Why Christianity Fails in Terms of the Evidence

[Immanuel Can]

I was groomed for the priesthood from quite a young age and am well schooled in theology. It was made unambiguously clear to me that the journey of the Christian life was to wage a continuous war against doubt. Of all the sins which lay in wait to imperil the immortality, ( and possibly the sight), of a developing young man the one which would most surely bring about my eternal damnation was DOUBT. Doubt was to be excised root and branch from the Christian mind and must never be allowed to resurface.

I doubted it.

And I agree with your decision to doubt.

That may surprise you, especially if your previous experience with Christianity has been primarily in a Fideistic form...and even more, if your experience, as your history above seems to suggest, was with authoritarianism.

Mine was not like that. By my parents I am told (though I cannot personally recall, of course) that my first declaration of my need to doubt was at age 4. That seems young to me, but I have no real reason not to trust their memory of the events, since they never trouble themselves to lie to me. In any case, I do know this: from a very early age -- earlier than I can recall -- I was encouraged to doubt, explore, discover and conquer doubts if I could: never was I ever asked to suppress or deny them. Consequently, I have quite a healthy respect for skepticism and critical thinking; they are key tools of faith, in my estimation. A strong faith uses them often.

But I'm sympathetic with your experience. I have heard similar stories.

I think suppressing doubt makes for weak Christians, and by adolescence, Atheists or something pretty close to that. And I think it betrays a lack of nerve on the part of the authoritarians; it means they're not really sure the kind of "faith" they are advocating is going to withstand any search into the facts. So I would not support how they treated you. Perhaps we should wish to ask the authoritarians, how can one "believe" what one is forbidden to disbelieve? How much of one's own faith is involved in bowing to the heavy voice that thunders, "Thou shalt not question!" Personally, I don't believe that's faith at all.

I'm wondering...you say "the priesthood"....Catholic? Anglican? Other?

[thedoc]

I don't know where you get this because my church does not prohibit me from thinking about what I believe, in fact it is encouraged to think about it and try to understand the beliefs better, we even question some of the basic beliefs.

In that case your church is in league with Satan. Ask any Jesuit theologian.

Are you suggesting that a "Jesuit theologian" is the sole arbiter of Christian theology, I would have to disagree and assert that they are just one branch of a very diverse group.

[Dubious]

It was perhaps the greatest error and distortion of the West to turn something as thoroughly and exclusively tribalistic as Judaism into its ecumenical counterpart called Christianity. The Church Fathers were indeed brilliant. If that were not the case, they could never have managed to build so majestically and successfully to complete the structure in terms of philosophy and logic on the foundations of Judaism.

The other half of that story were the authorities forcing a consensus for political reasons establishing the infrastructure which allowed it to subsist. Christianity became a religion designed by secular motives. Historically, it has this in common with the rise of Judaism in the OT. The main and critical difference being the latter became inclusive of ONE while Christianity sought to be inclusive of ALL...while God as given became nothing more than a placeholder, a formality and an excuse in both.

[Obvious Leo]

I'm wondering...you say "the priesthood"....Catholic? Anglican? Other?

"Give us your boy by the age of seven and we've got him for life"...Ignatius of Loyola. Founder of the Society of Jesus, more commonly known nowadays as the Jesuits.

I was singled out for special consideration by the nuns of St Joseph because they perceived a bright and precocious young lad with unusually advanced language skills. However the men in frocks didn't get me early enough to satisfactorily complete the brainwashing process because these language skills were not a gift from god. They were a gift from one particular nun who took pity on a nerdy migrant kid who struggled with English as a second language. She let me read whatever I bloody well liked and I read every book I could get my hands on. She even secured me a special exemption which permitted me to take out books from the adult section of the library before I'd met the age requirement. Ignatius would NOT have approved because I'd already figured out before the men in frocks got hold of me that the education of one's mind was the most exclusively personal journey which any human being would ever be privileged to experience and I was utterly determined that nobody would ever stand between me and my secret journey. I've never once regretted this choice which I made as quite a young man because I've never allowed ANYBODY to tell me how to think. I particularly resent the suggestion that my decision to do my own thinking reflects poorly on me as an ethical human being because I've never intentionally done bad shit to anybody.

My mother was a devout Christian and she never batted an eyelid when I declared myself a non-believer at the age of 14. "God couldn't care less what you believe", said Mum, "he only cares about how you live your life". She understood the Christian message better than any other human being I ever met before or since.

[Dubious]

It reminds me of a quote by G.K. Chesterton, when he reflected on the corpus of Atheist hate mail against Christianity. For your further musings, I offer it below:

This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church…I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. I have known people who protested against religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child’s mind must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there could be no human judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their own corn to set fire to the church…But what are we to say about the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred for the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God…The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy: "The Romance of Faith,"
Doubleday, London, 1959.

...can't help saying, this has to be one of the dumbest, one-sided quotes I ever read from a so-called intellectual; full of incongruities, nonsense and non sequiturs from top to bottom. It's pathetic if this is an example of the apologetics now available to defend the Church!

No matter how well one writes a litany of sweet sentimentality any entry to truth requires a far more robust foundation.

[Obvious Leo]

It was perhaps the greatest error and distortion of the West to turn something as thoroughly and exclusively tribalistic as Judaism into its ecumenical counterpart called Christianity. The Church Fathers were indeed brilliant. If that were not the case, they could never have managed to build so majestically and successfully to complete the structure in terms of philosophy and logic on the foundations of Judaism.

The other half of that story were the authorities forcing a consensus for political reasons establishing the infrastructure which allowed it to subsist. Christianity became a religion designed by secular motives. Historically, it has this in common with the rise of Judaism in the OT. The main and critical difference being the latter became inclusive of ONE while Christianity sought to be inclusive of ALL...while God as given became nothing more than a placeholder, a formality and an excuse in both.

A thoughtful post. More than anything Christianity was a geo-political movement and this was exclusively an accident of history. It simply emerged in the right place at the right time to eventually subvert the power structures of the world's only superpower.

[Obvious Leo]

I don't know where you get this because my church does not prohibit me from thinking about what I believe, in fact it is encouraged to think about it and try to understand the beliefs better, we even question some of the basic beliefs.

In that case your church is in league with Satan. Ask any Jesuit theologian.

Are you suggesting that a "Jesuit theologian" is the sole arbiter of Christian theology, I would have to disagree and assert that they are just one branch of a very diverse group.

Of course I'm not suggesting that, doc. There are as many different ways of interpreting Christian thought as there are thoughtful Christians to interpret these ways. However in the modern era all religious belief must inevitably founder on the rocky shoals of epistemic knowledge if educated people must be required to accept metaphorical parables as literal truths. In most of what was formerly the Christian world this is what has happened and belief in the supernatural has become little more than a quaint historical curiosity. This is as irreversible and inevitable as the North Sea eventually blasting the little Dutch boy's finger out of the hole in the dyke.

Dead blokes do not come back to life. End of story.

[Hobbes' Choice]

It is quite impossible that Christ himself ever claimed to be the son of god....

While it is quite true to say that there have been many people throughout history, both prior to and after Christ, who used the expression "son of God" of themselves, the above statement isn't possible, actually. It's very clear from a number of things that that is exactly what He claimed. .

Bullshit.
1) You do not know is Jesus existed.
2) You have not one word claimed to be his own. So Jesus, himself claims nothing at all.
3) Every word claimed to be by him is third hand, passed on by illiterate goat herders to Greek scholars and written down at a time beyond living memory.
4) Much of what he is reported to have said is contradictory, and many of the events in the New Testament are inherently absurd.
5) You ability at simple discrimination and reason is thus questionable.

[Obvious Leo]

2) You have not one word claimed to be his own. So Jesus, himself claims nothing at all.

It beggars credulity beyond its breaking point that Christ or any of his followers would have been literate in any of the languages in use in Judea during his time. Written Aramaic was the exclusive domain of the Judaistic priesthood and the common written language of the merchant classes would have been a highly bastardised form of Greek. Even the educated Roman classes would probably have preferred Greek in the written form ahead of their native Latin, other than for formal legal or administrative documents. There is no evidence that any of the new testament stories were ever written in the language which Christ actually spoke and there is even less evidence that any of these stories were written within fifty to a hundred years of his death. If you've ever played Chinese whispers you can form your own judgement about the evidentiary value of these tales.

[Dubious]

One would have thought that a 'God" or Son of... would have stood out above those who merely claimed a god as their pappy. Genealogy was so simple in those days. Simply rewrite scripture or narration and you don't even have to ask who your grand pappy was.

[thedoc]

It beggars credulity beyond its breaking point that Christ or any of his followers would have been literate in any of the languages in use in Judea during his time. Written Aramaic was the exclusive domain of the Judaistic priesthood and the common written language of the merchant classes would have been a highly bastardised form of Greek. Even the educated Roman classes would probably have preferred Greek in the written form ahead of their native Latin, other than for formal legal or administrative documents. There is no evidence that any of the new testament stories were ever written in the language which Christ actually spoke and there is even less evidence that any of these stories were written within fifty to a hundred years of his death. If you've ever played Chinese whispers you can form your own judgement about the evidentiary value of these tales.

And yet in the book of Luke chapter 4 verses 16 - 20 Jesus is reading from the Torah, from the book of Isaiah, directly contradicting what you are claiming. And some of his disciples were lawyers and tax collectors and they would certainly have known how to read several languages.

[Obvious Leo]

Consider the "virgin birth" story. In ancient Aramaic the word for "virgin" and "young woman" were the same word. How easily is a miracle made after the event? A virgin giving birth to a child is truly a miraculous event but any young woman can do it if Daddy can't stop the young bucks sniffing around.

[thedoc]

Consider the "virgin birth" story. In ancient Aramaic the word for "virgin" and "young woman" were the same word. How easily is a miracle made after the event? A virgin giving birth to a child is truly a miraculous event but any young woman can do it if Daddy can't stop the young bucks sniffing around.

It would depend on whether you read the "virgin birth" as a biological event or a spiritual one.

[Obvious Leo]

It would depend on whether you read the "virgin birth" as a biological event or a spiritual one.

This is very much the point I'm making. A teenage girl does not get pregnant unless some randy young bugger jumps her bones. This is hardly a controversial proposition for an educated 21st century person to accept at face value, so trying to sell the "miracle" story to such a person is just not going to work. The same goes for the dead bloke drifting up into the sky.

What the hell is wrong with regarding these stories as the metaphorical fables they were intended as? The existence of god can neither be proven nor disproven but if such bullshit is offered as proof of his existence then you deliver an insult to human reason and declare philosophy to be a farce. I am not angered by what people choose to believe but philosophy has been my life's work and I am infuriated by people who accord themselves the right to make a mockery of it.

[thedoc]

It would depend on whether you read the "virgin birth" as a biological event or a spiritual one.

This is very much the point I'm making. A teenage girl does not get pregnant unless some randy young bugger jumps her bones. This is hardly a controversial proposition for an educated 21st century person to accept at face value, so trying to sell the "miracle" story to such a person is just not going to work. The same goes for the dead bloke drifting up into the sky.

What the hell is wrong with regarding these stories as the metaphorical fables they were intended as? The existence of god can neither be proven nor disproven but if such bullshit is offered as proof of his existence then you deliver an insult to human reason and declare philosophy to be a farce. I am not angered by what people choose to believe but philosophy has been my life's work and I am infuriated by people who accord themselves the right to make a mockery of it.

What makes you think that you can paint all Christians with the same brush and deny the possibility of a christian that accepts these stories as metaphors. Also what is wrong with accepting the possibility of the miraculous when there is no proof that it didn't happen, only the evidence of everyday experience. Just because something has not been observed to have happened, is not proof that it could not have happened. Absence of proof, is not proof of absence. You claim to champion philosophy, yet there is little in philosophy that is backed by solid testable evidence, it is mostly the opinion of one philosopher over another. Can you prove or disprove free will or determinism? What philosophy do you debate that is not science and therefore not testable?