the value of this world (Matthew 16:24-26, 19:29; Romans 7; 1 John 2:15-17);
even to the point of selling everything and giving it to the poor (Luke 12:33,
18:22), like Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan Monks is known to
have done.
We find the virtues of faith to be more important than reason in the NT too
(Mark 9:23, 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16), which has led many believers into some
bizarre fatal doomsday cults. We find texts on prayer that have led Christians to
pray in faith to be healed rather than go to the hospital (Mark 11:22-24, James
5:14-15). Many children have died because their parents refused to take them to
a doctor for easily treatable medical problems. We find texts that offer sexually
repressing advice (1 Corinthians 7)-including what many Christians see as the
denigration of homosexuality (Romans 1:18-32). We find chauvinistic passages
that tell us women are to be silent in the churches (1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy
2:8-14), and that they should submit to and obey their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-
24, 1 Peter 3:1-6). We find disturbing passages that slaves are supposed to obey
their masters, which helped sustain the status quo (Ephesians 6:5-8, Titus 2:9-10,
1 Peter 2:18-20). Then there's the church's ultimate threat of hell in the lake of
fire (Revelation 20:11-15), the most terrifying cradle-tograve threat of all.
Taking these biblical passages at face value is no longer an option for most
Christians. Instead, Christians find other passages that can be used to interpret
them in a gerrymandering fashion by finding the "canon within the canon," so
they are more palatable to their modern consciences. But at face value they have
caused harm, and in some cases a great deal of harm, for an unconscionably long
time. Even if Christians reinterpret such passages to mean something other than
what they appear to say, God is still proven to be one of the worst
communicators in history. All of this could have been prevented and clarified
right from the start, and to the benefit of countless people, by even an average
communicator, much less one with the alleged talents of a god.
DOCTRINAL DISPUTES AND CHRISTIAN
VIOLENCE
Not only is there divine miscommunication about morals, which has led to a
great deal of suffering at the hands of believers, but there is also the problem of
doctrinal disputes Christians have had between themselves. If God had done a
better job communicating what he wanted the faithful to believe, there wouldn't
have been as much bloodshed, even between Christians themselves, nor would
there be as many splintered groups, all calling themselves Christians. Could an
omniscient God have foreseen this and communicated better? I see no reason
why not.
During the decades of conflict between the Arians and the followers of
Athanasius, Christian people were strong-armed and killed on both sides of their
debate over who Jesus was.17 I'm pretty sure that if God had been clearer about
whether Jesus was the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, "frilly God and
fully man in every respect," this debate and the suffering incurred would not
have happened.
Moving on, centuries later the angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas had argued that
heresy was a "leavening influence" upon the minds of the weak, and as such,
heretics and infidels should be killed. Since heretical ideas could inflict the
greatest possible harm upon other human beings, it was the greatest crime of all.
Heretical ideas could send people to an eternally conscious torment in hell. So,
he argued, logic demands that the church must get rid of this heretical leavening
influence. It was indeed the greatest crime of them all, given this logic and the
biblical passages that supported it (Exodus 22:20; Numbers 25:2-8;
Deuteronomy 13:1-15 and 17:2-5, 20). So, beginning in the fourteenth century
and carrying on for two hundred years, the rallying call of the Inquisition was
"convert or die!"
Protestantism's founders were not exempt from this same logic. They killed
thousands of Anabaptists, known as rebaptizers, often by burning them at the
stake or by drowning, which was a parody of baptism.18 Martin Luther and John
Calvin both believed heretics like these should be punished and even killed by
the state, as did some other reformers.19 Martin Luther wrote:
There are others who teach in opposition to some recognized article of faith
which is manifestly grounded on Scripture and is believed by good
Christians all over the world, such as are taught to children in the Creed...
Heretics of this sort must not be tolerated, but punished as open
blasphemers ... If anyone wishes to preach or to teach, let him make known
the call or the command which impels him to do so, or else let him keep
silence. If he will not keep quiet, then let the civil authorities command the
scoundrel to his rightful master-namely, Master Hans [i.e., the hangman].20
But the number of deaths during the Inquisition pale by comparison to the
religious wars fought between Christians themselves. Bryan Moynahan, in his
balanced treatment of the history of the church, tells us that the "twenty-five
thousand" victims from the Inquisition "bear no comparison to the eight million
or more who died in the swill of religious wars that devastated other parts of
Europe." 21 These religious wars were an outgrowth of inquisitional thinking
applied to whole groups of people who were thought of as heretics. The
mentality expressed in the phrase "Heretics Must Die" was transformed into:
"Heretics Must All Die." While it's true that wars almost always have a
multifaceted number of causes, religious differences were certainly among the
causes of these wars. And people probably never kill with more passion than
when they do so because of religious reasons. Without these religious differences
one wonders whether there would even be the conflict in the first place. At the
very least we could say that religious differences exacerbated and intensified the
conflict.22
In sixteenth-century France (1562-1598) there were a series of eight wars
between Roman Catholics and Protestants (primarily Calvinist Huguenots),
known as the "French Wars of Religion." The infamous St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre took place during one of them. Starting on the eve of the feast of
Bartholomew, August 23, 1572, a group of Huguenot leaders were slaughtered
by Catholics. Lasting several weeks, the massacre extended across the
countryside where as many as ten thousand Protestants were slaughtered (see
note).23
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was one of the most destructive wars in
European history that pitted Christians against each other. This war was fought
primarily in Germany, but other countries got involved as well. Roman
Catholicism and Protestant Calvinism figured prominently in the opposing sides
of this conflict. So great was the loss of life from this war that estimates show
one-third of the entire population of the Germany was killed. Wiirt-temberg lost
three-quarters of its entire population. Brandenburg suffered
the loss of half of
its population, as did Marburg and Augsburg, while Magdeburg was reduced to
rubble. Outside of Germany nearly one-third of the Czech population died as
well.24 Christian apologist Paul Copan admits: "Denominational differences
were a matter of life and death." 25 That's an understatement. We're talking
about a Christian bloodbath. From this conflict the idea of religious tolerance
was born, and with it the basis for modern democracy, something we find
precursors of in ancient Greece.
The main doctrinal disputes between Catholics and Protestants were over the
means of salvation, the importance of biblical authority, and the priesthood of all
believers. When it came to the Catholic claims of authority, a disputed text in
Matthew's Gospel was unclear to them. After Simon Peter confessed Jesus was
"the Christ, the Son of the living God," Matthew's Jesus replied: "Blessed are
you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my
Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build
my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,
and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:16-19).
The Catholic Church claimed a succession of popes stemming from Peter, the
first Pope. What is the "rock" that Jesus was to build his church upon? Did Jesus
mean to say he would build his church on Peter, or on his confession of faith?
Knowing church history as we do, if a perfectly good, omniscient God were
involved we would certainly want Matthew's Jesus to be very clear here, but he
wasn't. Because he wasn't, a massive number of Christians were killed by their
brothers in the faith.
Protestants themselves fought over the nature of the Eucharistic wafer. At the
last supper before being crucified Jesus is reported to say: "Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will
raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink
indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him"
(John 6:53-56).
Was Jesus speaking metaphorically with regard to the Eucharist, or literally? It
wasn't that clear to the church in these days. Knowing the history of the church
like we do, why wasn't John's Jesus clear? He could have used different words or
said plainly "I'm speaking metaphorically" That would have saved Christians
from spilling a massive amount of blood between themselves-the very people
whom Jesus prayed should be unified as one (John 17:20-23).
Skipping ahead in history, the American Civil War was due, in part, to
religious conflict. While the war concerned state's rights, the principle cause for
the conflict had to do with the right of Southern states to own slaves. Historians
agree that abolitionist John Brown played a major role in starting the Civil War
with his failed terrorist raid on Harper's Ferry, (West) Virginia, in 1859. Brown
was a deeply religious Calvinist his whole life.26 Equally religious were his
opponents, and equally passionate. Biblical passages supporting and opposing
slavery were bandied back and forth on this issue from pulpits and essayists like
weapons of war. The issue really isn't that clear at all in the Bible. In fact, it
appears to me that when the Bible is taken at face value, the proslavery
arguments were stronger than the abolitionist ones.'? These disputes were settled
when the North won the war. But 620,000 Christian people on both sides lost
their lives to settle it. Had God been very clear on this issue from the beginning,
no Christian believer could ever biblically justify such a cruel and barbaric
institution. God would certainly have known this would cause such a war,
including the horrific suffering of the slaves themselves, and simply said over
and over, "Thou shalt not buy, beat, or own slaves as property" and left out the
other texts supportive of slavery.
CHRISTIAN ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN GOD'S FAILURE TO
COMMUNICATE
Christian thinkers are not unaware of these problems. Several attempts have
been made to explain them away. Let me offer eight of the most serious attempts
to do this, along with some brief objections to them:
1. Thepeople who committed these terrible acts were not true Christians.28
The problem with this attempted answer is that there is no such thing as
Christianity. There are only Christianities, as David Eller argued in chapter 1.
Christianity reinvents itself in every generation and in every culture as it's forced
to adjust to its historical and cultural environment. Such an answer presupposes
that the Christianity in any given local culture of today is true while all of the
others in the past, present, and future are false. That's a huge presumption! I tell
people who make this argument to start a blog or Web site titled True
Christianity and invite all professing Christians-the only kind we ever see-to try
to come to a consensus. We know that will never happen. If instead, Christians
want to argue that good morals are what define a Christian, the same thing
applies. The history of Christian morality itself is fraught with the same kinds of
disputes.29 Besides, if having good morals defines a Christian (rather than
correct doctrinal beliefs), then not only does this debunk those Christianities who
think otherwise, but even atheists can be Christians by being good. Not only this,
such an answer presumes that the people who killed one another over correct
doctrinal beliefs were extremely insincere, stupid, and/or evil, and that too is
nonsense. This brings me to the next attempted answer.
2. Sinful fallen humans committed these atrocities in disobedience to God
despite what God clearly communicated. But I find this almost ludicrous. God
would know in advance that we are fallen human beings, so he would know that
he must communicate better to us. And if he also had foreknowledge of what
believers would do, God would also know what to say so that the historic
Church as an institution could not biblically justify so many horrendous deeds.
It's one thing for individual believers to justify wrongdoing. It's another thing
entirely for the Church as an institution to justify wrongdoing, for this requires a
number of church leaders to agree with each other and the willing compliance of
the people in the pew.
3. God in his revelation was accommodating his commands to their hardened
hearts. But why should God have to do so? Doesn't the law have an educating
effect? Then why not educate his people from the very beginning with Adam and
Eve, or Moses, by communicating better than he did? What could possibly
morally justify leaving people in the dark about his will, knowing full well that
the Church would do the things she has done?
4. Even though the Israelites and Christians committed atrocities, they were
still morally better than the surrounding cultures. Any believer who re
ads judges
19-21 or Psalm 137 and concludes the Israelites were better than their stir
rounding cultures is simply fooling himself.30 Even if so, and I doubt this, being
"better" doesn't cut it. Who cares if they were better, if they did the horrendous
things we read about in the Bible? And who cares if the church was better than
the secular governments of her day if she did the horrendous things she did? The
fact is they did horrendous things! In many ways believers today are better
people than the believers of the past. So at the very least God could have brought
the believers of the past up to speed with today's moral understandings.
5. The Bible does indeed contain a lot of barbarisms, but through it all God
was progressively leading believers to civilized notions about morality, which
were either finally realized in7esus, or later in the Church down through the
centuries But what can morally justify how long it took God to do this, given the
massive amount of carnage that took place in the meantime? All he had to do
from the very beginning was to give them the correct morals the first time
around. And all he had to do in Jesus was to be clearer to the church who even
misunderstood him.
6. The Old Testament covenant was different, containing civil, ceremonial,
and moral laws, most of which don't apply to believers who are under a new
covenant of love by a loving God, expressed in7esus.31 But Christians in prior
generations had not yet come to this conclusion, even if it's correct. And if it is,
then why didn't God tell them about this clearly? That he didn't do so is
evidenced by the fact that Christians are still debating whether or not there is a
difference between the two Covenants-between the law and the Gospel.32
7. Calvinists claim God has at least two wills, one revealed in the Bible and a
secretive one only he knows. The revealed will is not his true will. But it can be
used to get people to do his true secretive will. His secretive will sometimes
sovereignly decrees that people will commit horrendous acts against others for
higher purposes In the Calvinist sense then, God didn't communicate his true
will on purpose. But if this view is correct, then as I've argued elsewhere,
Calvinists have no reason whatsoever to trust the Bible about anything at all.33
It also means everyone eventually does what God wants them to do, including
me. You see, I'm doing God's secretive will by editing this book, which will lead
people astray. Maybe his secretive will is to save all skeptics and damn all
Calvinists to hell? On Calvinistic grounds there can be no reasonable objection
to this possibility because Calvinism leads to a complete and utter skepticism
with regard to what God really wants us to do and to believe.
8. What God does is a mystery. We are not in a position to question his actions
God's ways are above our ways. But if we cannot understand his ways, when his
ways of communicating have caused so much bloodshed, then why should we
believe that his ways are perfectly good? The evidence from the Problem of
Miscommunication says otherwise. The only way to know whether God exists
and his ways are good is to understand enough of his ways to know that he exists
and that his ways are good! There is no other way. And if God supposedly
created us with minds, then he also expects us to use them. That's what we read
in various passages of the Bible (Deuteronomy 6:5; Isaiah 1:18; Matthew 22:37;
2 Corinthians 10:5). But when we use them to think about these questions, rather
than to defend the beliefs we were raised with, it causes us to think differently.
Christians will further argue that we are fallen human beings and as such we
cannot think properly about these issues. But if so, how can God reasonably
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 25