It’s a miracle! Rejecting Jesus is now in book form! And on Kindle too.
Well, not quite – sorry JC.
But you can now read Rejecting Jesus posts in the format the Son of God would surely have preferred if books had existed then the way they do now. The pictures are all present and correct too, in glorious B&W, for all first-century messiahs to enjoy.
Available here and here and also all over the world. Go, buy it, make disciples of all nations.
Meet Father Dwight Longenecker. He operates a blog called Standing On My Head, which, if he really does, might account for the topsy-turvy view of the world you’ll find there. Dwight makes grandiose and daft claims for the Roman Catholic church while taking side-swipes at others’ beliefs: Atheism, he says, is dull because – quite unreasonably – it insists on ‘evidence’, which Dwight is sure is quite over-rated. Other belief systems are boring because they don’t involve nearly as much dressing up and parading with statues as Catholicism. Islam is a demonically inspired religion that can only be defeated by Aslan the Catholic church’s special magic… you get the picture.
Here are some other fantastic claims he’s made recently:
On other religions:
There is only one God who is the source and ground of existence. However, there are also demonic beings sometimes called “demi-gods” that many people worship as “gods”.
The ‘everybody is wrong but me’ argument, which is ironic when so much of what Catholics believe isn’t even remotely biblical: the Pope, purgatory, Marian worship, saintly intercession, transubstantiation. All this extraneous stuff is regarded by other Christians as being itself ‘demonic’. Dwight doesn’t seem to realise he’s in a glass house (church?) and in no position to cast this particular stone.
On the after-life:
I would have thought the universal human belief in an afterlife – as well as near death experiences – provide ample evidence, but of course (atheists) dispute that.
The problem here is that there is no ‘universal belief in an afterlife’. As I note in ‘All Is Vanity’ below, the belief in the resurrection of the dead is a very late development even in the Old Testament; ancient Judaism, despite its belief in Yahweh, did not consider the possibility for most of its existence. That said, if there were such a universal belief, it would not mean eternal life actually existed. There has always been widespread belief in fairies and sprites but that doesn’t make such beings real. There is no correspondence between the extent and persistence of a belief and the existence in reality of its object.
As for near death experiences, the clue is in the name; near death. Near death is not death, it’s life. How else would we know of the experiences if not through people who have been resuscitated, brought fully back to consciousness? These experiences are now known to be brain-induced hallucinations while a person remains, if only just, alive.
On the Catholic version of the after-life:
Your understanding of the Catholic approach to the afterlife is immature. We don’t spend our life trying hard to get into heaven. We spend our life in an abundant, joyful and disciplined way being a follower of Jesus Christ and aiming to become “perfect as he is perfect”.
That my understanding of an immature belief is immature seems fitting. I don’t suggest Catholics spend their lives trying to get into heaven; this is a straw man of Longenecker’s creation. I’ve also yet to meet a Catholic who is any more ‘perfect’ than the rest of us. I’ve not encountered many joyful ones either, come to that.
On living this life:
The intrinsic problem with your saying you would rather make the “most of this life” is the question of what that actually means. Your idea of “making the most of life” and your neighbor’s idea of “making the most of life” could vary enormously. Who is to say what “making the most of life” consists of?
Dwight and the church he represents would rather we all conform to Catholic ideas of what makes life worth living. As for who is to say what making the most of life consists of, I’d have thought it was those living it. Dwight has chosen strange religious practices as his way of living his life, but so insecure is he in his choice he feels the need to denigrate others’ choices as a means of bolstering his own.
On the world’s problems:
It seems to me that most of the problems in the world are caused by people “making the most of life”- which usually means unfettered and total selfishness – which of course leads to destruction.
I’d be the last person to mention the Catholic church’s paedophilia scandals, its covering up of those scandals, its suppression of women and LGBT people, its accumulation of vast wealth in the service of one who constantly preached against it. Nor would I want to say anything about the church’s historic failings (so no mention of the Inquisition, the imprisonment and execution of those who disagreed with it, its support of Hitler and so on.
Dwight presents no evidence for his subjective claim (‘it seems to me’) that the only alternative to Catholicism is hedonism and selfishness. The false dichotomy is wholly disingenuous. It is not hedonism or atheism that says we merit God’s special attention; not atheism that panders to our selfish desire to live forever; not atheism that says God will get us out of the hole into which we’ve dug ourselves; not atheism that promulgates such a supremely arrogant and self-centred view of life. No, it’s the Christian perspective that does that, the Catholic one. Indeed, it could and has been argued, by Hitchens, Harris et al, that most of the problems in the world are caused not by atheism or even ‘unfettered selfishness’, but by religion.
Atheism and the humanism to which it gives rise accept that we got ourselves into this mess and it’s ourselves who will have to get us out of it. Maybe that’s boring and maybe it will prove impossible, but it’s better, more realistic, than appealing to fairy tales, dressing up and talking to statues.
As you’ll see in comments to previous posts, Christians like to encourage gambling. Recycling Pascal’s wager, they say things like ‘if I am wrong then I have based my life on a false premise and have ceased to exist. I won’t even have the opportunity to express regrets. However, if you are wrong, having rejected Christ, you, sadly, will have quite a while to weep, wail and gnash your teeth.’
The old faith-as-insurance-policy argument. Rather like the Chance card in Monopoly that lets you avoid jail, it offers you the chance to escape hell, where all this gnashing is supposed to occur, by the simple expedient of holding a particular set of beliefs in your head.
Surely this hedging of bets doesn’t impress God, the supposed creator of the universe, Father of mankind and judge of all the Earth. He won’t really be taken in, will he, on that great and dreadful Judgement Day when we admit, ‘actually, I only believed in you so you wouldn’t send me to hell’? Maybe he will, being a God without discernment or insight. It’s certainly all that evangelical Christianity has to offer – just ask my preacher friends – a Get Out Of Hell Free card. Which is a long way from what Jesus taught about the coming Kingdom and how to be part of it; not, in his case, by believing the right things but by doing them (Matthew 25.31-36).
What if I am wrong, though, as Christians think? Then I could be in trouble. But so might they; they could find they’ve gambled on entirely the wrong God (curse you Pascal for not thinking of that!) and find themselves up before Allah or Vishnu once they’ve miraculously survived death. ‘Wrong God, mate,’ Allah will have to tell them: الله خطأ، تتزاوج . What then?
And given that they think eternal life awaits them, why are so many Christians fearful of leaving this life? Could it be because they’re not convinced that the gamble is going to pay off? They know intuitively that this life is the only life they’ll be getting – and that when it’s gone it’s gone, as it says in Poundland. That will be why they mourn their brothers and sisters in Christ who ‘pass away’; “sorry to hear about your loss,” they say, when according to their magic betting slip it’s no loss at all but an immortal gain.
So I’m confident I’m not wrong. The odds are in my favour; the evidence is on my side. Consider, if you will, Christians:
If any of you would like to demonstrate that these assertions are wrong, please do. All I ask is that you bear in mind that insisting they’ll happen at some point in the future because the Bible says so, is not evidence; it’s wishful thinking. Which is pretty much where we came in.
All is vanity.
The idea that human beings can live forever is a very old one, being part of a number of ancient religions. The Egyptians, for example, believed there was an afterlife and that where you spent it was determined by a post-mortem judgement. Christianity would later embrace similar notions of judgement and everlasting life.
The idea is, however, largely absent from Judaism. Ecclesiastes in the Christian Old Testament (‘Kohelet’ in Judaism) has this to say about death and its aftermath:
I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3.18-20).
This seems to me to be an entirely realistic, if somewhat pessimistic, view of life and death. (And humans as animals! Today’s believers still have trouble accepting this, even when their holy book spells it out for them.) Later writing – the book of Daniel, for example – begins to toy with the idea of eternal life, but it isn’t until we get to Jesus’ time that the idea really takes off.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes knew, and as I suggest here, there is no evidence we survive death. Death would hardly be death if we did. The dessicated bodies of those Egyptians, mummified so their ‘owners’ could reclaim and re-use them on the other side, are still with us. There’s no evidence either that a special part of us – a soul or spirit – makes the transition. In any case, this is a predominantly pagan idea and is not what the New Testament offers. Both Jesus and Paul are firm believers in bodily resurrection here on the Earth.
The desire to live beyond the brief few years that our physical bodies last is understandable. It’s hard to imagine that one day every single one of us will no longer exist, that our consciousness, personalities, thoughts, memories, emotions – everything that makes us who we are – will simply no longer be. That’s why, I suppose, people in the past rebelled against that inevitability and fantasised about a continued existence once this one came to an end. Eventually religions came to offer such compensatory life-after-death, provided of course suckers people believed the right things.
Such is Christianity.
When you think about it, what a truly absurd notion it is; that believing in a magic formula will defeat death and enable you to be resurrected on the Earth to live in God’s new Kingdom here, or (when that didn’t quite pan out) taken up to Heaven to live there. All you have to do is believe the right things and God will do this for you. Death will be defeated by the simple expedient of your belief. We’re so used to the idea after 2,000 years of Christianity that the absurdity ceases to register – but absurd it surely is.
to be continued
Christians like to claim atheism is a religion. It’s their way of saying, ‘look – atheists are as daft as we are. They believe in bullshit just like we do, except, of course, they’re wrong and we’re right.’ You can see them saying just this here and here and here.
But atheism isn’t a religion, any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby, as Penn Jillette puts it. It isn’t a religion because it is the absence of belief – primarily in a god, but also in any other kind of supernatural being. The atheist knows there are no saviours, angels, devils, demons, ethereal saints or eternal prophets, and no heaven and hell to house them either. Atheism is devoid of any sort of worship of imagined supernatural beings; nor does it address them, commune with them or otherwise revere them. It does not recognise the authority of ‘holy’ books nor that of self-appointed spiritual authorities, including popes, pastors, preachers, imams, mullahs and rabbis. It doesn’t regard anything as sacred, including its own experts; neither Darwin nor the so-called New Atheists are above criticism. (Try that with those who think they represent God’s Truth™!)
Where religionists build their belief systems on the insubstantial foundation of faith, atheists accept nothing on trust. Instead, they look for evidence to support their knowledge and value reason, not dogma – things that are anathema to religion.
Given, then, that atheism is the antithesis of religion and that atheists don’t do what religion demands, it is intellectual dishonesty to insist that atheism is a religion. Those who do so are false witnesses; mistaken at best, liars for sure.
According to the Bible, why did the resurrection happen?
To show us that we’re all going to go to Heaven when we die? No, nowhere does the Bible say that.
To demonstrate that Jesus was really God? No, it doesn’t say that either.
To let people know that God was about to resurrect everyone so that the righteous could live on a renewed Earth, while the rest would be sent off to eternal punishment?
Yup, that’s the one. That’s the way Mark, Matthew and Luke tell it and it’s also what Paul believed. He refers to Jesus as the ‘first fruits’, with lots more ‘saints’ being resurrected after him to populate God’s kingdom on Earth:
…in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Corinthians 15. 20-25).
This is why Matthew has hordes of the dead rising from their tombs (Matthew 27.53) – he sees resurrection as the indisputable proof that the Kingdom has arrived. Matthew is so desperate to show that it’s already started, he has bodies emerging from their graves even before he has Jesus himself come back from the dead.
Of course, all of it’s a fairy story, Matthew’s zombies and Jesus’ resurrection included. As we saw last time, there’s no evidence at all that Jesus rose physically from the grave. Paul’s experience of the resurrected Christ was of a beam of light that appeared in his own head, and from this he concocted his entire theology (Galatians 1.12). When the gospel writers created their resurrection stories much later on, they turned such visions into ‘real’ encounters with a reinvigorated Jesus. They offer stories of his eventual return – after a quick visit to Heaven – as a conquering hero who will kick-start God’s Kingdom on Earth (Matthew 25.31).
So there you are. Jesus’ return from the dead, which didn’t happen anyway, was intended to be the first of many such resurrections, right here on Earth. According to Paul and the later synoptic gospels, it signified that God’s Kingdom was about to be established in this world, not the next. In the first century.
As we know, it all happened just as they said it would.
Hi, Thea Lojan here talking about the creed. Here’s what else it says, following on from last time:
I believe Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God and will come to judge the living and the dead. As I was saying, Jesus could do amazing things. He could, like, beam up into the sky and out into space – that’s what ‘ascended’ means. Amazing. And he is coming back to judge the Earth, just like he promised. I know he said he’d be back real soon, like while his disciples were still alive, but to God a minute is like a thousand years so a few years can be anything like a million, or something like that. We shouldn’t take it literally when he said he’d be back while his friends were still around, though the Bible is, without a doubt, the literal Word of God.
Anyway, when he returns Jesus is going to send those who don’t believe in him to Hell, where they’ll suffer eternal torment for, like, forever and ever, amen. And he’ll take people who are saved, like me, back to Heaven with him. I can’t actually find the bit in the Bible where he says he’ll be taking me to Heaven, but I have faith so I’m sure he will.
Just a thought, but why doesn’t this creed mention the Bible, and how it’s the ineffable and literal Word of God? You’d think it would, wouldn’t you.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church and the communion of saints. Definitely. The Holy Spirit is like the feeling of God that you get when you’re being blessed. You can’t see it – though it’s actually a ‘him’ because God is a ‘him’ – but it’s there, helping you make decisions, like whether you should buy a new car or install a heated pool in the yard. You definitely get a sense of him then. In my experience, he’s never let me down. He always guides me right.
I’m less sure of the holy Catholic Church because of course we’re not all Catholics and nor should we be when Catholics have got everything so wrong. But the pastor at church says it just means ‘the Body of Christ’ here, the same as ‘the communion of saints’ does, though that makes you wonder why we’ve got it in there twice. The communion of saints means all worshippers everywhere being united and working together. So, yes, I totally believe that because, that’s what we do as Christians; we all love each other. I don’t accept any of those lies that some people put about that there’s, like, 41,000 different kinds of churches. I don’t think God would let that happen, do you?
I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Yes I surely do, for God has forgiven my sins through the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, his son. And if they’re really, really sorry I can forgive the sins of others, except of course if they’re, like, homosexuals. It really grosses me out to think about what so-called “gay” people do with each other. It’s unforgivable and even the Lord doesn’t forgive it. But my sins, yes, he forgives those.
The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Well, I already covered this. This is another repeat. What this really means is that everyone whose sins are forgiven and have been saved will go to live with God in Heaven after they die. Isn’t that amazing? Just think, whatever happens to your body all the time you’re dead, even if it’s been burnt or has rotted away to nothing, God will repair it and make it good as new. And then you’ll live forever in Heaven, because that’s what it means when it says ‘the life everlasting’. Even if I still can’t find that bit in my Bible.
Well, that’s it. That’s my creed, and what Christians everywhere believe. It was written, in fact, by the apostles, that’s Jesus’ friends, way back when he was still alive or just after. If you were to give your life to the Lord – and you really should if you want live forever in Heaven – then it’s what you’d believe too. Isn’t that, like, really, literally incredible?
When it comes to derogatory and hateful remarks about minorities, Jesus is frequently given a pass. His ‘meek and mild’ persona – not one he actually had, but one he’s acquired over time – is brought into play to absolve him of all unpleasantness.
For example, and as liberal bloggers are fond of saying, here’s what he had to say about gay marriage:
“
”
Yup, that’s right; he said absolutely nothing about it – not directly anyway. But what Jesus did say, if ‘Matthew’ is to believed, was that he upheld the Jewish Law in its minutest detail:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5.17-19)
That’s the Law that prescribes death for even the smallest infraction that he’s endorsing there. Here’s a brief sample of that Law and the penalty for breaking its petty rules:
Stone to death anyone who works on the Sabbath. (Exodus 35.2 and Numbers 15.32-36)
Kill publicly children who dishonour their father or mother. (Leviticus 20.9)
Stone to death anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord. (Leviticus 24.16)
Execute a married couple who have sexual intercourse during the woman’s period. (Leviticus 18.19)
Put to death those involved in adultery. (Leviticus 20.10)
Execute any man who lies with another man, as with a woman. (Leviticus 20.13)
Stone to death at her father’s door any woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night. (Deuteronomy 22.13-14 and 20-21).
Sound familiar? With its oppressive brutality and liberal use of the death penalty, this sort of behaviour is like IS practices today. They’re both desert ‘moralities’, after all. And this is the law that Jesus advocates and insists remains in place until ‘heaven and earth pass away’. As that hasn’t happened yet, the Law, according to Jesus anyway, remains in effect. Never mind that Paul says it doesn’t – God himself, in the shape of Jesus Christ says it does. How’s that for meek and mild?
(Cue Christians referencing the story of the woman caught in adultery. That, however, is a late addition to the Bible and, in any case, Jesus only saves the woman because his beloved Law hasn’t been properly complied with.)
Thankfully, civilised human beings – and civilised Christians too – ignore Jesus and don’t seek to apply such old barbaric laws (though there are some believers who want to when it comes to LGBT people; see my previous post.) But if you want to know Jesus’ position on moral issues that he doesn’t pontificate on explicitly, just remember he fully supports the death penalty for adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, not being a virgin on your wedding night, having sex at the wrong time of month, dancing, listening to the radio, tweeting and texting… oh wait… now I have got him confused with Islamic extremists. It’s so easy to do.
Next time: Jesus says that the only way to gain eternal life is to follow this vicious Law with all its unreasonable demands.
Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again (or ‘from above’).’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit (John 3.3-5).
While John’s gospel isn’t the only source of Christian nuttiness, it’s certainly a mine of golden nuggets. This is mainly because it was made up so long after Jesus lived, by people who had, in all probability, never met him but who belonged to a sect led by someone who claimed he had.
Imagine, in a world without technology, photography and literacy, writing an account from memory (or from other people’s memories) of events that had occurred sixty years earlier. It would be like attempting to create today the history of a charismatic, back-water nobody who lived in the early 1950s – but without any reliable written records, pictures or sound recordings. How much faith would you have in such an account? How far would you trust, at such a distance, the account’s supposedly verbatim dialogue, especially when it conflicts on nearly all crucial points with the few other stories that circulate from the period? Of course you wouldn’t. And yet this is precisely what we have in ‘John’s gospel’, where we find the famous exhortation to be ‘born again’.
Let’s be clear at the outset; Jesus did not say ‘you must be born again.’ The point of the story is that he meant something else (equally ludicrous, but different nonetheless). Despite this, today’s Christians still insist he did say it and that to be truly saved you must indeed be ‘born again’.
But, as Bart Ehrman explains in Jesus, Interrupted (p 155), the misunderstanding central to this exchange, between ‘born again’ and ‘born from above’ occurs only in Greek. As Aramaic speakers, Jesus and Nicodemus would not, if they knew any, have resorted to Greek for this one conversation, just so this very confusion could be created.
The word in question is the Greek word anothen, which can mean both ‘again’ and ‘from above’, and it is this double meaning that prompts Nicodemus to ask if he is expected to crawl back into his mother’s womb so he can be born ‘again’. The contrivance allows Jesus to make a show of correcting him and to make his real point; ‘No, Nic, you dumbkoff. Not ‘born again’, but ‘born from above’. What do they teach you at synagogue school these days?’
So in a conversation he never had, depending as it does on a misunderstanding of the Greek he didn’t speak, ‘born again’ is not what Jesus means: his point, as the writers of John’s gospel make clear (in the Greek Jesus didn’t speak, but they did) is that one has to be ‘born from above’.
And why do people have to be ‘born from above’? Because that’s where the story’s creators believed heaven to be – above them, in the sky. Jesus himself would have believed this too, even though he didn’t utter a single one of the words attributed to him in this fabricated conversation.
This post is adapted from my (five-star rated!) book Why Christians Don’t Do What Jesus Tells Them To …And What They Believe Instead, available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com
It’s always nice when the local fellowship keeps in touch.
Some prefer the comfort of Faith. I prefer the cold, hard Truth.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
Welcome to Carlisle Writers' Group blog, showcasing some of our recent writing and outlining a few of our other activities.
Musings on my former Christian Faith
by E.B. de Mas, reachable at: pink.agendist@yahoo.com
Responses to common theist arguments
rejectingjesus, 