the part of this chapter that was inconvenient to your hypothesis: in the same chapter, God says, ‘Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.’ Jesus is counted as merely one of the great ones and must share with them? That’s quite an insult to the son of God. And who are these equals? Most important, note that there’s no mention of the resurrection here. How can this be a Jesus crucifixion story without the punch line? This chapter is actually a very poor description of the crucifixion because the ‘he’ in this chapter is not Jesus but Israel.”

“But the Gospels themselves refer back to this chapter as prophecy of Jesus.”

“I don’t give a damn—this chapter isn’t about Jesus.”

Paul felt blindsided, as if he were lying on the ground, wondering where the haymaker came from. Samuel hadn’t told him about this rebuttal. Paul said, “Well, what about Psalm 22? It describes the crucifixion experience and has Jesus’s last words, exactly. It even describes the guards casting lots for his clothes. And this was written centuries before Jesus’s day.”

“Come now, think about it! The writers of the Gospels were literate, and they would have read all of the Law—what we call the Old Testament. They could have sifted through it to find plausible prophecies before they wrote the Gospels. Don’t you see? It’s as if they looked at the answers before taking a test.”

Paul leaned forward. “You’re saying that they cheated? That they deliberately invented the Gospel stories to fit the prophecy?”

“Think of the incredible boldness of the Bible’s claims,” Jim said, “that Jesus was a supernatural being sent by an omnipotent and omnipresent God who created the universe. That’s about as unbelievable a story as you can imagine. Deliberate cheating to invent this story—that is, a natural explanation of the Gospels—is much more plausible than that the story is literally true—which is a supernatural explanation. But here’s an explanation that’s more plausible still: suppose Jesus was nothing more than a charismatic rabbi. The original facts of Jesus’s life were then told and retold as they went from person to person, each time getting a little more fantastic. Details might have been gradually changed until they matched a particular prophecy. If people assumed that Jesus was the Messiah, he had to fulfill the prophecies, right? The Gospels were passed along orally for decades after Jesus’s death before they were written down, gradually translated into the Greek culture on the way. No need to imagine the deliberate invention of a false story.”

“But there was no oral tradition. The Gospels were written by eyewitnesses.”

“Prove it.”

“Ask any minister!” Paul said with a chuckle that probably betrayed his unease. “It’s common knowledge. Matthew was an apostle, he was an eyewitness, and he wrote the book of Matthew. And so on for the other Gospel authors—all apostles or companions of apostles.”

“The names of the Gospel books were assigned long after they were written. No one knows who wrote them—each Gospel is anonymous, and the names are simply tradition. No Gospel begins, ‘This is an account of events that I witnessed myself.’ Even if they did, should that convince me? You take any fanciful account, put ‘I saw this myself’ at the beginning, and it becomes true? A natural explanation—that the Jesus story is just a legend—is far, far likelier than the supernatural explanation.”

Jim had been noisily worrying his cinnamon stick but now set it back on the sofa. “Besides, we have lots of examples of similar things in other religions—holy books that are really just myth. For example, we can probably agree that the Koran, Islam’s holy book, is mythology. Muhammad wasn’t really visited by the angel Gabriel and given wisdom from God. Did Muhammad invent it? Did a desire for power push him to create a new religion, with him as its leader? Through extreme fasting, did he have delusions that he interpreted as revelations from God? Any of these natural explanations and many more are much more likely than the Koran being literally true. Or Gilgamesh or Beowulf or the Hindu Vedas or the Book of Mormon. They all have supernatural elements and they are all mythology. How can you and I agree that these are mythology and that mankind throughout history has invented religion and myth, but you say that the Bible is the single exception? When you cast a net that brings up Christianity, it brings up a lot of other religions as well.”

“You can’t lump the Bible in with those books. It’s in a completely different category.”

“Prove it,” Jim repeated, and he slammed his Bible onto the table.

“Why should I have to prove it?”

“Because you’re the one making the remarkable claims.”

“Remarkable?” Paul paused, his mouth open, as he collected his thoughts. “How can you say that? You’re in the minority and you reject the majority view. Christianity is the most widespread religion the world has ever seen. Almost everyone in this country is thoroughly familiar with Christianity. They wouldn’t think the claims are remarkable.”

Jim smiled. “I wouldn’t make that majority claim too loudly. Within your own religious community, your views are in the majority, but your flavor of Christianity isn’t even in the majority right here in Los Angeles. Even when you lump together all the denominations of Christianity worldwide, the majority of people on the Earth still think you’re wrong.

“It’s true that the tenets of Christianity are widely familiar, but that doesn’t make them any less remarkable. A God who can do anything, who has been around forever, and who created the universe? Take a step back and see this as an outsider might. You’ve made perhaps the boldest claim imaginable. No one should be asked to believe it without evidence, and very strong evidence at that.”

Jim picked up his cinnamon stick and waved it as he spoke. “Suppose someone claims to have seen a leprechaun or a dragon or a unicorn. Next, this person says that, because no one can prove him wrong, his beliefs are therefore correct. And since they’re correct, everyone should adopt them. This is nonsense of course. He is making the bold claim, so he must provide the evidence. In other words, we are justified—no, we are obliged—to reject extraordinary claims until the extraordinary evidence has been provided.”

“I have provided evidence!” Paul said.

Jim leaned back on the sofa and looked at Paul, for the first time at a loss for a quick retort. “Son, this is what I expected from you,” he said quietly, almost gently. “But this evidence barely merits the name. What you’ve provided is a flimsy argument that might satisfy someone who wants to support beliefs that he’s already decided are correct. But don’t expect this to convince anyone else.”

Paul sat back in his chair as if hit in the stomach. He had been preparing for a debate like this with increasing intensity for two years, and he thought that he deserved more. He didn’t expect accolades for his cleverness . . . but something? He tried to salvage the discussion and glanced at his note card, almost used up. His voice felt shrill and unreliable as he began. “But you must adjust your demands given how long ago this was. You can’t ask for photographs and diaries when the events happened close to two thousand years ago. It’s not fair.”

“Not fair? Suppose you come to me and ask to buy my house. I say that it’s worth three thousand dollars. You say, ‘I’ll give you five dollars for it.’ I say, ‘No—that’s ridiculous. I must reject your offer.’ And then you say, ‘But that’s not fair—five dollars is all I have.’”

Jim leaned forward, staring at Paul and with his arms outstretched. “That would be absurd. But it’s equivalent to the argument ‘since proving the fantastic claims of the New Testament is quite hard, you’ll have to accept whatever evidence we have.’ No, I don’t! I won’t accept five dollars for my house, I won’t accept pathetic evidence for leprechauns, and I won’t accept it for God.”

Jim paused and then said, “And while we’re at it, neither should you.”

I am the punishment of God….
If you had not committed great sins, 
God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
— Genghis Khan

*Older copies have been found since 1906.

Photo credit: John