13 Reasons to Reject the Christian Naysayer Hypothesis

Posted on by

Apologists tell us that the gospels were written at a time when many disciples—the eyewitnesses—were still alive. If they heard an inaccurate story, they’d say, “I was there, and that’s not the way it happened!” They’d shut it down. An incorrect version of the story would not have survived. Said another way, that our gospel story did survive means that it avoided the gauntlet of naysayers and must be true.

Let’s consider this alternate history, where the gospel story was false, and those in the inner circle successfully snuffed it out. It quickly falls apart under examination. Here are 13 reasons why I say nay to this Naysayer Hypothesis.

naysayer hypothesis

1. There would have been few potential naysayers. The gospel story does report thousands witnessing the miracle of the loaves and fishes, but these wouldn’t be naysayers. A naysayer must have been a close companion of Jesus to witness him not doing every miracle recorded in the Gospels. He would need to know that Jesus didn’t walk on water and didn’t raise Lazarus. A proper naysayer must have been one of Jesus’s close companions during his entire ministry, and there would likely have been just a few dozen.

2. We imagine a handful of naysayers who know that the Jesus story is only a legend, but that was in the year 30. Now the first gospel is written and it’s roughly forty years later—how many are still alive? Conditions were harsh at that time, and people died young.

And consider that the gospels were written after siege of Jerusalem in 70, which Josephus says killed 1.1 million people. More were scattered or enslaved. Few naysayers would’ve remained to critique gospel accounts.

3. A naysayer must be in the right location to complain. Suppose he lived in Jerusalem, and say that the gospel of Mark was written in Alexandria, Egypt, which historians say is one possibility. How will our naysayer correct its errors? Sure, Mark will be copied and spread, but there’s little time before our 60- or 70-year-old witnesses die. Even if we imagine our tiny band dedicating their lives to stamping out this false story, believers are starting brush fires of Christian belief all over the Eastern Mediterranean, from Alexandria to Damascus to Corinth to Rome. How can we expect our naysayers to snuff them all out?

4. The naysayers had no motivation for dedicating their lives to stopping the false Jesus story. So there’s yet another nut who thinks he has it all figured out—who cares? Your Judaism isn’t under threat from this tiny cult (and it was a tiny cult in the early years).

Consider a modern equivalent. Many atheists today spend much time responding to claims of Christianity, but that’s because Christianity is society’s bull in the china shop. It causes harm. In contrast, imagine a Christian who also believes in reincarnation. That’s a weird set of beliefs, but who really cares? No one would devote their life to stamping out that belief.

5. The naysayers wouldn’t know about the problem. Two thousand years ago, you couldn’t walk down to the corner bookstore to find the latest Jesus gospel. How were our naysayers to learn of the story? Written documents at that time were scarce and precious things. And the naysayers would be Jews who didn’t convert to Christianity. They wouldn’t have associated much with the new Christians and so would have been unlikely to come across the Jesus story.

6. There was another gulf between the naysayers and the early Christians: the early church was a Greek institution. The epistles and gospels were written in Greek, not the local language of Aramaic spoken by Jesus and the naysayers. To even learn of the Jesus story in this community, our naysayers must speak Greek, which is hard to imagine among the typical peasant followers of Jesus. How many could have done this? And to influence the Greek-speaking readers of the gospels for us to learn of the problem, a rebuttal would have to have been written in Greek—not a common skill in Palestine.

7. Imagine a naysayer knew the actual Jesus and knew that he was merely a charismatic teacher. Nothing supernatural. Now he hears the story of Jesus the Son of Man, the man of miracles, the healer of lepers and raiser of the dead. Why connect “Son of Man” Jesus with your childhood buddy Jesus? “Jesus” was a common name (actually, Joshua or Yeshua), and supernatural claims were common at the time. His friend Jesus didn’t do anything like this, so the story he heard must be of a different person. So even when confronted with the false teaching, he wouldn’t know to raise an alarm.

8. Consider how hard is it today for a politician, celebrity, or business leader to stop a false rumor, even with the many ways to get the word out. Think about how hard it would have been in first-century Palestine. How many thousands of Christians were out there spreading the word for every naysayer with his finger in the dike? Given the sensational story (“Jesus was a miracle worker who can save you from your sins!”) and the mundane one (“Nah—he’s just a regular guy that I hung around with when I was growing up”), which has more traction?

The Jews of the time of Jesus had far better evidence of his divinity than we could ever hope to have. A tiny handful found it compelling and became his followers, but the vast majority didn’t. If eyewitness testimony is relevant, as today’s Christian apologists claim, we should follow that majority.

Concluded in part 2.

If 50 million people say a foolish thing, 
it’s still a foolish thing.
— Anatole France

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/26/12.)

Image credit: erokism, flickr, CC

Same-Sex Marriage Is the Law of the Land: Panicking Yet?

Posted on by

gay marriageEveryone’s heard that the Supreme Court declared in a 5-4 ruling that same-sex marriage is just “marriage,” and this applies across the United States. I’d like to explore the conservative reaction and compare this decision with another Supreme Court decision in 1967.

Justice Alito dissented from today’s opinion:

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools… By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.

Well, yeah. If you hate the idea of either homosexuality or same-sex marriage, you can speak your mind, and I will support you in that. Make your argument. Tell us why it’s bad for society rather than simply being something that doesn’t work for you personally. But where your opinion conflicts with others’, they may also speak their mind, and you may get your feelings hurt—such is life as an adult. You think this is unique? You think Loving v. Virginia in 1967 wasn’t a bitter pill for those who supported laws against mixed-race marriage?

As the majority opinion becomes even stronger, your views will be seen as increasingly marginalized and weird. You will be on the wrong side of history. No one’s forcing you either way, but don’t be surprised or outraged when fewer and fewer see you holding the moral high ground.

Politics—the tail wagging the dog

One straight-married woman, interviewed about this decision, said that it, “essentially ends marriage as we know it.” It threatens society because “marriage is the fundamental building block for the family and society to flourish.”

This is an impressive Machiavellian win for the conservative PR machine, but it refers to a reality that we don’t inhabit. This decision doesn’t threaten their marriage or my marriage or indeed any straight marriage one bit. Are they unaware that same-sex marriage has been legal in some states for over a decade? Where’s the fallout?

Glenn Beck, always eager to throw gasoline on a fire, said that the civil disobedience necessary in response to same-sex marriage is now martyrdom—literal martyrdom.

The number that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death, is anywhere between 17,000 and 10,000. That is an extraordinary number of people that are willing to lay it all down on the table and willing to go to jail or go to death because they serve God and not man.

Who does he imagine will be on the other side, killing these pastors?

You know what’s going to happen—zero pastors will get martyred, and no one will come back to Beck demanding that he address his failure.

Precedent in Loving v. Virginia

Conservatives always hate when the conversation comes back to the 1967 Loving decision, which threw out state laws against mixed-race marriage. They handwave that they’re not comparable.

To some extent they’re right, though not for the reasons they imagine. Let’s look at how the 1967 Loving decision is different from today’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Obergefell squeaked by with a 5-4 vote. Loving was 9-0.

Today, the public is strongly in favor of same-sex marriage—approval reached 50% in 2012 and is now 60% for and 37% against (Gallup).

But public opinion was very different at the time of Loving: just 20% in favor of mixed-race marriage and 73% against it in 1968, one year after the decision. Approval was even less in the whites-only demographic. Consider approval ratings from a few more years: 4% approved mixed-race marriage in 1958, 50% in 1995, and 87% in 2013.

I don’t know which is more shocking—that nationwide approval was so low in 1958, that it took almost three decades after Loving to reach 50%, or that it wasn’t 100% in 2013! (The cartoon xkcd has an excellent graph.)

Conservatives today declare that they’re going to hold their breath until they turn blue (or get executed by the thousands if Glenn Beck’s dream comes true), and yet public opinion is strongly in favor of the Supreme Court decision. Think back to 1967 with the Loving decision, where the unanimous Supreme Court was way out in front of public opinion. Imagine the public backlash that must’ve caused.

I wanted to find more, so I burrowed through online newspapers of the time. I wanted to find southern newspapers full of outrage at a meddling, activist court “legislating from the bench.” I expected to find scandalized opinion pieces predicting God’s retribution on society, supported with Bible verses.

I didn’t find a single one. I found instead many copies of a few nationally syndicated articles soberly summarizing the Loving decision, but that was it—just a simple statement of the facts. People seemed ready to accept the decision and move on.

That things are so different today, with many conservatives refusing to move on, makes clear that this is not Christians standing up for what’s right but just politics. Christians, keep in mind politicians’ Chicken Little games. Citizens can ignore politics when things are fine, but if Christians are under attack, they must circle the wagons and support Christian politicians. If there’s no reason to circle the wagons, they’ll make up one.

Ignore politicians’ made up crisis. Have you stopped to think how hardhearted you look when you stand in the way of two people who want to get married?

A special thank you to my family of birth
for relentlessly and colourfully demonstrating
the cruelty of anti-gay sentiment,
thus driving decent people away from hatred
and into the arms of justice and equality.
— Nathan Phelps,
who rejected his father’s “God Hates Fags” church

Image credit: Nate Steiner, flickr, CC

Christians Blaming God for Disasters

Posted on by

In the Jonah story, Jonah doesn’t like the task God assigned for him. He flees in a boat, and then a terrible storm comes up. The sailors draw lots (apparently a reliable way of discovering the truth) and discover that Jonah is the problem, which Jonah admits. They throw cargo overboard but that’s not enough. The storm finally stops only when they throw Jonah over.

God caused the storm. The Bible even admits that God causes all evil:

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, Jehovah, do all these things (Isaiah 45:7).

Is it not from the mouth of El Elyon that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38)

This idea that disasters are caused by God continued in the medieval period. With the Black Death, which killed roughly half of Europe’s population from 1346–53, the Christian continent again thought that only God’s rage could explain the pandemic. The best way to protect oneself from this terrible disease was penitential activity such as public and bloody flagellation, pious commemoration of the dead, and persecution of those groups that God was probably angry at such as the poor, beggars, or minorities like Catalans or Jews.

Our approach to evil today

Things are different today, with modern science to tell us what causes storms and disease.

Or maybe not. When it suits them, some apologists and politicians will dismiss the science and fall back on superstition.

Remember what Jerry Falwell said on Pat Robertson’s television show two days after the 9/11 attack:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”

Remember Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005? God was obviously mad about something, but what was it? Maybe racism (Louis Farrakhan’s conclusion) or abortion (Pat Robertson) or America’s insufficient support for Israel (an Israeli rabbi). Or, of course, the gays.

Remember the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed 300,000? It was the result of that pact they made with the devil. Just ask Pat Robertson—he’ll tell you.

Remember the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed over 10,000 people? Reverend Ron Baity of North Carolina said that God was furious about same-sex marriage.

If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow [same-sex marriage] to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation.… You think Ebola is bad now, just wait.

(For even more examples of everything that’s the gays’ fault, check out this list from The Advocate.)

Remember when Texas governor Rick Perry prayed for an end to the 2011 drought in Texas? A California State Assembly member now thinks that God is similarly involved with her state’s ongoing drought, and she makes clear what God is livid about this time: abortion.

Remember John Hagee’s groundless fulminating about the “Four Blood Moons”?

A little reason

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson both backed away from their hysterical 9/11 slander. The first major rain after Rick Perry’s 3-day public Days of Prayer came six months later. And who knows what nonsense Hagee will invent as he claims victory after the final eclipse this September.

We know what causes hurricanes, lunar eclipses, disease, and droughts. We understand terrorism. We know that homosexuality is natural. God isn’t part of the equation. Pointing to God as the puppet master behind the world’s disasters is an empty claim. It’s like pointing to Halley’s Comet as the harbinger for the victory of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

It’s hard to believe that it’s the twenty-first century, and Christian leaders still make these claims. Or that their fans accept the claims and then come back for more after they fail. And what does it say about their God that they can easily imagine that he’s behind all the natural evil in the world?

I can do little but suggest that that’s what our imperfect brains can do, that we’re all susceptible, and that we must be continuously on guard. And to offer this bit of insight from author and professor Kathryn Gin Lum:

This instinct [to fear an angry God] is also why conservative evangelicals care so deeply about same-sex marriage and abortion even though they don’t engage in those activities themselves. It’s why people who are anti-big-government want the government to intervene in affairs that don’t seem to have that much to do with their own lives. This is why some evangelicals take a laissez-faire view of the financial markets but a highly interventional view of the government’s role in policing others’ individual choices.

I love seeing the Universe described by math.
I also love seeing it described by Michelangelo and Beethoven.
I’m appalled at seeing it described by William Lane Craig and Ray Comfort.
— commenter Richard S. Russell

Image credit: Wikimedia, public domain

The Sin of Sodom was Homosexuality … Or Was It?

Posted on by

While on a business trip to Japan in the ’90s, I came across an interesting brand of bath salts. In bold letters across the top of the bag was the word “Sodom.” Salt, Sodom—yes, I see the connection, but that’s not the happiest image to attach to your brand.

So what ought we think of when we think of Sodom?

On a Stand to Reason podcast (“The Bible and Homosexuality,” 9/2/12), Greg Koukl unsurprisingly thinks that the point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story recounted in Genesis 19 is that homosexuality is bad—bad enough, in fact, to get your city destroyed.

He kicks around an alternative possibility, that poor hospitality was really the sin of Sodom. Remember that Lot offered hospitality to the two visiting angels, but the men of Sodom threatened their safety. Koukl rejects this option. And if the sin isn’t lack of hospitality, what could it be but homosexuality? Apparently, he can only imagine two possibilities.

He concludes that “the scripture speaks clearly on this … don’t twist what it says.” I agree, both that the issue wasn’t hospitality and that we mustn’t twist the scripture to make it say what it doesn’t.

Koukl looks to other parts of the Bible for their interpretation. One cross-reference is in the book of Ezekiel. In chapter 16, the faithlessness of the Jews is portrayed with Jerusalem being analogous to an adulterous wife. Other cities are likened to wicked sisters, and one of these is Sodom.

What are wicked Sodom’s crimes?

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen (Ezekiel 16:49–50).

If homosexuality were Sodom’s crime, wouldn’t this be the only thing on the list? Instead, we have arrogance, lack of concern for the needy, and unspecified “detestable things.” This gives no tangible support for the Homosexuality Hypothesis.

In fact, it’s pretty clear from the Genesis story itself that homosexuality wasn’t the issue.

1. Lot makes this clear. Lot was a resident, and he understood the townspeople. If the men were all gay, he’d know it, and he wouldn’t bother offering them his daughters as a substitute, which he does in Gen. 19:8.

As an aside: it doesn’t say much for the morality of the city’s most godly man that he offers his daughters as if they were just sex toys. And if this is unthinkable today, why would it be an option thousands of years ago? So much for the idea that morality is objective and unchanging.

Lot also had sex with his daughters (which, despite long lists of forbidden familial couplings in the Bible, is incredibly not forbidden). But somehow, Lot is still the hero of the story.

2. An all-gay city wouldn’t be sustainable. “All the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house” (Gen. 19:4). So “all the men” were gay? How could there be children if all the men were gay? Such a city would simply die out. And why wouldn’t that be an option for God? Just give Sodom a few decades and let the population fade away.

And does it even say “all the men”? That word is often translated as “men,” but it can also mean “people.” This casts more doubt on the idea of a horny gay mob at Lot’s door.

3. Seriously? A city with all men gay? Homosexuality wasn’t studied when it was taboo, but we now know that only a few percent of society is homosexual. Anyway, why would godly Lot stick around if the city was so detestable? Perhaps for literary purposes?

4. Can we assume that there were no women? There is no evidence that this is an all-male city. “All the men” makes clear that this is not everyone, and so some must’ve been left behind. The straightforward interpretation is that all the men came to Lot’s house, that the women stayed at home, and that the women were mothers, wives, and daughters as in any ordinary city.

5. We have a better explanation. Gang rape is less about pleasure than about humiliating or establishing dominance. That the local men wanted to bully or dominate the visitors seems a better explanation than that they were just eager for sexual pleasure.

As we study the story, however, let’s not dismiss the violence. No one can question that there was significant evil in Sodom (even if it’s just legend) when visitors are threatened with gang rape. But what was the sin of Sodom? This is a story of attempted rape. Yes, it was homosexual rape, but the homosexuality isn’t highlighted as the crime.

Koukl is right that we shouldn’t twist the story, but he seems to be the one with the agenda. Only with a desire to find anti-gay messages in the Bible can we imagine one in the Sodom and Gomorrah story.

What’s also clear is that this has nothing to do with the loving, monogamous, homosexual relationship that is the subject of today’s discussion of same-sex marriage.

Every time you see a rainbow,
God is having gay sex
(seen on a bumper sticker)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 11/5/12.)

Conservatives Will Hold Their Breath to Get Their Way

Posted on by

A number of conservative Christians are cranky about the expected Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage later this month. Don’t think that they’ll just accept the court’s decision placidly, they assure us.

Their “Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage” outlines an inept argument against such a ruling and threatens unspecified consequences if the Supreme Court makes them mad. Let’s explore that jeremiad pledge and an advertisement that went along with it.

God has spoken!

First, they want to make clear who’s the boss.

We will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman [from the ad].

Is there a “clear biblical understanding of marriage”? Not really. Not only do you disagree on same-sex marriage within your own religion, the Bible says much about all sorts of embarrassing marriage customs and prohibitions sanctioned by God: no interracial marriage, concubine sex, rape for fun and profit, genocide while keeping the virgin girls, slave marriage, levirate marriage, and of course polygamy. You still want to go with “clear biblical understanding” as your final answer?

You can believe whatever you want, just don’t imagine that your beliefs will be taken into account when making laws. You need a secular argument.

What Would Martin Do?

From the ad:

We affirm that any judicial opinion which purports to redefine marriage will constitute an unjust law, as Martin Luther King Jr. described such laws in his [1963] letter from the Birmingham Jail.

Not quite. Let’s look at what Dr. King actually wrote about just and unjust laws in that letter. He said, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” King’s work was exclusively aimed at expanding rights and privileges for those who had been discriminated against. You want to follow his advice? Then in the debate over same-sex marriage, look to what ruling would “[uplift] human personality” and what would degrade it.

There’s not love enough in your heart to expand the institution of marriage so that other loving couples can share it? You complain about easy divorce and raising families outside of marriage, and yet you snub a group that wants to embrace marriage? Rethink your position.

Dr. King added, “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.” Here again, the “defense of marriage” faction that hopes to repurpose Dr. King finds that he isn’t cooperating. Law that restricts marriage to two straight people suits these Christian conservatives just fine. They can marry whomever they love, though it doesn’t work that way for homosexuals. The majority seeks a law that it “does not make binding on itself.”

Who knew? Marriage is all about the sex.

The Pledge says:

Conferring a moral and legal equivalency to any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, by legislative or judicial fiat, sends the message that children do not need a mother and a father. As a policy matter, such unions convey the message that moms and dads are completely irrelevant to the well-being of children.

This argument is a melancholy deflated balloon. Flailing around for an argument, these conservative Christians want to imagine that marriage is about nothing but children. But of course there’s nothing in the traditional marriage vows about making babies. You remember the marriage vow, right? “To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Nor is there anything in the state’s marriage license about making babies. Nor are married couples ever penalized for not having the correct number of babies.

That they’re forced to shoehorn marriage into this “marriage = making babies” mold proves that playing politics is their goal, not guarding the sanctity of marriage.

Suppose the Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal across the country. What fraction of the population is homosexual? What fraction of that will get married? And what fraction of that will bring new children into the marriage? This is a very small percentage of all children. If caring for children were actually a goal, they’d focus on helping the millions of children in imperfect homes—those with just one parent or poor medical care or a dangerous neighborhood or not enough income. A mixed-gender couple isn’t mandatory for children; rather, a healthy family environment is what’s important.

This is not their focus, and caring for children is obviously not their goal.

The Court had better know its place

No civil institution, including the United States Supreme Court or any court, has authority to redefine marriage.

That ship has already sailed. There’s Davis v. Beason (1890), which stomped on the Mormons’ biblically based right to polygamy. There’s Loving v. Virginia (1973) that threw the Bible in the garbage by declaring that mixed-race marriage was legal in every state. Divorce has been made easier. Marital rape is now a crime.

You do know that the Bible doesn’t call the shots, right?

The sky is falling! Marriage will be destroyed!

No kidding—that’s what they really claim will happen.

We will not stand by while the destruction of the institution of marriage unfolds in this nation we love.

My, aren’t we dramatic!

Guess which state has had legal same-sex marriage the longest. If destruction of a fundamental social institution is really what we’re talking about, that should be easy—it would be the state where it’s raining fire and brimstone and where people have been turned to salt. Or maybe where zombies roam the streets or where police cars are overturned and burning. Any guesses?

It’s been legal for over a decade in Massachusetts, and things seem to be running fairly smoothly. In fact, it’s legal where more than 70% of Americans live. It’s legal in 17 countries. Show me the social metrics that say that anything measurable (homicides, burglaries, STDs, etc.) is worse as a result.

Punch line: don’t infringe my right to discriminate

This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights.

Yep, just like before. And the state will prevail over religious prejudice, just like before. The Mormons lost their fight for polygamy. Racists against mixed-race marriage lost their fight for racial purity. I’m all for people’s right to their religious beliefs, regardless of what I think of those beliefs, but that right ends when society declares that it infringes on something more important.

Christian schools that discriminate risk losing their tax-exempt status. Bakers and photographers must provide equal access just like restaurants, hotels, apartments, and other places of public accommodation. Discrimination because you don’t approve of a couple because they’re mixed-race or same-sex or foreign is illegal, even if your motivation is driven by religious reasons. If you value your ability to discriminate more than your business, then get out of the business.

As people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law. We respectfully warn the Supreme Court not to cross this line.

The Constitution runs this country, not the Bible. If that’s a problem for you, I can help you find the door.

We stand united together in defense of marriage. Make no mistake about our resolve.

Seriously? This is the hill you want to die on—the right to discriminate? To restrict rights?

Remember that Martin Luther King was universally trying to expand rights. Don’t you get tired of always being in the same bin as the KKK? Can’t you pick an important issue to focus on?

Go ahead—hold your breath to try to get your way. Your view is already looking like the fringe view today. It will look even more so tomorrow.

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—
deliberate, contrived and dishonest—
but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears.
We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
— John F. Kennedy

Image credit: James Dobson’s Family Talk

Saint … or Insane?

Posted on by

Joan of Arc thought she saw visions of God telling her to lead French troops against the English during the Hundred Years War. She became a saint. But Brian Mitchell said that God gave him license to kidnap and rape Elizabeth Smart in 2002. He was sentenced to two life sentences.

Abraham was ready to kill his own son Isaac because he thought that God told him to. He is seen as a Jewish patriarch and a prophet of Islam. But Charles Manson was convicted of conspiracy in the killings of three people though he thought he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous saw a vision of Mary in Lourdes, France. She also became a saint. But Andrea Yates drowned her five children (aged six months to seven years) one by one because she was trying to save them from Satan. She is not on the short list for sainthood.

Ezekiel lay on his left side for 390 days to bear the sins of Israel and then 40 days for the sins of Judah because God told him to. He is a prophet. But Jim Jones, another supposed incarnation of Jesus Christ, ordered over 900 people to kill themselves in Jonestown, Guyana.

Saint? Or insane?

How do you tell the saints from the insane? One source quotes a professor of the psychology of religion who concludes that the difference between a prophet and a psychopath is “whether or not [they] can get followers.”

Can it be that we know prophets based on the number of their followers, not whether what they say is true or not?

Contrast this with the scientific consensus. Issues like plate tectonics, evolution, the Big Bang, and so on become the consensus in a similar way but with two massive differences: the consensus is built on and destroyed by evidence, and the consensus comes only from those competent enough to evaluate this evidence.

What if Charles Manson had gotten a million followers? Would that turn him into a prophet? Conversely, what if Joseph Smith had gotten only 20 followers? Would that turn him into a kooky charlatan?

The other factor separating saint from insane is harm, but it’s not that the saints did nice things and the insane did bad things. We have no more evidence that God spoke to military leader Joan of Arc than to convicted rapist Brian Mitchell, but we do know that Joan of Arc participated in more killing. The military leaders in the Bible (Joshua, Saul, David, Gideon, Samson, and so on) killed many more people than Jim Jones. But saints can’t kill good people. They can kill “them,” but not “us.”

New rule

Let me propose a rule. A saint (or prophet or patriarch):

  • (1) can’t hurt people that you can identify with, and
  • (2) must have sufficient followers.

Try this out on some well-known names. John Hagee and Hal Lindsey preach the coming end, and they may have enough followers to be called prophets (using a generous definition of “prophet”). But Harold Camping, though he had the guts to make specific predictions, fails on requirement 2 (I wrote about Camping here).

Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science), Ellen White (Seventh-day Adventism), and Aimee McPherson (Four Square) were prophets, but David Koresh (Branch Davidian) and Charles Manson fail on 1 and 2.

Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba was a prophet, but Ram Bahadur Bomjon, the supposed Buddhist bodhisattva who is said to fast continuously for months while meditating, fails on 2.

The pope can say that he’s the Vicar of Christ, but if I say that about myself, that fails on 2.

Though “saint” has a formal definition, colloquial forms of the labels “saint” and “prophet” are bestowed by popular acclaim. In short, you’re a prophet when people say you are. Popularity doesn’t mean that what you say is true, and there’s no requirement that it be true anyway.

This flabby definition of “prophet” is obvious for the other guy’s religion, but maybe Christians should reconsider what it means for those that they think are prophets.

If you talk to God, you are praying; 
if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia
— Thomas Szasz

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/31/12.)