A couple of weeks ago I received an unsolicited review copy from Prometheus Press of the most recent book from blogger John Loftus, The Outside Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion is True. I’ve reviewed a few other books of which Loftus is the author or editor and while I (obviously) disagree with him when it comes atheism, I will readily admit that I have found his books to be more interesting and useful than some of the more popular ones (e.g. God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens). He at least seems well-versed in evangelicalism (which shows through in the people he interacts with in this book e.g. Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Talbott, William Lane Craig, David Marshall, and Norman Geisler), though doesn’t seem as well acquainted with the broader Christian tradition (e.g. his discussion on universalism in pp. 48-49 leaves something to be desired).

The book begins with a brief introduction in which he states that he believes “skepticism offers the only way for believers to rationally test their faith”, and that the focus in this book is on “Christianity, especially evangelicalism, best represented by the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society” (pg. 7). Following this are ten chapters which I shall provide this very brief overview. The first chapter presents the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). The OTF is comprised of a four point argument and the next few chapters delve into each of those four parts, explaining each point in more depth and interacting with what critics have said. The next few chapters deal with specific arguments against the OTF. The final two chapters put Christianity to the test and argue against faith in general. And this is followed by a concluding chapter.

As I mentioned before, the first chapter provides an explanation as to what exactly is the ‘Outsider Test for Faith’. The author begins by noting that “as children we were all raised as believers” and that “whatever our parents told us we believed” (13). This is true to such an extent that one can “even locate specific geographical boundary lines between different religious faiths around the globe” (13). He also notes that despite this fact “the strange thing is that even as adults we do not usually question our religious faiths” (14), thus “we need some sort of objective, unbiased, non-double-standard type of test in order to investigate what we were taught to believe” (15).

The OTF can be broken down into a four part argument which I shall summarize as follows: (1) there is lots of religious diversity in the world; (2) because of this religious diversity one can surmise that “one’s religious faith is causally dependent on brain processes, cultural conditions, and irrational thinking patterns” (15-16). These two points lead to (3) “at best there can be only one religious faith that is true. At worse, they could all be false” (16). Thus, the author proposes (4) “The only way to rationally test one’s culturally adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outside, a nonbeliever, with the same level of reasonable skepticism believers already use when examining the other religious faiths they reject” (16-17).

I do not understand logic of these four steps. While I agree that the religious faith of some people is causally dependent upon their cultural upbringing, considering that fact that many people change their religious faith as they get older, this leaves a segment of society where (2) does not necessarily follow from (1), at least not when it comes to the issue of why one has chosen a specific religion. The second chapter discusses the fact of religious diversity in more detail. In it the author says:

Many evangelicals are exclusivist to a large degree. But this view simply cannot be maintained in the light of the amount of religious diversity in the world along with the subsequent rational disagreement about religious faiths among peers. If there is a God who wants us to believe in him, there would not be so much religious diversity around the globe. The probability that the Christian God exists is inversely proportional to the amount of religious diversity that exists (that is, the more religious diversity there is, the less probable it is that he exists), and there is way too much religious diversity to suppose that he does. (45)

“If there is a God who wants us to believe in him, there would not be so much religious diversity around the globe”. This is representative of some of the logic in this book. If God exists, then X must be true (why? because I say so). X is not true, therefore God does not exist.

Another curiosity of the premises behind the author’s OTF is that I can’t see where the heck (3) is coming from. Considering that religious faiths are not comprised of a solitary belief, but are instead comprised of numerous propositions (many of them being shared across religious faiths), then the force of (3) is undercut. But this is actually kind of irrelevant because the author presents no compelling case as to why (3) logically follows the premises of (1) and (2). Sure there is lots of religious diversity in the world and many people inherit their religious beliefs (and never change them). But the author’s proclamation that all religions are likely to be false does not logically follow from these facts. The author’s solution to the so-called ‘problem’ of religious diversity isn’t even a solution. Also, in (4) the author says that someone should approach their own religion with the “same level of reasonable skepticism” used when “examining the other religious faiths they reject”. Not everyone possesses a flippantly dismissive stance towards other religious faiths. I am as skeptical of my own religious tradition just as much as I am of others, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t choose one over another (and no, one doesn’t need empirical evidence in support of a religion in order to choose that one). Additionally, I don’t even agree that one needs to be an ‘outsider’ to be able to effectively critique a religion.

Further along in the first chapter, the author says that “the OTF grants that a religious faith can be reasonable” (17-18). Yet he also says:

I argue that religious faiths do not pass the OTF. I argue that by its very nature faith cannot pass the OTF because faith is always unreasonable. I argue that the problem is faith itself. With faith as a foundation, anything can be believed, so informed people should reject faith altogether. … Again, it is possible that there could be a religion that passes the test… But I argue… that because of the nature of faith, no faith passes the outside test. Sufficient evidence just doesn’t exist for any faith. (19)

And then towards the end of the book he says this: “I argue that any believer who claims to have successfully taken and passed the OTF has not done so properly” (172). He also says that this is not due to “any pretheoretic commitment” on his part, but rather comes as “[his own] result of applying the OTF” (172). What can one do but LOL at such a statement?! He is effectively saying, “Look! I took my religion through the OTF and it failed, therefore everyone else will arrive at the same result”. Tight logic there, sir.

The first chapter then takes a look at some precursors to the OTF, naturally showing that the author is simply following in the footsteps of Socrates, Descartes, Hume, and even Thomas Jefferson! Towards the end of the chapter the author describes how the OTF relates to those pesky liberal people of faith:

The more conservative, exclusivist, and pseudoscientific the religious faith is, the more helpful the OTF will be. The more liberal, inclusivist, and accepting of scientifically based reasoning the religious faith is, the less important the OTF will be. But it is important for all types of religious faiths, to various degrees. (30)

Being the quasi-universalist that I am, I naturally fall under the second umbrella in the author’s bifurcation of believers into ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ groups. However, as the author says, because liberals still accept faith-based reasoning they “are not off the book” (30). And as one finds in chapter 10, the author has a little bit of disdain towards faith-based reasoning.

On at least a few occasions throughout the book, the author states that one’s religious beliefs should be based on “sufficient evidence”. In the third chapter he discusses how one’s religious beliefs are “not a matter of independent rational judgment” (53) but rather, “to an overwhelming degree, one’s religious faith is causally dependent on brain processes, cultural conditions, and irrational thinking patterns” (53). I agree that, for many people, their religious faith is causally dependent upon their upbringing. Yet, of course, many people change as their religious faith as they get older and think for themselves. Of course, the author will say that such cases are still the result of irrational judgments and that we should require “sufficient evidence based on scientific reasoning before coming to any firm conclusions about religion” (72). But the author fails to convince me of this.

Why should I believe a foundationalist and empiricist/verificationist outlook? Is this the only way to acquire true knowledge? [note: By “foundationalist” I mean the idea that knowledge resembles a progression where you commence with some basic or intuitive ideas (e.g. the Cogito Ergo Sum of Descartes), with more complex ones being added onto that foundation. By “empiricist/verificationist” I mean the idea that knowledge is only legitimate to the extent that it has been proven or verified].

This is what I see when I’m reading Loftus in The Outsider Test for Faith: “Christianity (and every other religion) is false as there is no legit evidence or verifiable data to back up its extraordinary claims and I only believe what I can see. I only believe in science because empiricism and inductive logic can withstand all challenges.” Now, before I am castigated for being an anti-empiricist or some such thing, I should mention that I do not have anything against an empiricist viewpoint. I do not, however, accept that the author’s empiricism is the only way to obtain true knowledge, nor do I accept naturalism [by “naturalism” I do not mean methodological naturalism (i.e. science) but rather ontological naturalism, that is, the philosophical position that everything that exists is composed of the natural material elements and thus is susceptible to scientific explanation through methodological naturalism].

Also, this raises the question as to what exactly constitutes “sufficient evidence”. If a person was asked why they believe in God and/or why they are a Christian and their response is: “An angel visited me one evening and told me that Jesus Christ is Lord”. Would that person be right in saying that this is sufficient evidence for their Christian faith? I know that this hypothetical person would have a hard time convincing other people to believe in the Christian God simply due to their own personal experience, but the important thing is that it would be sufficient enough for their own Christian faith. Can personal ‘revelations’ or experiences play any legitimizing role in one’s own personal faith? Considering I do not hold to naturalism and that I have experienced some weird shit to which I have not found an adequate natural explanation, I would answer yes.

If one has gone through experiences that one is sure are not susceptible to an ordinary naturalistic explanation, is that sound enough reasoning for them to believe in a supernatural explanation? For someone who holds to naturalism, then the answer is no. But considering that the author’s philosophically devoid arguments did not convince me to embrace his empiricist and naturalist viewpoint, I would have to disagree and say yes. I support the evidential value of one’s own experiences. I know that many people will reject the evidential value of ‘supernatural’ phenomena and will say it is insufficient to warrant the remarkable claims people say it led them to (i.e. belief in gods, afterlife, etc). That is all well and good. I would not expect other people’s personal experiences to change a skeptic’s opinion. But if one experiences something to which they find naturalistic explanations inadequate, and said person is not a fundamentalist dogmatist who must simply reject a supernatural explanation just because it is a ‘supernatural’ one, then such experiences are good enough reason for themselves to believe in the existence of the supernatural and so forth.

Anywho, I was planning on writing more on this review but its late and I need to get some shut-eye. In a nutshell, this book argues that people should approach their own religious faith with the same level of skepticism that they approach other religious faiths. Amazing that an entire book could be written on this! Unfortunately, the book lacks any philosophical depth (but makes up for it in non sequiturs), is poorly argued, and is primarily aimed towards the exclusivist and conservative faiths (esp. evangelicalism). So it isn’t really useful except for maybe someone who has never given critical thought to their religious beliefs before. 

Oh yea, one more thing. The blurbs to this book are atrocious. Here is but one example: “A must-read for believers and any atheists who want to debate them. Superbly argued, air­tight, and endlessly useful, this should be everyone’s first stop in the god debate.” –Richard Carrier. I know blurbs are usually ridiculous but Merciful Mother in heaven, did he even read the book?!

There has been a bit of hooplah on the interwebs recently (e.g. here and here) concerning Richard Carrier and his response to Bart Ehrman’s book on why Jesus mythicism is a joke – Did Jesus Exist? Interestingly enough, it seems like Richard Carrier has very recently released his own book on the historicity of Jesus, or lack thereof (see here).

I have a self-published book of Carrier’s on my kindle, Why I Am Not A Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith, and so I thought I would give it a quick whirl while sitting out on the balcony in the sun.  I knew I was in for a treat when I cracked the book open (can one use this language when talking about an e-book?) and saw on the first page Carrier saying that he has “become something of a world renowned atheist.” I had no idea!

The book consists of four main chapters, each of which is an explanation of a reason as to why Carrier rejects God. At the beginning of the first chapter, Carrier says,

If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn’t leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages.

This type of reasoning is what you essentially find on many pages of the book: I think God would do XYZ, God does not do XYZ, therefore God could not possibly exist. Yup, that is the main thrust of Carrier’s whole argument. God doesn’t do things the way I would, therefore he doesn’t exist.

The book is extremely light on knowledge of Christianity (Carrier only evinces a very rudimentary knowledge of C.S. Lewis’ brand of “mere Christianity”), and doesn’t even really attempt to touch the surface of theology and philosophy. The four reasons that Carrier provides in the book as to why he isn’t a Christian may be perfectly fine for him, but for those who desire an intellectual discussion of the issue, you will be sorely disappointed. This book makes Christopher Hitchens badly researched book, God is Not Great, seem like a veritable five-star intellectual discussion on Christianity.

A continuation of a series looking at the book Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Revised and Expanded) by John Loftus.

In chapter 21 – Did Jesus Bodily Rise from the Dead? – the author attempts to show that we cannot trust the New Testament witness to the resurrection of Jesus, thus there is no reason to believe that Jesus was resurrected. For the first few pages, Loftus laments the lack of evidence we have for the resurrection of Christ. For instance, he says that,

We do not have anything written by the apostle Paul before he converted … nor do we have anything written by the Jewish leaders of the that time about Jesus or Paul, nor do we have anything written by the Romans that mentions Jesus, the content of his preaching, why he was killed, or what they thought about claims that he had been resurrected … We also lack testimonies from Ananias, Caiaphas, Herod, or Pilate about the events we find in the Gospels. (410-11)

I’m not exactly sure of why this lack of testimonies has an impact regarding the question of whether Jesus was resurrected from the dead. I mean, even if we had all of these textual witnesses from non-believers contemporaneous with Jesus, is Loftus seriously suggesting that it gives an ounce more credibility to the veracity of Jesus’ resurrection?

As with the last chapter of this book I blogged about (read here), there was a lot of minor quibbles I had with what the author said at times. But the main disagreement I have is the whole approach that Loftus takes in this chapter. He seeks to see if there is enough evidence to warrant a belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, whereas I think that whole approach is foolish because I do not think that one can prove (or should attempt to do so), with any degree of historical probability, a supernatural event in antiquity. But I also do not see anything wrong with believing in the resurrection of Christ without the kind of evidence that Loftus and others require.

There are some Christian scholars, though, who maintain that the historical method can indeed be used to determine whether Jesus was resurrected from the dead (e.g. N.T. Wright, Mike Licona). There are others who suggest that we can determine the likelihood of Jesus’ resurrection probabilistically via Bayes’ theorem (e.g. Richard Swinburne). I have even seen one guy, Frank Tipler, attempt to utilize quantum physics in order to assert that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

Another perspective on this issue, which is what I myself agree with, is that the resurrection of Jesus is a historiographically inaccessible event, due to the fact that the very nature of the resurrection is inherently contradictory towards physical reality, thus making the historical- and scientific-methods inadequate and ineffective in determining whether it really occurred. This type of perspective is held by various contemporary theologians, one of whom said the following:

Christ’s death on the cross is a historical fact – Christ’s resurrection is an apocalyptic happening. Christ’s death was brought about by human beings – his raising from the dead is an act on God’s part. (Jürgen Moltmann)

In other words, the death of Christ on the cross is a historical fact which was brought about by man and the historical method can be applied to this event. But his resurrection is an act accomplished by the finger of God and is an apocalyptic event which transcends what the historical method can access, meaning that it cannot be confirmed as history and thus has to be seen in other terms. This view is not due to an imperialist epistemological view of history, but is the result of viewing Christ’s resurrection for what it really is – an apocalyptic happening that breaks through into the linearity of history and is itself a history-making event.

Earlier this week I received a copy of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Revised and Expanded) by John Loftus from the publisher (see his blog here). I’ve read a few chapters in it, one of which is chapter 18 – Was Jesus Born of a Virgin in Bethlehem?

The author discusses the following things in this chapter:

• the citation of Micah 5.2 in Matt. 2.5 as a prophecy of where the Messiah was to be born
• the Star of Bethlehem
• the problem of the census found in the Lukan birth narrative
• the virgin birth (or more appropriately, the virginal conception)
• the quotation of Isa. 7.14 in Matt. 1.20-23
• the genetics of a virginal conception

I didn’t have much of a problem with the overall conclusions of this chapter, as I think that the virgin birth of Jesus was likely a later accretion to the message being proclaimed about him. For any Christian readers out there, remember that even if the virgin birth is true, it is simply not a pillar of the Christian faith, as the key confession of faith that “Jesus is Lord” is entirely independent of the virgin birth, and not based on it in any way. The idea that the virgin birth was a fabrication will only really be a problem to those who hold to the chief pillar of evangelical Christianity known as biblical inerrancy (and, of course, a problem for anyone overly enamored with church tradition and creeds).

One disagreement I had with what Loftus said in this chapter was with how he dealt with Matthew’s use of the Old Testament. In discussing Matthew’s use of Isa. 7.14, he says that:

such a type/anti-type view of these two sons is superstitious to the core, based on typology, which is all in the mind of the beholder. I’ve already argued that we find this in the Bible and that we should reject this kind of thinking. (376)

To judge the way in which the author of Matthew cites and applies the Old Testament by your own modern hermeneutic is stacking the deck and asinine. When Matthew says that a Scripture was “fulfilled” in Jesus, don’t just immediately assume he meant a prediction-fulfillment scenario. Think of it this way, in first-century Judaism, the Jews did not have a list of Old Testament verses that they thought would be fulfilled by a coming Messiah(s). Instead, it was more of a general understanding as to what this coming deliverer would accomplish and be like. This understanding was comprised of various concepts which were drawn from the Old Testament and other Jewish religious texts, and the ancient Near Eastern culture, e.g., priesthood, royalty, the warring divine warrior, etc. It’s pure sophistry to disparage a first-century Jew for applying Jewish scriptures in the manner he did.

There were many other places in this chapter where I believe Loftus said something erroneous. The following quote is one such error that particularly stood out:

There were also savior-gods, like Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, who were born of virgins and known to the Gospel writers centuries before. They also did miracles. Most of them were crucified, and they also rose from the dead. (380)

Wow. Looks like the author has been reading too much Kersey Graves, Acharya S. (a.k.a. Dorothy Murdoch), Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.

For those unaware, there are some people who believe that Jesus was really just a conglomeration of various other religious and mythic figures who existed beforehand, with some even going so far as to say that there was no actual historical figure behind Jesus; he was just entirely the product of imaginative minds (this is known as Jesus mythicism). The author, even though thinking that “the mythicists make a reasonable case” (370), does not adhere to Jesus mythicism.

Loftus only briefly mentions a few of these figures upon whom Jesus is supposed to be based, and only offers a few examples of parallelism (they were born of virgins, were crucified, and rose from the dead). Others, such as the aforementioned authors, present a much more detailed list of parallels and engage in what can only be described as parallelomania; they take a legitimate concept in comparative religious studies, syncretism, and just go crazy with it.

For an example of this parallelomania, pick up Kersey Graves’ book, Sixteen Crucified Saviors. This type of nonsense is also seen in the online documentary released in 2007, Zeitgeist (the first part of this video deals promotes this parallelomania). There are also still many uninformed people who consider this nonsense to be legit, but they are only found on the interwebs (you should have seen the circlejerk known as r/atheism at Easter time over on Reddit).

A few of the parallels you can find between early Christianity and paganism are actually kind of interesting, and I think that there definitely was a syncretism of Judaism and paganism in early Christianity. But the vast majority of these parallels you read about on the internet are either: (1) parallels that just didn’t exist (i.e. complete fabrications); or (2) very general parallels that are quite useless (e.g. Loftus mentions that these other gods “did miracles”).

John Loftus specifically mentions Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz, and says that they were born of virgins, were crucified, and were subsequently raised from the dead. First, none of them were crucified. Second, Osiris, Dionysus, and Tammuz were not born of virgins or virginally conceived. Krishna was conceived without his mother engaging in sexual intercourse, though her seven prior children were conceived through natural means, so she wasn’t a virgin when she conceived Krishna.

And third, while some may fit into the broad motif of a dying-and-rising god, this in no way necessitates that this is what led to the belief in Jesus’ resurrection; remember, (a very general) correlation does not equal causation. Belief in the resurrection of Christ was foundational and presuppositional to earliest Christianity, as all the data we have makes it impossible to disentangle earliest Christianity from the belief that God resurrected Jesus from the dead. This belief was not a later pagan syncretistic accretion to the Jesus movement, but was either borne out of: (1) grief-stricken delusions; (2) deliberate deceptions; or (3) the fact that God really did resurrect Jesus from the dead.

Title: The End of Christianity

Editor: John Loftus

Bibliographic Info: 435 pp.

Publisher: Prometheus, 2011.

ISBN: 9781616144135

Buy it at Amazon

Read Part I of the review.

Read Part II of the review.

Read Part III of the review.

The final section of this volume has four chapters and is titled “Science Puts an End to Christianity.” The first of these, by Dr. David Eller, is called “Is Religion Compatible with Science?” Eller argues that while science and religion can indeed coexist (since they already do), they are not compatible with one another. He says:

[F]urther, science has no need for religion since religion has no relevance for science (and vice versa), and science can only proceed when it is liberated from the specific claims and the general mindset of religion. This was true in Galileo’s time, and it is true today. (258)

Eller then begins the meat of the essay by discussing how we should define the terms “religion” and “science”:

A religion is a particular system of thought that posits nonhuman and, in certain manners, superhuman agents or persons in the world along with humans. (261)

I think the essence of science lies in two premises, just as the essence of religion lies in its “supernatural” premise. The crucial premises for science are detectability and doubt, and it is these that separate it from just any old explanatory system or manual procedure. (264)

Keep in mind that these quotes are brief snippets and Euller does flesh out in more detail what “science” and “religion” are. He then goes on to examine whether these two concepts are compatible with one another and concludes that science has no obligation to be compatible with religion, and that if religion had any inherent merit, it would not need any scientific explanations to help explain things (e.g. what caused a tsunami).

I would not entirely agree with Euller’s portrayal of religion. He states that the religious paradigm is “intensely unscientific and antiscientific” (275) due to his idea that “religion does not encourage and often does not allow questioning or skepticism.” (275) I love religion (which is kind of obvious considering I blog about it). But I also love science. The only time I found them to be incompatible with one another was back in my younger, fundamentalist days, when I held to certain theological presuppositions and interpretations. Once I managed to shed the last vestiges of fundamentalism, I haven’t experienced any incompatibility between science and religion. Though considering this book is aimed towards conservative evangelicalism I guess I can see why he says that the religious paradigm can be antiscientific.

Even if one assumes that science and religion are not compatible, how does that automatically lead to the conclusion that a supernatural realm filled with supernatural entities does not exist? How does it end Christianity? Is science able to examine and test all things? Even things that exist outside the range of our scientific instruments? Can the scientific method be used to examine the metaphysical and not just the physical? Science is a great tool for explaining and probing natural phenomena, but it is not well-suited to probe the existence of a supernatural/non-physical realm considering it is somewhat limited to that which is empirically observable.

Dr. Richard Carrier‘s second essay of the volume is next up. This one is called “Neither Life nor the Universe Appear Intelligently Designed.” This chapter is basically an argument against the Intelligent Design hypothesis. Carrier uses Bayes’ theorem to calculate the probability that a god is responsible for an apparent intelligence behind life, the universe, and everything. Carrier specifically focuses his use of Bayes’ theorem upon three different claims for intelligent design: (1) the existence of current life, (2) the origin of life, and (3) the supposed finely-tuned construction of the universe.

As readers of this blog may very well know, I do not hold to Intelligent Design (nor the more horrendous Creationism). I think life on this planet can wholly be explained as the result of a natural process of evolution carried out over a very long time with no direct “outside” interference from a supernatural entity. Thus, there wasn’t a great deal of resistance from me to the overall gist of this chapter.

Though, I felt that the essay was peppered with assumptions by Carrier. He seemingly claims to know what God would do if God did in fact directly intervene in the cosmos to create life. Carrier says:

That God would allow common descent and just “tweak” DNA here and there to build new parts and systems and species out of what’s already there, and piecemeal bit by bit over vast spaces of time, is certainly “possible” but is not even remotely what we would normally expect. The probability that a god would effect his designs that way, instead of any number of countless more direct and obvious ways (like simply creating all life tout court right at once, or just generating new species sui generis when it suited him), is certainly low, whereas the probability that this is what we would observe if evolution explained it all is fully 100 percent. (285)

I would agree with the last clause that what we observe can be explained by evolution, but how can Carrier know what God would do if he created life. Why does Carrier assume that God would “[create] all life tout court right at once, or just [generate] new species sui generis when it suited him”?

In discussing the the supposed fine-tuning of the universe and a possible multiverse, Carrier says (in a footnote):

…that hypothesis [i.e. the Multiverse] has an extremely high prior probability: in our background knowledge b we have no knowledge of any law of physics that would prevent there being other universes (and no means of seeing if there are none), so the probability that there are is exactly what that probability would be if the number of universes that exist were selected at random. Of all the possible conditions that could obtain (no universe; just one universe; two universes; three; four; etc., all the way to infinitely many universes), that there would be only one universe is only one of out infinitely many alternatives. This entails it is effectively 100 percent certain and infinite multiverse exists because the probability of there being only one universe is then 1/INFINITY, which is ~0 percent. (408-09)

The multiverse theory is unfalsifiable, has no empirical evidence to support it, and lacks the ability to be tested empirically; thus it is in the same category as Intelligent Design which is also unfalsifiable, has no empirical evidence, and also can not even be tested empirically.

But none of that stops Carrier from just simply assuming the multiverse exists because there are no laws of physics that we know of that prohibit it from existing. Astonishing! I could use the same logic to come up with prove of the existence of God(s):

…that hypothesis [i.e. that a God exists] has an extremely high prior probability: in our background knowledge b we have no knowledge of any law of physics that would prevent there being a god or gods (and no means of seeing if there are none), so the probability that there are gods is exactly what that probability would be if the number of gods that exist were selected at random. Of all the possible conditions that could obtain (no god; just one god; two gods; three; four; etc., all the way to infinitely many gods), that there would be only one god is only one of out infinitely many alternatives. This entails it is effectively 100 percent certain an infinite number of gods exist because the probability of there being only one god is then 1/INFINITY, which is ~0 percent.

How can anyone be an atheist now when I just proved there is 100% certainty that an infinite number of Gods exist! Now the only problem remains as to which god we will worship out of the infinite number of gods! (yes, that was dripping with sarcasm)

The next chapter is “Life After Death: Examining the Evidence” by Dr. Victor Stenger. His essay is largely a response to Dinesh D’Souza’s book, Life After Death: The Evidence. Stenger touches upon a whole array of issues in this chapter, most notably the veracity of near-death experiences (NDEs). A big chunk of this chapter is devoted to the legitimacy of NDEs as a means of scientific support for the claim of an afterlife. The logic is that if NDEs do not happen, or the ones that do are merely the result of some reaction happening in the brain, then that proves there is no soul or afterlife.

Assuming that this chapter is correct in stating there is no evidence to support the existence of an afterlife, there are some Christian sects (e.g. Seventh-Day Adventists) who can avoid the implications of this chapter. They do so by believing in what is known as the doctrine of “soul-sleep”. This is the idea that when we die, nothing happens. Our soul just “sleeps” in a manner of speaking until the Second Coming of Christ and the general resurrection. Thus for people who adhere to this belief, the absence of NDEs does not disprove the existence of the afterlife. Typically people who hold to such a belief consider humanity to be a thoroughly holistic being, which is to say that we can not exist apart from our body. Hence, when our body dies, we no longer exist as such. (The descriptor of “soul-sleep” is somewhat erroneous as these people tend to reject the platonic notion of a separate immaterial soul, and instead consider our mind or consciousness to thoroughly be a part of our body).

Regardless, I think this chapter was practically the only one in this entire volume that begins to contribute an argument that is relevant to the end of Christianity (and all religions for that matter).

The final chapter in the book, the third by Dr. Richard Carrier, is “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (And Science Could Find Them).” Carrier starts off by saying that:

[O]nly empirically confirmable facts can constitute a valid reason to be moral, and yet religions do not provide any. …

It will here be demonstrated that there are natural facts that show everyone will benefit from adopting certain moral attitudes and behaviors, that science could demonstrate this if it undertook the proper research program, and that as a result Christianity is either irrelevant or an obstacle to genuine moral belief. (333)

Carrier then proceeds to discuss the logic of Christian morality, or rather, he discusses a caricature of it:

The most popular Christian theory of morality is that we had better be food or else we’ll burn in hell for all eternity, but if we are good, we’ll get to live forever in paradise. Christian intellectuals chafe at this, but despite their lament, it’s the mainstream view. (335)

There is a reason “Christian intellectuals chafe at this”, and that is because Carrier is just plain incorrect. The rest of this section on Christian morality follows on from his faulty premise of Christian morality so there is no point in addressing it.

Carrier also states that:

In contrast, naïve Christianity is a perfect vehicle for manipulating masses of people toward any wicked end for which a Christian purpose can be conceived. The Holocaust, the Inquisition, antebellum slavery, and the genocide of American Indians are the most notorious examples. (339)

Fair enough, there have been atrocious things done in the name of Christianity. But are we seriously supposed to think that the atheistic worldview is a paradigm of hope which could never lead to such atrocities? Any worldview, including atheism, can lead to atrocities being carried out.

The case for naturally existing morals is then discussed. Carrier states:

Since we will only ever do what we most want to do, because that is by definition what it means to choose to do one thing rather than another (a point I’ll illustrate below), our focus should not be in trying to deny this fundamental egoism. Rather, we should focus on ensuring all moral agents are operating rationally and with sufficient information. Because when we do, scientific facts come to bear that establish quite strongly that self-interest does not entail selfishness, self-centeredness, hedonism, or indifference. To the contrary, rational self-interest entails quite the opposite, that the cultivation of personally enduring virtues of compassion, integrity, and reasonableness (at the very minimum) is necessary for your own happiness and well-being. I won’t demonstrate that here. I have elsewhere, and others are adding to the case. (343-44)

A footnote is attached to this with some references to relevant literature published on this. I may have to check some of it out because I would like to see what empirical evidence would demonstrate that rational self-interest is comprised of virtues such as compassion, etc (it really does sound interesting to me). But, alas, in this essay Carrier is only attempting to prove that naturally existing moral facts do exist, that science can empirically prove them, and thus no religious hypothesis is needed for morality.

This chapter then closes with an appendix with various logical proofs in an attempt to back up the arguments of the chapter. So if we assume that human morality is indeed entirely natural and that we have no need to invoke a God hypothesis for it, what exactly does that prove? That God doesn’t exist? No. That Christianity is a fraud? No. That Christianity should end? No.

This volume closes with an afterword by Dr. Robert Price in which he briefly discusses where he thinks Christianity is headed (“toward being one more tolerant, live-and-let-live mainstream denomination”).

All in all, this book did not live up to its overconfident title of “The End of Christianity.” I would think that since the book was aimed towards the conservative evangelical stream of Christianity that maybe they should not have picked such a broad title. Most of the essays were only written towards a fundamental stream of conservative Christianity that I don’t jive with. This book, while interesting in parts, did not give me reason to give up on my belief in God or Christianity (though it is an uphill battle to challenge a person’s faith if they have witnessed something truly supernatural). So while this book didn’t shake my faith, I am sure it would probably rile up the feathers of a lot of today’s church-goers. That is probably a good thing though, for as  Randal Rauser said in his blurb on this book, “Should Christianity end? I think not. But unthinking Christianity definitely should.” 

Title: The End of Christianity

Editor: John Loftus

Bibliographic Info: 435 pp.

Publisher: Prometheus, 2011.

ISBN: 9781616144135

Buy it at Amazon

Read Part I of the review.

Read Part II of the review.

The next section of this volume, “Living on Borrowed Time”, is comprised of four essays. The first essay (seventh in the book) is “The Absurdity of the Atonement” by the late Dr. Ken Pulliam. He starts out his chapter by saying that the idea that Jesus died for sinners is central to the Christian faith. Yet, what exactly does that mean? How does Jesus’ death actually save us? Various models of the atonement have been proposed since Christianity’s inception, with differing theories being all the rage for a few centuries and then falling into relative obscurity when a new theory gains prominence. The early Christians did not have a set doctrine of the atonement or how the cross made salvation efficacious, it was rather more of varied collection of metaphors and images, not all of them necessarily being able to be synthesized into a unified and coherent framework.

In modern Christianity the most prevalent theory of the atonement (in evangelicalism at least) is the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PSA). Pulliam explains:

This view states that God’s holiness demands that sin be punished. God cannot remain just and forgive man without punishing his sin. That would ignore the seriousness of sin, according to this theory. Therefore, God sent his son to bear the punishment for man’s sin. Jesus vicariously bears the punishment for man’s sin. Once sin has been punished, then God can forgive man without compromising his holiness or justice. (181)

As Pulliam then points out (with quotes from notable evangelicals), the PSA is a non-negotiable for most evangelical Christians. Indeed, I myself have seen plenty of Christians (especially those of the Reformed stream) who equate the PSA with the Gospel. Therefore, if you deny PSA then you deny Jesus and Christianity.

Pulliam attempts to prove why the PSA is illogical, immoral, incoherent, and ultimately, absurd. Seeing as that I am not an adherent to the PSA, this essay didn’t exactly challenge my beliefs. Pulliam sees this objection from Christians such as myself and says in one of the footnotes:

Some Christians may object that what has been said in this paper does not apply to their view of the atonement. All views of the atonement, however, hold that in some way the suffering and death of an innocent person makes it possible for man to receive salvation. Thus, all views of the atonement share at least some of the problems associated with the PST. (395)

I would have appreciated if Pulliam had substantiated that general blanket statement with reasoning as to why all the main theories have some of the same problems. I adhere to a holistic Christus Victor view of the atonement and I really can’t see how it shares any of the same problems that Pulliam puts forth against the PSA.

Next up is Dr. Matt McCormick’s essay, “The Salem Witch Trials and the Evidence for the Resurrection.” McCormick discusses the late 17^th century Salem witch trials with the intent of showing that if we employed the routine standards of skepticism that we use to squelch the accusation of supernatural happenings in Salem, then we would likewise not accept the resurrection of Christ. In other words, if we use a consistent standard for judging the Salem witch trials and the resurrection of Christ, we would not believe anything supernatural happened in both cases. This, of course, presumes that nothing supernatural did occur in Salem.

McCormick believes that without historical evidence for the resurrection, the foundation of Christianity collapses; if we do not have enough evidence then Christianity isn’t reasonable to believe in. The whole chapter seems to be built upon the premise that one must reach a certain level of evidence before one can believe in the resurrection. I would definitely disagree with that premise, and so naturally I see the whole chapter as an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, it was actually quite an interesting essay to read (I never really knew anything about the Salem witch trials before reading this chapter).

I know many Christians, especially apologists (e.g. Mike Licona), would argue that the resurrection can be accepted due to historical evidence pointing towards it as the best explanation of what transpired. I do not believe that myself. I do not think the resurrection can ever be said by a historian to be the most plausible answer to the evidence. Any natural hypothesis, no matter how crazy, has to be considered as more plausible than a supernatural explanation (e.g. that God resurrected Jesus from the dead). Even if that theory is that Aliens from planet Xenu abducted Jesus after he was laid in the tomb (ok that maybe a bit of an overstatement).

Interestingly, McCormick believes that there is a point at which the evidence would make it reasonable to accept that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, though what this point consists of is never explained (216).

This is followed by an essay by Dr. Robert Price called “Explaining the Resurrection without Recourse to Miracle.” Price presents four natural theories to provide natural explanations for the resurrection claims by Jesus’ followers: (1) the Swoon theory, (2) the Reburial theory, (3) the Mistaken Identity theory, and (4) the Cognitive Dissonance theory.

Note: Price is only presenting these arguments to demonstrate that even if one grants the historicity of the gospel narratives, one still doesn’t have to believe that the resurrection is the appropriate explanation.

I will briefly comment on  Prices’ claim for the swoon theory, a.k.a. the Scheintod (seeming death) theory. This is the theory that posits Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross and that he was still alive when taken down from it. Price argues (and this is really bizarre in my mind) that the swoon theory was in fact “the actual teachings of the Gospels at some earlier stage.” (223) What evidence does Price see for this? Well, one piece of evidence is putting Mark 14.35-36 (the Gethsmane prayer) alongside Hebrews 5.7, and suggesting that Hebrews depicts Jesus as being delivered from death. Yes, Jesus was delivered from death… by being resurrected from the dead after he died! To seriously suggest Hebrews implies that Jesus did not die is beyond bizarre (see e.g., Heb. 2.9-10).

The final essay in this section is “Hell: Christianity’s Most Damnable Doctrine” by Dr. Keith Parsons. The gist of this essay is summed up in the following quote, “I contend that insofar as Christianity is bound to the dogma of an eternal, punitive hell, it forfeits any claim to moral authority” (233) The essay is divided into two parts. The first lays out the “horrors of hell” as seen in writings of orthodox Christian theologians. In the second part Parsons examines some  apologetical arguments from modern-day Christian adherents to hell (such as C.S. Lewis).

I quite enjoyed Parson’s critique of the traditional view of Hell, but that is probably because I do not subscribe to the view he critiques. I usually lean towards the annihilationist-conditionalist perspective on the fate of the unrighteous, and on other days I lean towards (or moreso hope for) some sort of universalistic outcome. Some days I think that Hell is essentially like purgatory in that any “punishment” that is endure in there has a remedial purpose instead of a retributive purpose. In any case, I am quite fuzzy in my thinking of post-mortem conditions for the righteous and unrighteous.

I particularly like the following paragraph from Parsons which aptly sums up something that I have always believed to be wrong in evangelical Christianity:

I have so far not stated what I consider to be the most unreasonable thing about the Christian doctrine of hell, what I call the “doxastic requirement” for salvation. Christian doctrine has always imposed a doxastic requirement; that is, it has taught that to be spared hell you must believe certain things. That is, there are certain creedal assertions that are such that if you do not believe them, this is sufficient for your condemnation to hell. Ever if the rest of your life were blameless, failure to believe these core creedal claims would be sufficient for your damnation. (249)

This notion of a “cognitive salvation” (as I call it) is a huge problem in Christianity in my opinion. And it runs counter to the teachings of Jesus. I mean, Jesus just did not teach that one has to adhere to certain precisely nuanced creedal beliefs or doctrines in order to inherit eternal life. His teaching was rather focused more on how you lived. His teachings focused quiet a bit on  things like the law of reciprocity, e.g., “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

It needs to be noted, though, most Christians wouldn’t vocally agree with Parsons that one can believe certain things, live a terrible life, and still be saved. But I think that  many Christians still effectively believe that. I mean, Christianity has created a climate in which we are so quick to judge someone as a heretic or unsaved simply because they do not adhere to some doctrinal belief regarded as orthodox by the majority (e.g. the virgin birth, the Trinity, etc). Furthermore, as long as you adhere to these certain beliefs, then you are declared saved! Hallelujah!

In the conclusion, Parsons mentions that the damage that the doctrine of Hell has caused is “horrific” and that “torturers and inquisitors through the centuries justified their own atrocities with reference to hell.” (254) It reminded me of this following quote from Queen Mary I (in which she is defending her persecution of people that opposed her):

As the souls of the heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper for me than to imitate the Divine vengeance by burning them on earth.

Read Part IV here.

Title: The End of Christianity

Editor: John Loftus

Bibliographic Info: 435 pp.

Publisher: Prometheus, 2011.

ISBN: 9781616144135

Buy it at Amazon

Read Part I of the review.

The second section of this book is called “Putting an Ancient Myth to Rest”. It is comprised of three essays, each of which I shall look at in this part of the review.

The first chapter (the fourth chapter in the book) is “Why Biblical Studies Must End” by Dr. Hector Avalos. He starts of his essay with the sentence, “The only mission of biblical studies should be to end biblical studies as we know them.” (107)

There are two main premises behind his essay. In a nutshell, they are: (1) Scholarship has shown that the Bible is a product of various cultures whose beliefs Christians no longer find relevant; and (2) the academic profession of biblical studies attempts to maintain the illusion of relevance in the field, which is achieved through various faulty disciplines which either have a bad methodology or are philosophically flawed.

Avalos then discusses the following disciplines throughout the essay:

• Translation
• Textual Criticism
• Archaeology
• Historical Jesus Quests
• Literary Criticism
• Biblical Theology

I will just make a brief comment about one of those fields – textual criticism. Avalos seems to believe that the field of biblical textual criticism should come to an end. Why? Apparently because there is no hope at ever recovering the the original text of the autographs unless we “have access to the entire transmission process from inception to current copy.” (115) I think that betrays a trivial view of the purpose of textual criticism, not to mention that it imposes an impossible standard that shouldn’t be laid upon  any text of antiquity in order for the study of textual criticism to be relevant.

Avalos considers there to be three alternatives for the disciple known as biblical studies: (1) eliminate it completely; (2) retain it as it is, but admit it is a religionist enterprise; and (3) retain it, but redefine its purpose so that it completely eradicates biblical influence in the modern world. Avalos himself prefers the third option.

Admittedly, most of what Avalos discusses will be completely foreign to the average person-in-the-pew. I mean, when was the last time you heard a pastor discuss the original reading of  Deut. 32.8-9 and how it relates to the polytheism of ancient Israel? Not recently I bet. I do not agree, though, that recognizing the Bible (or any sacred text for that matter) is just human machinations about the divine, means that the text is no longer relevant to our times.

Avalos may have a quest to  liberate humanity from the idea of any sacred text being an authority for modern human existence, and I can only say to him that he is going to need lots of luck on that, because he is indeed facing a very steep uphill battle. I mean, the fact that new sacred texts are still being produced in this day and age shows that they are here to stick around for centuries to come.

The next essay is “Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn’t?” by Dr. Jaco Gericke. He begins his chapter with the notion that the Hebrew Bible  (HB) depicts Yahweh as one god amongst many gods. This is set in contrast with the God of philosophers and Christians. Gericke also argues that the HB depicts Yahweh as having a literal physical body. I wonder, though, if Gericke would also assert that the HB portrays Yahweh as literally having wings of feathers? (cf. Psa. 91.4)

One aspect I enjoyed about this chapter was how Gericke categorized readers of the Bible into three camps (regarding the issue of how Yahweh is depicted therein):

First, there are still some fundamentalists (naive realists). This is your average committed conservative (often “evangelical”) Christian scholar who thinks one is warranted to believe in a correspondence between representations of Yahweh in the biblical text and an alleged extratextual reality to which they supposedly refer. The text and language are assumed to function like a window through which you see reality as it really is. The Bible is literally the Word of God.

Second, the majority of mainstream biblical scholars are theists but critical realists. They believe the Old Testament contains Israel’s fallible human perspectives on God in their beliefs are Yahweh, who is assumed, nevertheless, as really existing. According to this view, the biblical text is like a painting, an attempted semirealist representation of the reality it seeks to describe. The text is God’s Word in human speech or human words about God.

Third, there are those of use who realize that what we have in the text is the character Yahweh who, as depicted, can for various reasons not possibly exist outside the stories in which he acts. Yahweh, is like Donald Duck, who is real in some fictionalist sense. He does not exist outside the cartoons about his character (except people in costumes, I suppose). We are the nonrealists who believe that the text is neither a window to some divine reality nor a painting of it. It is simply a house of concave and convex mirrors which in a warped manner reflects to us only human ideals, beliefs, desires, fears, and values. For us the text is just human words, period. (135)

Concerning its impact on the demise of Christianity, Gericke’s chapter is only successful insofar as you agree to the literalistic view of the Bible that he proposes.

The final chapter in this section, by Dr. Valerie Tarico, is called “God’s Emotions: Why the Biblical God is Hopelessly Human.” Her essay examines the portrayal of God as an emotional being in the Bible, and more specifically, how this intersects with what we now know about emotions as physical and social phenomena.

I don’t really know what to say about this chapter. The information she provided about emotions is interesting, but she approaches the biblical text as the fundamentalist naive realist described above (in the quote from the previous essay). As I approach the biblical text in a different manner, nothing in the essay really pertained to my understanding of how the God of the biblical text relates to the God of reality.

Read Part III here.

Title: The End of Christianity

Editor: John Loftus

Bibliographic Info: 435 pp.

Publisher: Prometheus, 2011.

ISBN: 9781616144135

Buy it at Amazon

This collection of 14 essays, edited by John Loftus, is another volume in trilogy of polemical diatribes  against the Christian faith. The previous two volumes are Why I Became an Atheist, and The Christian Delusion. This volume aims to show that Christianity is completely untenable to believe in and thus should end. Though considering that is what The Christian Delusion was meant to demonstrate, I wonder why this sequel had to be released. Perhaps not enough people were leaving Christianity after reading The Christian Delusion?

This review will consist of four or five parts in which I shall provide brief overviews of each essay, as well as an overall assessment of the book and how it impacts Christianity. Does this book live up to its contentious title of ending Christianity? We shall see.

The introduction, by the editor John Loftus, is not really an introduction to the book as such, but is basically just an apologetic for Loftus’ prized “Outsider Test for Faith” (OTF). This is apparently a “hotly contested” concept and Loftus seems rather sure it is some sort of bunker buster that can demolish a person’s religious faith once they take the test. I won’t rehearse the OTF here, but head on over to his blog and I am sure you can read all about it.

The essays in this volume are divided up into four sections, the first of which is called “Why Two Thousand Years are Enough.” It is composed of three essays which are what this first part of the review will tackle.

The first essay of the book is titled “Christianity Evolving” and is written by Dr. David Euller. I will provide the following quote from this chapter which I think aptly sums it up:

… there is no such thing as the religion of Christianity; at best it is a multitude of related but distinct and often-enough opposed traditions, shifting and swaying with the winds of local culture and passing history. (23)

Euller provides a brief overview of Christianity from its beginnings to the reformation, then the many adaptations of the Christian faith that have occurred in America, and lastly, the global Christianities that have been emerging in Latin American, Asia, and Africa.

Euller’s essay was actually one of my favorites of the entire book, partly because it is generally an accurate assessment on the evolution of Christianity, and also because there were a lot of nice soundbites, such as the following:

Even more, the evolution of Christianity follows exactly the same processes as biological evolution such as speciation, radiation, competition, extinction, and so on. (24)

With that said, there were a few mistakes in the essay. For instance, on page 34, Euller refers to the Council of Chalcedon as occurring in 380. For those unaware, that is not even in the correct century (it was in 451). Maybe he meant the Council of Constantinople in 381?

Also, in discussing the shaping of the Christian scriptures, Euller gives the erroneous impression that there was some sort of decisive council and vote that decided on whether to include or exclude certain scriptures from the new canon: “Worse, as the scriptures of the movement gradually came into shape, many candidates for inclusion were voted out, such as…” (29)

I particularly enjoyed the brief section at the end where Euller pondered on whether Christianity would end if we discovered extraterrestrial life. I have also contemplated that before, and like Euller, I came to the conclusion that Christianity would adapt to such a discovery. It would necessitate some theological changes for sure, but it would adapt. I mean, after all, Christianity adapted to the discovery that the universe didn’t revolve around the earth (as it was believed for a long time), so it would also adapt to the discovery that our planet isn’t the only inhabited one in the universe.

While I did enjoy this essay overall, I really can’t see how it is supposed to contribute to the end of Christianity. I mean, are we really meant to think that the information provided in this chapter is so shocking that it proves Christianity is a fraudulent religion based upon mere superstitions and lies? Apparently so, but it just simply doesn’t provide any impetus for the demise of Christianity, or for that matter, the superiority of the atheistic worldview.

The next essay is by Dr. Richard Carrier and is called “Christianity’s Success Was Not Incredible.” The opening paragraph gives the overall gist of the chapter, but also shows why I thought this chapter was rather pointless:

…it’s often claimed that Christianity could never have begun or succeeded unless the people of its first three centuries had overwhelming evidence that it was true. Therefore we should conclude there was overwhelming evidence it was true, even if that evidence doesn’t survive for us to see it now, and since we should believe anything for which there is overwhelming evidence, we should believe Christianity is true. (53)

I have never ever heard any Christian layperson or apologist say that the reason Christianity was so successful in the early centuries was because there was overwhelming evidence it was true. I don’t even remember popcorn apologists like Josh McDowell making that claim (yes, unfortunately I was a fan of McDowell and similar people back in my teenage years). Obviously I can not claim to have read all Christian apologetic books, so maybe there are people out there who use the argument that Christianity’s early success means it is true. If that is the case, then I have to make up a new category for them, because they are not even worthy to be place in the “popcorn apologist” category.

There was one redeeming feature of this essay by Carrier in that he tried to go on the offensive. He said that Christianity’s conception and growth were standard and that Christianity arose naturally like every other religion, and that this means that Christianity is an entirely natural religion and thus, false. Carrier says:

[Christianity's] rate of development was entirely natural. Since that rate was natural, we should expect its cause was natural, which alone closes the book on Christianity having any supernatural evidence or guidance. Had it had such, its rate of success would reflect that. It does not. (54)

Naturally, Carrier provides no reasoning why Christianity would need to have had some unnatural rate of development for it to be considered a valid truth claim. Why on earth should we accept Carrier’s claims to know what we should have expected to happen if Christianity’s claims were true or false?!

Essentially, this chapter is filled with a bunch of supposed claims that Christians make that Carrier then proceeds to tear down. For example, one claim that Christians supposedly make is that Christians being tortured, hunted, and killed would have made their success impossible except for divine intervention. I have never heard a Christian make such a lame claim before. This essay was perhaps the most disappointing of the book as Carrier just sets up straw men and tears them down.

Carrier makes some other claims which are untrue as far as I know (or perhaps he just isn’t being too careful with his language). He says:

[Resurrection] was already a common Jewish staple, with past resurrections in its sacred stories and future resurrections in its imagined plan of salvation.

…

Even the claim that Jews would never have bought the idea of a singular resurrection before the general resurrection of all Jews is false: such special resurrection already appeared in their own Bible and were readily believed to still be occurring. (59-60)

I can not for the life of me think of a story in Second Temple Literature in which someone is resurrected. Resuscitated back to life? Sure. But that is not the same thing as resurrection (not in Jewish parlance anyway). Perhaps he is referring to the stories of figures being exalted and taken up into the heavens. But again, this is not resurrection. I think Carrier is just not being precise enough with his language. Proclaiming Jesus had been resurrected from the dead is not the same as saying that Jesus had been brought back to life (e.g. like the Shulamite woman’s son), nor is it the same as the concept of someone undergoing apotheosis and exaltation (e.g. Enoch). As far as I know, the idea of a singular person achieving resurrection before the general resurrection at the eschaton, was indeed quite a novelty in Judaism at that point in time.

Another point Carrier tries to drive home is the parallelism between the story about Jesus’ death and resurrection with that of various other figures throughout history. One example he latches onto in particular is that of Inanna. He says that the Sumerians believed in a religion centered on a crucified goddess, Inanna, who was “stripped naked and crucified, yet she rose from the dead and, triumphant, condemned to hell her lover, the shepherd-god Dumuzi.” (55)

Again, Carrier is being far too sloppy with his words to say that Inanna was “crucified”. I would have loved if Carrier had provided references to primary source material on Inanna to support his claims, because from what I know about the Sumerian account is that it simply states Inanna is killed and then her body was hung on a hook in the underworld. To say that Inanna was crucified is not just being far too loose and sloppy with words, it is dishonest (besides, I think crucifixion wasn’t used until about a millenium after Inanna’s story developed, by a completely different culture nonetheless). Also, to equate Inanna’s ascending from the underworld as being similar to the resurrection of Jesus is again being too sloppy with words and concepts.

The third essay in this book, by editor John Loftus, is titled “Christianity is Wildly Improbable.” Loftus lists ten propositions of protestant evangelicalism that he finds to be utterly implausible to adhere to.  At one point Loftus states:

If in our world miracles do not happen, then they did not happen in first-century Palestine, either. And that should be the end of it. (80)

Just because Loftus has never witnessed a genuine miracle does not mean they do not occur. Just because Loftus has never witnessed something truly supernatural, does not mean such things do not exist. (And by “supernatural” I do not mean a nice warm feeling you get when you worship at Church).

The chapter ends with an attempt by Loftus to tackle some philosophical and theological questions relating to some key Christian doctrines. For instance, he asks:

Many humans have been eaten by cannibals, bears, sharks, and parasites. Others have been lost at sea or cremated. How can there be a bodily resurrection for these bodies if they no longer exist? (88)

A good and proper question. But does Loftus think that just because Christians couldn’t provide a compelling answer, that we should then just abandon this belief? I don’t see why we should abandon beliefs that do not have completely adequate answers.

Loftus also takes a look at prominent Christian apologists Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, and Richard Swinburne. Not much to complain about there because I pretty much agree with him in his criticisms of them. The chapter ends with Loftus presenting 15 points on what it takes to believe and defend Christianity.

As with the previous chapters, I just don’t see how this chapter is meant to contribute to the demise of Christianity. It may do so against the uncritical fundamentalist strain of Christianity, but not Christianity in general. The type of Christianity that Loftus argues against can be clearly  seen in the following quote:

The evidence is simply not there to believe in a three-headed, eternally existing god who became one of us to die on a cross for our sins in one lone part of the ancient world; a god who bodily resurrected from the grave but was only seen by a small number of people, which forces the rest of us to believe their word on it or else spend an eternity in hell because we were not there to see it for ourselves. (99)

Read Part II here.