Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

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by John W. Loftus

200 CE) actually wrote a whole book telling his audience how to distinguish his

  work from forgeries. Even among the early Christians such practice was frowned

  upon. The church father Tertullian (ca. 160-ca. 225) told the story of how the

  forger of 3 Corinthians, a Christian presbyter, was duly convicted by the

  ecclesiastical authority for composing this letter and falsely attributing it to

  Paul.93

  As Bart Ehrman pointed out in his recent book, 7esus Interrupted,94 the

  ancients, used words such as pseudon (a lie) and nothon (a bastard child) to

  describe forgeries. Pseudepigraphy was not considered "okay" by the ancients

  and anyone who wrote such a piece of work must have been aware of the

  morally repugnant nature of what he was doing. Yet the works of such people as

  these made it into the NT. We end this section on an ironical note. One of the

  most commonly used passages by evangelicals to "prove" biblical inspiration is

  this one: "Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for

  reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16).

  Yet this passage is almost certainly the work of a forger.

  CONCLUSIONS

  Let's recap what modern scholars have found. The Bible is filled with so many

  diametrically opposite viewpoints that if they were present in a human being we

  would probably label that person bipolar or, even worse, schizophrenic. We have

  seen that the pillars of biblical archaeology-the Patriarchal Narratives, the

  Exodus, and the Conquest-events once thought to have been historical, are now

  shown to be made up almost completely of myths and legends. In the NT we

  find that critical historical research has relegated the nativity accounts in

  Matthew and Luke to the realm of myths, legends, and fairy tales. Prophecy, far

  from being strong evidence for the divine authority of the Bible, is actually an

  Achilles' heel. The Bible contains prophecies that were faked (i.e., made after the

  fact) and prophecies that failed. We also find that the verse most often used by

  evangelicals to support their doctrine of biblical inerrancy, 2 Timothy 3:16,

  comes from the pen of a forger.

  The Bible cannot be considered inspired by God in any meaningful sense at

  all.

  ADDENDUM: THE LIBERALS AND THE BIBLE

  I have argued that the evangelical belief in biblical inspiration cannot be

  defended in the light of modern scholarship. However, there are many Christians

  who are not evangelicals, members of the mainline Protestant churches, such as

  Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist churches, who do not accept the evangelical

  position. These churches subscribe to some forms of liberal-modernist theology.

  Liberal or modernist theologians would happily admit to all of the findings

  mentioned in this chapter but would dismiss them as "insignificant" objections to

  their faith. Yet, strange as it may seem to the average person, these theologians

  still consider themselves Christians.

  Liberal modernist theology has its roots in the Enlightenment-an intellectual

  movement that started in the eighteenth century-which placed reason above all

  else. The skepticism of philosophers such as David Hume (1711-1776) and to a

  certain extent, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) presented many difficulties for

  Christian theologians. Even more troubling to theology than philosophy was

  natural philosophy, or, as it eventually became known, science. The Copernican

  revolution, which showed that the sun, not the earth, was the center upon which

  everything in the thenknown universe revolves, took away the earth's, and thus

  man's, place from the center of the universe. It became harder to believe how

  man could be the crowning glory of creation when he is placed in an

  insignificant corner of the universe.' The plight of the theologians continued to

  pile up in the nineteenth century. The publishing of Charles Darwin's (1809-

  1882) treatise on evolution, On The Origin of Species (1859), meant that science

  had gone one step further against the theologian. The theory of evolution

  presented by Darwin showed that man is an evolved animal, no more and no

  less. If evolution is true, and the evidence marshaled by Darwin in his book is

  compelling, then Genesis is false; far from being created in God's image,

  humankind bore all the marks of an animal ancestry.

  Within Christendom, the development of biblical criticism, especially in its

  "higher" form, began to show that the Bible was not a unique document (as

  we've shown). Christian theology bifurcated into fundamentalist/ conservatism

  on one side and liberal/modernism on the other.96 While the fundamentalist side

  rejected the assured results of science and biblical criticism, the liberal side

  embraced them and subsequently reinvented their Christian faith. Thus the

  liberals did not reach their position by abstruse theological reasoning. Instead

  they were forced into it by external circumstances-the findings of science,

  comparative religions, enlightenment philosophies, and textual and historical

  criticism.

  The position of the liberals on the Bible can be divided into two broad, not

  necessarily mutually exclusive, positions. The first is that the biblical myths

  convey symbolic truths, as expressed in a report published by the Anglican

  Church Commission on Christian Doctrine in 1938: "Statements affirming

  particular facts may be found to have value as pictorial expressions of spiritual

  truths, even though the supposed facts themselves did not actually happen. In

  that case such statements must be called symbolically true ... It is not therefore

  of necessity illegitimate to accept and affirm particular clauses in the Creeds

  while understanding them in this symbolic sense." 97 This report, probably on

  purpose, never made it clear which clauses of the Anglican creeds were to be

  understood in this symbolic sense.

  The second position asserts that the Bible, while being fallible, is in general

  the inspired word of God, as Carl Lofmark summed up the views of liberal R. P.

  C. Hanson and A. T. Hanson:

  They recognized that the Bible contains errors and cannot be divinely

  inspired, that its world view is "prescientific" and its accounts of history

  mainly myths, legend, or fiction, that its miracles never happened and that

  parts of it are unedifying if not disgusting.... They agree that the Bible text

  is unreliable and the original words (including the words of Jesus) have

  often been altered. Yet they still believe that the Bible's "general drift" or

  "impression" is a "true witness to the nature of God." The unedifying texts

  are "balanced" by others, which reveal the truth. Deep significance is not

  found everywhere in the Bible, but only in its "high spots."... This approach

  is eclectic: they select from the Bible those passages which they find

  edifying and construct from those passages their own impression of the

  Bible's "general drift," while rejecting the bulk of what the Bible contains.

  Only the better parts are a true witness to the nature and purpose of God.98

  The first problem to note is that if modern liberals are right about the Bible, then />
  most Christians have failed to understand God's true message throughout church

  history until recent time. Put in this way, the liberal position sounds smug and

  pretentious.

  The second problem is that the question remains as to which passages are to

  be taken literally and which are to be taken symbolically. If the intent of the

  biblical authors is rejected by the method of selection, then this leaves the door

  wide open for selecting which passages should be symbolic and which should

  not. Thirdly, how are those passages to be interpreted symbolically? There is no

  guide or generally accepted method of symbolic interpretation. How does one

  know which symbolic interpretation is correct? Fourthly, just because the stories

  are defined as symbolic by the liberals, it does not mean that the issue of the

  criterion of truth has been successfully avoided. What happens when two liberal

  theologians come up with two mutually exclusive symbolic truths from the same

  biblical passage? And finally, many socalled interpretations of the symbolic

  truths of the Bible are actually devoid of any cognitive meaning.

  Take for instance an Ascension Day sermon written for an English newspaper

  by an Anglican bishop: "[The ascension of Jesus is] not a primitive essay in

  astrophysics, but the symbol of creative intuition ... into the abiding significance

  of Jesus and his place in the destiny of man. It might be called a pictorial

  presentation of the earliest creed, Jesus is Lord ... Creed and scripture are saying

  in their own language that here is something final and decisive, the truth and the

  meaning of man's life and destiny-truth not in theory but in a person-life in its

  ultimate quality, that is God's life."99 From what he said only one thing is clear:

  the good bishop does not believe that the ascension story is to be taken literally.

  Apart from this, it is very difficult to fathom what it is he is trying to say and

  how what he is trying to say is derived from that story told in three verses in

  Acts, if it is not grounded in an actual historical event. While we can forgive the

  author of Acts for his lack of knowledge of astrophysics, it is hard to know what

  to do with the bishop.

  As for the "take some and leave some" approach to the Bible, the central

  question remains: if some parts of the Bible are false or unacceptable, what

  guarantee do we have that the other parts are true, or are of any special value?

  Thus the moment one admits that some parts of the Bible are untrue or

  unacceptable, the position of the Bible as the inspired word of God becomes

  very difficult to objectively defend.

  Take for instance this passage from American liberal theologian Leslie

  Weatherhead: "[W] hen Jesus is reported as consigning to everlasting torture

  those who displease him or do not `believe' what he says, I know in my heart

  that there is something wrong somewhere. Either he is misrepresented or

  misunderstood.... So I put his alleged saying in my mental drawer awaiting

  farther light. By the judgment of the court within my own breast.. .1 reject such

  sayings."loo The question here is simple: if he could use his own judgment to

  accept and reject biblical passages, why rely on the Bible at all?

  This leads us into the liberal theologians' views of Jesus. It is obvious that

  since the late nineteenth century these theologians have ceased to believe that the

  main events of the Gospels are historical, especially the virgin birth, the

  associated nativity stories, the miracles, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The

  liberals trip all over themselves trying to avoid saying the actual truth: if the

  bodily resurrection of Yesus is not historical then traditional Christianity, in any

  form, is no longer valid. This is the skeptic's position, of course. But the liberals

  added that the resurrection is to be understood in a different sense, but just

  exactly what sense is not clear. Their writings contain so much garbled speech

  that it is difficult to even see if they agree with one another. Most of the liberal

  interpretation involves accepting the resurrection as some kind of internal

  revelation of the disciples. This experience, they proclaim, is what really

  matters, not the actual historical fact of resurrection. But why should it, we ask?

  Why should the visions or dreams of a few ill-educated, first-century Galilean

  peasants be of any significance and be treated any differently from others all

  over the world and throughout history? Because it is about Jesus? But take away

  the historical claims about his supposed supernatural powers, his miracles, and

  his bodily resurrection, and what do we have? A first-century, xenophobic,

  ignorant Galilean peasant who thought the world was going to end (as Loftus

  proves in chapter 12). If this is so, why not just dispense with it altogether? It's

  high time they did. As Hector Avalos has argued very effectively in The End of

  Biblical Studies, it's time that biblical studies as we know them should end.

  NOTES

  1. Editor's note: This chapter sums up only a few sections of Paul Tobin's far

  more extensive book, The Rejection of Pascal:r Wager-A Skeptic:r Guide to the

  Bible and the Historical.7esus (Bedfordshire, England: Authors Online, 2009).

  Good summaries of what scholars now widely conclude about the Bible, fully in

  accord with Tobin's account, can be found in Israel Finkelstein and Neil

  Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology :c New Vision of Ancient Israel

  and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001) and Bart

  Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible

  (New York: HarperOne, 2009) (for the OT and NT, respectively). All three

  books should be required reading for any actual or prospective Christian.

  2. Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans See Them (New Haven,

  CT: Yale University Press, 1984).

  3. See "The Confessions and Letters of Saint Augustin, with a Sketch of His

  Life and Work: Letter 82," Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel

  .org/ccel/schaff/npnflOl.vii.I.LXXXII.htinl.

  4. Robert Price, Inerrant the Wind The Evangelical Crisis of Biblical

  Authority (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009) and Beyond Born Again.-

  Towards Evangelical Maturity,

  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond born

  again/index.shtinl.

  5. The reader is encouraged to consult the following works for further

  information: Hector Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies (Amherst, NY:

  Prometheus Books, 2007), pp. 37-5 3; Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical

  PreacberBecame One of America:c Leading Atheists (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses

  Press, 1992), pp. 222-50; Rod Evans and Irwin Berent, Fundamentalism:

  Hazards and Heartbreaks (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1988), pp. 89-94; Bruce

  Metzger, The Bible in Translation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001),

  pp. 140-41; and my own Rejection of Pascal:r Wager, pp. 197-204.

  6. On this see Richard Elliott Friedman's two books, Who Wrote the Bible?

  (New York: Perennial Library, 1989) and The Bible with Sources Revealed-A

  New View into the Five Books of Moses (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco,

  2003). Friedman is a premier critical historical scholar and a professor of

  Hebrew and comparative literature. He outlines how scholars discovered the

  source documents of the Pentateuch when they realized that different accounts

  actually come from different sources that the editors of the Pentateuch tried to

  cobble together.

  7. Randel McGraw Helms, The Bible against Itself Why the Bible Seems to

  Contradictltself (Altadena, CA: Millennium Press, 2006).

  8. Compare also: Proverbs 1:13-17 versus Ecclesiastes 7:15-17; and Proverbs

  1:7 and 2:5 versus Ecclesiastes 7:23 and 8:1, 17-18. See Helms, Bible against

  Itself, pp. 60-63.

  9. Helms, Bible against Itself, pp. 115-33.

  10. C. Dennis McKinsey has written a book of more than five hundred pages

  cataloging these errors, The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy (Amherst, NY:

  Prometheus Books, 1995).

  11. Some examples: Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties

  (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan 1982), in 476 pages; Norman Geisler and

  Thomas Howe, The Big Book of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker

  Books, 1992), in 615 pages; and R. A. Torrey, Difficulties in the Bible (Chicago:

  Moody Press 1972), in 159 pages.

  12. For example, the book by the German journalist Werner Keller, The Bible

  as History (1956), has the subtitle "Archaeology Confirms the Book of Books!"

  13. See chapter 4, "Collapse of the Paradigm," in Thomas W. Davis, Shifting

  Sands.- The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University

  Press 2004).

  14. Davis, Shifting Sands, p. 145; P. R. S. Moorey, A Century of Biblical

  Archaeology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 173-75.

  15. Ian Plimer, Telling Lies for God-Reason versus Creationism (Milsons

  Point, NSW: Random House Australia, 1994), p. 75.

  16. For the full text of the epic of Gilgainesh, see: http://www.ancient

  texts.org/library/inesopotainian/gilgainesh/.

  17. Cyrus Gordon and Gary Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East

  (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 50.

  18. Archaeologists have discovered two even earlier versions of flood myths-

  the Sumerian epic of Ziusudra (ca. 2600 BCE) and the Akkadian epic of

  Atrahasis (ca. 1900 BCE). Together with the epic of Gilgamesh, these myths

  involve the gods causing a worldwide flood and a hero who builds an ark to save

  himself, his family, and some animals. The epics of Ziusudra and Atrahasis do

  not survive in their complete forms and are today extant only in fragments. For a

  thorough analysis of the relationship between these various flood myths, see

  Jeffrey Tigay's monograph The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadelphia:

  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).

  19. See Finkelstein and Silberman, Bible Unearthed, pp. 27-47; Niels Peter

  Lemche, Prelude to Israel:r Pasta Background and Beginnings of Israelite

  History and Iden tity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), pp. 12-44; John Van

  Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University

  Press, 1975); Thomas Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives:

  The Quest for the Historical Abraham (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press

  International, 2002).

  20. Eric Cline, From Eden to Exile-Unraveling the Mysteries of the Bible

  (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2007), pp. 56-57; Leinche, Prelude to

  Israel:r Past, pp. 39, 62.

  21. Finkelstein and Silberman, Bible Unearthed, p. 37.

  22. Manfred Barthel, What the Bible Really Says (New York: Wings, 1980),

  p. 79; Michael D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford History of the Biblical World

  (London: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 28, 109; Finkelstein and

 

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