The Implausible Faith

[James - Atheist Admin]

So this is my response to the arguments posted here at tektonics.org; I'll go through the list and respond in the order they are presented. I will have to add more later, as I'm sure I can't get to all 17 tonight. The basic premise, though, is that there are 17 reasons we can't disregard early Christianity as "just another religion"; and that this leaves us with the conclusion that it survived because it it true and revealed by God.

#1: Who on earth would believe a religion centered on a crucified man?
His first argument centers on the shamefulness of crucifixion. He gives several examples of ancient writers talking about the degradation of crucifixion, and Jesus' in particular. He goes through a lot to show us that the ancient world saw crucifixion as equivalent to drowning to death in bird poo while dressed as a clown. Disgraceful, to say the least! What kind of messiah dies on a cross? Gross! The ignominy of the crucifixion means, to the apologist, that the idea of Jesus as Savior and Messiah couldn't have just "caught on" as a myth; no one would have bought into it.

Why I'm not convinced:
3 things : 1) Missed the point: It's sort of a good point that a messiah myth couldn't start with crucifixion as its culmination. But that's irrelevant, because it didn't. It started exactly the way the author claims it "should" have (if it's just another religion). It started with a charismatic preacher and his followers wandering about, telling people the Kingdom of God was at hand. The disciples -- and I dare say young Y'shua himself -- didn't walk around thinking about, talking about and planning for the crucifixion. And when it happened, I'm sure they were waiting up until the last moment for Jesus to go all super-saiyan on the Romans' asses; and since the only slightly credible account of his end has Jesus crying out "Father, why have you forsaken me?", it's reasonable to believe that Jesus was waiting for it, too. This "cosmic disappointment" can profoundly affect a person's worldview, and I'll come back to it.

2) Homogeneity: arguments that seem to depend on any group of people marching in mental lockstep are suspicious to me. It's true that in the writings and histories of the ancient world there is much talk of honor and shame; but human nature is human nature. They may have talked about honor like a bunch of Klingons, but that doesn't mean their character was any different from our own, once you account for the same lifestyle differences that can make two modern people mature differently. I'm sure some people, even most people, reacted the way he described to claims of a crucified messiah -- with scorn and ridicule. But if you think that means the message could not find its audience, that's naive. First of all, if I stand on a street corner and preach that apples are God, I'm gonna eventually attract a few people who really, really love apples. Similarly, if I preach a message about a downtrodden, broken God, I'm going to attract the downtrodden and broken, which is exactly what early Christianity did. Second, don't underestimate the persuasive power of another person's enthusiasm. Even if only a few disciples kept the message going, those few would have been the ones who kept their faith after the cosmic disappointment, who really believed or (wanted others to believe) in the resurrection. It would have only taken one or two idealistic firebrands, obsessing about their executed savior, to "realize" that resurrection was the answer to this disappointment. It doesn't have to be intentional deception, because people can convince themselves of amaaaazing things; but even if it was, it only has to be intentional from one or two sources. Once a few people legitimately believe that the savior they had just lost had risen from death and was proven the son of God, their genuine enthusiasm would be highly convincing to others. And that whole "conquered death and sitting at the right hand of God" thing rather mitigates the "disgrace" of the cross, dunnit? Just how much church growth is the author claiming happened in those three days of shame before the story stopped being about crucifixion and started to be about glory?

3) Mythology! If I could get every religious person to read a book, it wouldn't be about atheism or critiquing Christianity, it would be comparative mythology. Read some Joseph Campbell, at least. Death-by-ordeal, life-giving sacrifice, and temporary shame leading to power and redemption are common motifs. Odin hung from the world tree for nine days to gain the nine runes of power; Osiris was betrayed and dismembered by his brother only to return in glory; Krishna hung in a tree to be devoured by scavengers before ascending. Jesus actually has a surprising amount in common with Trickster mythologies. Apologists like to call him unique by comparing him to Zeus or Thor; he's more like Prometheus or Loki. And if you read up on Coyote or Anansi or The Monkey King, you'll see just how degradation and redemption are used in ancient mythology. These are not ancillary characters; in many cases they are the highest culture heroes and the most told stories, and frequently the creator of the world and humanity. They also frequently break taboos in order to conquer their foes, and these cultures are even more "honor" and "shame" based than the cosmopolitan Near East of the first century. The point is not that Christianity ripped these off; it didn't have to. The point is that these are common things that speak to us on a deep level, and stories with these elements will persist, persuade, and catch fire in minds that are ready for them.

/rant

k, looks like I just got to # 1; lord knows I can ramble. Maybe I'll do a separate topic for each (or combine some). Whatever, let me know what you think.
-jy

[Clint - Christian Theist]

Before I reply to your reply, and we end up forking off in a million directions before even finishing the article, I'm going to keep going with JPH's next points. I will come back to it though.

Ok, I've deleted my response and will just add it to my full response when you're done.

[James - Atheist Admin]

Before I reply to your reply, and we end up forking off in a million directions before even finishing the article, I'm going to keep going with JPH's next points. I will come back to it though.

Point # 2 argues that, for the time and place, a religion that arose out of Judaism and a savior from Galilee could not have been successful, unless it was true. I'm noticing a pattern.

This is made quite clear by Judaism's own limited inroads in terms of Gentile converts. To be sure, this is partly attributable to Judaism not being much of a missionary religion. And yet if Christianity didn't have some cards close to the vest, the Jewishness of Jesus even by itself means that it never should have expanded in the Gentile world much beyond the circle of those Gentiles who were already God-fearers (i.e., Gentile proselytes to Judaism).

Once again, I am unconvinced. Surprise!
Ok, Judaism isn't "not much of" a missionary religion; it's not a missionary religion at all. The Jews don't give a rat's ass what other tribes believe; they aren't the least bit interested in converting people, because their religion is a tribal one. It's for Jews. And I'd like to point out that the Jewishness of Jesus did hold it back, except among some Jews and Gentile proselytes, for exactly the same reason the author says it should. But then along comes Paul, and turns, or at least clarifies and crystallizes, this religion into a universalist - that is, non-tribal, and an anti-Jewish religion. In fact, Paul's skill as an evangelist has more to do with Christianity's success than anything he talks about here. This guy is striving to make us find something implausible that really, really isn't.

And it continues! #3: Pagans and Jews didn't believe in physical, bodily resurrection. So why not make up a story everyone could buy more easily?

Sigh.
I wonder what Apologists think Skeptics believe is going on here. We aren't positing a council of scoundrels (a scouncil?) making up lies in order to control the people, bringing wealth, power, and fame unto themselves. It's much more organic than that. Religions evolve. I'll give you this: Christianity could not have gotten off the ground if several early followers didn't really, truly believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.

So?

The fact that someone believes something is of, like, literally no consequence. At least to a rationalist like myself, and at least with regard to extraordinary claims, and at least when I don't know the people making the claim. If my mother, a wise and sane woman whom I trust with all my heart, told me that she saw a deer today, I'd believe her without needing much evidence. If she said she saw a unicorn, I wouldn't -- though if she was really, really insistent, I might believe that she believes it. And if she fell weeping at my feet, proclaiming the beauty and majesty of the unicorn someone else saw -- even if she'd sooner die than question it, my belief in unicorns would not go up one teeny tiny iota. Yeah, it's really unlikely that my mom would tell a lie, and especially that she would die for one. But damn, she can be wrong. Because the fact is, people believe crazy things all the time; the human mind is pretty fallible. And this whole article is amounting to "this is too crazy to be false!" and it's an inherently weak argument. Being less plausible doesn't make it more plausible.

The only part of #4 that even interests me is that if you compare Christianity's emergence from Judaism and Buddhism's emergence from Hinduism, you'll see many interesting parallels, as a tribal, ritualistic, legalistic religion gives birth to a personal, universal, transformative one at the hands of a charismatic teacher. So #4 doesn't get a full post; if you find it especially powerful, maybe you can give it a better case than JPH does.

#5: Christianity is hard, because no more crazy pagan orgies; also communism.

Again...
This guy doesn't get human nature. I'm not surprised, because this fits in with the Christian view of humans being inherently worthless, lazy, and sinful. That stuff is there, but so are drives toward purity, aestheticism, sacrifice, and hard work. In the Christian world view, the baseline for human behavior is a rapist who eats nothing but Doritos, heroine, and candy, and steals and murders his way through life. This is one of my biggest problems with the Abrahamic faiths as a whole, this benighted, insulting, incorrect view of human beings. People do have some dark and lazy tendencies, and it can take discipline to resist temptations, and strength and courage to work toward real morality. But people also respect courage, honor, and charity, and earlier philosophies have all contained similar values. While we may struggle with weakness and selfishness, contrary to the author's point, no religion that didn't contain values of aestheticism and self-sacrifice could have caught on like that. Sure, the Roman politicians and merchants aren't going to give up their orgies; but yes, some people will give up a lot of earthly goods for a life they see as more pure, chaste, or spiritually fulfilling. Hedonism regularly flares up, much like the STDs that follow in its wake, but its ultimately unsatisfying nature leaves people looking for meaning and character as cultures continue to evolve.

Ok. #6: meh. As in #4, the idea that Christianity was "SOOO crazy different" from the Roman worldview but eventually did catch on holds no water to me. Cultures change. Feel free to add some weight to this if you want.

#7: Wicked smart levels of historical accuracy and specificity, which would have been easy for skeptics to disprove.

First of all, the new testament is chock full of contradictions.(link) So it's logically impossible for them to "have all their ducks in a row." But let's set that aside maybe for it's own topic -- maybe a discussion on what sort of contradictions or inaccuracies "matter". Because where I want to focus is again on JPH's total misunderstanding of human beings and culture.

This is not the way to start a religion. You start a religion by linking to obscure and nameless people.

Hang on, I can't resist a smiley:

There, I feel better.

Look, let me reiterate that I don't think this was started by a "scouncil" (heh), plotting and scheming to create the most plausible and believable faith. (as an aside, though, even absurdly obvious contrivances like Mormonism and Scientology can become quite prolific.) But filling your stories with anonymous people would actually have been suspicious and unpersuasive. None of these "easily tested" claims have anything to do with anything supernatural, like healing, casting out demons, or the resurrection itself; but it wouldn't have mattered for the same reason I detailed in #3. Say Paul claims some famous official testifies to the resurrection -- how does that matter? Even if it's true that this official claims to have seen a resurrected Jesus, that doesn't make him correct. This doesn't even start to be evidence. All it proves is that early Christians were actually walking around the Near East when they said they were.

Ok, that's all I got for tonight; stay tuned!
-jy

[James - Atheist Admin]

Ah yes. #8: early Christians would be socially ostracized, therefore it... has... to be true...

So it is: The Jews would dislike you, the Romans would dislike you, your family would disown you, everyone would avoid or make sport of you. Furthermore, men like Paul and Matthew, and even Peter and John, gave up lucrative trades for the sake of a mission that was all too obviously going to be nothing but trouble for them. It is quite unlikely that anyone would have gone the distance for the Christian faith at any time -- unless it had something tangible behind it.

Again, no, all this shows is that they really believed it -- and all it takes is a few true believers to spark things. If the argument is "people don't believe things without good reason!", then, um, this is actually kind of sad. However, it's been pretty clear that the author doesn't understand human nature, culture, or religions and how they form. A handbook on social values of the first century Near East doesn't override the rest of human psychology and sociology.

He's also very obviously trying to make it seem like overwhelmingly clear evidence. 17 criteria! But zero times seventeen is still zero, and so far his points have all had that exact numerical value.

Ok, #9: yeah, no, versions of human-divine/spirit hybrids are a dime a dozen, and even within the Christianity, the debate isn't really settled. Even in Judaism you have the Nephilim, and angels or the dead manifesting spiritually (but visibly) or physically. Jesus wasn't even the first "son of God." Yeesh, gimme something to chew on here.

And in the interest of brevity, I'm lumping 10, 11, and 12 together; because they amount to the same thing: Christianity can't be fake, because it upsets social norms and gives honor to the least, last, and lost of society.

Great for it. To reiterate a few important things that have applied to earlier points: 1) this argument would only matter if it were a conscious fabrication, some "scouncil" trying to gain power and control. 2) all it proves is that a few of the disciples, at least, were genuinely convicted. As far as social status and stigma affecting credibility, for instance, JPH says:

Only Paul may have avoided this stigma among the apostolic band.

Exxxxxactly; and Paul was the one who took Christianity viral. Probably (and for several other reasons) it would have stayed just another dwindling messiah-cult if not for Paul.

And again with the human nature: yes, the social norms and prejudices were strongly ingrained. but Rome wasn't some hive-mind. Come on, you don't think there were people disliked these very social norms? Even if they weren't proto-hippie-revolutionaries, all it takes is a dissatisfaction ... (possibly related to Roman dominance and occupation, and the Jewish perception of their church as complying with the occupiers; and among Gentiles, there were still plenty of people with room for grievance) ... and if someone comes along with a message that validates and explains your angst, maybe you come hear a sermon... then maybe the speaker is charismatic and inspiring... maybe the crowd -- which may be small but mostly made up of the already converted -- gets worked up... sucked into the rhetoric and moment, washed over by the feelings of the group, you have a transcendent experience that verifies the spiritual claims of the teacher, or maybe even later that night you have a dream, or later that month nagging doubt causes you to return for another sermon or reading....

This is how conversion works. There's nothing magical about it. Sorry.

Also combining #13 and #15, as they both deal with the "empty tomb" -- it would have been easy to check and verify, ergo, resurrection! (15 makes a few more points, but it's just the same "Jesus was disgraced and therefore if he wasn't God he couldn't have been perceived as messiah" type argument from way back in #1.)

But ok, empty tomb : Prove he was ever buried there to begin with, and we'll talk. If he was instead buried in an anonymous -- or worse, mass -- grave, then there very shortly wouldn't have been much of a body to point at and say "here's yer messiah!" After all, he was a criminal.

And while, yes, I'm sure the authorities of both the Jewish and Gentile communities may have wanted to disprove and discredit the physical resurrection -- but that wouldn't have happened until at least people started to publicly claim it, which I'm not convinced happened anytime soon enough to recover an identifiable body. And I'm not even convinced that the doctrine of physical resurrection, which is the only kind the empty tomb would have mattered for, wasn't a later insertion.

And to return to the whole "human nature" thing, I'm not sure it would have worked anyway. The religious mind is notoriously immune to counter-evidence. He's breaking his own rules about history and social context; these are first century Jews and pagans, not 21st century rationalists trained in the scientific method.

We're getting there! #14: Jesus showed ignorance of certain things, therefore (everybody now) nobody would have made this up! I've addressed other claims like this already, so I'll just add that this merely shows that a) Jesus was just a man, and b) the early Church wasn't sure of its own doctrine, which it really should have been if The Man himself had been kicking it with them for 3 years.

#16: I.. crap this is a long one. Ok, miscellanea!

Jesus taught people to break even with family, if needed, for the sake of the Kingdom; he also indicated a highly inclusive assembly (Matt. 8:11-12) in a highly inclusive society.

Yup, so do all cults.

In his teachings Jesus often made reversals of common expectations that would have grossly offended the majority

Again, it may show it wasn't fabricated on purpose, but not that he's the Son of God; additionally, upsetting social norms and making demands of adherents is required for any movement to seem legit. People know there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The theme of being "born again" was a real shocker! [John, 82] When one was born, one's honor status was considered fixed at birth. Only extraordinary circumstances allowed for a change in honor status.

Cults, secret societies, and conversion and adulthood rituals were also a dime a dozen; taking a new identity when joining a group, and rites and symbols associated therewith, is actually the norm for humankind.

The remaining points are, again, about upsetting social and religious norms -- again, that's part of how it worked, not some bizarre mystery that supports his supernatural origins or authority.

... drum roll, please...

#17!!! here we go!.... aw, man, it's just restated earlier stuff.

Suppose, for example, you are starting a new UFO cult, where the faithful will be taken up into a UFO that is waiting for them. Such a cultist would usually follow advice from factor #7, and make sure the UFO is somewhere where people can't go and check up on it (e.g., assert that the UFO is hiding behind the Moon). But suppose you ignored this advice, and instead asserted that the UFO was waiting in a cave in a mountain not far from the city.

But this ignores how it is people actually come to believe weird things, and how they react to counter-evidence. There are true charlatans, of course, and those people are often quite careful, unless they are fools, to avoid easily disproved claims. But "easily disproved claims" haven't stopped all manner of out-and-out bullshit from spreading prolifically and being taken seriously. And once a movement has momentum, it can be hard to put down; indeed, "persecution" often just adds fuel to the fire. Yes, other, similar movements did fizzle out, but what they lacked was certain narrative elements, not supernatural underwriting.
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Alright, well, that was fun, but I remain unconvinced. I'll go back to your first responses, and any you put later, tomorrow.
-jy

[Clint - Christian Theist]

Here's the article in question for others reading that I originally brought up some of to James in person.

The Impossible Faith

The author of that article later released a book, Defending the Resurrection, and added more depth to the argument. Most of it's viewable on Google Books (pages 183-283).

Also, I would recommend analyzing it altogether.

Why I'm not convinced:
3 things : 1) Missed the point: It's sort of a good point that a messiah myth couldn't start with crucifixion as its culmination. But that's irrelevant, because it didn't. It started exactly the way the author claims it "should" have (if it's just another religion). It started with a charismatic preacher and his followers wandering about, telling people the Kingdom of God was at hand. The disciples -- and I dare say young Y'shua himself -- didn't walk around thinking about, talking about and planning for the crucifixion.

Except for the fact that Jewish historian Josephus records that other Messiah movements of the 1st century did die out when the leader was killed.

2) Homogeneity: arguments that seem to depend on any group of people marching in mental lockstep are suspicious to me...And that whole "conquered death and sitting at the right hand of God" thing rather mitigates the "disgrace" of the cross, dunnit? Just how much church growth is the author claiming happened in those three days of shame before the story stopped being about crucifixion and started to be about glory?

Some of your points in this section connect to later sections of the article. However, I will point out as to the social status makeup of the first Christians, quoting from factor #17 of the article,

Finally, the critic is confounded by the fact that -- as has been observed by Stark and Meeks -- Christianity as a movement was top-heavy in the social status area. Since 99% of the people were poor and/or wretched, of course any movement would take most of its people from that group, but Christianity had an unusual number of the rich and the powerful in its ranks for its size. As Witherington notes, quoting E. A. Judge (Paul Quest, 94):

...the Christians were dominated by a socially pretentious section of the population of big cities. Beyond that they seem to have drawn on a broad constituency, probably representing the household dependents of leading members.

Next, JPH doesn't claim there were people started converting after the crucifixion, but after the Pentecost. The gospel, while proclaiming the resurrection, also centrally proclaimed the crucifixion. It would still be offensive. The point is that the only way they would accept the gospel is if they had good reason to think Jesus' did undergo a status-reversal i.e. resurrection.

3) Mythology! If I could get every religious person to read a book, it wouldn't be about atheism or critiquing Christianity, it would be comparative mythology. Read some Joseph Campbell, at least. Death-by-ordeal, life-giving sacrifice, and temporary shame leading to power and redemption are common motifs.

But for these to be an actual counterargument, it must be shown that they had a similar beginning to Christianity in other respects (the other 16 factors) and for this specific factor, that these things were of the same disgracefulness as crucifixion. Also, if any of them had the prospect of force behind them in their initial spreading (such as Islam) then that counterargument becomes very problematic.

And I'd like to point out that the Jewishness of Jesus did hold it back, except among some Jews and Gentile proselytes, for exactly the same reason the author says it should.

But then along comes Paul, and turns, or at least clarifies and crystallizes, this religion into a universalist - that is, non-tribal, and ananti-Jewish religion.

In fact, Paul's skill as an evangelist has more to do with Christianity's success than anything he talks about here. This guy is striving to make us find something implausible that really, really isn't.

Evidence for these assertions? Also, this wasn’t even addressed.

Christianity had a serious handicap in this regard, the stigma of a savior who undeniably hailed from Galilee -- for the Romans and Gentiles, not only a Jewish land, but a hotbed of political sedition; for the Jews, not as bad as Samaria of course, but a land of yokels and farmers without much respect for the Torah, and worst of all, a savior from a puny village of no account. Not even a birth in Bethlehem, or Matthew's suggestion that an origin in Galilee was prophetically ordained, would have unattached such a stigma: Indeed, Jews would not be convinced of this, even as today, unless something else first convinced them that Jesus was divine or the Messiah. The ancients were no less sensitive to the possibility of "spin doctoring" than we are.

I wonder what Apologists think Skeptics believe is going on here. We aren't positing a council of scoundrels (a scouncil?) making up lies in order to control the people, bringing wealth, power, and fame unto themselves. It's much more organic than that. Religions evolve.

He’s probably arguing against a scouncil because it’s the most extreme thing a skeptic could say about Christianity’s origins, but the argument works for less extreme explanations too because the argument is about the religion being so repulsive and counter-cultural that people would make sure there was something solid behind it before converting. An simple evolution out of Judaism would not provide any hard evidence, besides people believing these things. In this argument, people would seek out witnesses who didn’t just claim belief, but actually seeing his miracles and resurrection.

I'll give you this: Christianity could not have gotten off the ground if several early followers didn't really, truly believe that Jesus has risen from the dead.

This is missing the point of the whole argument. It’s saying that wouldn’t have been enough precisely because of the nature of the claims about Jesus, his resurrection, and other claimed historical events. They were of the nature that could be easily debunked if not true. And of course, as JPH is arguing, based on social factors of the period, people would have plenty of motivation to do so considering how socially disrupting Christianity’s claims were.

The only part of #4 that even interests me is that if you compare Christianity's emergence from Judaism and Buddhism's emergence from Hinduism, you'll see many interesting parallels, as a tribal, ritualistic, legalistic religion gives birth to a personal, universal, transformative one at the hands of a charismatic teacher. So #4 doesn't get a full post; if you find it especially powerful, maybe you can give it a better case than JPH does.

Sorry, but that happened in Far-Eastern cultures, and you offered no evidence to show that they paralled the first century Greco-Roman situation in the empire. Nor do you explain why it would not be a hurdle for people then.

This guy doesn't get human nature. I'm not surprised, because this fits in with the Christian view of humans being inherently worthless, lazy, and sinful. That stuff is there, but so are drives toward purity, aestheticism, sacrifice, and hard work. In the Christian worldview, the baseline for human behavior is a rapist who eats nothing but Doritos, heroine, and candy, and steals and murders his way through life. This is one of my biggest problems with the Abrahamic faiths as a whole, this benighted, insulting, incorrect view of human beings. People do have some dark and lazy tendencies, and it can take discipline to resist temptations, and strength and courage to work toward real morality.

You misunderstand the doctrine of total depravity/what it means for humans to have a sinful nature. This quote from Tim Challies explains well what the doctrine teaches.

We can put one drop of deadly poison in that glass and it renders that entire glass poisonous so that if you were to drink it, you would quickly drop dead. That one drop extended to every part of the glass even though the entire vessel is not filled with poison. This represents humans after the Fall. While they are not wholly corrupt, the corruption they do have extends to every part… Humans are not as depraved as they could possibly be.

For this reason, I think radical depravity is the better term to use for the doctrine.

But people also respect courage, honor, and charity, and earlier philosophies have all contained similar values.

Paul talks of God giving everyone a moral sense in Romans 2, so this lines up.

While we may struggle with weakness and selfishness, contrary to the author's point, no religion that didn't contain values of aestheticism and self-sacrifice could have caught on like that. Sure, the Roman politicians and merchants aren't going to give up their orgies; but yes, some people will give up a lot of earthly goods for a life they see as more pure, chaste, or spiritually fulfilling. Hedonism regularly flares up, much like the STDs that follow in its wake, but its ultimately unsatisfying nature leaves people looking for meaning and character as cultures continue to evolve.

You would have a point for these people, but as JPH said,

But it is very difficult to explain why Christianity grew where God-fearers were always a very small group. Not even evangelistic fervor explains that.

So it only works if you can show that large groups of Romans were into the harder religions, if they even existed.

Ok. #6: meh. As in #4, the idea that Christianity was "SOOO crazy different" from the Roman worldview but eventually did catch on holds no water to me. Cultures change. Feel free to add some weight to this if you want.

Culture (well some aspects, not all) changes, and quickly, in a society like ours, but where is the evidence that it would have back then? Furthermore, as JPH said,

The Christians refused to believe in the gods, "the guardians of stability of the world order, the generous patrons who provided all that was needed for sustaining life, as well as the granters of individual petitions."

Patronage was a big deal to people back then, since 99% were poor. It was basically their biggest lifeline because there was no welfare, etc. (and people would also voluntarily become slaves too). It doesn’t make sense to switch from patrons that provide, to a Patron that provides + social ostracizing unless there was something solid there. They wouldn’t take the decision lightly because of the high importance of patronage in their society, thus those with the means to do so would be compelled to check out the claims.

First of all, the new testament is chock full of contradictions.(link) So it's logically impossible for them to "have all their ducks in a row."

Historians don’t need the documents they analyze to be inerrant for them to declare specific events in them historical. Whether the NT is inerrant or not is irrelevant to this discussion.

(as an aside, though, even absurdly obvious contrivances like Mormonism and Scientology can become quite prolific.)

In a completely different religious/cultural situation.

But filling your stories with anonymous people would actually have been suspicious and unpersuasive. None of these "easily tested" claims have anything to do with anything supernatural, like healing, casting out demons, or the resurrection itself; but it wouldn't have mattered for the same reason I detailed in #3. Say Paul claims some famous official testifies to the resurrection -- how does that matter? Even if it's true that this official claims to have seen a resurrected Jesus, that doesn't make him correct. This doesn't even start to be evidence. All it proves is that early Christians were actually walking around the Near East when they said they were.

First off, the claims about Jesus were obviously supernatural. Do you really think the early Christians could have gotten away with saying he had a 3-year ministry involving miracles done in front of thousands upon thousands when it didn’t actually happen? The King Paul spoke to would know of these people.

Next, you don’t even really address this section.

Now consider the domino effect of making such claims. If claim #1 is proven false, that opens the way to doubt others -- all the way up the line to the resurrection. And it need not even be Joe of A's tomb in particular, or Herod becoming wormburgers in particular. It can be any one of the places where the early Christians and the NT made bold claim to some influence or event in any city. People outside the area of Lystra may not have known enough about what happened in Lystra, or wanted to check it, but Christianity was making claims at varied points across the Empire, and there were also built in "fact checkers" stationed around the Empire who could say something about all the claims central to Jerusalem and Judaea -- the Diaspora Jews. (And it gets worse; see below.)

The NT claims countless touch-points that could go under this list. An earthquake, a darkness at midday, the temple curtain torn in two, an execution, all at Passover (with the attendant crowds numbering in the millions), people falling out of a house speaking in tongues at Pentecost (another "millions attend" event) -- all in a small city and culture where word would spread fast (see below). Healings of illnesses and dysfunctions, even reversals of death, in highly public places. A truimphal entry into Jerusalem in blatant fulfillment of Messianic prophecy.

In short, Christianity was highly vulnerable to inspection and disproof on innumerable points -- any one of which, had it failed to prove out, would have snowballed into further doubt, especially given the previous factors above which would have been motive enough for any Jew or Gentile to say or do something.

If these claims were bunk, we expect that there would be some record of a non-Christian explaining so because of the number of people involved in some events.

Again, no, all this shows is that they really believed it -- and all it takes is a few true believers to spark things. If the argument is "people don't believe things without good reason!", then, um, this is actually kind of sad. However, it's been pretty clear that the author doesn't understand human nature, culture, or religions and how they form. A handbook on social values of the first century Near East doesn't override the rest of human psychology and sociology.

Yes it does show that they really believed it. However, you’re missing the nuance. Honor was such a huge deal to them that they would not come to really believe it without great reason. They considered shame worse than death. Because people did, it led to huge consequences for oneself if they were engaged in something shameful. Furthermore, for the Apostles, they didn’t claim to just believe, but to have seen the risen Jesus.

They had firsthand knowledge of its veracity. Paul also said 500 people had this firsthand knowledge too, and the oral tradition Paul cites in 1 Cor 15 that the 500 comes from is dated within two to eight years of Jesus’ crucifixion! (Source is from cite 77 of page 365 of JPH’s book). So, considering how highly valued honor was then, a high honor claim (vindication by resurrection), would be checked out.

Ok, #9: yeah, no, versions of human-divine/spirit hybrids are a dime a dozen, and even within the Christianity, the debate isn't really settled. Even in Judaism you have the Nephilim, and angels or the dead manifesting spiritually (but visibly) or physically. Jesus wasn't even the first "son of God." Yeesh, gimme something to chew on here.

He’s using the modern usage for Son of God (meaning he’s saying that they proclaimed that Jesus was fully divine as well as human). Otherwise, your other examples miss the nuance of

To believe that ordinary Jews were willing to bestow on any human man, no matter how impressive, all the titles of divinity and full identification with the ancient God of Abraham is simply inconceivable." And so it would be: Unless it actually happened, and that "human man" proved himself to be the Son of God. Doherty's "fallacy" amounts to an argument in favor of Christianity.

And it would be no better in the Gentile world. The idea of a god condescending to material form, for more than a temporary visit, of sweating, stinking, going to the bathroom, and especially suffering and dying here on earth -- this would be too much to swallow

To reiterate a few important things that have applied to earlier points: 1) this argument would only matter if it were a conscious fabrication, some "scouncil" trying to gain power and control.

What I said before applies here as well. He’s probably arguing against a scouncil because it’s the most extreme thing a skeptic could say about Christianity’s origins, but the argument works for less extreme explanations too because the whole argument is about the religion being so repulsive and counter-cultural that people would make sure there was something solid behind it before converting.

Only Paul may have avoided this stigma among the apostolic band.

Exxxxxactly; and Paul was the one who took Christianity viral. Probably (and for several other reasons) it would have stayed just another dwindling messiah-cult if not for Paul.

Except that the religion Paul preached was repulsive to them.

And again with the human nature: yes, the social norms and prejudices were strongly ingrained. but Rome wasn't some hive-mind. Come on, you don't think there were people disliked these very social norms? Even if they weren't proto-hippie-revolutionaries,

Sorry, but American hippies were still individualists just like non-hippie Americans. Some things about culture are so strong that they are in place in subcultures. That’s the sort of cultural values we’re talking about. Books like David DeSilva’s Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity show that Christians still cared about honor, patronage, and collectivism just as the non-Christians did.

Furthermore, the phrase hive-mind is a poor caricature. What’s needed is evidence that first Christians were culturally out-of-phase before conversion with prevailing cultural norms cultural anthropologists say existed in the 1st century of the Roman empire, especially considering my response to your next paragraph.

all it takes is a dissatisfaction ... (possibly related to Roman dominance and occupation, and the Jewish perception of their church as complying with the occupiers; and among Gentiles, there were still plenty of people with room for grievance) ... and if someone comes along with a message that validates and explains your angst, maybe you come hear a sermon... then maybe the speaker is charismatic and inspiring... maybe the crowd -- which may be small but mostly made up of the already converted -- gets worked up... sucked into the rhetoric and moment, washed over by the feelings of the group, you have a transcendent experience that verifies the spiritual claims of the teacher, or maybe even later that night you have a dream, or later that month nagging doubt causes you to return for another sermon or reading....

This is how conversion works. There's nothing magical about it. Sorry.

I’ll just show you the rebuttals from page 189 of JPH's book,



and pages 232-233.





Looks like you’re just assuming they would be thinking like Westerners. Sorry.

Also combining #13 and #15, as they both deal with the "empty tomb" -- it would have been easy to check and verify, ergo, resurrection! (15 makes a few more points, but it's just the same "Jesus was disgraced and therefore if he wasn't God he couldn't have been perceived as messiah" type argument from way back in #1.)

But ok, empty tomb : Prove he was ever buried there to begin with, and we'll talk. If he was instead buried in an anonymous -- or worse, mass -- grave, then there very shortly wouldn't have been much of a body to point at and say "here's yer messiah!" After all, he was a criminal.

Well, you offer nothing to show how these dishonorable things wouldn’t have been an issue. Next, there is no necessity of identifiable remains once you understand the nature of the collectivist society delineated in factor #13, even if it was a mass grave. Finally, if you’re saying the empty tomb isn’t true when a mass grave could’ve been, then it doesn’t make sense because of what I said about honor with regard to #8 for a dishonorable burial to be connected with it whether the burial/empty tomb story evolved with time or was the result of a scouncil.

And while, yes, I'm sure the authorities of both the Jewish and Gentile communities may have wanted to disprove and discredit the physical resurrection -- but that wouldn't have happened until at least people started to publicly claim it, which I'm not convinced happened anytime soon enough to recover an identifiable body. And I'm not even convinced that the doctrine of physical resurrection, which is the only kind the empty tomb would have mattered for, wasn't a later insertion.

Well, my point about the 1 Cor 15 creed has bearing here, and with Luke saying there were converts 50 days later, I think if there was a decaying body there, and the collectivist mindset point mentioned earlier too would be more than enough to make the religion falsifiable.

And to return to the whole "human nature" thing, I'm not sure it would have worked anyway. The religious mind is notoriously immune to counter-evidence. He's breaking his own rules about history and social context; these are first century Jews and pagans, not 21st century rationalists trained in the scientific method.

How nice. They just weren’t smart enough like us enlightened moderns to discern whether a tomb was empty or not, ask people questions about claims, and figure out that dead bodies do actually typically stay dead.

Then there’s that thorny problem that superstition was at a low point during the time.

Doesn't the pervasive gullibility of the ancient world reduce the credibility of these accounts to virtually nil?

We're getting there! #14: Jesus showed ignorance of certain things, therefore (everybody now)nobody would have made this up! I've addressed other claims like this already, so I'll just add that this merely shows that a) Jesus was just a man, and b) the early Church wasn't sure of its own doctrine, which it really should have been if The Man himself had been kicking it with them for 3 years.

Non-Christian would’ve probably thought (a) and (b) too. So your point?

#16: I.. crap this is a long one. Ok, miscellanea!

Jesus taught people to break even with family, if needed, for the sake of the Kingdom; he also indicated a highly inclusive assembly (Matt. 8:11-12) in a highly inclusive society.

Yup, so do all cults.

But in societies where kinship is valued so highly as was the case then?

In his teachings Jesus often made reversals of common expectations that would have grossly offended the majority

Again, it may show it wasn't fabricated on purpose, but not that he's the Son of God; additionally, upsetting social norms and making demands of adherents is required for any movement to seem legit. People know there's no such thing as a free lunch.

I think the things I’ve said already show the inadequacy here, particularly the bits about assuming they shared certain western values.

The theme of being "born again" was a real shocker! [John, 82] When one was born, one's honor status was considered fixed at birth. Only extraordinary circumstances allowed for a change in honor status.

Cults, secret societies, and conversion and adulthood rituals were also a dime a dozen; taking a new identity when joining a group, and rites and symbols associated therewith, is actually the norm for humankind.

It’s talking about honor status changing, not identity.

But "easily disproved claims" haven't stopped all manner of out-and-out bullshit from spreading prolifically and being taken seriously. And once a movement has momentum, it can be hard to put down; indeed, "persecution" often just adds fuel to the fire.

In different socio-cultural situations, yes.

Yes, other, similar movements did fizzle out, but what they lacked was certain narrative elements, not supernatural underwriting.

What narrative elements, specifically?

To conclude, your biggest mistake seems to be not realizing how much different these people were from Westerners, especially as it relates to honor, and how off putting the factors of women witnesses and the breaking down of class distinctions would have been to the ancients.

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