Category Archives: Christian extremists

The End of Days

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A friend of mine was recently given the book The Dragon’s Prophecy: Israel, the Dark Resurrection and the End of Days by Jonathan Cahn. My friend, already concerned about the state of the world, said how much the book had disturbed her. She had become convinced that the time we live in had been predicted in the Bible, in Revelation in particular. ‘It’s all there in the Bible,’ she said to me. ‘It’s all happening just as it says.’

I tried to reassure her that Revelation was written by someone who, 2000 years ago, believed that the situation then couldn’t get any worse, what with the Roman occupation, the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of Christians (as the writer saw it.) This, together with his belief that the Lord would soon be coming on the clouds (Revelation 1:7), convinced him he was living in the world’s last days. I told my friend that because of the mess the world is in today (and when is it not a mess?) the book of Revelation resonates with some people; a voice from the past echoing down the ages. In no way, however, was it written about today.

My friend was unconvinced so I took it upon myself to read The Dragon’s Prophecy. Coincidentally, I had just begun to read Bart D. Ehrman’s Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End, dealing with the same concerns. The comparison between the two books couldn’t be more striking.

Ehrman’s is a measured analysis of Revelation and other ‘prophetic’ books of the Bible. He demonstrates from the outset that Revelation was written for believers of the late first/early second century and that its symbolism represents individuals and events of that time. John of Patmos, whoever he may have been (a cult leader, Ehrman suggests) expected, like most early Christians, that the End was going to materialise soon, in the first or early second century, emphatically not in the 21st.

Ehrman warns that ‘professional prophecy writers’ (he doesn’t name Cahn) think ‘the way to use the Bible is to assemble the pieces to reveal the big picture, which until now no one has seen before’ (p17). He’s right. This is precisely what they do. In his book, Cahn promises ‘to put together the pieces of the mystery’ (p11) and claims ‘We (sic) will now begin assembling the pieces of the puzzle’ (p36). He then proceeds to jump around the Bible like a grasshopper on steroids. He’s one of the ‘prophets’ who, as Ehrman puts it, sees the Bible as ‘a great jigsaw puzzle with one piece hidden in this place, one in another and yet a third somewhere else’ (p17).

Cahn opens his argument with a series of bald, unsupported assertions: ‘Behind the perceivable realm lies another, beyond our ability to measure or quantify’ and ‘Behind the history of this world lies another, unrecorded, unrecited (sic), unknown,’ his readers evidently not expected to ask how he knows any of this codswallop. He goes from there to build his argument, such as it is, with a bombardment of ridiculous questions and pseudo-profundities:

What is evil? And how did it come into existence? It is both a mystery and a problem. The mystery is the problem (p9).

Then there are the propositional statements of the ‘If… then we’d expect’ variety. There’s rarely any evidence for the ‘if’ and none at all for the proposed expectation. Here’s the two – rhetorical question and propositional statement – rolled into one: ‘If evil is uncreated, how did it come to exist?’ (p32). Naturally, Cahn is going to answer this question and all the others like it, with a series of unfounded assertions, non-sequiturs and a smattering of unrelated Bible verses.

A central premise of The Dragon’s Prophecy, the dragon being that of Revelation 12:9 and therefore the devil, is ‘the dark resurrection’ of its subtitle. This Cahn explains, pretending the idea comes from the Bible when it doesn’t, is the re-emergence of the Israelites’ old, (extinct) enemies, the Philistines. Like the Israeli nation they too have now been resurrected: as the Palestinians. Under the control of the dragon/devil, they re-enacted on October 7th last year one of the many ancient Philistine attacks recorded in the Bible, only this time with ‘guns and explosives’:

On that October morning, the ancient drama replayed. The resurrected Philistines had again invaded the land, and the resurrected Israelites had again gone into hiding, keeping silent and still in fear of their pursuers (pp99-100).

How do we know this is a replay of an ancient invasion? Because some of those under attack on 7th October went into hiding, just as the Israelites did in 1 Samuel 13:6. As if no other group of besieged civilians hasn’t tried to hide at any other point in history. That and the ‘fact’ there were, according to Cahn, exactly 3,000 invaders on each occasion. Yes, the book really is this bad.

And so, Cahn says, the stage is set for the final battle and the return of Christ who will knock a few heads together, torture and slaughter everyone who isn’t a Christian and set up his faithful followers in a new Jerusalem made of gold and fancy stuff. As Ehrman says, this is indeed what Revelation promises – for the world 2,000 years ago. Ehrman argues that the author of this revenge porn, (he doesn’t use the term: that’s my contribution – you’re welcome) creates a Christ so unlike those of the gospels that he can only be a fiction (aren’t they all?)

Revelation barely made it into the canon and we would all be better off if it hadn’t; certainly my friend would be, and as Ehrman shows, human society and the planet in general would be too. He warns us to read what the Bible actually says, instead of, as Cahn does, forcing it to say what we want it to (to sell books). Irritatingly, Ehrman consistently refers to the Christ’s prophesied appearance on the clouds as his ‘Second Coming’ when the Bible never uses the phrase. Read what it says Bart!

I don’t know whether I’ll finish Dragon’s Prophecy. Its cover blurb boasts that Cahn is a New York Times best seller so clearly there’s an audience for such poorly argued, alarmist nonsense – which is itself alarming. While Bart D. Ehrman has also made the NYT list in the past, Cahn easily outsells him. Nevertheless, I’ve bought my friend a copy of his Armageddon in the hopes it might serve as an antidote to the dire The Dragon’s Prophecy.

The Great Eternal Life Scam

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Heathens like me, and you dear reader, are gambling how we’ll spend eternity by rejecting Jesus. We’re turning down everlasting life to live in the mire of our own sin. Or so we’re told by evangelicals and other religious zealots.

So convinced am I that the claims of Christianity are wrong in every respect that I know I’m not gambling anything. Like everyone else who has ever lived, I will not survive my death. This is the nature of death – extinction, obliteration, oblivion. It is absurd to believe it is anything other when we know it is not.

I would not be averse to existence, particularly my own, continuing after death. I’d definitely go for it if that were available; I like being around, all sentient and self-aware and such. This is the sentiment to which Christianity appeals; most people do not want to think their existence is finite and that this often challenging life is really all there is. But life patently does not continue post mortem, except in works of fiction: fantasy, science fiction, the gospels.

Everlasting life is not the only promise Christianity makes, of course. There’s the whole ‘getting right with God’ shtick, forgiveness of sins and Life in all its fullness. Eternal life is the big one though, Christianity’s most miraculous, death-defying special offer.

Those doing the gambling are not atheists or sceptics. It’s Christians themselves doing that, succumbing to the false, utterly worthless promise of life after death. Those fully committed to Christianity spend their lives enslaved to its cultish demands, desperately trying to convince others they should surrender to its preposterous claims.

I value this life too much to squander any more of it on such nonsense. Yes, I did once, but I saw the light and stepped into it. Life is what you make it and needs to be lived before you die. There is zero chance you’ll be able to once it’s over.

Burst the bubble, those of you trapped within it. Your one and only life awaits you here on Earth. The clock is ticking.

Speaking in Tongues

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I used to be so uncomfortable in prayer meetings that I attended back when I was a true believer when someone would start praying in tongues. It usually went something like alaluboolubamuba repeated over and over again, like a babbling brook. Babbling is what it was. In the churches I experienced it in, there was rarely any interpretation of the tongues as Paul instructed there should be. Even when someone was led by the Spirit to pipe up, what the speaker in tongues had said in gobbledegook was standard praise stuff: ‘Thank you Jesus for your wonderful mercies. Praise you for all you have done for us. Alleluia! Praise you’ etc, etc. And who were we, the others present, to say it wasn’t? Some would add their own Amens to the interpretation, adding credence to the meaningless phenomenon. The Spirit at work indeed.

Speaking in tongues, glossolalia, seems to have afflicted the cult in Corinth in particular. Paul addresses it in his first letter to the church there, and nowhere else. He doesn’t seem to know what to make of it. He feels unable to say that it’s merely a few people getting carried away (because that’s pretty much what all early Christian worship was) and can’t say it’s not the Spirit moving them to babble when that’s what the church was claiming. So he fudges it, claims he speaks in tongues more than anyone else (why do I hear Donald Trump in this boast?) and makes a few stipulations:

Only speak in tongues if there’s an interpreter present. (What happens if you get the urge the Spirit moves you when there’s no interpreter around?)

Glossolalia is ‘uttering mysteries’ in the Spirit that no-one can understand (so how can they be translated/interpreted by someone else?)

You shouldn’t speak in tongues all at the same time. It’s unseemly.

Use tongues only in private (according to the great know-it-all apostle, tongues are of the spirit and are merely a way of praising God. Tongues then are God praising God: what a narcissist he is! Other than this, Paul concludes they’re not much good.)

Interestingly, at no time does Paul suggest or acknowledge that some of the tongues manifesting themselves are other languages – real languages as opposed to unintelligible babbling. In fact he makes much of the fact that no-one understands what is said. It’s left to Luke to elevate linguistic nonsense to miracle status. In Acts 2:4-12, he has the disciples speak in real foreign languages after the Holy Spirit takes hold of them. Those around are ‘amazed’ (aren’t they always?) that they can suddenly hear the gospel message in their own tongue. Luke labours the point that, conveniently, there were men from ‘every nation under heaven’ present to verify the use of multiple languages by otherwise uneducated fishermen. Far more likely is that Luke, aware of the outbreak of babbling in at least one early church, shaped what he’d heard into what he thought was a more credible account. In other words he made up the story of the disciples spontaneously becoming fluently multi-lingual.

Later still, the unknown writer who invented the longer ending of Mark decided to mention the tongues phenomenon in the prophecies he invented for Jesus. In Mark 16:17 he has Jesus promise that those who believe in him would miraculously speak in ‘other languages’. How many times has this happened in the ensuing two millennia? I’d put money on there only ever having been sporadic outbreaks of meaningless babbling, such as that which I experienced. 

The church today continues to be confused about tongues. Some claim that ‘the gifts of the Spirit’, of which tongues are a part, no longer manifest themselves among believers. It’s a neat way to consign bizarre behaviour to the dumpster of history, but alas, it’s unscriptural. Nowhere does Paul suggest tongues and the other gifts of the Spirit would have a sell-by date before the Lord’s coming. Admittedly, he thought the Lord would be coming real soon. Only then, not before, would tongues and the other gifts of the Spirit ‘pass away’.

Other churches today are open to the possibility of tongues. Some even claim that the Spirit does indeed enable believers to launch fluently into languages, complete with correct syntax and vocabulary, that they don’t actually know. We can be sure there would be evidence of this online if it really occurred. There isn’t. 

Others are happy to go along with the unintelligible babbling, preferably with an interpreter who makes stuff up is also led by the Spirit to make sense of the mumbo jumbo.

Some abandon all restraint, with entire congregations babbling at the same time. Paul’s rules be damned!

And they wonder why we don’t take them seriously. As Paul himself warned:

If the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? (1 Corinthians 14:23)

They surely will.

Have any of you encountered speaking in tongues? What did your church make of it?

Featuring the Battle of the Century! Doomsday v. Panacea!

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Human beings love doomsday scenarios. We have perpetually convinced ourselves that the circumstances in which we live are the most dreadful ever and, to quote The Beatles, can’t get no worse, The earliest Christians thought it: things were so bad that the end was surely to come. YHWH would tolerate the awful state of affairs no longer. But to the surprise of no-one he did.

Those alive in 17th century Europe couldn’t conceive of a worse time, what with the plague and all, and persuaded themselves that the world was ending. During the Covid lockdown we were told that the human race faced being annihilated by the virus and that whatever we’d previously regarded as normal would never return. Today we’re assured that the planet faces extinction if we don’t stop using fossil fuels. At the same time others claim that democracy/the West/civilisation are in such decline that the world will soon disintegrate into anarchy. Who knows, perhaps one day one of these modern doomsday scenarios will come to pass. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Equally though, we are adept at devising panaceas, universal remedies to our problems. We have an unshakeable belief that by making a few simple changes – a new government/president/policy/ invention/initiative/innovation – we will avert disaster and resolve the challenges we face.

How have the panaceas of the past fared? The Jesus’ cult’s promises of new life and heaven of earth collapsed in the first century when God failed to rescue those who identified as his Chosen Ones from the wickedness that surrounded them. Nevertheless, Christianity bullied its way on to the present day, still offering the same tired solutions to age-old problems. Religion, in all its forms, only makes matters worse.

Revolution is no solution either, as the socially aware songs of the 1970s advised us. The French, American, Russian and Chinese revolutions changed situations but they didn’t usher in an age of peace and prosperity or remedy everything their instigators said they would. History demonstrates again and again that violence fails to improve anything. The freedom and independence that the Baltic states now enjoy came not from revolution but from the foresight of Mikhail Gorbachev who knew Russia could no longer afford to sustain its satellite states. Putin however knows better and seeks to reabsorb them back into his own soviet union.

Other panaceas of the past have similarly failed to deliver. The so-called industrial revolution created our modern world, led to the end of slavery and gave us the standard of living those of us in the West enjoy. Now we must deal with what many perceive as its legacy: world pollution, climate change, dwindling resources. Eliminating these is the new panacea. Once these challenges have been met, or so we’re told, the world will find itself on a much better footing, on course to recover from the damage we’ve caused it. Hence Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. It’s as simple as that. Except we know that surely it isn’t when the biggest polluters – China, Russia, India and potentially the US (Trump says he will pull out of climate change agreements if returned to the White House) – are not wholly on board.

We are a very long way from eliminating the use of oil: for a long time to come it will be needed to lubricate machinery, engines and windfarms, and for the production of plastics (a panacea in their own right not that long ago), computers, mobile phones and building materials. That’s not to mention the need for oil in the nation’s defence: the navy’s ships, the air force’s planes and the army’s tanks. We do not yet have the means of replacing the oil which fuels and lubricates modern life. We can be sure too that when we do, this new panacea will also have its own drawbacks, which will only become apparent once we have committed to them. We know this already with nuclear power which, once fossil fuels are eliminated, will be the principal means of producing electricity in the enormous quantities required to supply to industry, for heating, lighting and transport, including electric cars, which, if politicians have their way, will be the only kind available. We are already using ‘environmentally-damaging methods’ to extract the rare minerals used for the manufacture of batteries, a process which also, ironically, creates more CO2 than the manufacture of a petrol car (itself a panacea not too long ago): ‘According to MIT’s Climate Lab, one ton of mined lithium emits almost 15 tons of CO2’.

While there are those who claim that EVs cause less environmental damage than petrol (gas) vehicles, damage is still damage. It is not net zero. The dream of worldwide net zero is impossible. The only way it is even approachable is for the car and other forms of transport to disappear altogether – and we all know that isn’t going to happen. Even  hypocritical eco-warriors use the car and other forms of transport dependent on fossil fuels to get themselves to whichever work of art or ancient monument they plan to deface. 

China, which produces two thirds of the world’s electric car batteries, accounted ‘for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023.’ Then there’s the disposal of spent batteries: do we have policies for doing that in an environmentally friendly way? Is there an environmentally friendly way?

As you can probably tell, I’m not a believer in panaceas, whether religious or politically devised. They don’t work and never have. In years to come, the West will be wringing its hands at its plundering of the Congo for cobalt and South America for lithium for electric car batteries. ‘How could we get it so wrong?’ we will cry. ‘There must be a better way, a better panacea. Meanwhile, we must do penance and make reparations.’ I don’t have the answers, but extremist approaches like the half-baked schemes of Ed Miliband, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (yes, really), and pursuing impossible dreams do not seem to me to be the solution.

Gullibility

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On the left, oily evangelical preacher the reverend canon Mike Pilavachi (yes, really. No irony at all in those self-aggrandizing titles.) Pilavachi used his spiritual authority to abuse young men, compelling them to take part in homoerotic wrestling matches and providing them, for his own kinky gratification, with full body massages. Because, you know, it’s what Jesus would’ve wanted. He also bullied and manipulated others in his church and ‘across the world’ in his ‘ministry.’ So far so much par for the course.

What I find incredible is the reaction of one of Pilavachi’s victims, Matt Redman (right), musical partner in Pilavachi’s Soul Survivor church festivals.

Redman had this to say recently:

I think Jesus is an expert at bringing things into the light, and I think that’s what’s happening in this whole process. I think Jesus is doing this. I think Jesus is cleaning up his church and bringing something into the light that needed to be in the light.

What lunacy! Jesus will bring the sordid goings ‘into the light’, which raises more questions than it answers :

Was it Jesus who brought these doings into the open or was it victims who found the courage to speak out? If it really was Jesus, why didn’t he reveal matters much sooner to prevent more young men from falling foul of the deplorable Pilavachi’s abuse? Why, indeed, did Jesus not prevent the abuse in the first place, saving everyone the pain and psychological damage Pilavachi’s actions caused? Why did Jesus not make Pilavachi into a brand new creation, as promised in 2 Corinthians 5:17, when first he imbued him with his Spirit, a creation that lacked the desire to manipulate and abuse others?

I think we know the answer to all these questions.

Believing in Jesus is to believe in a fiction that has no more concern for your well-being than Casper the Friendly Ghost (to whom he is closely related). As much as I empathise with the vulnerable Matt Redman, he needs to be less forgiving of Pilavachi, reassess his reliance on a shadow and face reality. If anything, his belief in Jesus led him into the clutches of a psychopath who used him for his own gratification.

Mike Pilavachi has yet to be questioned by police. I guess Jesus really does look after his friends.

Respect

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Even before the events in Israel and Gaza, there were numerous recent examples of the term Islamophobia being used to suppress freedom of expression or shield wrongdoing.

A recent report by an all party group of UK MPs.

I’ve been told before that I should respect people’s religious beliefs. We all should apparently.

I can’t, I confess, summon respect for patent nonsense, nor for those who subscribe to it. I’m not even going to try.

There have, I admit, been a few believers I’ve met in life for whom I have had respect and even admiration, but this has been for the kind of person they were, not because of their religious beliefs per se. And no; their religion is not what made them admirable people. They were admirable irrespective of, or even despite, their irrational beliefs. I still hold to the theory of my own making, that religious conviction is like alcohol: both accentuate the existing characteristics of the individual, making them more of the person they already were, for better or for worse.

Equally, I’ve met many non-believers (I hate it that we have to describe ourselves as what we are not), LGBT people (for many religionists, the antithesis of admirable) and individuals whose views and outlook on life I haven’t necessarily agreed with, for whom I have also had respect and admiration.

It comes down to the old cliche, a truism nonetheless, that respect has to be earned. Just because someone believes in the supernatural or that Jesus died for our sins or that their deity or prophet trumps all others doesn’t mean I have to respect such views, or indeed those who hold them.

But this is where we’re headed, it seems. We’re expected to respect any old make-believe so long as it comes under the banner of religion and still more that doesn’t. It’s becoming ‘hateful’ to criticise religious belief and those who practise it. Because their views are sincerely held, the thinking goes, they merit protected status.

I commented some time ago on a Christian site (something I rarely do except when incensed) that was insisting ‘sodomites’ would burn in hell, because… the Bible. I countered that gay people were not going to hell because, in fact, no-one was. As well as the subsequent ‘loving’ comments from Christians, I was taken to task by a gay person telling me I was disrespecting the original poster’s Christian convictions.

Likewise when I suggest that we should be more wary of Muslim beliefs I’m told I’m being profoundly unfair, racist and Islamophobic, towards a minority – as a minority of one myself – and I should show more respect for an ancient and sacred tradition as well as those who subscribe to it.

I can’t do it. I can’t respect religious belief. It is no more worthy of respect than astrology, palm reading and spiritualism. It flies in the face of rationality. Not only is it insupportable, it is dangerous, a threat to hard-earned freedoms and rights.

Presenting a well-thought through Christian Response*

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If there’s one thing I love about writing this blog it’s the considered, articulate comments I get from loving Christians.

A brave anonymous commenter left one the other day on the 2015 post ‘Gentle Jesus – meek and mild?‘. Short on time and rhetorical skills, Brave Anon opted instead for a different range of tactics. Here’s what he(?) had to say:

I’m a little short on time, and i wish I wasn’t, because I could pick apart your post piece by piece for hours. I WILL say though, that I’d expect someone who has dedicated a whole site to this matter to have actually read the book he’s so dedicated to disproving. It’s pretty clear that you haven’t and only used quick Google searches to try to prove your point. The big thing that i’d really like to point out is that most of the scripture you quoted to try to prove your point is from the Old Testament. That means it was law BEFORE Jesus was born. Yes, some of them are pretty harsh. That is why Jesus whittled the 613 commandments in the OT down to 10 in the NT. The most important being, ”Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The most important one, right behind that, is to, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That is why I just prayed for you. I wish that people like you would get away from trying to disprove the Word and find something else (literally ANYTHING else) to spend your time doing. What do you have to gain by making this site? Do you have such little self worth that, as a grown adult (I assume, but maybe I’m wrong), you really need someone to pat you on the back and say, “WOW! You did a really good job! You get a gold star. That means, you get to pick out what toy you want to play with at recess first today!” Will, if that’s what you need, I ain’t the one to say it. Your arguments are weak, and you are clearly uninformed on the subject you’ve chosen to focus on. Why don’t you, at least, read the Bible (I mean cover to cover) before you speak on it. If you need a little motivation, why don’t you remember that Satan knows the Bible better than ANYONE here on Earth. I mean, even better than the POPE!!! Familiarize yourself so you can, at least, make an educated, organized, well informed, argument. You do that, and I’ll consider giving you a shred of respect. Otherwise, good luck on your day of reckoning. I hear it’s hot down there, so make sure you pack shorts!!

Let’s ‘pick apart’ the tactics in use here:

  1. Mind reading: Brave Anon knows that I have never read the Bible. Impressive. Wrong, but impressive. He uses his telepathy too to work out my motivation for writing: so I’ll be rewarded with praise. Thanks, Brave Anon; in the 12 years I’ve been blogging I’ve never realised this.

  2. Jumping to conclusions: Brave Anon decides all my information comes from Google. While it’s true I do use Google to verify sources and provide links to articles, when it comes to the Bible, I quote it directly. All those references in brackets are the clue that this is what’s going on. They look like this: (Matthew 7:1-3), (1 Corinthians 5:12). Brave Anon might want to look these two up on Google.

  3. Confused irrelevancy: Brave Anon is unhappy I ‘quoted… from the Old Testament’ in the post in question. Wait – didn’t he just say I’ve never read the Bible? Isn’t the Old Testament part of the Bible any more? The point made by the post is that Matthew’s very Jewish Jesus says that the Law – that’s the one in the Old Testament – will never pass away, not one jot or tittle of it. Wasn’t the Old Testament, under a different name of course, the only scripture Jesus knew? Maybe that’s why I quote it alongside the later stuff Matthew makes up for him to say.

  4. Intuition: Brave Anon intuits I’m a full grown adult. Brilliant. He could of course have read ‘The Author…’ above, which would have told him that, and would also have informed him of why I post what I do. Guessing is so much more effective though, don’t you think?

  5. Condescension: Brave Anon prayed for me. Nice. Nevertheless, he felt moved to send a derisory comment.

  6. Withholding his respect: Jeez, if I’d known this was going to happen I’d never have written the post. I’m positively bereft.

  7. More confused irrelevancy: Satan, the capitalised POPE… what the…?

  8. Desperation: ‘Just wait until the day of reckoning then you’ll regret criticising my buddy Jesus ‘cause you’ll be burning in hell!’ This threat is always a part of Christians’ comments. I’m thrilled Brave Anon remembered to include it.

Thanks for dropping by, Brave Anon, and for reminding me to pack my shorts.

*Not really.

Religiophobia?

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Is criticising Christianity and the way some people practise their religion a form of Christophobia? Strictly speaking a phobia is an irrational fear of whatever precedes it, as in homo-phobia, trans-phobia, Islamo-phobia and the like. In the accusations of whatever-phobia we hear today – and they invariably are accusations – ‘phobia’ seems to have come to mean ‘hatred of’; a hatred of Christianity and therefore of Christians; of homosexuality and therefore of gay people; of trans-people; of Muslims and so on.

Reasonable criticism of belief systems is not hatred. I don’t and am sure I never have had a hatred of Christianity or of any other religion. I certainly have views about Christianity as a seriously flawed, cock-eyed superstition (I hope I’m not giving my position away too early.) Reasonable criticism of it, mockery even, is perfectly legitimate, for reasons I’ve outlined before, just as criticism and mockery of any belief in the fantastic is legitimate. Ideologies based on belief in imaginary beings do not automatically merit respect nor do they have a de facto immunity from criticism. The same applies to those who subscribe to such fantasies, particularly when they attempt to force them on others. Calling out believers on their inconsistencies and hypocrisy is perfectly reasonable.

Is it fair then to express critical views of homosexuality and by extension of gay people? Of course. We are not immune from reasoned criticism, though much of it doesn’t qualify as ‘reasoned’; we have suffered much from emotional reactions to our existence and still do. (See Bruce’s recent post in which Republican North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson rants about godless homos. When comment deteriorates into vitriol it becomes an incitement to hatred and, sometimes, violence. When this happens, the modern sense of phobia is justified.)

Islam is as irrational as Christianity and other religious belief systems. It is as legitimate to criticise and, when appropriate, to condemn Islam, just as it is Christianity. It is reasonable to question Muslim’s treatment of women, to insist it is inappropriate, particularly in a Western context. It is appropriate to oppose Muslims’ opposition to Western values rather to accede to their opposition to, for example, freedom of speech or the teaching of evolution and sex education in schools. It seems increasingly to me that in Britain we are conceding too much to Islam and to Muslims because we fear both the accusation of Islamophobia and, not entirely irrationally, a disproportionately aggressive response. Reasonable criticism of a belief system and those who subscribe to it is not hateful. We have a duty in a largely secular society to say so. To resist irrational belief in the supernatural when that belief, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other of the 4,200 religions human beings have dreamt up seeks to impose itself on others is neither hateful nor irrational. It is essential.

I‘d write more about Islam if I knew more about it. I’m disinclined to learn more, however, having already wasted much of my life in thrall to that other ‘great’ religion, the one I spend so much time deconstructing here. Who needs to know more about another? Saviours, Prophets, Gods, angels, signs and wonders – they’re all equally meaningless. Instead of claiming they’re victims of Christo/Islamophobia, religionists would do well to develop thicker skins as we ‘abominations’ and ‘perverts’ have had to do. They should ask themselves whether criticism of their practices and worldview is justified. They might just find it is.

After the Gospels

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None of the New Testament documents written prior to AD70 – those by Paul – contain any of the sayings, miracles or activities attributed to the Earthly Jesus in the later gospels. They don’t reflect anything of the oral tradition, first proposed in the 18th century. Those same gospels don’t reflect much of it either; the only ‘good news’ passed on by word of mouth was of a transcendent celestial Godman seen in visions. There is no evidence of any other. The later gospels incorporate the visions experienced by Cephas and others in their resurrection stories.

What then of the letters and books written after the appearance of the gospels? Do they reference, quote or base their teaching on the pre-crucifixion aspects of the Earthly Jesus of the gospels? Or do they, like Paul, concentrate solely on demonstrating the heavenly Jesus is the Messiah on the basis of what can be found in Jewish scriptures? You’d think that, with the gospels in circulation by then, that It’d be the former. But you’d be wrong.

Let’s make a quick survey of New Testament books post AD70. I’m taking their composition to be those listed here.

Hebrews (composed anywhere between 60 and 115 by unknown author[s])

Hebrews describes the Messiah as a heavenly high priest. Everything the writers ascribe to him is taken not from the gospels, nor an oral tradition on which the gospels are supposedly based, but from ancient Jewish writing; what we know as the Old Testament. Every single reference is from this source. Read the book for yourself and take note of the footnotes. Like gospel Jesus, Jesus the High Priest is constructed from snippets lifted from the Old Testament.

Revelation (composed anywhere between 70-110)

In Revelation, warrior Jesus has a lot to say, most of it quotations from the Old Testament. None of it is derived from the gospels nor the oral tradition on which the gospels are supposedly based. John’s ‘revelation’ is a fantasy constructed around ancient ‘prophecy’. Again, read the book for yourself and take note of the footnotes. Like gospel-Jesus, Jesus the Great Warrior is constructed from snippets lifted from the Old Testament.

1 Peter (70-100) and 2 Peter (125-150)

You’d think the letters purportedly written by the disciple Peter (or Cephas), the man who, according to the gospels spent three years with Jesus, would be full of his teaching, the mysteries he explained only to his closest followers, reports of his miracles or any of his other activities. But no. The best he can do across the two letters (written by two different people, decades apart, neither of them Peter the disciple) is this:

For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain (2 Peter 1: 16).

Remarkably, this fake Peter recalls an event which never happened: when Jesus glowed like a lightbulb as two long-dead prophets beamed down from Heaven. It is, however, finally a reference to a gospel story. But then, doesn’t the author disparage ‘cleverly devised stories’ in this same passage? What else could he be referring to if not the gospels? We find a similar warning in 1 Timothy (and again in Titus 3: 9):

…command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work – which is by faith (1 Timothy 1: 4, written by a fraud pretending to be Paul).

These New Testament writers, even when they seem aware of gospel myths and their endless genealogies don’t approve of them. Perhaps that is why they prefer to ignore them, deriving proof of the Messiah from ancient Jewish scriptures instead. Every other reference to Jesus in the Peter epistles is from the Old Testament. How strange for someone pretending to know the man in the flesh.

We could go on to look at other books of the New Testament – for example, that written by ‘James’, supposedly Jesus’ brother – but this post is already too long. Rest assured if we did, we would see the same thing: none of the information about Jesus is derived from the gospels or the oral tradition on which the gospels are said by apologists to be based. There was no oral tradition, apart from stories of visions. The gospels are literary recreations – allegories – of those visions. They were not well received by the other writers of the New Testament who either ignore or disparage them. All that mattered to these early cultists were ‘revelations’ directly from the Lord and the Old Testament ‘prophecies’ that validated them.

An Anonymous Author Writes…

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A little while ago I came across a group of enthusiasts who met locally to celebrate the chap who’d founded their group a few decades back. I paid them a few visits to see what they were about and when they learnt I was capable of stringing a few sentences together, asked if I would write a short biography of their Founder. Being an obliging sort, I said I would, not realising the challenges that lay ahead.

For a start, none of them had actually known the guy. He’d died soon after the group had started and none of the current membership had ever met him. Worse, they weren’t even sure what his real name was. Some said ‘Josh’, some ‘Jess’ and others ‘Manny’. They thought a guy who had known him was still alive, but couldn’t remember his name either. ‘Rocky’, they said, or maybe ‘Tiny’.

All the same, I’d said I’d have a go at the biography and didn’t want to disappoint them so I set about searching the Web. I soon discovered that both ‘Rocky’ and ‘Tiny’ had passed away, about the same time six or so years earlier. There was nothing online about any Rocky but there was quite a bit about Tiny. Or rather by him. He’d left a whole series of posts, mostly about he’d been contacted by the founder from beyond the grave. He said over and over that he could prove it really was the Founder he was channelling because, apparently, it said so in some old stories. He quoted these all over the place.

All weird stuff, but all I had to go on.

So I set to. I tried to make as much sense as I could of Tiny’s writing. I made stories out of his rambling, imagining what the Founder must’ve been like from the things Tiny claimed he’d told him. Like Tiny, I used old stories to fill out the narrative and included loads of metaphor. People love finding hidden meanings in things. I stopped short though at having the Founder come back from the dead at the end, not even metaphorically. Tiny insisted he had done but no-one in their right minds would believe it.

In the end, I thought I’d made a good job of it. The guys in the group thought so too. They were so pleased they suggested I publish it on Amazon, which I did. To my surprise, it started selling really well and got some very good reviews (and only a couple of poor ones.) To my annoyance, though, it wasn’t not long before a bunch of opportunists took to writing novellas about the Founder themselves, and (the nerve of it) lifting whole chunks of my story and ‘correcting the errors’! Errors? How could there be errors in something I’d made up? They even used my technique, lifted from Tiny, of borrowing bits from older books and making them fit their version. Their ‘Founder’ turned out to be different from mine, though not, I’m convinced, anywhere near as good.

I’ve decided I was going to retire from this writing lark. It’s too competitive and there are too many plagiarists around. Let them get on with their inferior sequels. Everybody will remember I was the first, and the best. Won’t they?