God: The Failed Hypothesis (25 page)

Almost certainly, the Jewish kingdom was far more modest than described in the Bible, and the events surrounding David are probably as mythological as those of the lives of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

As you might expect, these conclusions continue to be hotly debated in the community of biblical scholars and archaeologists. Some maximalists have argued that the remains of Solomon’s temple and other signs of a Golden Age in Jerusalem have been wiped out by later building projects. However, the extensive excavations carried on in Jerusalem in modern times have yielded impressive finds from much earlier periods such as the Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age, which would have been covered by even more debris
³⁴
.

In short, the hypothesis of a God who looked down with favor on a small desert tribe fifteen hundred to a thousand years before Christ, enabling them to forge a great, albeit short-lived empire, is falsified by the absence of data.

Not Even Remotely Historic

If the most important stories found in the Old and New Testaments are even remotely historic, then scientific evidence should exist for an escape of large numbers of Jews from Egypt in the thirteenth century
BCE
and forty years of wandering in the desert.

It does not. Physical evidence should exist for great battles as the Israelites captured the land of Canaan, after returning to Canaan.

It does not. Physical evidence should exist for a Golden Age in a combined kingdom of Israel and Judea around 1000
BCE
and the Temple of Solomon. It does not.

Historical evidence should also exist for the extraordinary events reported to have occurred at the time of Jesus’ birth. It does not. Historical evidence should exist for the extraordinary events reported to have occurred at the time of Jesus’ death. It does not.

From the absence of evidence that should exist in the scientific and historical record, we can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that these extraordinary events did not take place as the Bible describes.

The Bible reads as an assembly of myths fashioned by ancient authors who had no concept of historical accuracy. Its description of the world reflects the scientific and historical knowledge of the age in which the manuscripts were composed.

The information and insights contained in scriptures and other revelations look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God who revealed truths to humanity that were recorded in sacred texts.

Notes

¹
Archer L. Gleason,
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), p. 23.

²
See, for example, Gen. 1:6-8; Chron. 16:30; Ps. 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Isa. 45:18. Isa. 40:22 says Earth is a “circle.” Note that a circle is flat. Both the King James and Revised Standard versions have been con-sulted here.

³
For an attempt to make the Bible creation story consistent with science, see Gerald L. Schroeder,
Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of the Harmony between Modem Science and the Bible
(New York: Bantam Books, 1992);
The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom
(New York: Broadway Books, 1998);
The Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth
(New York: Free Press, 2001). For reviews, see Victor J. Stenger, “Fitting the Bible to the Data,”
Skeptical Inquirer
23 no. 4 (1999): 67, also online at
Secular Web,
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/vic_stenger/schrev.html
(accessed December 13, 2004), pp. 165-70; and Mark Perakh, “Not a Very Big Bang about Genesis” (December 2001), online at
Talk Reason,
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/schroeder.cfm
(accessed December 15, 2004).

⁴
Thanks to Brent Meeker for rewriting this for me in Biblespeak.

⁵
Josh McDowell,
Evidence That Demands a Verdict
(San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Publishers, 1972, 1979). Quotations from paperback version of revised edition.

⁶
For a chapter-by-chapter critique, see Jeffery Jay Lowder, ed., “The Jury Is In: The Ruling on McDowell’s ‘Evidence,’” online at
Secular Web,
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/
(accessed January 14, 2005). The essays date from 1997 to 1999.

⁷
McDowell,
Evidence That Demands a Verdict,
pp. 141-66.

⁸
Ibid., p. 145.

⁹
Randel Helms,
Gospel Fictions
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988), p. 59.

¹⁰
Elizabeth F. Loftus,
Eyewitness Testimony
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

¹¹
Everitt Ferguson,
Background of Early Christianity,
3d ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2003), p. 488.

¹²
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy,
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God?
(New York: Harmony Books, 1999), p. 133.

¹³
William Lane Craig, “The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus,”
New Testament Studies
31 (1985): 39-67,
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/tomb2.html
(accessed January 4, 2005).

¹⁴
Freke and Gandy,
The Jesus Mysteries.

¹⁵
Ferguson,
Background of Early Christianity,
pp. 297-300.

¹⁶
See, for example, Philostratus,
The Life of Apollonius of Tyana,
quoted in Helms,
Gospel Fictions,
p. 9.

¹⁷
Helms,
Gospel Fictions.

¹⁸
Joseph R. Hoffmann and Gerald A. Larue, eds.,
Jesus in History and Myth
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986); G. A. Wells,
The Historical Evidence for Jesus
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988); Earl Doherty,
The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?
(Ottawa: Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999).

¹⁹
Hugh Ross, “Fulfilled Prophecy,”
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/prophecy.shtml
(accessed January 14, 2005). Original dating 1975, revised August 22, 2003.

²⁰
Tim Callahan,
Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment
(Altadena, CA: Millennium Press, 1997), p. 47.

²¹
Angela M. H. Schuster, “Not Phillip II of Macedon,”
Archaeology
(April 20, 2000),
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/macedon/
(accessed December 26, 2004).

²²
Joe Nickell,
Inquest on the Shroud of Turin
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987).

²³
Ibid., “Bone (Box) of Contention: The James Ossuary,”
Skeptical Inquirer 27,
no. 2 (March/April 2003): 19-22. A complete set of scholarly essays on the James Ossuary is online at
Bible and Interpretation,
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/James_Ossuary_essays.htm
(accessed December 25, 2004).

²⁴
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman,
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
(New York: Free Press, 2001).

²⁵
Ibid., p. 57.

²⁶
Ibid., p. 62.

²⁷
Ibid., p. 63.

²⁸
William G. Dever,
Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research
(Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1990), p. 25.

²⁹
Dever,
Recent Archaeological Discoveries,
p. 48; Finkelstein and Silberman,
The Bible Unearthed,
pp. 81-82.

³⁰
Finkelstein and Silberman,
The Bible Unearthed,
pp. 33-38.

³¹
Ibid., pp. 128-31.

³²
As quoted in
Biblical Archaeological Review
31, no. 1 (January/February 2005): 16-17.

³³
Ibid.

³⁴
Finkelstein and Silberman,
The Bible Unearthed,
p. 133.

Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.

—Charles Darwin

The Pipeline

T
he religions of the world have laid claim to the role of arbiters of human behavior, and their leaders continually decry the moral decay they claim to see in society. They insist they have the right to tell the rest of us what is right and what is wrong because they have a special pipeline to the place where right and wrong are defined—in the mind of God.

On the other hand, the opinions of atheists, freethinkers, and humanists are rarely solicited—and frequently reviled.

The implication is that atheists and humanists are somehow undesirable members of society, people you would not want to invite into your house. According to lawyer Phillip Johnson, nonbelievers actually think humans came from monkeys, which is the source of many of the “evils” of modern society, including homosexuality, abortion, pornography, divorce, and genocide—

as if the world had none of these before Darwin came along
¹
.

However common may be the view that religion is the source of moral behavior, what do the data say? I have seen no evidence that nonbelievers commit crimes or other antisocial acts in greater proportion than believers. Indeed, some studies indicate the opposite. According to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Christians make up almost 80 percent of the prison population. Atheists make up about 0.2 percent
²
. It is to be admitted that these data are not published in a scientific journal, but I think it is safe to conclude that the godless do not fill prisons.

Published studies do indicate that a child’s risk of sexual abuse by a family member increases as the family’s religious denomina-tion becomes more conservative, that is, when the teachings of scriptures and other doctrines are taken more literally
³
. Similarly, the probability of wife abuse increases with the rigidity of a church’s teachings pertaining to gender roles and hierarchy
⁴
.

But let me not rely solely on sociological statistics, where correlation does not always imply connection given all the mitigating factors. Even observers from the Christian side have expressed dismay that the current dominance of evangelical Christianity in America has not translated into a strengthening of the nation’s moral character or the characters of evangelical Christians themselves. In an article in
Christianity Today,
theologian Ronald Sider lamented: “Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most

‘Christians’ regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment
⁵
.” Sider continues, The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. “Gallup and Barna,” laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, “hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, selfcentered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”

Divorce is
more
common among “born-again” Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the
most
likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers.

Common Standards

It is not my purpose in this chapter to say how humans ought to behave. Rather I am acting as a scientist, observing how they do behave and asking what those observations tell us about the truth or falsity of the God hypothesis. In this regard, I reject the notion that science has nothing to say about morality.

Preachers tell us that any universal moral standards can only come from one source—their particular God. Otherwise standards would be relative, depending on culture and differing across cultures and individuals. The data, however, indicate that the majority of human beings from all cultures and all religions or no religion agree on a common set of moral standards. While specific differences can be found, universal norms do seem to exist. Anthropologist Solomon Asch has observed, “We do not know of societies in which bravery is despised and cowardice held up to honor, in which generosity is considered a vice and ingratitude a virtue
⁶
.”

While we live in a society of law, much of what we do is not constrained by law but performed voluntarily. For example, we have many opportunities to cheat and steal in situations where the chance of being caught is negligible, yet most of us do not cheat and steal. While the Golden Rule is not usually obeyed to the letter, we generally do not try to harm others. Indeed, we are sympathetic when we see a person or animal in distress and take action to provide relief. We stop at auto accidents and render aid.

We call the police when we witness a crime. We take care of children, aged parents, and others less fortunate than us. We willingly take on risky jobs, such as in the military or public safety, for the protection of the community.

That stealing from members of your own community is immoral requires no divine revelation. It is revealed by a moment’s reflection on the type of society that would exist if everyone stole from one another. If lying were considered a virtue instead of truth-telling, communication would become impossible. Mothers have loved their children since before mammals walked the earth—for obvious evolutionary reasons. The only precepts unique to religion are those telling us to not to question their dogma.