Robert M. Price is both a biblical scholar and a critic of popular culture, and he is well qualified to compare two super-powered heroes who came to earth from another place, Jesus and Superman. His Bible Geek podcast for 5/18/2011 compares these two superheroes and finds more similarities than you might expect.

You could argue that Superman is a Christ-like figure, but that’s not the topic here. Rather, the techniques Christian apologists use to conclude that the Christ story is historical would also lead historians to a similar conclusion about Superman.

Sifting out the historical core

There are Superman comics, radio shows, TV shows and cartoons, movies, and even novels and video games over a 75-year span, and the stories aren’t always consistent. Suppose a future historian is trying to make sense of this and decides to select just the uncontested facts. These might be: Superman grew up in Smallville, was strong enough to lift a car, disguised himself as reporter Clark Kent, and so on. In the Superman canon, nothing contradicts these claims, so they must be historical, right?

We see the same thing with Christian apologists. They’ll take the natural elements of the gospel story and demand that they must be historical. Jesus was born, he was crucified, he was buried, and the tomb was later found empty. Who could argue with these? They must be historical.

Gary Habermas is well known for his minimal facts argument, that with just a handful of facts accepted by relevant scholars, the resurrection of Jesus is the obvious conclusion. (I’ve written more on this argument here.)

Or take the Testimonium Flavianum, the passage in the writings of first-century historian Josephus that gives a flattering account of Jesus. This is unlike anything a Jew like Josephus would write, and even many conservative scholars agree it isn’t authentic. Instead of rejecting it as an obvious forgery, however, many are determined to salvage what they can and imagine a toned-down original by Josephus that they can declare as historical. (More here.)

Support from extra-canonical evidence

If we take the comics as gospel, what extra-comical evidence is there for Superman? Plenty, given the numerous radio and TV series, movies, and other media. Thought bubbles don’t translate from print media, and Jimmy Olsen first appeared in a radio show to give Clark Kent or Superman an excuse to explain what he’s thinking. There are countless instances where Superman is referenced by journalists or ordinary citizens.

We see the same thing in Christian apologetics. Some writings were declared heretical, like the writings of Marcion. Some books are canonical in some churches but not in others. For example, 1 and 2 Maccabees are canonical in the Catholic Church but not in Protestant churches. Apologists point eagerly to meager mentions of Christianity in the works of first- and early second-century historians.

Redaction, copyist errors, and deliberate changes

Superman originated with high school students Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), but the entire canon is the result of many hands—other comic writers and artists, TV and movie screenwriters, radio scriptwriters, and more. Plot holes, logical flaws, and other errors are inevitable with so many contributors. An internet search for “Superman continuity errors” returns two million hits.

More serious are the deliberate changes. For example, everyone on Superman’s home planet of Krypton originally had superpowers, but later only Clark Kent had them due to the earth’s yellow sun. And is Superman super just as a man, or also as a teen, a boy, or a baby? Some projects reboot Superman, preserving the broad outline without being constrained by details in previous incarnations.

The Bible is also the work of many hands. However, unlike Superman, whose story spans less than a century, the Bible spans a millennium—more if you consider the oral history from which it arose.

As with Superman, there are many contradictory versions of Jesus. The biblical solution was to drop the inconsistent versions, and the writings of the Marcionites and Gnostics didn’t make the cut (at least according to the faction that won the popularity contest). Later contributions by Mohammed and Joseph Smith weren’t included either.

Though the books of the Bible were selected to satisfy a narrow orthodoxy, we still see the shadow of these inconsistencies. For example, does post-resurrection Jesus have a spirit body (Luke 24:31) or a physical body (eight verses later)? How can Jesus go to “Paradise” with the thief on the day of his death according to Luke when Acts says Jesus remained on earth for 40 days? Another example: Paul’s ideology conflicted with the stricter views of the James/Peter sect, and he documents this struggle in Galatians 2:11–21.

Lifting ideas from previous sources

Superman is drawn from other super-savior myths of the time, and the borrowing can be obvious. For example, you probably know of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, but Doc Savage also had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, and his first name was also Clark. Doc Savage (née 1933) is the Man of Bronze and Superman (1938) is the Man of Steel.

Captain Future (1940) is The Man of Tomorrow; so is Superman.

The girlfriend of The Shadow (1930) was Margo Lane; Superman’s was Lois Lane.

Likewise, we see plenty of examples in the Bible that draw from prior traditions from civilizations in the region.

• The Noah story comes from earlier Sumerian ideas about how the earth and heavens were put together (more).
• The Garden of Eden story mirrors the Sumerian Atra-Hasis epic (more).
• Yahweh defeated Leviathan, and we find the same Combat Myth in earlier Ugaritic, Babylonian, and Akkadian literature (more).
• The Jesus story comes from a culture full of stories about dying-and-rising gods like Dionysus, Osiris, and Tammuz (more).

Historical support for historical Superman belief?

If the techniques of Christian apologists are valid, future Kentites would be justified in their belief. Or, if that logic is flawed and a historical Superman is ridiculous, the same is true for the gospel story.

On the face of it, the Superman story is far more plausible than the Jesus story. Superman is an intelligent being who lived on a planet, and we understand that since that’s what we are. Superman got here with technology, and we understand that, too—we have a limited ability to travel through space ourselves. But Jesus? We have zero universally acknowledged evidence of a supernatural anything.

Another important difference is that Superman saves people whether they believe in him or not.

Two possibilities exist:
either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying.
— Arthur C. Clarke

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/11/14.)

Image credit: Wikipedia

I don’t take donations, and I don’t have a Patreon page. But what I would like to ask is that you consider my two books as possible gifts this holiday season.

Both books are novels that explore Christian apologetics, and if you enjoy the material at this blog, you’ll appreciate the critique given to the Christian position in these books. Perhaps someone on your holiday list needs a copy. Or perhaps you know a blogger or journalist who might be able to provide a little PR love.

The apologetic argument becomes another character in Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey. It’s the story of a young man torn between two mentors and struggling to maintain his Christian worldview in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. This earthquake was actually predicted by a real church, and the novel takes off from this historic event.

A Modern Christmas Carol is a reworking of the Dickens classic, in which a shrewdly successful televangelist receives unexpected Christmas visitors: first, his long-dead partner, and then three ghostly guides. Finally able to acknowledge the shallowness of his message and doubts he has long suppressed, he makes amends with far-reaching consequences.

Christmas topics

Here are a few Christmas-y posts:

• The virgin birth story is always in the list of supposedly fulfilled biblical prophecies. When you actually read it, however, it’s startling how many ways this claim falls apart.
• The War on Christmas™ seems to come sooner every year, doesn’t it? Some Christians seem to enjoy being offended, and the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is a professional at it. Literally—it’s his job. In one end-of-the-year survey, he thought he found a juicy factoid with which to attack the atheists, but it blew up in his face.
• Stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt demolished a pop Christmas song and taught an important lesson about how God doesn’t work: “How Christianity Infantilizes Adults.”
• A parable about two kids arguing about evidence for Santa has interesting parallels with evidence for Jesus. Be careful about dismissing the existence of Santa, because that reasoning may demand that you dismiss Jesus as well.

We cannot know that Santa definitely doesn’t exist.
This is technically true.
But what’s your best guess?
Go on. Be bold.
— Ricky Gervais

Image credit: Donnie Ray Jones, flickr, CC

You know Chick tracts, those small Christian cartoon pamphlets used to evangelize? One pamphlet tells the story of a gallant Christian student who stands up for Christian truth in a classroom run by a dictatorial atheist. My summary is here. That tract might as well have been the first draft of the screenplay for God’s Not Dead.

The first thing to get past in this movie is that real-world plausibility is out the window. In this world, philosophy professors can bully a Christian student to renounce his faith without consequences, then demand that the student debate him in front of the class and put a large fraction of that student’s grade on the outcome.

Show me such a situation, and I’ll show you a professor who is in trouble with the college administration. Not only is that unethical, it is crying out for a lawsuit. Every atheist I know would be allied with the Christians to say that that’s way out of bounds.

Sure, Christian students can have their beliefs challenged when they go to college. I see no problem with that. But school-sanctioned humiliation of Christians doesn’t happen in the real world. Despite the long list of court cases at the end, I’ve yet to see one real example. This is simply Christians’ David and Goliath fantasy.

Let’s step through the main points of the movie.

Atheist journalist gets cancer

A liberal atheist journalist discovers that she has cancer, and as a result she’s immediately dumped by her rich go-getter boyfriend. Then we see her talking with the doctor about her MRI results. The doctor asks if she has anyone that she’d like to be there with her. But no, she has no one. She’s alone and afraid.

At the end, she barges in on the Christian rock group about to play at a concert (that’s her journalistic style), and we realize that God pushed her to do that. Then they have a good pray.

But there was no mention of the helpful elephant in the room: science. That is, medicine, MRIs, surgery, chemotherapy, and all that. Yes, that’s coldly clinical, and a warm and loving friend would be a comfort, but science is the only thing that will actually, y’know, do anything about the problem. Even the prayer at the end was intended to do nothing more than encourage God to support her through the treatment.

Muslim tensions

Ayisha wears a niqab so that only her eyes are showing, or at least she does until her father drives away. You see, she’s become a Christian in the previous year. When her father finds out, he beats her and throws her out of the house. He’s torn apart by his misguided devotion to a ridiculous faith, and he collapses in tears.

Yes, that happens. Yes, it’s tragic. But why show it happening in a Muslim family when there are so many more Christian families in America broken up over religion? If the point is that religion can make you do crazy things, a Christian example would be far more relevant.

Apologetics

There are other subplots to critique (and if you want more of a plot summary, I recommend the Geek Goes Rogue review), but I’d rather focus on the apologetics arguments. I’ll use David to refer to our plucky student and Goliath to refer to the dictatorial professor.

No one can prove God? Well, no one can disprove God, either! True, but that’s not how we make conclusions. We don’t believe in Bigfoot or unicorns because their nonexistence hasn’t been proven; rather, we follow the evidence. The evidence points to no Bigfoot, no unicorns, and no God. Let’s be open-minded enough to consider new contradicting evidence if it comes in, but for now, we have no justification for belief.

You want an explanation for the Big Bang? Look to Genesis: “Let there be light.” (Despite being unprepared for this challenge, David has unaccountably awesome presentations.) No new science has come from the Bible. You can try to show that, now that we know how things work thanks to science, the Bible was sort of pointing in the right direction (it wasn’t), but let’s not pretend that the truth was right there in the Bible all along.

Atheists say that the universe came from nothing, and they must defend that. First, it’s scientists who do the saying (not atheists), and second, no they don’t say that the universe came from nothing. Maybe it did, but the jury is out.

There’s nothing embarrassing or unreasonable in science saying, “We don’t know.” That’s how we focus on new questions to answer. Science not knowing something gives no grounds for the Christian to jump in and say, “But I do!!” Finally, note that any cosmological argument is a deist argument. Even if we accepted it, we’re a long way from Christianity.

Atheists ask, Who created God? but God was uncreated! Backatcha, atheists! You don’t respond to a scientific question with a theological claim. “My religion says that God was uncreated” is no answer in the real world.

“But who created God?” is a reasonable question. More here.

Both Christians and atheists must explain how the universe started. Wrong again. Science always has unanswered questions. That’s no evidence in favor of Christianity. Science has explained much in the real world; Christianity has explained nothing. Weigh the evidence and choose the best explanation.

What about the sudden arrival of animal species? The Bible nicely explains it: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” More theology in place of science. No, science doesn’t come from the Bible.

Note that Goliath made none of these rebuttals. He does little besides mock, and destroying David has become a personal mission. In one brief attempt at holding up his end of the debate, he quotes Stephen Hawking: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

This is just an Argument from Authority. Hawking is a smart guy, but just because he said it doesn’t make it true. This is a data point, nothing more. But does David point this out? Nope, since he wants to respond with his own Argument from Authority by bringing up John Lennox. (I’ve responded to Lennox’s embarrassingly shallow apologetics here.)

In the end, David hammers Goliath with, “Why do you hate God?” And then it comes out, in front of his class: it’s because God killed his mother. As a 12-year-old, little Goliath had prayed to God to cure his mother’s cancer. God didn’t, and he’s held a grudge ever since. So, it turns out that Goliath actually does believe; he’s just mad at God.

The students then stand, one by one, to render their unanimous verdict: “God’s not dead.” The professor walks out, humiliated.

Marketing God? Or marketing the movie?

Our Christians celebrate at the concert at the end. David’s noble battle is publicly acknowledged, and everyone at the concert is encouraged to text “God’s Not Dead” to all their friends. (Wait a minute—isn’t that also the name of a Christian movie?) And, of course, we in the real audience are next encouraged to tell all our friends that “God’s Not Dead.”

If the flabby arguments in the movie are any evidence, however, there is scant reason to think so. This movie is nothing but persecution porn.

Continue with the review of the thrilling 2016 sequel, “God’s Not Dead 2.” Or jump to the review of GND3.

The Almighty deserves better advocacy
than he gets in this typically ham-fisted
Christian campus melodrama.
— Scott Foundas critique of the movie in Variety

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/25/14.)

A Finnish karate master can defeat opponents without a punch or kick (see video on The Friendly Atheist). He used what he calls “Empty Force.”

You can, too—for a fee.

The video shows opponents falling to the floor, but these were students of the master. When he tried his magic on skeptics, nothing happened.

The Friendly Atheist noted that the students falling to the ground in response to the master’s touch was like Benny Hinn’s celebrated public healings, where sick believers are “slain in the Spirit” as they fall back and writhe on the floor in response to Hinn’s magic wave. But you have to be a believer for it to work—or be in on the scam. When faith healers do their mumbo jumbo on children, the children don’t know that they’re supposed to flop backwards. Hilarious!

What if the opponent isn’t your own student?

Another example is Kiai Master Ryukerin, who has a touchless energy technique similar to Empty Force. Here’s a demonstration of the master sparring with and knocking over his students.

It looks like a stunt but is still intriguing. How would this work in an actual fight? Surprisingly, Master Ryukerin was confident enough not only to offer to fight anyone but to put up prize money. An MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter accepted the challenge, and the results are predictable. Though respectful, he quickly thrashed the old man. The magic force field was only in the mind of his students and had no hold over an outsider.

The Christian energy field

The naïve Christian street preacher or door-knocking missionary is similar to Master Ryukerin. They care what the Bible says, so they’ll support their argument with Bible quotes. They had a compelling personal experience of Jesus, so they’ll share it. They are swayed by emotional (rather than intellectual) arguments, so they’ll use them.

They’ll talk about how the church community is important to them, or that the pastor is charismatic. It works on them, so it should work on others, right?

But this has as much impact on skeptics who demand evidence as Master Ryukerin’s energy field does to a fighter not in on the gag.

More experienced evangelists faced with such an atheist may try intellectual arguments or move on to look for easier conquests.

Christians know what I’m talking about when it comes to cult leaders like Jim Jones or disgraced televangelists like Jim Bakker. They might enjoy a video of Benny Hinn fighting demons with video game sound effects. How could people have not seen through them? But, of course, to the people in their circles of influence, these frauds were very persuasive.

As was Master Ryukerin to his students.

If your religious faith 
is what stops you from raping and murdering, 
that doesn’t make you a good person, 
that makes you a sociopath on a leash.
— commenter Sven2547

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/20/14.)

Image credit: VGjunk