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500 Eyewitnesses to the Risen Christ? Not Likely.

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The apostle Paul throws down the gauntlet in 1 Cor. 15:6, and many apologists see it as powerful evidence in favor of the resurrection story. Paul in effect dares his readers to go check out his claim if they want. Who would make a claim like this, making himself vulnerable to readers catching him in a lie (or at least an embarrassing error), if he didn’t know it were true?

[Jesus] appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have [died]. (1 Cor. 15:6).

But this confident defense of the resurrection wilts under scrutiny.
Let’s think this through. Imagine that we’re in that church in Corinth and we have just received Paul’s letter.
1. Who are these 500 eyewitnesses? Names and addresses, please? To find out, someone would need to send a letter back to Paul, at that moment 200 miles across the Aegean Sea in Ephesus. If a church member had the money, time, and guts to write this letter, why would Paul have deigned to reply?
Even if Paul had witnessed Jesus in front of the 500 (he hadn’t), it’s possible he wouldn’t have known a single person in the crowd. And even if Paul thought the number was accurate, “500 eyewitnesses” might be all he knew, and he wouldn’t have been able to back it up with any evidence.
2. How many will still be around? Paul writes 1 Corinthians in about 55CE about a supposed event that occurred over 20 years earlier. Of the 500 eyewitnesses, how many are still alive and still in Jerusalem, ready to be questioned?
3. Who could make this trip? Jerusalem is 800 miles away, and getting there would involve a long, dangerous, and expensive trip.
4. How many candidates for this trip? Paul had only started the church in Corinth a couple of years earlier. There would probably have been less than 100 members.* Would even one have the means and motivation to make the big trip to Jerusalem?
5. Who would challenge Paul? If the founder of the church says something, who’s likely to question it? There might well have been people who were unimpressed by Paul’s message, but these would never have joined the church. Others within the church might have become disappointed and left. Even if these people had wanted to embarrass Paul, they wouldn’t have been in the church community to learn of the claim.
6. What did the eyewitnesses actually see? Let’s imagine that we have the money and daring to make the trip, we have a plan for whom to interview in Jerusalem, and we’re rebellious enough to spit in the face of our church’s founder to see if he’s a liar.
After many adventures, we reach Jerusalem. What will the eyewitnesses say? At best they’ll say that, over 20 years ago, they saw a man. Big deal—that’s uninteresting unless they saw him dead before. Had they been close enough to the movement to be certain that they recognized Jesus? Human memory is notoriously inaccurate. There’s a big difference between the certainty one has in a memory and its accuracy—these don’t always go together.
7. So what? Suppose all these unlikely things happen: we make the long trip, we search for eyewitnesses, and we conclude that Paul’s story is nonsense. If we successfully make the long trip back, what difference will this make? Even if we had the guts to tell everyone that Paul’s story was wrong, so what? Who would believe us over the church’s founder? We’d be labeled as bad apples, we’d be expelled from the church, and the church would proceed as before. And Paul’s letter would still be copied through the centuries for us to read today!
In my recent post on the Shroud of Turin, I noted that our very first historical record of the Shroud is a letter stating that the shroud was a fake. That’s done nothing to steer people away from a belief they want to hold. As with the Naysayer Hypothesis, apologists imagine that this argument is far stronger than it is.
Who would imagine that a supernatural claim written two thousand years ago would be compelling when we wouldn’t find it compelling if written two minutes ago?
Let’s consider two possible conclusions about this verse.
1. The resurrection happened supernaturally as the gospels describe it. (Let’s suppose that the gospels all tell the same story.)
2. Tales circulated orally in the years after the crucifixion among Jesus’s followers, with the number of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ growing with time.
Why imagine a supernatural story when a natural story explains the facts?

If you can’t be a good example,
then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.
— Catherine Aird

Photo credit: University of Michigan
* Prof. Philip Harland’s “Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean” podcast #1.5 (“Paul and the followers of Jesus at Corinth, part 2”) argues that each house church would’ve only had dozens of members.
(This is a modified version of a post originally published 12/21/11.)

A Critique of 1 Corinthians 15

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Christians often point to chapter 15 in 1 Corinthians as important evidence for the resurrection. This book, Paul’s first epistle to the church in Corinth, was written roughly a decade before the earliest gospel of Mark (written in c. 70 CE). This makes it the earliest claim for the resurrection of Jesus.
Let’s see if the story holds up. Here’s the section that many Christians point to:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to [Peter], and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have [died]. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1 Cor. 15:3–8)

Claims about the dating of this important passage are all over the map. Some argue that it actually precedes Paul’s writing. They say that it appears to be in a different style, as if it were a creedal statement (like the modern Apostle’s Creed) that would have been recited by believers. That is, though Paul wrote this epistle 25 years after the crucifixion, it had been an oral creed since as early as a few years after Jesus’ death. They cite this as evidence that belief in the resurrection was years earlier than Paul’s writing.
But if it’s a creed, it’s not evidence. A creed is a faith statement—a statement of what people believe. It even sounds like one. There is no mention of time or location, like a police report or newspaper article would have, and “Christ died for our sins” isn’t an observation, it’s a faith statement.
Others propose a very different interpretation: that the different style suggests that it was added to copies decades after Paul’s writing. The gap from the creation of this epistle to our oldest copy is about 150 years. That’s a lot of opportunity for hanky-panky as scribes copied and recopied the letter, especially during the early turbulent years of the new religion of Christianity. We can’t know for certain what the original said.
Now consider more questions about this chapter.

  • Jesus was “raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” This is a reference to Jonah 1:17 (“Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights”), but how can the resurrection of Jesus be “according to” this scripture? That verse in Jonah is hardly a prophecy.
  • Jesus appeared “to the Twelve”? But they were Eleven after Judas was gone, and his replacement was elected after the ascension of Jesus.
  • “Christ died for our sins”? Here, the sacrifice of Jesus parallels the Old Testament animal sacrifices. But later in this chapter, Paul discards this by saying, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (15:17). So he’s apparently changed his mind, and now it’s the resurrection that is the saving act.
  • Paul says, “and last of all he appeared to me also.” But the appearance to Paul as recorded in Acts 9:3–9 was a visionary sighting (his companions at the time saw nothing). Is Paul’s list of appearances above a combination of visionary and actual sightings? If so, which of the others are visionary as well?
  • Later in the epistle, Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (15:22). This is nice symmetry—we didn’t do anything to get tarred with the brush of Adam’s sin, and we don’t need to do anything to get the redemption of Christ—but most Christians don’t think everyone’s going to the same place.
  • Paul says, “the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (15:28). This isn’t too surprising, since our concept of a Trinity of co-equal persons was developed in the fourth century, but it does highlight the fact that Paul might be shocked by what Christianity has become.
  • Paul says, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable … it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (15:42–4). This makes clear that the resurrected Jesus was spirit, not flesh. This sounds a lot like docetism, a heresy that was rejected in the First Council of Nicaea. It also contradicts Luke’s physical post-resurrection Jesus: “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).
  • We’re told that Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time.” But later, after Jesus rose into heaven, the believers were “a group numbering about a hundred and twenty” (Acts. 1:15). The 500 can’t have been too impressed with what they saw if they weren’t all believers. And if Paul’s claim is such compelling evidence, why didn’t any of the gospels include it?

Though an important bit of history, this chapter may not be as compelling as believers think.

The book [of Mormon] is a curiosity to me.
It is such a pretentious affair and yet so slow, so sleepy,
such an insipid mess of inspiration.
It is chloroform in print.
— Mark Twain

Acknowledgements: I’ve gotten some of these points from The Atheist’s Bible Companion to the New Testament by Mike Davis, Nailed by David Fitzgerald, and one particular sharp-eyed commenter.
Photo credit: Codex Sinaiticus project

The Curious Case of Antony Flew

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atheist now deist antony flew book not convincingAntony Flew created waves with his 2007 book There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. He was a prominent atheist philosopher who converted to deism. Attacked or ignored before, Flew suddenly became a darling within many Christian circles and was celebrated as one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers.
Antony Flew, the Christian coup
A 2009 Greg Koukl podcast gives an example of this Christian reaction. Koukl blathered on about what a top-flight philosopher Flew was. He attacked the idea that Flew was losing it, as some atheists charged. “Just read his book and see,” he said. He said that scientists like Dawkins should feel privileged to be in the same room with a great philosopher like Flew. And so on.
Koukl is often motivating, and that was the case here. However, I doubt that it motivated me in the direction that he was expecting. In the first place, and you need only look on the cover to see this, Flew wasn’t the author. It says “Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese.” Maybe Flew wrote most of it, but I doubt it. The “with” customarily means that the other guy wrote it all.
There are other clues. This book is structured in a very different way than a typical nonfiction book in which someone lays out a thesis and then supports it with evidence. It has long summaries of the thinking of other people—Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and so on. No original thinking here, just summaries.
For example, it has a book report-like summary of part of Infinite Minds by John Leslie, which talks about quantum laws and special relativity. Flew’s background gives no indication that he was comfortable with this kind of science, and even if he was, who cares? He wasn’t a physicist or even a science journalist, and he brings no authority to his analysis of physics.
There are also lots of places like this: “In my new introduction to the 2005 edition of God and Philosophy, I said, ‘I am myself delighted …’” (p. 123). Flew was reduced to quoting himself? He can’t just say what he wants to say?
Another example: “In The Presumption of Atheism and other atheistic writings, I argued that we must take the universe itself …” (p. 134). Here again he’s referring to himself as if he were another person. The book is peppered with this structure. It looks exactly as it would if someone (I don’t know … maybe someone like Roy Abraham Varghese?) were told to write a book-length essay on someone else’s philosophy and tried to couch it as if written by the great man himself.
Was Flew losing it in his waning years?
Here’s how Flew summarized his new position in a 2007 video:

If the integrated complexity of the physical world is a good reason, as Einstein clearly thought it was, of believing that there was an intelligence behind it, then this argument applies a fortiori [even more strongly] with the inordinately greater integrated complexity of the living world.

Let’s step through Flew’s argument.
1. Einstein is really smart. True, but this is an irrelevant appeal to authority.
2. Einstein said that there’s an intelligence behind the physical world. False, but even if he did, so what? A really smart guy says that there’s a god behind the curtain, pulling the levers of reality, so therefore it must be so?
3. If you think the physical world is complex, the living world is way more so.
4. If there’s intelligence behind the physical world, there’s even more reason to believe that about the far more complex biological world. Complexity doesn’t demand design. A pile of straw is complex (imagine documenting each piece), but it wasn’t designed.
Flew approvingly mentioned Einstein’s reluctance to go “where [he] didn’t have any authority at all and wasn’t inclined (reasonably enough) to talk about it.” Too bad Flew himself didn’t follow that advice!
The relevance of Flew’s conversion
Let’s return to Koukl’s point about Dawkins vs. Flew. The book itself shows the ridiculousness of this complaint. In the beginning of the conclusion chapter, it lists “the three items of evidence we have considered in this volume—the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the universe.” These three are all squarely in the domain of science! Now who’s the interloper into a field that he’s unqualified to critique?
If Varghese wants to spin Flew’s works or glean a theistic argument out of Flew’s writings, that’s fine, but what did Flew himself add to this project besides give permission? The image comes to mind of someone helping a senile old man sign his name to the release form. One critic of the book said, “Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, [the book] rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

If you are drawn into controversy,
use very hard arguments and very soft words.
Frequently you cannot convince a man by tugging at his reason,
but you can persuade him by winning his affections.
— C.H. Spurgeon

Unintended Consequences of the Prodigal Son Story

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Why can't God follow the example of the prodigal son parable?Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11–32. We’re all familiar with it—a son demands his share of his inheritance and then runs off to some foreign land and wastes it. Destitute, he finally sees the error of his ways and decides to return. He throws himself on his father’s mercy, but the father forgives him in an instant and celebrates his return.
I’m against much of what the Bible stands for, but here’s a story that has real value. It has become a universally understood metaphor in Western civilization, but the Bible is an odd place to find it. Perhaps God might do well by reading it and resetting his own moral compass by its wisdom.
By contrast, the Old Testament has many one-strike-and-you’re-out stories about God. For example, Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant to steady it when the oxen stumbled, but God zapped him dead. There’s Onan, who “spilled his seed.” Don’t forget that poor schlub who picked up sticks on the Sabbath. And, of course, Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit.
This isn’t the “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” God that other parts of the Bible imagine (Ps. 103:8). God has a short fuse and isn’t at all forgiving, quite the opposite of the father in the parable.
If the moral of the parable is that we need to forgive, even after we’ve been grossly wronged, why can’t God set the example? Is he drunk with power, a deity who can do whatever the heck he likes? That’s the message from Job.
Some apologists will argue that it’s ridiculous to try to understand God’s actions with our puny minds. So what if God’s approach makes no sense? God is inscrutable and we should just assume that whatever God does is good and right by definition. The first problem is that this presupposes God and interprets the facts to fit. The second is that Christians who opt for this route must avoid labels for God that pretend that they do understand his actions, like “just” or “good.”
Imagine a Christian responding to something bad happening by saying that we simple humans can’t understand God’s reasoning. But when something good happens, of course, that same Christian is certain that he understands God’s thought process. I got the new job; the Americans conquer Iraq; a single baby is found alive in a crashed airplane—God’s generosity is boundless and his purpose is clear!
Use the “God can’t be understood” defense if you want, but be consistent. If we can’t understand why God allowed the Holocaust, then we can’t understand why he allowed the survivor in the plane crash.
But to get back to the point, why does God not follow the example of the father in the Prodigal Son parable? If we’ve wronged God, why can’t he just forgive us with no strings attached? Why the song and dance about Jesus dying for our sins? Alternatively, given God’s headstrong nature, why is that parable in the Bible?
Incredibly, I’ve heard apologists try to hide God from this spotlight by saying that the moral of the story isn’t that generous forgiveness is a good thing. No, the point of the story is that you must ask for forgiveness.
They sacrifice a noble story to try to salvage the logic of their religion. Sad.
In this Easter season, why imagine that a human sacrifice must be given to appease a savage Old Testament deity? Let’s see the Prodigal Son story as a far more healthy response to being wronged.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.
An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said.
An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
— Madalyn Murray O’Hair

Photo credit: Hicks

Gay Marriage, Abortion, and Open Mindedness

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Abortion and gay marriageSenator Rob Portman (R-OH) now supports same-sex marriage, a reversal he recently made public. What caused the turnaround was his son coming out as gay two years ago.
Portman’s record against homosexual issues was pretty consistent. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, he supported the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and he voted to prohibit gay couples in Washington, DC from adopting.
He said about his change of heart:

What happened to me is really personal. I mean, I hadn’t thought a lot about this issue. Again, my focus has been on other issues over my public policy career.

Dick Cheney had been a closet supporter of gay marriage for years because of his lesbian daughter but in 2009 he also came out on the issue.
Why the delay? Republicans are hesitant to do the right thing on gay marriage because it’s politically inconvenient? Since when do you put what’s best for the party in front of what’s best? Still, they have company. I’m sure that was behind the Catholic Church pedophilia cover up—doing what’s right for individuals took a back seat to what was best for the Church. But that’s a side issue. It’s a step forward, and let’s celebrate politicians who take a potentially unpopular stand.
Imagining it vs. living it.
Here’s my question. I see that having a relative makes the issue one you can’t just push away, but why does it take that? Isn’t one of humanity’s super powers the ability to imagine themselves in new situations? Why couldn’t Portman or Cheney speculate, “Gee, what if this issue hit me directly? What if my own child was homosexual? Would I still not budge on ‘traditional marriage’?”
The tide has turned, and many conservative legislators who are now against same-sex marriage will change their minds in the next decade, but why must it take so long? Why can’t they mentally put themselves in Portman’s position and change their minds next week? (And when they finally do change, will they think back on Portman’s example and wonder why it took them so long?)
I guess it’s harder than it looks. Speculating about something must be a poor substitute for it actually happening, and Portman and Cheney would probably still hold their old positions if not for the push from their children.
How does this apply to abortion?
Let’s broaden this observation. One of my recent posts on abortion received nearly 1000 comments, and I argued there with several pro-life advocates. I’m guessing they were older men (related post: Why is it always men advancing the pro-life position?). Their positions were pretty simple: a fetus is a human life, and it’s just wrong to kill a human. That’s it—no nuance, no exceptions, no consideration for the harm of not having an abortion. And why should there be? It’s murder—end of story.
It seems to me that these antagonists are like the pre-enlightenment Portman or Cheney. They’re smart, and they can marshal arguments to support their position. And their position isn’t insane—abortion does kill a fetus.
It’s the tunnel vision that’s the problem. Let’s broaden the view, Senator Portman, and imagine that your own son were gay. Let’s broaden the view, Mr. Pro-Life, and imagine that your own 15-year-old daughter had an unwanted pregnancy. All the plans that you and your wife have for your daughter—graduating from high school, then college, and then a satisfying career and a family—are in jeopardy. How much school will she miss? What teams or clubs must she withdraw from? What commitments will she have to cancel for decorum or out of embarrassment?
It will be an enormous bump in the road if she places the child for adoption. But girls in that situation almost never do—just two percent of premarital births in the U.S. are placed for adoption. Now we’re talking about, not a bump in the road, but a fork to a completely different life, a life with her as a 16-year-old single mom living at home trying to make a life from the constrained options available.
Problem one is that Mr. Pro-Life can’t put himself in this situation, or at least can’t do it successfully. Imagining it is a poor substitute for actually hearing his daughter sobbing in her room and finding out what the problem is.
Problem two is where the lesson from Sen. Portman fails. Portman understands that he can’t make his son un-gay, but Mr. Pro-Life can encourage his daughter to become un-pregnant. He could cite extenuating circumstances in his situation, take care of the problem, and then return to his pro-life dogmatism.
We see this situation in the stories of women picketers of abortion clinics who, being human, have their own unwanted pregnancies. Or their daughters do. They’ll slip in the back door, have the abortion, and then be back on the picket lines days later. When asked about the hypocrisy, they say that other women are sluts. They, by contrast, had a good excuse.
For this reason, pro-lifers may never be able to understand the difficulty facing the nearly one million American women who choose abortion each year. And perhaps we will never have a reasoned conversation on this divisive issue.

I was always looking outside myself
for strength and confidence,
but it comes from within.
It is there all the time.
— Anna Freud

Photo credit: Cafepress

A Debt to Christianity?

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Does Christianity give us much? Do atheists or secularists owe it a debt?I recently came across a 2010 article by John Steinrucken titled, “Secularism’s Ongoing Debt to Christianity” in the conservative online magazine American Thinker.
I didn’t think much of it.
Steinrucken says that he’s an atheist, but he has an odd accommodationist point of view. I don’t see him making many new atheist friends, and his view of Christianity as a false but useful fiction to keep the Proletariat in line can’t endear him to Christians either. Still, dozens of sites reference his article, many of them Christian.
First, let’s understand his thesis.

Religious faith has made possible the advancement of Western civilization. That is, the glue that has held Western civilization together over the centuries is the Judeo-Christian tradition. … Western civilization’s survival, including the survival of open secular thought, depends on the continuance within our society of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

As an atheist, he doesn’t believe that there is anything behind Christian faith. And though the somewhat-Christian West is at the top of the pyramid at the moment, other societies have advanced quite well without Christianity—consider the Islamic Golden Age, China’s many dynasties, the Aztecs and Olmecs in Central America, the Incas and Aymara in the Andes, Mali and Egypt in Africa, Greece and Babylon in the Eastern Mediterranean, Angkor and Sukhothai in Southeast Asia, and India. He has a long way to go to show that Christianity does something that other religions don’t.
Next, it’s Christianity as a “moral compass.”

Can anyone seriously argue that crime and debauchery are not held in check by religion?

I say to any Christian who would be a rampaging maniac without religion: please remain a Christian! Since prisons aren’t overflowing with atheists, they tend to avoid crime simply because it’s the right thing to do.
If you wondered if this guy is really an atheist, he really looks like a clumsy Poe when he says:

Has there ever been a more perfect and concise moral code than the one Moses brought down from the mountain?

Wow—how many ways would this be wrong in American society? No, the law that Moses brought down from the mountain would be worse than useless. The Ten Commandments demand allegiance to God; the First Amendment allows religion but says that government must stay out of it. The Ten Commandments say nothing against slavery, genocide, and rape; today, we have a very different view of what’s right and wrong. The Ten Commandments presuppose a theocracy; the Constitution outlines a representative democracy.
He blunders into the question of morality and says that the secularist

can cite no overriding authority other than that of fashion.

Wrong again. Atheists point to a shared moral instinct. We’re all the same species, so we have pretty much the same moral programming. If Steinrucken is pointing to objective morality, I want evidence of such a thing. I’ve seen none.
For some reason, he has a chip on his shoulder about “secularists.” He pauses to paint a bizarre picture of how they fill their God-shaped hole. If it’s not nutty New Age nonsense,

they surrender themselves to secular ideologies or do-good causes, especially those in which they can mass with others in solidarity, shouting in unison mindless, ritualistic simplicities and waving placards of hackneyed and inane slogans.

My local atheist group organizes an event at the local blood center every eight weeks. At Christmas, we wrap presents at book stores, with donations going to a children’s hospital. We answer phones for the local public radio station pledge drive. We don’t shout mindless simplicities or wave signs with inane slogans—should we?
Next, we’re told that

secularism has never offered the people a practical substitute for religion.

Do you substitute something for malaria or cancer? Or do you simply make victims healthy?
But if you want to see it that way, the substitute for religion is reality.

We secularists should recognize that we owe much to the religionists, that we are not threatened by them, that we should grant to them their world.

They already have their world—read the First Amendment. I strongly support the demand that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
As for our not being threatened, guess again. Some Christians are eager to see prayer in public schools. To see Creationism taught in science class. To see prayers in government buildings from City Hall to Congress. To see “In God We Trust” continue as our official motto and the phrase “under God” remain in the Pledge. To see a de facto Christian requirement for public office.

Why should we be exercised over a Christmas Crèche in front of the county court house?

Because it spits on our governing document, that’s why. (Unlike what you may have heard, there actually are stupid questions.) Do we care about the First Amendment or not? If so, respect it and protect it.

And what harm will come to a child who hears prayer in the schoolroom?

You tell me. Should we deliver morning prayers by cycling through the religions represented in America, giving turns to Muslims, Mormons, Satanists, Wiccans, Hindus, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics, and so on? No conceivable harm to the schoolchildren, right?
Or—crazy idea—maybe we should leave the religious indoctrination at home and just focus on education at school.
Steinrucken doesn’t think much of “elitists,” which pop up occasionally as scoundrels in his essay. They stand on the shoulders of the Christian masses to practice “their conceits and dilettantes.” But it would be wise of them to

publicly hold in high esteem the institutions of Christianity and Judaism, and to respect those who do believe and to encourage and to give leeway to those who, in truth, will be foremost in the trenches defending us against those who would have us all bow down to a different and unaccommodating faith.

So fight fire with fire? When the Muslim believers attack, we must respond with Christian believers for some reason.
No, you don’t fight fire with fire; you fight it with water. A civilization that is immune to the siren call of Christianity won’t care much for Islam either.
But from Steinrucken’s standpoint, what’s the problem? If Christianity is the special sauce that makes a civilization run, what’s the problem with replacing it with Islam? Wouldn’t it provide the same thing? He’s asserted that Christianity is the best but provided no evidence.
This flabby apology for American Christianity never gets off the ground. It’s not that Christianity is the foundation on which is built American democracy; it’s the other way around. The Constitution is what we should defend and hold in high esteem. It’s the Constitution that gives religion its freedom.

A religious war
is like children fighting over
who has the strongest imaginary friend.

Photo credit: Jonathan